Sweden turning to the right wing?

Not local but enjoyed an evening in Swedish company recently.

Very normal conversation until right at the end when somewhat out of the blue one of them suddenly brought up the immigration problem in Sweden, in a tone which left no doubt as to his feelings. We were all too drunk by this point to really engage and it just fizzled out, but surprised me.

Sounds like very fertile ground for the far right over there at the moment...

Its been happening for the last ten years or so.
Most of what is said about Sweden is mostly stuck in a timewarp.

Surely it's more than turning to the right - isn't the party with the most MPs in Sweden now far-right?

Edit : Apologies, no the far-right party received the second largest share of the vote, it's the largest party in the winning right-wing bloc.

There's certainly been a vocal right wing minority there for a while, it's just the gradual shift in vote share across the left-right spectrum that's caused the change.

The spectrum of politics is apparently (mentioned in a BBC article I think) calibrated differently over there, so what they consider right wing is basically our liberals.

I would be interested to see what the definition (or framing) of far right is in Sweden. Is it like the UK whare anti immigration fear mongering has been used to bring in right wing economic policies and erode freedom, or is it still the same political environment with anti immigration rhetoric thrown on top.

Yup, going to be a rough time for the foreseeable future.

Really don't know what else to say, i mean, there are most definitely issues around the vast influx of immigrants and how they function, or more importantly are allowed to function in Swedish society. But this is very much *not* the way to deal with it.

If anything, it's going to make it worse. It'll encourage the meatheads, anyone who doesn't pass for Swedish is likely to get aggro on a more regular basis (my girlfriend already does, despite speaking Swedish like a native AND working for the government). And that will likely exacerbate current issues. Budgets for schemes that are designed to help are likely to be cut. It'll become harder to get visas or residency, they've already been talking about citizenship testing in some form.

So, yeah, it's going to be unpleasant for many people, including dozens i count as friends.

so what they consider right wing is basically our liberals.

The Swedish Democrats were formed from violent from neo-Nazi groups. - There's a long history of  anti-communist rhetoric in Sweden's political history that spills over to ultra right wing populist nationalism. While they have made efforts to rid themselves of some of their more extreme members, I think they still have questions surrounding their funding and support. I don't think the Lib Dems would be happy to be compared to them TBH.

@MSP @csb

TBH, yes, that is something to bear in mind, the far right in Sweden are more like racist liberals with a touch of several other isms and phobias than actually having anything like Tories or UKIP policies on how to run a country.

I mean, they are looking at increased funding for the NHS and generally support other social security systems etc etc

Worst thing i've seen is a colleague at work who has become something of a poster boy the the local SD party supporters.
He's from Iran. And will find his countrymen and quite possibly his family being impacted by this.

Most of Scandinavia is quite right wing, people get blindsided by its social care/responsibilities approach.

There’s always been a dark undercurrent to Sweden’s Nordic liberalism - see eugenics, biker gangs etc.

They have excelled at some things, like keeping society relatively flat economically as opposed to the extremes American hyper-capitalism has imposed on us, equality for women, childcare etc. Immigration from far flung cultures is a fairly new thing for their society and they’re not very good at accepting and integrating it yet - just like we weren’t when it started in earnest here. It has been a painful learning process for us and it will be for them.

The far right will disgrace themselves as they always do and people will return to the middle ground, as they always do. Not much fun if you’re a brown person in Malmo at the moment though.

Most of Scandinavia is quite right wing,

This.

I spent 3 months working in Norway a few years ago.

They were very right wing, they still seemed to feel threatened by communism/USSR/Russia.

It's not just a Scandinavian/Nordic thing though, the rise of the far-right is a Europe-wide phenomena. In ten days time the far-right Brothers of Italy, which ironically is led by a woman, are very likely to become the largest party in Italy and will be in power.

It is a sad fact that in 2022 Europe is becoming increasingly racist - from Sweden to Hungary.

They were very right wing, they still seemed to feel threatened by communism/USSR/Russia.

How wrong can some people be? 🤨

One or two countries near Russia might disagree with that.

They were very right wing, they still seemed to feel threatened by communism/USSR/Russia.

That makes them right wing? If you disregard the communism bit, I'd say that is pretty understandable. I know the USSR is no more, but Putin very clearly aspires to recreate it.

Putin threatened 'consequences' hinting that they might be nuclear, if Finland and Norway joined NATO. I think that, and Russia's territorial ambitions generally gives the Scandinavian populations every right to feel threatened by them does it not?

Thank you for the comments and context to it all

Deeply ironic that Putin will applaud the rise of the far right in europe!

Sweden's economic model of being prosperous whilst maintaining a system of high taxes and a strong social safety net has always made it a target of certain (usually American) groups as it stands as a clear rebuttal of their 'Free Market and low taxes = better" ideology.

For over a decade now it's not been hard to see a steady drumbeat of memes and fear mongering over crime and immigrants targeting Sweden, convincing wealthier people that all their taxes are going to undeserving 'others' is a proven effective technique for undermining an existing public consensus on paying for a state safety net,

If you want to be depressed just google image search 'Sweden Meme', it's a pretty much unending torrent of racism, fearmongering and homophobia. Most of it in English, again the US alt-right are very active in all this and as always with divisive social movements, I wouldn't discount a Russian factor as well.

Sadly over time all this seems to have had the intended corrosive effect.

Hope those tax cuts are worth it guys.

I'm glad someone else has mentioned the American influences, it saved me typing up a far less coherent comment on that side of things.

Deeply ironic that Putin will applaud the rise of the far right in europe!

I'm not sure why, Putin has always enjoyed the support of the far-right in Europe and the US. For obvious reasons European far-right politicians, such as in France, are now a little less supportive of Putin since the invasion of Ukraine.

I’m not sure why, Putin has always enjoyed the support of the far-right in Europe

I think he has funneled a fair bit of funds into their campaigns.

His aim has always been to disrupt and weaken the west, he see's that as a victory he can sell to Russia rather than actually improving the lives of Russian citizens. I think in that way he is quite well aligned to the far right in Europe, who also want to sell a false victory and distractions rather than doing the work to improve their respective countries.

I think he has funneled a fair bit of funds into their campaigns.

Well the Russian oligarchs that back him have certainly pumped money into the Conservative Party, so I'm sure he must have applauded the Tory victory last election.

Especially as unlike many UK politicians the then leader of the Labour Party was and had been an outspoken critic of Putin. No doubt Putin felt that it was money well spent back then, although now, belatedly, UK politicians across the political spectrum have come to realise the dangers of Putin.

hi from östersund. As usual, it's a fairly complex issue!  Swedes, both left and right , many feel that sweden is in decline. Schools and health service isn't what it was,  crime and gangs has certainly become more visible,  and the right have succesfully coupled this to immigration .

I'm as lefty as they come, and work in local government, but i think everyone acknowledges that mistakes have been made with the immigration policy, especially post arab spring when 150,000 immigrants arrived (1.5% of population at the time) and this had led to parallel societies.

SD have no power and possibly sit in government with a 3 seat majority. Social democrats are still the biggest party by a long way, but yeah block politics mean the centre right are in.   it is rare that a government holds power for more than two mandates here, so a loss was perhaps expected, but the shift from the centre left to the centre right has surprised people.

Excuse my spelling, swedish keyboard and spellcheck !

His aim has always been to disrupt and weaken the west,

Nationalist sentiments, especially anti-immigration ones, have been fertile ground for Putin all across the world. Helping to divide, disrupt, and weaken democracies everywhere.

Deeply ironic that Putin will applaud the rise of the far right in europe!

Putin himself is about as far right as you can get, so I don't see any irony in this at all.

it is rare that a government holds power for more than two mandates here

How things have changed!

Was it 40 completely uninterrupted years that the Social Democrats ruled Sweden post World War 2?

Yes indeed, that was almost 40 years ago mind.

Putin himself is about as far right as you can get, so I don’t see any irony in this at all.

Not only that, his online outriders (Paid Russian trolls and Western 'useful idiots') have long aggressively pushed him as the true defender of Christian Ayran culture and masculinity, surely I wasn't the only one who saw all those 'Obama Vs Putin memes 10 years ago, they were everywhere.

To those scared by change and diversity he offered himself up as their 'white knight' (sic)

And it worked

:large

If only we could have a centre right party!

Another Swedish resident here, also working for the state, but also one of the ones that SD are likely to class as “the right kind of immigrant”.

I never really thought of sweden as being very right wing, what with the large left voting block, good workers’ rights and pride in social infrastructure, but there is no doubt that some of the parties are looking to follow the Us and the U.K. down the route of privatising it. Liberalarna have a rep for wanting that, same with Moderatarna.

I’m glad that Stockholm has swung back to the left, but was shocked to find that my local post area had SD (aka the racists) as the highest voted for party. Not by much, but they were. With SD, if you overlook the racism, just leave that bit out for a moment, some of their headline policies kind of look like they might possibly be good for the average person. You know, like cheaper fuel (so the Raggare can drive their shit old American cars a bit more) or tougher sentences for criminals (written on posters with a plane in the background suggesting that they will be “sent home”).

I hope, really hope, that the next term shows how much of a one trick pony the racists are and that they are ruined in the next election.

Note: I have a vested interest in this… one of their people whinged about my employer being nothing but liberal propaganda because we reported on someone saying that SD had links to nazism ( https://svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/bjorn-soder-sd-kritiserar-svt-propagandainslag). Oddly, the guy doing the complaining has actual history in nazism, meeting former SS members and being photographed wearing a KKK t-shirt ( https://twitter.com/crehbinder/status/1393497517086683136)

Another Swede here 🙂
Yes, I also find this shift saddening. But maybe not very surprising, given the general discourse in many forums. The Sweden Democrats are true populists that thrive on painting a grim picture of the state in the country, and using simplified explanations (=blame everything on the immigrants, fake news media and the lefties), claiming to be the true voice of the people. Unfortunately (as seen also in many other places) this is a very potent recipe for attracting votes (Trump, Orban anyone).

And their arguments are almost always based on emotion rather than facts or logic. They appeal to our lowest neanderthal instincts, "non-swedes are the bad guys", "harder punishments", "more deportations" etc. Unfortunately, as they grow and this gets traction, "traditional" conservative parties are forced to move in that direction as well (very clearly demonstrated by Moderaterna and Kristdemokraterna that will likely be the ones forming a government fully relying on the support of the Sweden Democrats in parliament).

Sweden Democrats are also opposing the Paris agreement so Sweden's focus on fighting climate change will likely lose momentum. The argument here being, why should we as a small country be forced to save on fuel/energy and adjust our way of living to cut emissions, when China plans to start X number of coal fuelled power plants.

Our hope (and this is a view held and discussed by many) is that they will f-ck up so badly now when they have more power and fail in actually "saving" our country. This would, as the theory goes, send them into decline. It's hard to be the truth-talking, swamp-draining, anti-establishment party when you get to be part of the establishment. This is somewhat supported by development in other Nordic countries where national conservative parties have lost many voters after terms of office. Maybe Sweden i just a bit behind the curve.

My two cents from Uppsala
/J

Thanks for the Swedish contributions, I found them all really interesting - particularly the comment concerning the post Arab Spring immigration being 1.5% of the Swedish population, that is a massive amount, for the UK that would represent over a million people.

I don't know anything about Swedish national politics but I do know that fascism/far-right need three ingredients to thrive - an economic crisis, a minority to scapegoat, and established political parties not to take the threat seriously.

This has been a very educational read. Thanks all. Ernie s post above mine is true and frightening. When will we learn from the past.

Probably when the last tribe has finished bludgeoning their neighbours to death with a rock for the last water on the planet.

Although I hope it will be sooner.

The people I know in Stockholm seem confident that, with the exception of input into immigration and energy policy, nothing much will change. Jimmy knows that his party has no real policies, so he’s happy to let Uffe take the top job and (probably) accept a few key positions. We’ll see.

Ernie. You should probably pay more attention to us. Instead of populism in true opposition politics, this is open racism and populism in coalition politics. The election was dirty, really dirty, so seeing if that continues, if the blue bloc can hold together and if SD can retain their strength over this term might be interesting for you.

I’m not looking forward to things. I’m been the victim of racist abuse once here (early in my first year), and really don’t want to have that again. I had to explain to friends from Göteborg why I gave a specific house the finger and they were quite shocked.

I just voted in the national elections in the first time. PR so the first time I got to vote for the parties I wanted and it made a difference.

- as with all western countries there is a lot of change and the right parties are promising to roll back that change. For example the Moderates party had adverts saying “no to reduced speed limits and yes to building more roads. “
- there is a panic about crime and shooting. Basically I feel Sweden is very safe and crime free but there are a lot of robberies of youths and my daughter said a lot of working class youngsters vote for the far right. Then there is a lot of really blatant gangland violence with hit men and bombings. It feels like the police just don’t know how to cope with it and a lot of immigrants are locked out of Swedish society because it is based on who you know and employing people like you.
- nuclear power. For some reason a big issue in this election was building more nuclear. I just could not get my head around this as In the government statistics Sweden has been shutting old nuclear power plants but exporting more power to Finland for example. Finland needs more more as their new nuclear plant has gone way over budget and suffered multiple delays. It was strange watching a political debate where the Green Party was suggesting the market led approach of cheap, quickly implemented wind power and the right wing was suggesting expensive state run nuclear. And Denmark is next door producing so much power from wind.
- none of the other right wing parties want to be in government with the right wing populist party the Swedish democrats and they don’t want to be in government (with ministers). I am guessing so they can keep pretending that they are not in power and they get the blame when things don’t work out.

From my point of view the changes that are happening to our life styles are so big. We cannot consume and travel as we know the consequences We cannot expect to have stable populations when it is so easy for people to say F this when they are getting bombed, starved, being poor in their country when it is so obviously 1000x better in the west and so easy to travel. These are big issues and even if the right wing solutions logically either will be counterproductive (climate change=more migration, less focus/money for integration =more crime) they are selling something that is simple and easy for people to understand and agree to.

I know the Wallander books are fiction but I remember reading them and thinking that if you changed the names of the people and places it was the same general themes as Britain. Came as quite a suprise.

The Sweden Democrats have been very successful in moving from a small protest party (with neo nazi roots) to the second largest party in the country. The populist, simplistic policies that they promote don't stand up to much scrutiny, but if enough people aren't bothered by realistic compromise solutions, there you go. As previously mentioned, emotions rather than facts and figures are used which are harder to argue against (Brexit anyone?)
My worry is that they will have a huge influence on the inside of government but will still maintain their 'outsider' status when it inevitably all goes to shite.

A rise in populist right immigration-fueled discontent has seen a shift to the right. What’s not been mentioned is that the largest party by seats was the previous left of centre party. But a collaboration of the right has more seats and hence will form the government. Think ukip-conservative alliance. Was an excellent interview on R4 10 o’clock news the other night. Wait for Swexit 😉

an economic crisis, a minority to scapegoat, and established political parties not to take the threat seriously.

TBH, talking to mates who work in various state organisations the government has to a greater or lesser extent ignored the "threat" of mass immigration.

Mostly through under investment in services. All the budget models seem to have been worked out over the last few decades based on a generally healthy and stable population of people who have lived here for generations, with a small percentage of immigrants being added every year.

When you add 5% to the number of people using a service in a certain are (Somalitown as it's known here), the budget only went up by the required 5%.
Except a good proportion of that 5% need masses more budget than is allocated. They've potentially just left a warzone, so need ongoing CPTSD treatment, or treatment for long term injuries, they are likely to be ill more often due to stress or a lack of medical care when younger, they have larger families, so need more school space and somewhere larger to live. They have kids in their teens who can't read or write in their own language, let alone Swedish (or english), it's harder to find jobs (back to that Swedish fear of brown people) so unemployment is likely to be more frequent and long term.

All of that requires more budget and people, which isn't always being provided, or provided soon enough, so services have been cut. And there is an easy target for SD and the far right to focus on. "Current Government is useless, doesn't care about Swedes, look at all the brown people." And here we are.

Compound that with policies to close nuclear plants (immediately visible policy) and some frankly weird policies/contract around pricing and sale of energy internationally, and you have a situation where people are paying a quid a kWh for peak rate electricity when they were paying 15p last year, and diesel is up at over 2 quid a litre. (All the governments fault apparently.)

It's a perfect storm TBH.

And SD have no idea how to fix it.

Wait for Swexit

Only a halfwit would vote for that...

Oh. Yeah. Carry on...

(hopefully they'll see the issues around brexit and decide to give it a miss.)

Most of what is said about Sweden other countries is mostly stuck in a timewarp.

Is more the case ime, even people who have emigrated and currently live in country xyz forget the bubble they exist in.

The spectrum of politics is apparently (mentioned in a BBC article I think) calibrated differently over there, so what they consider right wing is basically our liberals.

Yes and no. This rant is not specifically at you but this general they are "better than us" comparison where usually they are different or comparison is caveated.

I tend to find different countries "left and right" vary in their make up. "Their right" (whoever they may be ) might seem to have much in common with our liberal in some areas and but on issues of immigration less so.

I also feel comparisons are very hard because the countries are in very different places in terms of history of immigration, amount of immigration, economy, population (size and distribution).

Basically what I am trying not say is comparison of politics and situations between countries, it's not that you can't compare but people have to be very careful and exact in you comparison and recognise the limitations of the comparison. Stuff is not simple dispite what many in politics would have you believe.

Simple sets of rules give rise to complex behaviour.

https://rsf.org/en/sweden-rsf-asks-country-s-second-biggest-party-stop-undermining-press-freedom-and-right-information

After the recent parliamentary election, the Swedish Democrats blocked access of several journalists to their election night and threatened the media in general. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) warns of the link between political and physical attacks.

His words sounded chilling. When a journalist of the Swedish public broadcaster, SVT, asked on September 12th the chief of staff of the Swedish Democrats what he was looking forward to after the party ended second in the general election the day before, Linus Bylund responded: “A lot of work, a lot of what we call journalist rugby,” meaning “pushing journalists around.”

I reckon Donald Trump would approve.

What’s not been mentioned is that the largest party by seats was the previous left of centre party.

Probably because it is not notable, they have had the biggest share of the vote in every election since World War I,
the SD have obviously significantly increased their vote share this has led to the sufficient members of the right coalition seeking to work with them to govern - that is the biggest change - in the last two elections the SD vote effectively kept the right out of power because insufficient members of the coalition were willing to govern with their support.

Compound that with policies to close nuclear plants (immediately visible policy) and some frankly weird policies/contract around pricing and sale of energy internationally, and you have a situation where people are paying a quid a kWh for peak rate electricity when they were paying 15p last year

I looked into this and there are extra taxes on nuclear but only so that they actually paid for their costs. For example extra insurance after Fukushima and paying more to fund the expensive decommissioning and waste storage costs. So this is not a tax it is removing a subsidy as far as I could tell.

And I think the electricity contract stuff is as much to do with the European open market as anything

So this is not a tax it is removing a subsidy as far as I could tell.

As far as I am aware there has never been an example of nuclear power generation anywhere in the world being profitable. The horrendous costs involved, including obviously decommissioning, means that it always has to be subsidised by governments.

The reasons for having nuclear power are varied but I don't think because it's cheap is one of them

it won't be called Swexit it'll be called Swedone

Genuinely interesting thread. Thanks for the informed contributions.

A distraction... How to swear like a Swede

No, nuclear is rarely profitable, but suddenly removing a good chunk of our national generating power, whilst not having a suitable replacement available wasn't the smartest of moves.

On a local basis, we've been told to extend the periods we're not allowed to use our biggest machines (as we are still partially reliant on the local grid) and also to run our own power station at a higher load the rest of the time. No, i don't know the details, but it's been reported on our internal news.

There are also some commercial oddities around moving Swedish power via Norway that are impacting on our costs as well. And there is also a reciprocal deal with Norway getting Sweden to move their power, that is generating large profits for the electricity distribution companies, but has no impact on our rising bills.

One of my mates (works for Vattenfall) was ranting about it a few weeks ago after his bill quadrupled at the end of his fixed rate deal, no laughing matter when a good chunk of the country is reliant on electrical heating. And a few companies are either offering no fixed rate deals, or the sort of deal that'll lock you in to paying astronomic rates for the next two years.

Danes supported building nuclear power station opposite Copenhagen. Danes wanted nuclear power station opposite Copenhagen a few years later.

Old nuclear power stations are old and due to be closed anyway. Just look at France where I think half of the nuclear are closed down for maintenance. Sweden is currently exporting 15% of its electricity in comparison to a decade ago even after closing down nuclear in the mean time. And a lot of that is getting sent to Finland due to the massive delays and cost over runs of their new nuclear power station.

https://www.naturskyddsforeningen.se/artiklar/fem-myter-om-karnkraften/