Sweden a country known for openness transparency and gender equality, has changed, there is a new populist government that has opened the door to the far right. There is an image of Sweden that it is a socialist utopia, but there is something else, it is rebelling against immigrants, taxes and change has come from privatisation of state owned industries. Inflation in the suburbs is being felt, but it is the gang warfare among the immigrant community that to a degree has left a lot of Swedes moving away from the comfortable socialism that once dominated the ways Swedes lived, sympathised and voted toward a tolerant social order.
As Sweden moves from its comfortable world view into a more reactionary direction, there are questions as to how a country with an all inclusive agenda has moved towards a populist argument. In the past Sweden has been a safe haven for refugees, but in 2015, Sweden had 162,877 applications for asylum, which translated as 1.6 percent of Sweden’s population of 10 million. The Sweden Democrats (SverigedemoKraterna), a right wing populist party, at its founding in 1988 was said to have ties with neo-Nazis, and is today the third largest party in Swedish politics. Politically, the Swedish Democrats have built a narrative around migration, it has created an avenue of argument that distinguishes Muslim migrants from the population, through sociocultural arguments distinguishing difference especially on questions such as law and order. The Sweden Democrats specific argument is to stop migration through halting asylum immigration. The perception of Swedes towards migration is being manipulated by arguments of law and order, a concept that has gained popularity through news headlines that argue there are no go areas, there are ghettos and that the problem is not the socio-economic system but the manipulation of Sweden’s welfare system by immigrants.
The once argued for Swedish exceptionalism, was severely tested in 2015, where even the Social Democratic Prime Minister Stefan Lofven argued that Sweden could not take any more asylum seekers. This itself led to the popularity of the Sweden Democrats, who called for the restriction of immigration, but especially Muslim, which actually conformed to their connections to Swedish fascism in 1988 when they elected Anders Klarstrom, who was linked to the neo-Nazi Nordic Realm Party. In 2005, the Sweden Democratic elected Jimmie Akesson to lead the youth wing, Akesson changed the direction of the party to a more moderate party, with neo-Nazis being expelled, which ushered the party from openly racist into a populist party, and moved the party from nationalist to social conservative.
But there was still a racially defined argument that differentiated, Akesson in a 2009 speech argued that migrants were responsible for rapes and that there would be segregation. According to a Pew Research Centre poll, 59 percent of Swedes who had a positive opinion of the Sweden Democrats had a low opinion of Muslims in the country. Leading up to the 2018 election, immigration and healthcare were at the top of the concerns of Swedes. The Sweden Democrats drew attention to the failure of the governments approach, with headlines of growing crime in the popular press and alternative media, which created an avenue of recruitment for the Sweden Democrats.
In 2015-2016, Sweden spent Euro 6 billion or 1.35 percent of GDP on 162,877 asylum seekers, which amounted to 1.6 percent of the population of Sweden, from predominantly Muslim countries. The Swedish government funds language attainment, training and labour integration, housing and healthcare. After two years of support the government then passes responsibility to municipal services.
The Sweden Democrats argue that asylum immigration should be ended and instead believe that increased economic aid for refugees should be given abroad in their respective countries. They believe that this will avoid arguments such as assimilation, which they believe is the catalyst to the economic, criminal and cultural problems because they believe migrants have failed to assimilate into Swedish culture.
The crime rate increased in 2020, with an 11.01 percent increase from the rate of 2019, which has become part of the public’s concern to the direction that the country is taking. In 2019 Sweden saw 100 bombings, twice that of 2018, which is one of the highest in an industrialized nation. While murder is considered relatively low, last year the country of 10.3 million people recorded 360 incidents involving guns, including 47 deaths and 117 injuries. The increase in deaths is linked to criminality in socially disadvantaged areas, and eight out of ten shootings were linked to organised crime, a significant higher proportion than in other countries. Sweden Democrats called the statistics in the report by the Swedish national council for crime (BRA), as capitulating. Klara Hradilova Selin a researcher at BRA, said one killing tended to trigger another. “It is social contagion, if a shooting takes place then another usually takes place close to it, in both in time and space.”
A lot of these arguments of crime in Sweden have been challenged by the Police, though the statistics tell a different story, such as rape, which like in all countries is hard to prove judicially. But the Police argue that the reporting of rape and the statistical significance of growing numbers, comes down to the legal definition of rape and how these statistics are carried over into the number of rapes that have been reported. They argue that the definition of rape has broadened and as such there is actually a downward trajection because the defined parameters are so large.
According to a report by Daniel Lee Thomson writing for the Brooking Institute, “crimes have been connected to a rise of gangs and organised crime groups, which are predominantly composed of first or second generation immigrants, though not strongly correlated to a specific count This feeds into the national psyche that immigrants are key to all Sweden’s problems and feeds into the support of the Sweden Democrats by those who blame migration on statistics that there are growing problems with Sweden’s law and order among the migrant community.
Like everything, the media feed on these statistics and in 2018, a public broadcaster argued that 58 percent of all convictions for rape were committed by foreign-born residents, which fed into the narrative that the rise in rapes was defined by cultural difference. The Sweden Democrats jumped on this broadcast and argued that the Social Democrats have “a dogma that crime is due to poverty.” But it is the Swedish authorities who have challenged these statistics, they argue that it is the way that rape is quantified that has differentiated how Sweden to date has managed to challenge the sensationalism of the agenda put forward by parties such as the Sweden Democrats.
But it is the politics that have reacted, the Sweden Democrats vote has increased to 1,330,325 up 3 percent, with 73 seats up by 11. Major gains were made in northern Sweden, and in the lower east a strong hold for leftists all went to the right. This enabled the Swedish Democrats to be central to the power and for the first time the leader of the Moderate Party, a conservative party has turned to the Swedish Democrats to form a government. It will be the first time that the Swedish Democrats will hold an influence in government, which was criticised by the European Union.
What will happen in Sweden over the next four years is dependent on whether the alliance will hold, but most interestingly, it is whether the Swedish Democrats will be central to the policies and arguments of the government or act as a silent partner. Maybe it is populist governments gaining more popularity across Europe, but ultimately Sweden will be watched closely, especially on its immigration policies and whether the country that held its hand out to over a million migrants will return to policies that disrupt the image that Sweden has always held as a centre for liberal and socially responsible governance.
Bibliography
https://www.government.se/articles/2017/02/facts-about-migration-and-crime-in-sweden/
https://www.oecd.org/migration/integration-indicators-2012/keyindicatorsbycountry/name,218347,en.htm
https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/sweden
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SWE/sweden/crime-rate-statistics
Current Affairs 
Leave a comment