In the fullness of time, Sweden’s Sept. 11 parliamentary election may mark a minor turning point for the West: A country long famous for leftism is heading in the right’s direction.
The Sweden Democrats, once a marginal party, received 20.5 percent of the vote, second only to the left-wing Social Democrats.
What’s more, the Sweden Democrats’ coalition with other parties on the right beat a left-wing coalition associated with the incumbent government. They'll have real influence in the new Parliament.
The party’s leader, Jimmie Akesson, was quoted prior to the election as saying the contest would give Sweden Democrats an opportunity to “make Sweden great again.”
What in the world persuaded young Swedes, of all people, to give conservatism a shot?
“The lost sense of personal security among the youth is a very strong driving force for this shift,” Charlie Weimers, a Sweden Democrat and member of the European Parliament, told The Epoch Times on Sept. 29.
He cited a rise in violent crime by migrants, many of whom live in segregated no-go zones.
“When you read about gangs waiting outside schools to ambush pupils after the school day, this does something to young people,” Weimers said. “They know that despite years and years of denial, this is directly linked to a too-high migration.”
The country’s generous social democratic policies, extended to just about anyone who walks through the front door, may prove to be the downfall of the Social Democrats.
“Migration has been driven to a large extent by the very generous welfare system,” Weimers said.
While the welfare state doles out benefits, the country’s criminal justice system struggles to administer punishment.
For example, a mere 13 percent of foreign nationals in Sweden convicted of child rape were deported to their countries of origin, according to government statistics spanning 2010 through 2014.
They aren’t a tiny percentage of those criminals either.
Weimers said rising energy prices and aggressive green policies have also contributed to youthful support for the Sweden Democrats. Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg’s popularity may be waning with Gen Z.
Moderate Turn
As with Italy, where the national conservative Brothers of Italy made huge gains in the Sept. 25 election, the legacy media has been eager to dredge up any links between the Sweden Democrats and extremist views. (Left-wing European parties’ historical links to global communism, and more specifically to the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, remain curiously under-examined.)Days before the election, then-Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, a Social Democrat, said that “the Sweden Democrats have deep roots in the Swedish neo-Nazis and other racist organizations in Sweden.”
Weimers said his own affiliation with the Sweden Democrats reflected the party’s moves toward normalization on the Swedish political scene, particularly its turn toward national conservatism.
Earlier this year, he spoke at the National Conservatism Brussels Conference, aligning him with a growing anti-globalist movement on the West’s center-right.
He highlighted Akesson’s zero-tolerance policy toward racism in the ranks.
For a long time, the Sweden Democrats were pretty much the only option for migration skeptics in ultra-liberal Sweden, according to Weimers.
Pivoting Against Russia
The rise of the Swedish Democrats comes as Sweden departs from its long tradition of neutrality, officially maintained through World War II and the Cold War, to oppose Russian expansionism.The country is expected to succeed in its bid to join the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
The Sweden Democrats have warmed to the idea, supporting Sweden’s accession to the alliance contingent on Finland’s accession.
The fate of Finland and Sweden’s NATO applications hinges on Turkey. In recent weeks, the three states have held talks to hammer out a deal satisfactory to Ankara, which seeks the extradition of alleged Kurdish terrorists from the Nordic countries.
Weimers explained why his party looked favorably on NATO membership despite the aversion to potential military entanglements among some conservatives.
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has forced several parties to update their security analysis,” he said.
Weimers stressed the strategic value of the Baltic Sea, which laps at Sweden’s eastern shores. Both NATO and Russia can be expected to contest the area, making it even trickier for Sweden to remain strictly neutral.
Yet the Sweden Democrats’ growing taste for multilateralism has its limits, including when it comes to the European Union.
Weimers described his party as “EU-critical yet reformist,” saying that they wanted to rein in Brussels while focusing on cooperation over trade and other core strengths of the union.
“The EU elite drew all the wrong conclusions from Brexit,” he said, arguing that the bloc’s leadership class has doubled down on the sort of policies that helped drive away the UK.
