Sweden after the election: Far right

"The real story of this parliamentary election is the capitulation of the liberal bourgeoisie to the extreme right. The Sweden Democrats will now probably have a say in the fate of the country, but they are anything but a normal party.

That's it. A moment ago Sweden was, in its own image and that of many outsiders, a beacon among nations: a humanitarian superpower, the home of equality and the welfare state, an impregnable bastion of tolerance and humanity.

Anyone who took a closer look could see that the rosy Bullerby dreams had long been little more than transfiguration, that Sweden was in the process of transforming itself into a country like many others. But since Sunday's election, Sweden has suddenly become more extreme than the others. 

 

Nowhere in western Europe is the extreme right stronger today than in Sweden.

 

The right-wing populist Sweden Democrats (SD), once founded by old and neo-Nazis, have left all bourgeois parties behind and are the second-strongest party in the country. Above all, however, the bourgeois have made the SD, which they had just avoided, into partners. And now they are preparing to have a say in the fate of the country. Turn of the tide in Swedish.

Ulf Kristersson, leader of the bourgeois moderates, is now celebrating the election victory. He will probably be Sweden's next prime minister - and yet he is duped, a loser too: Kristersson had to let the right-wing populists outdo him in his own camp.

The Social Democrats have recently done little politics good for the workers

There are many factors that have favored the rise of the Sweden Democrats. There is the self-deception of the Swedes about their own uniqueness, which went hand in hand with denying the darker sides of Swedish history as well.

 

There are the failings of the Social Democrats: recently they have hardly done any politics for the workers, the weak. And they simply overwhelmed their people by taking in more asylum seekers per capita than any other Western country, especially since they then failed to set the course for successful integration. And when gang crime escalated in the suburbs, they made the mistake of leaving the issue exclusively to the Sweden Democrats for a long time.

 

And yet the real story of this election is the capitulation of the liberal bourgeoisie to the far right - out of power calculations. It is the story of a trap they set themselves, as has happened so many times elsewhere: the story of bourgeois parties choosing to embrace right-wing populist movements for power gain, only to be amazed to discover at the end that it was the extreme right is the one who wins this little dance.

 

In order to justify breaking the taboo, Sweden's bourgeoisie not only pretended that the Sweden Democrats were a normal party, they even praised them for their harsh rhetoric on foreigners. But once the stigma is gone, many choose the original rather than the copy.

 

But that is fatal for democracy, because the Sweden Democrats are not just that: a normal party. They are no longer a Nazi party, but a party of extreme nationalism hostile to many aspects of liberal democracy. At heart they are a revolutionary party: they want a different Sweden, and they want it tomorrow. They have a vision of their very own cop, rave about Viktor Orbán's Hungary, dream of a Sweden of good, white-skinned, Christian family people, free from criminal foreigners and the dictates of foreign powers. Also free from critical media. Linus Bylund, chief of staff of the SD, called journalists "enemies of the people" a few years ago. Asked on election night what he was looking forward to, Bylund said: "Journalist rugby".

The ideas and language of the right seeped into the mainstream

The Sweden Democrats have already changed Sweden. They drove the others "like in a downward spiral," wrote the liberal Dagens Nyheter. When the far right is de-tabooed, its language and inhumanity slowly seep into the mainstream. During the election campaign, the parties outdid each other with proposals to dismantle the rule of law in the service of fighting crime. In the end, even Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson warned of "Somalitowns" as a threat. DN stated "a brutalization of the public".

So far, Ulf Kristersson's plan has looked like this: His citizens can be elected and tolerated by the SD. Formally, the party and its leader, Jimmie Åkesson, are to remain outside of government and merely assume the role of a support party. But now the right-wing populists are bursting with power. Well, said Svenska Dagbladet, who is generally well-disposed towards the bourgeoisie, one could also see it this way: "Ulf Kristersson will become prime minister in Jimmie Åkesson's government". The winner of the Swedish election is on the far right.”

 

The conclusion is that all Swedish society as a whole has shifted towards the extreme right. Even the reigning Prime Minister tried to do this, but was too late and lost power.