The right turn in Sweden and why it’s not gonna happen

Timofey
Timofey
Sep 6, 2018 · 4 min read

Sweden. What springs up in your mind when you hear this country’s name? IKEA meatballs, safety all across the country and well-functioned healthcare system. That’s probably what I think about looking at Sweden.

The answer is SOCIALISM. Enormously high taxes and progressive taxation scale forced IKEA to end up paying them in Sweden, catastrophic immigration system led to extremely large increase of crimes and a willing to provide free health care for all seems to be unachievable in the long term perspective. The change is needed. That’s obvious. So, what to do?

Vote! Despite those issues and all the poor shifts taking place there, Sweden still enjoys quite a high level of democracy. Hence, the elections really matter in the country. Moreover, an anti-immigration party is gaining popularity at the moment. The party is called “Sweden Democrats”. According to some polls they might even win the parliamentary election. Still according to the latest ones, “Social Democrats” are going to gain more votes. However, I guess that polls are not really accurate in terms of Swedish elections. Why? Because for many Swedes “Sweden Democrats” are associated with the brownshirts because of its neo-nazi roots. I’d assume that many voters feel ashamed to say about their political views due to that fact. As evidence of my point, I want to say about similar situation happening in Russian politics. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the right-wing populist party LDPR usually receives more votes than polls show, precisely because of his radical rhetoric. Anyway, it’s most likely that “Sweden Democrats” will be either 2nd or 1st in the nearest election. Unfortunately, that won’t change anything. Here’s why.

In the last election in 2014 Democrats became 3rd. It is a great result, isn’t it? Sure, but that didn’t give them any real power. Why? Because the purpose of controlling the legislature is not only to receive more votes from the ballot boxes, but also to be able to form an alliance with other parties. And yes. That’s not the party’s strong suit. Again, due to their radical rhetoric(of course for Sweden, in Russia, for instance, such policy would be considered as liberal) they are marginalized in the parliament, so even though they’re the 3rd largest party they’ve got no coalition with anybody else. And no coalition means no real tool for changing the laws.

Alright, but maybe there are other anti-immigrant parties in Sweden? Unfortunately, not. The coalition of so-called centre-right parties, leading by “The Moderate” is in fact social-liberal and holds quite a refugee-welcome agenda. As for the government coalition(“Social Democrats” and “Green Party”) and their far-left supporter(“Left Party”) it is even more clear — they want to maintain the help for new comers. To be fair, there is one more anti-immigrant party. The Nordic Resistance Movement. But they have almost no chance to get more than 0.1% during these elections. The reason of such lack of support is them being openly nazis. So, let’s not take this radical organization into account.

Frankly speaking, even with social-democratic-leading parliament Sweden made some effort in order to cope with the refugee crisis. They started the deportation of Afghan asylum seekers and promise to propose a law that forces refugees to learn Swedish in order to receive the welfare benefits. Yes, these measures are very close to nothing, but still it has helped the left parties not to lose as much votes as they could.

Summarizing everything said above, I want to say that even though “Sweden Democrats” have got real chances to win the upcoming elections, they highly likely won’t have enough power to change the situation radically and save Sweden. However, it might be a good symbolical sign for the rest of Europe.

Anyway, let’s wait for the 9th of September and see the actual election results. Hopefully, at least some change will happen.

Pray for Sweden.

    Timofey

    Written by

    Timofey

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