Sweden

How the bibles of the leftist Anglosphere spin Sweden’s “far-right” turn.

Sweden Is Becoming Unbearable,” read the headline on Sept. 18. Well, yes, Sweden is becoming unbearable: thanks to the mass influx of Muslims into the country over the last few decades, its rape statistics are the highest in Europe, youth gangs burn cars in the streets of its major cities, and no-go zones — where even police and firefighters fear to tread — are proliferating. But because the headline was in the New York Times, the article wasn’t about the dramatic, destructive way in which Islam is reshaping a once almost ridiculously peaceful country. No, it was about the purportedly horrific fact that the Sweden Democrats (SD) won 20 percent of the vote in the Sept. 11 elections.

Across the Western world people are rising up against their dishonest rulers.

So now we know: nowhere is immune to the populist surge. Not even Sweden. Not even every European liberals’ favourite welfarist state. Once considered the happy country of Europe, an oasis of technocratic calm in an often unpredictable continent, now even Sweden has been rattled by populism. In last week’s election the Sweden Democrats, a right-wing nationalist party, emerged as the second largest party in parliament. And this has shaken not only the political class in Stockholm but liberal elites around the world. It’s a ‘dramatic shift’, says the New York Times. ‘Astonishing’, says Deutsche Welle. An ‘earthquake’, insist leftist observers. They sound like the troops of an embattled army watching their last patch of territory be conquered by the enemy.

Campaigning on issues like immigration, religion, crime and the cost of environmental rules, the Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots, grew its support.

STOCKHOLM — Magnus Karlsson, 43, works in information technology and is about to start his own company. Articulate and thoughtful, he follows the news carefully, both in Sweden and globally.

But fed up with what he considers the complacency of the Swedish political establishment toward issues of immigration, crime and inflation, he voted last week for the Sweden Democrats for the first time.

The New York Times is scared.

WITH almost all the votes counted in Sweden’s general election, Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson resigned when it became clear that her centre-left government had lost to a right-wing bloc by three seats in the 349-seat parliament.

A close result, but hardly the ‘right-wing takeover’ the media prophesied with dread in order to send shivers up the spines of latte drinkers in Notting Hill. The Times lamented ‘the rise of the Sweden Democrats, a hard-right party with Nazi roots’ who have become the second largest party in Sweden with 20.06 per cent of the vote. The Sweden Democrats replaced the Moderate Party as the leading right-wing party. This is a spectacular advance from the low of 0.4 per cent in 1998 or the 1.4 per cent they gained in 2002.

Radical populists will ‘freeze’ the asylum system

Sweden’s radical right is demanding measures to deport foreign criminals, strip gang members of their citizenship and “freeze” the asylum system as its price for propping up a conservative-led government.

The country is poised for a sharp swing to the right after the populist Sweden Democrats came second in the general election on Sunday, establishing themselves as kingmakers in a finely balanced parliament. After three decades of being shut out by mainstream parties, they have been invited to join coalition talks for the first time.

The leader of Sweden’s incumbent Social Democrats conceded defeat in the country’s knife-edge election on Wednesday, handing victory to a loose bloc of rightwing parties that includes the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD).

The prime minister, Magdalena Andersson, called a press conference at which she accepted defeat, while pointing out that the Social Democrats remained Sweden’s largest party with more than 30% of the vote, and that the majority in parliament for the right bloc was very slim.

When postal votes and those of citizens living abroad were counted on Wednesday, a loose coalition of the SD and the three centre-right parties edged ahead to win a majority of three in the parliament of 349 seats.

The far-right Sweden Democrats party was the big winner in the country’s election on Sunday, increasing its share of the vote by two to three percentage points and becoming the second largest party, but the overall result was too close to call as counting continued.

With 95% of votes counted, the rightwing bloc had 49.7% of the vote, which would give it a majority of one seat in parliament over the incumbent leftwing bloc.

The far right appears close to causing an earthquake in Swedish politics, the Sweden Democrats becoming the country’s second-largest party while the wider rightwing bloc edged towards a slim victory over the incumbent centre-left.

Exit polls on Sunday night had suggested a narrow victory for the Social Democrats and their allies but as the votes were counted the tally swung towards the right.

With 90% of the vote counted, the right bloc of four parties had a share of the vote corresponding to a majority of three in the 349-seat parliament.