Far right makes gains in Sweden
Nationalist party scores largest gains in election
•Head down and hands stuffed in his pockets, the leader of Sweden’s nationalist party rolled nervously back and forth on the balls of his feet as he waited backstage at a rally in the working-class town of Motala.
As his name was called Saturday, he jolted into action, strutting on the stage to thunderous applause, wearing a headset microphone and a broad grin.
Jimmie Akesson is the fresh new face of Sweden Democrats, a party with roots in neo-Nazi movements that made huge gains in elections Sunday, finishing a strong third with the backing of nearly 20 per cent of voters.
With four fifths of the ballots counted, Akesson said his party had “won,” because it had made the greatest gains in the national assembly.
Akesson told the crowd chanting his first name: “No one can take that from us.”
The Sweden Democrats focus overwhelmingly on migrants, mainly from Muslim countries, who they blame for a surge in sex attacks on women, riots in the suburbs and extra pressure on the welfare system.
They also want Sweden to follow Britain out of the EU.
“No women, no teenager, no old person, no one, should be scared,” Akesson told 200 supporters on the eve of the vote.
“We need to bring back a sense of safety in Swedish society because the government has failed us. We need to employ more police — put 10,000 of them on the streets,” he said, to clapping, cheering and stomping.
A key pledge was a twoyear shutdown of Sweden’s borders, after the country took in more refugees per capita than any other European country during the migration crisis.
The party wants to improve early integration of migrants by boosting education spending and putting Swedish language lessons at the forefront of the curriculum.
Though Swedish newspapers have brought to light a slew of racist incidents involving junior Sweden Democrat members, the party strongly rejects the terms “populist” and “far-Right” and instead considers itself a conservative, nationalist movement.
Akesson, 39, has taken pains to clean up his party’s image: overtly racist members, including one politician who said black men were genetically programmed to rape children, were purged from the party; and the old logo of a National Front-style burning torch was replaced with a blue and yellow flower.
“He’s a man of confidence, a man of the world who’s not afraid to tell people what he thinks,” says Jimmy Gronfoss, a 34-year-old supporter.
“Sweden Democrats is not an anti-immigrant party, and we are not anti-refugee, but we do feel we have taken in far too many people.”
According to the government, gun crime, rape and sexual assault rates have increased since the refugee crisis of 2015 — but does not disclose the nationalities of the perpetrators.
But many Sweden Democrats point to an investigation by state broadcaster SVT, which found that over the past five years, 58 per cent of sex crimes were committed by foreigners.
Not everyone in Motala is impressed with the Sweden Democrats’ stance.
Boll Wallberg, 50, said Akesson’s anti-immigrant rhetoric makes him uncomfortable, and he would instead cast his vote for the Social Democrats.
“He is too extreme. I think he is exploiting people by taking extreme examples (of migrant violence) and saying it’s normal,” he said.
All mainstream parties, including the centre-Right Alliance bloc, have refused to co-operate with them, citing its past ties with fascist groups such as the now defunct “Keep Sweden Swedish” movement.
Akesson said Sunday that he is interested in co-operating with other parties and wants to tell the head of the party that came in second, the Moderates, “how to govern the country.”
While Akesson is the poster boy for Europe’s latest radical right-wing party, his policies stem mainly from the mind of Mattias Karlsson, an MP and former party leader.
Karlsson, 41, says no one could deny the connection between sex attacks and Muslim immigrants.
“I think that is due to cultural differences in how you view women and women’s rights,” he says.