[Kaiserschmarrn]

Conventional wisdom used to have it that populists would never make any inroads in the UK, Germany and Sweden which were supposed to be immune to the populists' appeals.

Swedish far right at record high in pre-election poll

The ruling center left struggles to respond to rhetoric on crime and immigration.

Support for the far-right Sweden Democrats is at a record high ahead of September’s election, putting them hot on the heels of the ruling Social Democrats and main opposition Moderates, according to a new poll.

The anti-immigrant party scored 20 percent in the Ipsos poll in Dagens Nyheter, just four points behind the Social Democrats and two points behind the center-right Moderates.

Dagens Nyheter said Prime Minister Stefan Löfven‘s Social Democrats have never polled so low in May of an election year since its Ipsos series began in 1979.

The Social Democrats, who have dominated Swedish politics for a century (but were in opposition from 2006-2014), have struggled to respond to the far-right party’s tough rhetoric on crime and immigration, needing to strike a balance between reassuring the population and sticking to their traditional values.

The Sweden Democrats, led by Jimmie Åkesson, appear to be on track for their strongest result so far in the vote on September 9. After entering the Riksdag (parliament) in 2010, they scored 13 percent in 2014’s election.



Voter intentions for Löfven’s party have fallen from 29 percent in a February poll, the paper said. The Social Democrats won 31 percent in 2014, when they formed a minority coalition with the Greens, with parliamentary support from the Left Party.

And in Denmark: 'No more than 1,000 new Danish citizenships annually': DF as law change talks begin

The anti-immigration Danish People’s Party (DF) has called for a limit to be placed on the amount of people awarded Danish citizenship, regardless of other requirements being met.

Denmark’s coalition government will on Wednesday begin talks with its parliamentary ally DF, as well as the opposition Social Democrats, on new rules for citizenship applications.

“It is very good that curbs in this area, something that was unthinkable a few years ago, are now being proposed by the government,” DF’s citizenship spokesperson Christian Langballe said.

The party is hoping to persuade immigration minister Inger Støjberg to go even further than the proposals the government has announced.

[...]

[MadMonk]

Yep, my own Social Democrats have done a fantastic job of shooting themselves in the back of the head repeatedly over the last few months. Our esteemed party leader, acting with a tone deaf approach to rival Ivanka Trump, has sharply dropped in the leadership confidence index after several bungled debates. Internal strife within the Social Democrats are beginning to show on the overall election strategy and morale is plummeting within the rank and file.

I know it is not as exciting as Italian politics (and not as important), but swedish elections this year are like nothing we have seen in swedish politics since the Midsummer crisis of 1941.

Reporting live from 'making Sweden lagom again', the long-established dream of becoming a beer brewing monk seems more and more appetising.

[Albert]

Looks like people in Sweden are waking up. This is good news.

[Reichstraten]

While the Sweden Democrats try to be more moderate to gain votes, the neo-nazi's of Alternative for Sweden (AfS) try to fill the void on the right.

Right-Wing Leader Says Sweden Will Cease to Be 'Blond, Blue-Eyed', Sparks Debate

Until the advent of the Alternative for Sweden, which was founded earlier this year by maverick Sweden Democrats, Åkesson's party used to be the most right-wing on Sweden's political landscape.

With the AfS striving to gain momentum as a "mass deportation party," some Swedes have ventured that the Sweden Democrats have become "watered down." Nevertheless, the SD are still going strong into the autumn general election, currently polling as Sweden's third-largest party.

[Rich]

While the Sweden Democrats try to be more moderate to gain votes, the neo-nazi's of Alternative for Sweden (AfS) try to fill the void on the right.[/img]

Are they the normal Nazi suspects? You know people who believe in free speech and religious freedom, while being opposed to throwing homosexuals from roof tops, making 8 years old girls wear burkas and stoning women to death for adultery.

Are they Nazis like Tommy Robinson who support Israel's right to defend itself?

[Reichstraten]

There are hints of antisemitism:

Kasselstrand was one of many kicked out in the SD’s 2015 purge, which also led the party to shut down its youth wing. Party leaders alleged Kasselstrand and other youth wing leaders had relationships with the white nationalist Nordic Youth, who had espoused anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and “expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler.”

Among those in attendance at the kickoff Monday night was Ingrid Carlqvist, the leader of a new effort called the Free Sweden Association to bridge diverse far-right factions that is also a sign of new organizing efforts of the radical fringe.

Carlqvist is a former journalist who used to write for the Gatestone Institute, a US-based anti-immigration group. She now promotes a conspiracy theory that Jews were behind bringing Muslims to Sweden and collaborates with the white nationalist website RedIce. Her partners in this group reportedly include Magnus Söderberg, the former leader of the Nordic Resistance Movement, which is running this year as a Nazi political party, and Robin Holmgren, who fought in Ukraine with the Azov Battalion, a nationalist faction with neo-Nazi links.

source


They want to mass-deport immigrants:

The newly founded party seeking to dethrone the Sweden Democrats as the mouthpiece for right-wing beliefs is appealing to anti-immigrant voters by pledging mass deportations.

source

The Sweden Democrats, a party that's "not radical enough,” has itself origins in neo-nazi circles.

[ThirdTerm]

Jimmie Åkesson may be moderating the party's image to attract more voters. Åkesson argues that being a country of the "blonde and blue-eyed" is not desirable and adapting oneself to the Swedish way of life is good enough to belong to the Swedish nation. It's a reasonable message because Jimmie Åkesson has possible Finno-Ugric ancestry.

In an interview with Swedish Radio, Jimmie Åkesson, the leader of the right-wing Sweden Democrats, has resolutely dissociated himself from strictly biological characteristics defining the Swedish nation. According to Åkesson, Sweden won't return to being a country of the "blonde and blue-eyed" within the foreseeable future, and doesn't even consider it desirable.

Instead, he argued, adapting oneself to the Swedish way of life is enough to belong to the Swedish nation. One's background or birthplace doesn't really matter, he claimed.

"We are in favor of an open Swedish identity, in which one can actually become Swedish. I've never regarded a people as purely biological, it's more about a group of people with a common identity," Åkesson explained.

https://sputniknews.com/europe/20180531 ... blue-eyed/

[Steve_American]

If, [and as of now it is still an IF] if a right wing party wins the election in Sweden, then the other Swedish parties should have listened to me.

I wrote on another site that maybe it would be a good idea for liberal European parties to get their heads out of the clouds, and get it that, it is more important for the leaders of a nation to defend the people of that nation, than it is to defend guests. Here I'm uses guest to mean recent immigrants who can't vote and 'people of that nation' to mean the voters.

All I suggested was that the criminals who break the laws be dealt with. To not assume that *every* person who comes forward to report a crime be ignored because they must be a racist just because they are accusing an immigrant of a crime. [Yes, that may be an exaggeration. But, maybe not as much in the UK.]

For that [and my claim that the problem is their culture which only indirectly results from their religion] I was banned from that site for hate speech. I claimed that the immigrants' culture in too many ways and too strongly is different from current European culture. To me this is a self-evident fact. I suppose others may not be able to see that.
. . I didn't say this, but another part of the problem is the numbers allowed to stay. Let in a few and they are not a critical mass, let in too many and suddenly the demands for accommodations get much louder.

Getting back to my point --- it just seems less damaging to the nation [in this case Sweden] for a liberal party to win on a promise to do something more/sufficient to protect the voters from the few criminal immigrants who are causing the problems, than to have a right wing/fascist party take control of the Gov.

[Kaiserschmarrn]

Yep, my own Social Democrats have done a fantastic job of shooting themselves in the back of the head repeatedly over the last few months. Our esteemed party leader, acting with a tone deaf approach to rival Ivanka Trump, has sharply dropped in the leadership confidence index after several bungled debates. Internal strife within the Social Democrats are beginning to show on the overall election strategy and morale is plummeting within the rank and file.

I know it is not as exciting as Italian politics (and not as important), but swedish elections this year are like nothing we have seen in swedish politics since the Midsummer crisis of 1941.

Reporting live from 'making Sweden lagom again', the long-established dream of becoming a beer brewing monk seems more and more appetising.

Maybe not as exciting, but no less important in my view. Left-wingers everywhere like to point to Sweden as a role model, see for instance Bernie Sanders asking why the US can't be more like Sweden (paraphrased), oblivious to the fact that places in the US with lots of people with a Swedish/Scandinavian background are quite similar to Sweden. I don't know how long it will take, but I do hope that the left will soon wake up to the fact that culture, values and identity matter, and are ultimately determined by the people who make up a community. You can't just pick random people from around the world on a large scale, plonk them into Sweden and expect the same or even better ("diversity dividend") outcome.

So from my perspective as a right-winger, what happens to Sweden is significant, because it's a country that seems to have subscribed to this left-wing myth much more so than many other European countries.

[Decky]

What's left wing about Sweden? They collaborated with the Nazis (actually firing on the Soviet Navy while "neural") and they still have the private ownership of the means of production distribution and exchange. Belarus is the only left wing nation left in Europe.

[Reichstraten]

What's left wing about Sweden? They collaborated with the Nazis (actually firing on the Soviet Navy while "neural") and they still have the private ownership of the means of production distribution and exchange. Belarus is the only left wing nation dictatorship left in Europe.

Fixed it for you.

[Potemkin]

Maybe not as exciting, but no less important in my view. Left-wingers everywhere like to point to Sweden as a role model, see for instance Bernie Sanders asking why the US can't be more like Sweden (paraphrased), oblivious to the fact that places in the US with lots of people with a Swedish/Scandinavian background are quite similar to Sweden. I don't know how long it will take, but I do hope that the left will soon wake up to the fact that culture, values and identity matter, and are ultimately determined by the people who make up a community. You can't just pick random people from around the world on a large scale, plonk them into Sweden and expect the same or even better ("diversity dividend") outcome.

It seems to have worked for Singapore. Just puttin' that out there.

[One Degree]

Yeah, citystates can make anything work.

[SolarCross]

What's left wing about Sweden? They collaborated with the Nazis (actually firing on the Soviet Navy while "neural") and they still have the private ownership of the means of production distribution and exchange. Belarus is the only left wing nation left in Europe.

The left-right spectrum is pliable, anything can be placed on this axis and its use is in highlighting political differences. So for Sweden "right" means a preference for ethnic homogeneity and "left" means a preference for ethnic heterogeneity. At the far ends there is a loathing for foreigners and a loathing of natives respectively. As far as the Nordic model goes neither the "nazis" nor the "socialists" have even a spit of difference between them so it does not make sense to apply left-right descriptors to that issue.

Your trouble is you want the "left-right" spectrum to only be used for the class bigotry spectrum and never mind whether it is relevant or not.

[noir]

Is it realistic? Seems the process is irreversible

[Kaiserschmarrn]

It seems to have worked for Singapore. Just puttin' that out there.

OK, let's look at Singapore:

Despite the high emigration and low fertility rates of Chinese, the overall proportion of Chinese in the population has been relatively stable since Singapore’s founding (see Table 3). In 1957, Chinese represented 75% of the total population, yet by 2010, this percentage remained almost identical at 74%. The figures for Malays, are similarly rigid, varying only one percentage point over these fifty-three years. Indians remain unchanged at 9%, and others have risen from 2% to 3% taking into consideration the massive exodus of expats at independence.

The racial quotas are an open secret, so no, immigrants are not just from anywhere.

Also note that Chinese immigrants do well anywhere they go and, ironically, the only country where this wasn't true until recently is China itself. So if a country wants to attract immigrants, it could do much worse than with Chinese people.

Further, it's no coincidence that Singapore is preoccupied with racial and religious harmony and unity and has racial quotas, for example, in public housing to prevent ethnic ghettos. Still, the population is stratified along racial and religious lines. I'll let you guess which group is at the top.

Edit: People can search for Chinese privilege in Singapore if they want a taste of progressivism trying to make its way into that part of the world.

[AuroraBorealis]

This election is probably the most important in Swedish post-war history. We are more polarized than ever. A lot of people will surely have a mental breakdown after the votes are counted, much like after Trump won.
Either we will have a government in coalition with or backed by the Sweden Democrats, or there will be a grand coalition between the Social Democrats and the Moderate party, or there will be a snap election. I cannot see any other alternative now.

A grand coaliton would essentially mean that we get a pro-immigration bloc and an anti-immigration bloc. Traditional left-right conflicts will be pushed aside to preserve an immigration policy and a dream of a multiethnic society that a very large portion of the population, maybe a majority, absolutely do not want. This could lead to even more people abandoning the old parties in favor of new parties like Alternative for Sweden (a more radical version of SD) and the Citizens’ Coalition (a conservative/small-government party similar to the old Moderate party, but which has also become highly critical of the established parties' immigration policies). The Left party (openly communist until 1990) would probably also benefit from this.

Interesting times indeed.

Also, SD is not far-right, and AfS are not nazis.

[Varilion]

Just reading in Wikipedia what it says about "Ideology and political positions" i could even consider "Sweden Democrats" as let's say "an option", were it not for its Foreign/Environment policies. On the other hand "Alternative for Sweden" looks me pretty fascist...

[Political Interest]

It seems to have worked for Singapore. Just puttin' that out there.

It only just barely works there because the government throws people in jail if they mention anything to do with racial or religious subjects in public. But if there is a systemic failure or some type of economic crisis then the situation will become very unstable.

And Singapore was created in part because the Malay dominated government under the Tunku and UMNO were worried about the Chinese population of Singapore making Malays a minority. Hence Singapore was kicked out of Malaysia.

[Drlee]

It sounds to me like the Swedes are waking up to the fact that looking down their noses at the rest of us can have real consequences. They have become unbalanced.

We are talking about a country where it is legal to be a prostitute but illegal to have sex with one for money.

The PC crowd needs a knock on the knuckles.