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ANALYSIS: Why do Swedish politicians hold back in their criticism of the US?

Sweden's silence on Donald's Trump's baseless claims of election fraud may appear inconsistent with the Nordic nation's reputation as a protector of democracy, but fit into a wider pattern of Sweden-US relationships, political scientist Ian Higham told The Local.

Published: 4 November 2020 17:12 CET
Updated: 5 November 2020 18:29 CET
ANALYSIS: Why do Swedish politicians hold back in their criticism of the US?
President Donald Trump falsely claimed victory and called for vote-counting to stop with many votes yet to be counted early on Wednesday morning. Photo: AP Photo/Evan Vucci/TT

On Wednesday, the race was still close to neck-and-neck between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden, with many votes remaining to be counted and a final result not expected for days.

But Trump said he had won the election, baselessly saying “major fraud” had taken place and appearing to call for votes not to be counted.

In a brief press conference about the US election, Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde began by saying that the high voter turnout “is a sign of good democratic health”. She did not condemn Trump's comments, but called on viewers to avoid speculation and to “allow the American system to work”.

While Linde was restrained in her comments, other Swedish politicians did speak out about the president's actions.

The leader of the Swedish Left Party, Nooshi Dadgostar, told public broadcaster SVT that Trump “is twisting the democratic method we have to hand over power peacefully”, while the leader of the Centre Party Annie Lööf described Trump's actions as “upsetting and worrying” and “lacking democratic instincts”.

Political scientist Ian Higham, who works at Stockholm University, said the cautious official response could be seen as hypocritical given Sweden's stance as a defender of democracy.

“I don't think they would tolerate some of the things Trump does if it was happening elsewhere, in a country that's smaller and maybe has a greater history of corruption,” he told The Local.

But it's not the first time Sweden has kept quiet about actions harmful to democracy in the US. President Trump has refused to condemn white nationalist groups, and repeatedly labelled the national media as “the enemy of the people”.

“That's a criticism Sweden might level against a government in Belarus or Russia, but when the US does it they're pretty silent so I'm not that surprised that they're not commenting today,” Higham said.

The same pattern is repeated when it comes to moves to restrict rights to safe and legal abortion, or related to the rights of women and children.

“I don't think I've seen a Swedish politician comment publicly on the fact that more than 500 children have been separated from their parents by the current administration and the parents and children cannot be reunited. Forcibly taking a child away from their parent should be part of [Sweden's] feminist foreign policy and yet it's not something that's criticised.”

“I think Sweden would be more likely to criticise it there than in this powerful country that has a very important relationship with Sweden, not least economically.”

That important relationship encompasses security collaboration as well as trade, with Sweden the USA's 13th largest investor and hundreds of thousands of jobs in each country directly linked to trade between the two.

In some ways, Swedish-US relations have even strengthened under Trump's four-year term. Speaking on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Ann Linde described deepening this relationship as “one of my most important tasks”.


Foreign Minister Ann Linde. Photo: AP Photo/Burhan Ozbilici/TT

That's even despite the American president's criticism of Scandinavian social democratic policies, including the comment “you wouldn't believe what happened last night in Sweden“, referring to a YouTube documentary about immigrants and crime in Sweden which has been widely discredited.

The key example of positive development is Sweden's role in facilitating talks between the US and North Korea, giving the Scandinavian country greater prominence in Washington.

Meanwhile, Sweden's relationship with the other major superpower, China, has deteriorated during Trump's time in power due to issues including the imprisonment of Swedish dissident Gui Minhai and repeated threats from China towards the Swedish media.

But according to Higham, the main reasons for the lack of intervention from Swedish politicians is nothing to do with Trump himself.

“Resources would be poorly spent wasting too much political capital on the US, which isn't likely to change based on what Sweden says, but an aid-receiving country like Uganda may be more likely to listen,” he said.

“And the US is still mostly seen as a country that's democratic and respects human rights. Sweden's promotion of human rights and democracy and human rights is tied up with its reputation, so I think Sweden may be more likely to vocalise this view when it's going to be seen as worthwhile.”

“Swedes and the Swedish press are pretty happy to criticise Trump, he's not very popular here, but Sweden in general is reluctant to criticise the US government no matter who's in power in either country,” Higham explained.

As for whether Sweden will change its attitude towards the superpower, that likely depends at least in part on the result of the election, which should become clear later this week.

If Trump wins fairly, Higham doesn't anticipate significant change in these relations, but should the president attempt to hold onto power through illegitimate means such as ignoring votes, this could be something that tips the balance.

“There might come a point at which attacking the media, or challenging the counting of votes may not be something Sweden can ignore. Sweden has sought to play a big role in countries like Belarus that don't recognise democratic election results so a situation like that would become almost untenably hypocritical,” he said.

Sweden's Linde was not the only European minister to refuse to condemn Trump's actions.

British Foreign Minister Dominic Raab repeatedly said he did not want to “comment on the commentary” by saying whether the president was right or wrong to say he had won before many states had counted their votes.

Slovenian prime minister Janez Janša echoed Donald Trump's false early claims of a victory, accusing the media for “denying facts” in a tweet which was labelled by the social media platform as misleading.

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INSIDE SWEDEN

Inside Sweden: Why troll factory won’t spark a government crisis

The Local's editor Emma Löfgren rounds up the biggest stories of the week in our Inside Sweden newsletter.

Published: 18 May 2024 09:22 CEST
Inside Sweden: Why troll factory won't spark a government crisis

Hej,

News that the Sweden Democrats are operating a far-right troll factory – which among other things the party uses to smear political opponents as well as its supposed allies – has caused probably the biggest rift yet between them and the three other parties that make up Sweden’s ruling coalition.

The leaders of the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals all strongly criticised the Sweden Democrats’ blatant violation of the so-called “respect clause” in their Tidö collaboration agreement – the clause that states that the four parties should speak respectfully of each other in the media.

But after crisis talks held on Thursday, the conflict appears to be dying down.

The Sweden Democrats hit out strongly at the TV4 Kalla Fakta documentary where the troll factory was revealed, calling it a smear campaign and disinformation, but simultaneously went as far as to confirm that they do run anonymous social media accounts for which they refused to apologise.

They did say sorry to the Tidö parties for including them in the smear campaigns, and promised to remove some of the posts that had offended the other three parties, plus reassign a couple of members of staff to other duties until they’ve been given training on the Tidö “respect clause”.

But that doesn’t remove the fact that they vowed to continue the anonymous social media accounts whose existence they had prior to the documentary consistently denied, or the fact that some of the social media posts shared not only vague anti-immigration content, but white power propaganda.

The Liberals took the row the furthest, with Liberal leader Johan Pehrson describing people in his party as skitförbannade – pissed off as hell. He said ahead of the crisis meeting that they would demand that the Sweden Democrats cease all anonymous posting, which the latter rejected.

The party had two choices: walk out of the government collaboration and possibly spark a snap election, or walk back its strong words ahead of the meeting and wait for it to blow over.

They chose a kind of middle way, and called for an inquiry to be launched into banning political parties from operating anonymous social media accounts. The Social Democrats immediately accused the Liberals of trying to “bury the issue in an inquiry” – a classic Swedish political method of indecisive conflict avoidance which the Social Democrats themselves are well familiar with.

The Christian Democrats and Moderates both said that the Sweden Democrats had accepted their criticism and welcomed the party’s reshuffling of staff within its communications department, adding that it still had to prove its commitment to the Tidö agreement going forward.

So why isn’t this causing a bigger government crisis?

We asked Evelyn Jones, a politics reporter for the Dagens Nyheter daily, to come on the Sweden in Focus podcast to explain it to us:

“The Sweden Democrats are the biggest party in this coalition, even though they’re not part of the government. So the government really needs them. It’s hard for them to just stop cooperating with the Sweden Democrats,” she said.

“The cooperation between the government parties and the Sweden Democrats has been going pretty smoothly since the last election – more smoothly than a lot of people thought. This is probably the biggest crisis so far, but how big it is, is hard to say.”

You can listen to the full interview with her and the rest of the Sweden in Focus podcast here. 

In other news

If you are a descendant of a Sweden-born person and would like to find out more about them, there are ways to do that. I wrote this week about how to research your Swedish ancestry.

That guide was prompted by my interview with the chair of a community history group in a small parish in north-central Sweden, which has tried to get to the bottom of rumours that US mega star Taylor Swift’s ancestors hail from their village. I had so much fun writing this article.

The EU elections will be held on June 9th, but advance voting begins next week in Sweden. And poll cards are already being sent out, so if you’re eligible to vote you should receive yours soon.

Sweden’s consumer price index fell to 3.9 percent in April, below 4.0 percent for the first time in two years, reinforcing predictions that the central bank will keep lowering interest rates.

Sweden’s four-party government bloc has broken with the other parties in a parliamentary committee on public service broadcasting, adding what the opposition complains are “radically changed” proposals. How shocking are they?

Many people move to Sweden because of their partner’s career. Perhaps you’re one of these so-called “trailing spouses”. I’ve been asking readers in this situation how they’re settling in, and will have an article for you next week. There’s still time to answer our survey to share your experience.

Thanks for reading.

Have a good weekend,

Emma

Inside Sweden is our weekly newsletter for members which gives you news, analysis and, sometimes, takes you behind the scenes at The Local. It’s published each Saturday and with Membership+ you can also receive it directly to your inbox.

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