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SWEDEN ELECTS

Sweden Elects: Far right sets sights on becoming Sweden’s largest party

In our weekly Sweden Elects newsletter, The Local's editor Emma Löfgren explains the key events to keep an eye on in Swedish politics this week.

Published: 12 December 2022 08:23 CET
Sweden Elects: Far right sets sights on becoming Sweden's largest party
Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson speaks at a party conference. Photo: Tommy Pedersen/TT

Hej,

Jimmie Åkesson told a conference of some 800 Sweden Democrats in Karlstad over the weekend that he wants his anti-immigration party to challenge the Social Democrats for the spot of Sweden’s largest party.

It could happen.

The Social Democrats have been Sweden’s largest party throughout modern political history, even when they’ve lost elections, but their support has dwindled from the 50 percent of their social movement heyday of the mid-20th century to the 30 percent-ish of today.

The Sweden Democrats, meanwhile, have grown from being an outcast faction started by neo-Nazi sympathisers, to 20 seats in parliament in the 2010 election, to their 73 seats in parliament today. In the 2022 election they overtook the conservative Moderates to become Sweden’s second-largest party, and now they’ve got their eyes on the top spot.

I remember interviewing a Swede back in 2017 who went undercover for a year with the US alt-right movement, and one of his quotes stuck with me. “They’re not just doing political campaigning (…) but they organise barbecues and picnics, go to gallery openings, concerts, and just have a beer in a pub. (…) I think many of the people there are there for social reasons. It provides a context for them as friends,” he told me.

There’s a similar feel whenever you read reports from Sweden Democrat events or their presence in local politics. It’s a social glue that used to be provided by the Social Democrats and to some extent other parties.

If the mainstream parties wanted to draw inspiration from anything, perhaps this would be the thing to choose, rather than fighting to see who among them can be the toughest on immigration. But the latter is the path they’ve chosen, and Moderate Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard told the DN daily in a new interview that her government “is prepared to do whatever it takes to get immigration numbers down”.

You hear similar pledges from the right wing to the centre-left.

The leader of Kommunal, Sweden’s largest trade union for municipal workers (for example people who work in elderly care or preschools), urged the Social Democrats to stop “copying the Sweden Democrats”.

“Elderly care was barely mentioned in the election, despite the fact that all parties seemed to agree during the pandemic on how important and underserved it is. It is tragic,” she told DN in an interview last week.

As a news site founded by immigrants for immigrants, here at The Local we’ll keep covering this issue and other issues that matter to you.

In a new article, The Local’s acting editor Richard Orange (filling in for me while I’m on maternity leave) looked at the number of people who could be affected if the government abolishes asylum-related permanent residence permits, as Malmer Stenergard has said it wants to do.

On the latest episode of our Sweden in Focus podcast, my colleagues discussed Sweden’s plans to introduce a state-mandated cultural canon and what it will mean for foreigners (the episode also features a really interesting interview with Pakistan’s ambassador to Sweden).

In other news

The man who murdered a high-profile psychiatrist at Sweden’s annual political festival in July was last week found guilty of murder and preparing to commit a terror offence – the latter because of his plans to also attack Centre Party leader Annie Lööf. He was sentenced to psychiatric care.

Sweden’s business and energy minister, Christian Democrat leader Ebba Busch, has called on people to reduce their heating by 1C and halve their use of hot water in order to reduce electricity demand over the winter.

As Le Monde’s Nordic correspondent pointed out, that’s a very different tune to the campaign in 2021 when Busch, armed with a vacuum cleaner, criticised the then-government for urging people to save energy.

If you speak Swedish, a new documentary by public broadcaster SVT follows Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson and Left Party leader Nooshi Dadgostar on the campaign trail and in post-election talks.

Sweden’s popular speaker of parliament, Andreas Norlén, is ready to travel to Ankara to help negotiate Nato membership with Turkey, according to emails seen by DN. Nothing’s been decided yet, though.

Sweden Elects is a weekly column by Editor Emma Löfgren looking at the big talking points and issues after the Swedish election. Members of The Local Sweden can sign up to receive the column as a newsletter in their email inbox each week. Just click on this “newsletters” option or visit the menu bar.

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For members

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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