In A Pickled Herring

Members of Sweden's nationalist right-wing coalition are claiming victory as PM Magdalena Andersson has conceded defeat in this week's national elections, and it's not looking good for the future of the country.

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.

There is no formal agreement between the SD and the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals about how they will govern together, although the centre-right parties have said they will not countenance ministerial positions for the far right.

However, the SD’s strong showing, making it Sweden’s second largest party – and the largest on the right with more than 20% of the poll – puts it in a strong position to extract concessions in return for its support in parliament.

“Now the work begins to make Sweden good again,” the SD leader, Jimmie Åkesson, wrote on Facebook.

“We have had enough of failed social democratic policies that for eight years have continued to lead the country in the wrong direction. It is time to start rebuilding security, welfare and cohesion. It is time to put Sweden first,” he wrote.

Ulf Kristersson, whose Moderate party came third with 19% of the poll and who is now in line to become the new prime minister, thanked voters for their trust and said: “Now we will have order in Sweden.”

The final tally showed that the right bloc won 49.6% of votes, while the left bloc secured 48.9%

Given the closeness of the vote and the uncertainty over the final outcome, all the parties had refrained from making statements about a possible new government since polling stations closed on Sunday night. However, some of the key battlegrounds for a future rightwing coalition government with SD influence have already become clear.

Swedish television’s flagship news magazine on Tuesday night aired a short interview with the head of the Swedish Committee Against Antisemitism, who expressed concern that the result might encourage racists and repeated earlier accusations that the SD are ambiguous over whether Jews can be Swedes. Björn Söder, formerly party secretary for the SD and a central figure in the party’s leadership, subsequently accused the broadcaster of bias and propaganda and demanded that public service broadcasting should be “fundamentally reformed”. A former Moderate party MP compared public service to “a cancerous tumour” in a tweet.

 

The Sweden Democrats are right-wing nationalists, with a heavy emphasis on "Sweden for Swedes".  They've long been a problem in the country.

The most electorally successful far-right party in Sweden, the Sweden Democrats (SD, Sverigedemokraterna), have been represented in the national legislature since 2010 and the European Parliament since 2014. Rooted in Nazism and founded by white supremacists in the 1980s, the Sweden Democrats have attempted to rebrand by shifting to rhetoric and policies that stigmatize Islam, Muslims, and Muslim immigration in Sweden. SD members have a history of promoting anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, and racist statements and conspiracy theories.

Established in 1988, founding members of Sweden Democrats (SD) have roots in Nazism and Swedish fascist and white nationalist groups, including Bevara Sverige Svenskt (Keep Sweden Swedish). This includes the party’s first treasurer, Gustaf Ekström (d. 1995), who in 1941 left Sweden to join the Nazis and worked for the notorious Waffen-SS as a translator and propagandist. Anders Klarström, the first elected SD party chairman in 1989, has connections to the neo-Nazi Nordic Realm Party (Nordiska rikspartiet).

After photos came to light of SD members wearing Nazi uniforms in the mid-1990s, the party instituted a ban on uniforms and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Brookings Institute argues that these decisions were an “attempt to present a more respectable image.” Reporting in The Telegraph describes the shift of SD and other parties across Europe, in which white nationalists traded in skinheads and jackboots for “sharp suits and ties,” as the “new far Right.” The Telegraph argues, “Claiming to have left racism and anti-Semitism behind, these parties now concentrate on immigration and ‘the Islamisation of Europe’, disillusionment with the European Union, and undermining the political elite.”

In 2006, then party leader Jimmie Åkesson, Åkesson changed the SD’s logo from “a National Front-style torch to a baby-blue daisy,” furthering the party’s “programme of modernisation.” SD policies have also been “sanitised,” including a shift from “a preoccupation with Nordic ethnicity” to a concept of “open Swedishness” which The Telegraph argues “implies that immigrants are welcome so long as they renounce their other identities and take on ‘Swedish ways’.”

According to a former party member and whistleblower, the softening of SD’s image and policies is “largely PR-driven and meretricious,” and the party “has different ways of talking in public and backstage.” While the party has a record of expelling party members for white nationalism, expelled members have stated that party leadership were aware of their past fascist affiliations.

  

I don't expect Sweden to go the full Viktor Orban route just yet, but a few more years of this and the SD party will be calling all the Aryan shots in the country. This is bad news for sure, and if Italy goes the same way, the EU is going to be in dire trouble.