The Big Bad Swedish Politics & News Thread

[Gustaf]

Wow, long thread. I'd like to comment more when I have more time. For now I'll just note that I have some friends involved in the Centre Party draft and the youth movement there IS pretty libertarian.

Annie Lööf is viewed as a catastrophe even by those people though.

[Gustaf]

Also, this is like an all time high for Swedish members of the forum it seems.

[Gustaf]

I would caution the left supporters that incumbent governments tend to gain votes during election campaigns in Sweden. I think C and KD are likely to make the threshold at the end of the day with support voting as well.

There are two main obstacles to the social democrats, as I see it. One is that they have to form a governing coalition. They're doing well now because people have forgotten V and MP. At some point that will come back to haunt them a bit. The second issue is that with the Sweden Democrats this strong it will be hard to form a left-wing government. I think it's easier for the right to handle it, especially as they were so close to an own majority.

[Gustaf]

Sweden is like Britain; all kinds of things change, but the underlying patterns are remarkably stable.

With regards to the former, Västerbotten is interesting. What's behind that shift?

I think one explanation is that it used to be very evangelical and thus vote for the Liberals. The decline in religiosity would then make some sense.

Then you have the urbanization - the really rural areas has traditionally often voted Centre while more densely populated parts of rural areas vote left. The former has lost weight over time.

[Gustaf]

The centre and its predecessors were more loyal to Svenska kyrkan.  This difference can be seen in difference between Jönköpings län and Kronoborgs län.

Okay, but it doesn't quite explain the why. Somehow early peasant leaders must have been pro-establishment, maybe because they were chosen among the wealthier peasants? Also perhaps it was less anti-aristocratic than most peasant movements given that most Swedish peasant owned their own land.

The Swedish concept of frisinne http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisinne is a strange deviation from standard Liberalism and somewhat related to Grundtvigianism in Denmark (which is also a weird "ideology").

It's partly a question of timing. When politics started out you had Liberals v Conservatives. This division was similar to what I think it was in other places like England, with the Liberals tending to be pro-free trade, anti-military, progressive on social issues and associated with the evangelical movement. In those days, the evangelicals were often somewhat persecuted by the establishment, which heavily favoured the state church, so it made sense for liberals to support freedom of religion.

For natural reasons, the Liberals were otherwise typically associated with urban areas and the merchant class.

The Centre party started out as a party to look after the interests of the farmers and rural areas specifically. They've always been rather pragmatic and I don't think they had much philosophically in common with the religious types.

Incidentally, I believe the Liberals pushed for a high threshold to parliament back in the day to keep the Christian Democrats out, since they were threatening to steal one of their constituencies. Which, of course, is what ended up happening.

[Gustaf]

3,9% of immigrants prefer Sweden Democrats, I guess those are mostly Finns and Swedish talking Finns.

I'd be surprised if any Swedish-speaking Finns vote Sweden Democrats. Demographically they're as far from SD voters as one can imagine.

I'd guess those are mostly European immigrants from countries where xenophobia and islamophobia are much less stigmatized than in Sweden. Especially I imagine areas like the Balkans.

[Gustaf]

I just returned from Almedalen. Had lots of fun and listened to about half the speeches.

[Gustaf]

So, who voted in the church election?

[Gustaf]

Löfven is good when he's scripted but he's not a good debater. Romson says decent things but she lacks presence. Sjöstedt is pretty good.

I felt Åkesson was put in an advantageous position and was allowed to act as the common sense voice for the people. The established parties strategy and attitude when it comes to SD really continues to baffle me completely.

On the right, I thought Björklund did well and Hägglund was quite good too. Reinfeldt was a bit uneven, but still decent. Lööf, well...at least she did better than I expected.

[Gustaf]

Löfven today demanded that the right-wing take responsibility for the parliamentary situation. But when pressed he could not specify what he actually wanted.

[Gustaf]

Ah, there is a separate Swedish one I see. Chauvinist win for us I suppose.

Given her evangelical background, of course she will have a forced or awkward element to her cheeriness, that comes with the territory.

She caught some flak for having posed with an Israeli tank some years ago at some museum.

Anyway, I think her political orientation is the right one for KD, strategically speaking.

[Gustaf]

Hmm... judging from that second picture Busch seems to have a bit of the same 'crazy eyes' issues as the Moderates' party secretary Tomas Tobé.

But yeah with her as leader the Christian Democrats would definitely strongly continue down the 'SD-light' path the party has taken recently. Although since Hägglund came third in district nominations back in 2004 but still became leader Forssmed could have a bigger chance than you'd think after purely looking at the numbers, since he seems to be the favored candidate of Göran Hägglund and the current leadership.

Big news today also as Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson came out and said that the government would be looking to abolish the current 1% budget surplus goal and replace it with a simple balanced budget goal.

This came not a second too late in my opinion since as many economists, Confed. of Swedish Enterprise, all major trade unions, etc. have said, the surplus goal is really no longer needed when we have a relatively low national debt of 30-40% compared to the 80% we had in the early 90s. Besides, we haven't run a budget surplus for several years and for the sake of all honesty none of the parties would've ran on billions and billions of austerity cuts and tax hikes in the next election just to reach the 1% surplus goal. Better to set the goal of a balanced budget now instead so we won't have to see lots of empty talk about reaching the 1% surplus in the coming years when in reality there's no true political will to do so.

Wasn't this because the favoured candidates stepped aside?

[Gustaf]

While it seems morally correct to scrap this deal, the handling of our foreign policy is beginning to worry me. They seem to have no idea what they're doing.

[Gustaf]

The Sweden Democrats are rising fast in the polls: 20% in YouGov and 22% in Sentio. Not far behind S and M.

Fuck.

The only way to stop them is to increase immigration levels. What do you think of my plan?

That sound like something the mainstream Swedish parties would suggest.

I assume the joke is that this is what the Swedish government actually did when SD first got into parliament.

Interestingly, apart from 1998 when they increased their vote total by 50% they've been at least doubling their votes in every election they've run in since the party foundation in 1988. Pretty remarkable.

[Gustaf]

I assume the Conservative Parties are going to uphold the current government rather than bring it down and spark another election which would lead to SD increasing in votes?

They already pledged not to, but opinion polls show support for the deal keeping the Red-Greens in power  has shrunk to nothing among Alliance voters. Also, polls now indicate the Alliance might win a rematch. I still think they'll stay on and keep this and hope for a proper win next time around but there is growing dissent within the parties.

[Gustaf]

Two asylum seekers from Eritrea have been arrested for stabbing two people to death in an IKEA in Västerås. It seems that they didn't have a political motive. The police are investigating the details.

It's a terribly tragic event. The victims were a middle-aged woman and her son in his twenties. The police has so far only been able to release very limited information about their investigation. They've said that they haven't found any signs of a political motive so far, but they aren't ruling it out either. It's to early to know anything in other words. The lack of information has of course given birth to various rumors.

One of the suspected murderers are at the time being operated for wounds he himself received during the attack. The as of yet unconfirmed theory I've herd is that he was injured by the son who was trying to protect his mother.

The police is also taking security measures to protect the asylum centre were the two murderers were living, in order to prevent any violent acts of retaliation that might be directed at it.  

Terribly tragic indeed. Let's hope that the other, third victim will be alright.

Let's not, since the third "victim" seems to be the perpetrator.

Antonio, your post is exactly what the campaign aims at. Swedes take pride in being the type of country that others come to and are amazed by the tidiness and there not being visible poverty, etc.

This strikes effectively at the fears of many Swedes. Of course, the insane overreaction of, well, everyone not SD gave them the kind of coverage they could never have dreamed about. They basically admitted that this was their plan as well. The Swedish left is so easy to play for SD.

[Gustaf]

I also have some totally unrelated questions: recently, I read about Systembolaget. How popular is this among Swedish voters? Are there any polls about this? And how do you, Swedish posters, think about it?

I read that most of the complaining is about their opening hours (they supposedly close at 3 PM on Saturdays and then don't open again until Monday). That seems truly reasonable to me, as I consider it my own personal freedom to buy some beers on Sunday at 10:30 PM if I feel like doing so. But then again, I have this "liberal" Dutch perspective on this issue, which is, of course, not universal at all. I understand that there might be legitimate counterarguments. I'm really curious about your answers.

This is an issue where I'm about as lukewarm as the beers they sell.

But seriously, it's a nanny state argument. Swedish alcohol consumption is pretty low by European standards partly thanks to Systembolaget. The whole point is that it makes it harder to buy. The argument to the contrary is of course that it's bloody paternalism and I should be able to get a beer if I want to.

My issue is honestly less the opening hours and more the fact that they don't sell beer cold. So you can never get cold beer spontaneously.

[Gustaf]

Good Lord.

[Gustaf]

Randomly jumping in here with two questions:

1.) Why is Stockholm a stronghold of the center-right?


2.) When I was visiting Vadstena, Odeshog, and Urnatur in May, I met two local green politicians. How strong is the Green Party in Sweden? Is it common for them to be in rural areas and small towns?

Also, we had a talk with the man who owns the treehouse hotel at Urnatur (he's one of the politicians we met) and told us he resented many Greens from the city because they believe that people should all live in cities, while he advocates that people live in the country. How strong is this divide in the Swedish Green Party?


Also, why the f*** do you people not export Kina Wafers??? They are now my favorite chocolate and they're not available in the U.S.

That is just wrong on so many levels.

1. Apart from recently with the SD, Swedish politics has a strong consensus on social issues and is divided mostly alongside economic lines. City people are rich. Imagine if New York was voting solely on economics and rural Kentucky was doing the same.

2. The Green party mostly has strength in cities and university areas but they exist elsewhere too. A former party leader made them biggest party in rural northern Kalix. The Green party generally does badly in rural areas for the reason you cited so I wouldn't call it a strong divide within the party.

The Kina wafers are under fire for racism, I believe, so that may not help.

[Gustaf]

Also, two more polls came out yesterday which basically confirm this result. The average of the 3 have SD narrowly behind SAP and narrowly ahead of M.

[Gustaf]

Randomly jumping in here with two questions:

1.) Why is Stockholm a stronghold of the center-right?


2.) When I was visiting Vadstena, Odeshog, and Urnatur in May, I met two local green politicians. How strong is the Green Party in Sweden? Is it common for them to be in rural areas and small towns?

Also, we had a talk with the man who owns the treehouse hotel at Urnatur (he's one of the politicians we met) and told us he resented many Greens from the city because they believe that people should all live in cities, while he advocates that people live in the country. How strong is this divide in the Swedish Green Party?


Also, why the f*** do you people not export Kina Wafers??? They are now my favorite chocolate and they're not available in the U.S.

That is just wrong on so many levels.

1. Apart from recently with the SD, Swedish politics has a strong consensus on social issues and is divided mostly alongside economic lines. City people are rich. Imagine if New York was voting solely on economics and rural Kentucky was doing the same.

2. The Green party mostly has strength in cities and university areas but they exist elsewhere too. A former party leader made them biggest party in rural northern Kalix. The Green party generally does badly in rural areas for the reason you cited so I wouldn't call it a strong divide within the party.

The Kina wafers are under fire for racism, I believe, so that may not help.

I get what you're saying but New York isn't the best example since it's actually about 60% poor minorities and even among the Whites, a good chunk are either poor White ethnics living way out in the middle of nowhere in far west Brooklyn or hipsters making $10 an hour but getting by only because they don't have kids.

Yeah I guess one of the richest cities in the world with the same GDP per capita as Stockholm is a horribly analogy for Stockholm as a rich city.

http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/reports/2012/1/18-global-metro-monitor/0118_global_metro_monitor.pdf

[Gustaf]

The question we need to ask when we ask these kind of question is; why would people vote for a party to the right of SD?

Yes there will always be people who think anything less than death camps are too liberal, but those people are too little group to count. Instead people can choose between a party, which have proven it can come in parliament, have proven it doesn't collapse, have proven that it's competent and have broad appeal or you can choose wild eyed lunatics. There's likely a large number of people who think that SD is too liberals, but what else do these people agree with each other about, some may be nazi, other xenophobics greens, other national conservatives etc, these people can not agree to unite, and for them SD may look like the best compromise.

Kasselstrand, Hahne and Ohlson do not appear to be "wild eyed lunatics".

Presumably it would be the National Conservative segment that might make up 3% and then could get in with a few floating voters - or may even be bigger. That was what I was curious about.

The purpose of voting "SD Classic" would be the same as voting for Danish Unity in DK (or SPP to influence SD in the old days). To keep the bigger party from drifting towards the center by posing a potential threat on the flank.

Yes, they do. Kasselstrand is a clear cut fascist. I've no doubt that if he came to power people would be shot in the night and interned in camps. He has strong links to the identitarian movement which openly calls for war against race-mixing.

I incidentally know a Sweden Democrat who is a supporter of the SDU guys and who told me I was "on his list" once he found out about my Jewish heritage.

[Gustaf]

I incidentally know a Sweden Democrat who is a supporter of the SDU guys and who told me I was "on his list" once he found out about my Jewish heritage.

Did you turn him over to the police?

I'm holding out hope that he meant a Schindler's List kind of list.

[Gustaf]

Describing the Social Democrats as divided on NATO is ridiculous, imo. It's a fringe opinion and the wing that opposes NATO membership would all die of suicides and heart attacks if they changed the policy on it. Sweden Democrats are much more likely to become pro-NATO imo.

[Gustaf]

The deal was growing so unpopular I'm not surprised they abandoned it. Among my rightwing friends there was a lot of hate for the deal.

As has been stated already, entering the deal was the big mistake.