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.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

This weekend in Dallas is the Conservative Political Action Conference, aka CPAC, aka The America First Fascism Rally Experience Featuring Viktor Orban.

Stoking the culture wars is nothing new for CPAC. But with dark, militant speeches — and literal demonization of the MAGA movement’s political opponents — the conservative convention in Dallas this week menaced America with what seemed to be thinly veiled calls for violence, all while seeking to whitewash the political mayhem of Jan. 6, casting Capitol Hill rioters as victims of a “Democratic Gulag.”

From Hungarian authoritarian Victor Orbán to former Trump adviser Steve Bannon to right-wing extremist Jack Posobiec, Conservative Political Action Committee speakers urged an us-versus-them confrontation, seemingly unbound from the constraints of electoral politics.

Bannon, now the host of the “War Room” podcast, brought his bellicose message to CPAC, appearing as the headline speaker at the convention’s Friday night ball. “We are at war,” Bannon told the MAGA faithful. “We are in a political and ideological war.” Repeating the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, Bannon insisted that Joe Biden is an “illegitimate imposter.” Calling on Republicans to send “shock troops” to Washington, Bannon promised the crowd they had an opportunity to “shatter the Democratic party as a national political institution.” He alleged that the party has been overrun by “radical, cultural Marxists” and “groomers” who “want to destroy the Republic.” Bannon insisted the GOP must pursue absolute victory over “power-mad and lawless” Democrats, asserting: “There can be no half measures anymore.”

Orbán — the Hungarian strongman fond of Nazi-style rhetoric against race mixing — received standing ovations for his stark address to the MAGA faithful on Thrusday. Orbán described European parliament and the federal government in Washington as “the two fronts in the battle being fought for Western civilization,” warning, “today, we hold neither of them, yet we need them both.” Orbán called on CPAC attendees and the far-right in Europe to forge a global movement. “We should unite our forces,” Orbán said, to “take back” Washington and Brussels.

On Friday, Sen. Ted Cruz, laying on a thick Texas accent for the home-state crowd, inveighed against what he called the “power hungry, abusive totalitarian nitwits” of the Biden administration and the Democratically controlled Congress. Cruz likened his service in the Senate to that of a gladiator: “It’s like the old Roman Colosseum where you slam on a breastplate and you grab a battle axe and you go fight the barbarians,” he said of his Democrat colleagues. “As they say in the military world,” Cruz continued, “it is a target-rich environment.”

Cruz then suggested that more than elections may be needed for conservatives to take back Washington from those he called “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.” Cruz told the crowd, “We’re on the cusp of something extraordinary in this country … And each of you are the vanguard. You are the dangerous radicals. Like the men who signed the Declaration of Independence … like those who died at the Alamo, you are the courageous heroes,” he insisted, “fighting for liberty in our country.”

While CPAC has banned a few overt white nationalists from its ranks (including the noxious, Hitler-praising livestreamer Nick Fuentes) it welcomed to its stage Jack Posobiec, the Pizzagate conspiracy theorist recently denounced as a hate extremist by the Southern Poverty Law Center for his ties to “white nationalists, antigovernment extremists, members of the Proud Boys, and neo-Nazis.” Posobiec took his turn in the spotlight to promote the New Right (effectively the latest rebranding of the hateful “alt-right”). And he, too, painted the coming conflicts of the culture war in militaristic terms: “Are you ready for new ideas to actually take the fight to the front lines,” he asked, “because that’s where we live and we’re not stopping.”

It could be tempting to dismiss such bombast from Cruz and Posobiec as empty rhetoric. But Kari Lake, the GOP nominee for governor in Arizona, directly threatened confrontation with the federal government over immigration at the Southern border should she win office in November.

“We have an invasion at the border,” Lake insisted, referring to undocumented immigrants and refugees. Lake then vowed that, after being sworn in, she would mount a military response, even lacking approval from the Biden administration: “As soon as my hand comes off the Bible, we’re going to send the Arizona National Guard troops to the border,” Lake said. Insisting on the “sovereignty” of the states, she insisted: “We will take the fight to the federal government. We’re not going to be victims of what they’re doing to us.”

The rhetoric of revolution and frontline confrontation went hand-in-hand with other speakers and presenters who cast the American left as demonic, evil, and destructive — in other words the kind of enemies who deserve to be dealt with harshly.

In between speeches, CPAC promoted a documentary, hosted by chair Matt Schlapp, called The Culture Killers, which inveighs against a “great desecration” perpetrated by the left. ”Anything that’s good, anything that’s holy, anything that’s truthful is being attacked,” Schlapp insisted on video. The documentary describes America as “under siege from an enemy within,” with one voice insisting, over images of burning cars, “There is no end. These people will never stop, until you stop ’em.”

 

I figure even if we win, we're in for years of terrorist attacks, mass shootings, vehicle attacks running into crowds, probably some bombings as well. We're looking at monthly, if not weekly attacks where racist terrorists target Black and brown neighborhoods and churches, Jewish neighborhoods and synagogues, Muslim neighborhoods and mosques. Democrats and their voters will be targets on a regular basis and thousands will die.

We're already seeing these attacks. The Buffalo shooting targeting a Black neighborhood's grocery store. The Highland Park July 4th parade shooting targeting a Jewish neighborhood. And now, Muslim men are being assassinated in Albuquerque.

On Friday afternoon, Naeem Hussain attended the funeral service for two Muslim men who were killed in the past two weeks. He joined other mourners afterward, sharing a meal, at the Islamic Center of New Mexico. Then he left.

Several hours later, a little before midnight, Naeem Hussain was shot to death in a parking lot of an organization that offers services for refugees and asylum seekers near San Mateo and Copper NE, according to the Islamic Center’s spokesman.

His death was the latest in what police suspect is a string of homicides targeting Muslim men based on their race and religion.

“Now, people are beginning to panic,” said Tahir Gauba, the director of public affairs with the Islamic Center of New Mexico, who added that he had been fielding phone calls all day about the death.

The two men who were buried Friday — 41-year-old Aftab Hussein and 27-year-old Muhammad Afzaal Hussain — were shot near their homes on July 26 and Aug. 1, respectively. Police say they were ambushed.

On Saturday, an Albuquerque Police Department spokesman said the recent homicides have led detectives to try to determine whether the Nov. 7 fatal shooting of Mohammad Ahmadi, 62, is also related. Ahmadi was killed behind a halal market he owned with his brother. An APD official had previously said that there was a “strong possibility” that all three of the prior homicides were related.

Gauba said the Muslim community — especially the student population who live near the area where two most recent shootings happened — is feeling very afraid. He said Naeem Hussain is from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“Right now it is really tough to deal with it,” Gauba said. “I mean especially right after the funeral, the same day, that thing happened again. So it’s just really crazy.”

If we lose in November, and especially if we lose in 2024, the terrorists will primarily consist of local and state police, National Guard, and federal agencies and tens of thousands will die.

You may somehow not think that we're still not in a shooting war here in the US.

I am here to tell you that the right absolutely is engaging in this scenario. They are no longer content with just scaring the barbarians. They are here to start killing the barbarians.

We're the barbarians to them, only worth killing and terrorizing so we leave or die and they can have their white nationalist "Christian" theocratic ethnostate.

Never forget that.

Hungary For Fascism, Con't

Republicans want Viktor Orban's Hungarian single-party fascism so badly here in the US that they took their CPAC show to Orban's home turf in Budapest this week to rally the troops. 

Conservatives in Europe and the United States must fight together to "reconquer" institutions in Washington and Brussels from liberals who threaten Western civilisation ahead of votes in 2024, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Thursday.

Nationalist Orban said the next U.S. presidential election, when Donald Trump suggests he may seek a second term in the White House, and the vote for the European Parliament would make that a vital year. read more

He was addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the United States' most prominent conservative gathering, in Budapest, the first such CPAC event in Europe.

"Progressive liberals, neo-Marxists dazed by the woke dream, people financed by George Soros and promoters of open societies ... want to annihilate the Western way of life that you and us love so much," Orban told the conference.

"We must coordinate the movement of our troops as we face a big test, 2024 will be a decisive year," he said.

His comments were a familiar swipe at Budapest-born billionaire Soros, who he accuses of trying to undermine Europe's cultural identity by supporting immigration. Soros has promoted liberalism since before the 1989 fall of communism, funding education and scholarships.

Orban, who was re-elected for a fourth consecutive term after a landslide election victory in April, is seen by many on the American hard right as a model for his tough policies on immigration and support for families and Christian conservatism.

The EU has accused Orban of curbing media and judicial independence and enriching associates with public funds. He denies any corruption.

Orban laid out 12 points which he said were key to ensuring a dominance of conservativism, including playing by their own rules, standing up for national interests in foreign policy and gaining control over the media.

"We must reconquer the institutions in Washington D.C. and Brussels," Orban said.

 

Expect several Republican politicians to appear with Orban this weekend as they openly plot the overthrow of the US government for all to see.

Last Call For Hungarian For Power

It shouldn't surprise anyone that the first real COVID-19 fascist dictatorship is not a south-of-the-border banana republic or a Mideast kingdom, but a now-former European democracy as of this week.

Hungary’s parliament handed Prime Minister Viktor Orban the right to rule by decree indefinitely, effectively putting the European Union democracy under his sole command for as long as he sees fit.

While governments around the world assume emergency powers to fight the coronavirus, locking down all aspects of every-day life and shutting borders, few democracies have given their governments such latitude without an end date.

Hungary’s ruling party lawmakers overrode the objections of the opposition in a vote on Monday, handing Orban the right to bypass the assembly on any law. The Constitutional Court, which Orban has stacked with loyalists, will be the main body capable of reviewing government actions.

“I don’t know of another democracy where the government has effectively asked for a free hand to do anything for however long,” said Renata Uitz, director of the comparative constitutional-law program at Central European University in Budapest.

Orban is dictator for life.  He will never give those powers up willingly. He may be the first dictatorship to rise in the COVID-19 era, but I guarantee you he won't be the last fascist to take over this year.  As I discussed before,  the "soft fascism" of his regime is now a hard fact of life.