Nationalists poised for
SWEDEN IS facing a political upset in an election this Sunday that looks likely to generate the governing Social Democrats’s lowest share of the vote in more than a century.
Parliamentary deadlock appears to be the more likely scenario after this weekend’s vote, with neither Prime Minister Stefan Löfven’s left-wing bloc nor the opposition centre-right looking set to win a majority.
But polls suggest the right-wing nationalist Sweden Democrats (SD) party is set to perform strongly, winning as much as 20 per cent of the vote — up from nearly 13 per cent in 2014. That result would make it the second largest party in the country’s parliament.
The SD’s founders were involved in neo-Nazi movements before forming the party in the late 1980s. It now says it operates a “zero tolerance policy” on racism and, according to anti-racist magazine Expo, there have been 215 cases of “racist and intolerant” statements from party representatives since 2014, with several members expelled.
But the negative publicity has so far failed to stop the party from doubling support in every election since 2006 and it is not clear if this trend will change following recent reports in the Swedish media that have revealed racist views among party members, who have been found to share white- power music, antisemitic memes and conspiracy theories online.
Swedish voters identify migration and integration among the most important issues in this election and the SD wants the country to stop granting asylum permits, at least temporarily, and halt the admission of its EU quota of refugees. It also encourages repatriation and limiting immigrants’ access to welfare.
But this election will not just be about the Sweden Democrats. Smaller radical groups like the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement and the far-right Alternative for Sweden — who both regard the SD as “tame” — have been given air-time recently after holding demonstrations that saw clashes with anti-racist groups and generated an outpouring of moral indignation in the media. Some had argued that the attention has been disproportionate and only helped to give such groups more influence than they deserve over the national conversation.
The Stockholm Jewish Community’s assembly gathered last week for an emergency briefing on the threats posed to Swedish Jews, with representatives from Expo, the Swedish Defence University and the Swedish police and security service in attendance.
After the meeting, community chair- Cars were torched in Gothenburg