*SWEDEN: FAR RIGHT Looks To Deliver Crushing Blow In Elections Sunday

[appalachiablue]

Last edited Sat Sep 8, 2018, 03:59 PM - Edit history (1)

"The far-right looks set to deliver a crushing blow in Sweden’s elections on Sunday." The latest country in Europe where the established order is being upended by a political shift to the right. By Luke Barnes, Think Progress, Sept. 8, 2018.

There are plenty of things you might associate with Sweden- Viking hats, a certain flat-packed furniture store, bad Europop. Political instability, however, is not likely to be one of them. But this Sunday, Swedes are set to shatter the political image of their country as calm and boring when they vote in a general election.

Current polls indicate that the far-right Sweden Democrats look set to make the most gains. Here’s a rundown of what you need to know about the election, as well as why it’s so important.

What’s set to happen: Sweden is a parliamentary democracy, which means that Swedes vote for political parties who are then tasked with appointing a prime minister. Because of the number of political parties in the country, very rarely does one win an outright majority, and must instead form governing “blocks” with like-minded parties.

This is likely to happen again on Sunday. The Sweden Democrats are poised to capitalize on the weakness of mainstream political parties like the Swedish Social Democratic Party and the Moderate Party, and gain roughly a fifth of the vote, making them the nation’s second or third most popular party. This could position them as kingmakers within Parliament and give strength to their Euroskeptic, anti-migration platform.

Why are the Sweden Democrats so popular: Sweden has long prided itself as being what political scientist Lars Tragardh described as a “moral superpower.” Like other Nordic countries, it maintains an extremely generous welfare system, and has historically been extremely welcoming towards refugees.

As Foreign Policy pointed out, since the 1980s, it has taken in refugees from Iran, Eritrea, Bosnia, Somalia, and Iraq to name just a few countries, all granted access to the same high-quality health care, maternal leave, and unemployment benefits that Swedish citizens enjoy. In 2015, Sweden took in 163,000 migrants — more new arrivals per capita than any European nation.

Since then, however, the national mood has soured. Fears about rising crime have been compounded by a number of high-profile incidents, like the 2017 attack in Stockholm that killed four, a surge in reported rape cases, and most recently a series of coordinated arson attacks by masked youths.
Despite the links between migrants and crime being tenuous at best, these incidents have been seized upon by far-right commentators- as well as Donald Trump- to give the impression that the country is coming apart at the seems. Fake news sites are also flooding Sweden with far-right misinformation ahead of the election...*Read More..

https://thinkprogress.org/everything-you-need-to-know-about-this-weekends-swedish-election-0f479c79ebb8/



Stockholm City Hall is seen behind the Swedish flag.

[Doodley]

1. Another win for Putin. Why would a nation where the people are doing so well on almost

every measure go to the far rightly unless they were manipulated by the propaganda of hate and resentment?

[radicalliberal]

3. A disproportionately large percentage of the rapes in Sweden -- especially brutal gang rapes --

have been perpetrated by Muslim immigrants, who come from a cultural background of extreme misogyny. To many of them, the young native women are good only for sex. The Social Democratic government, which controls the media, has created their own rape culture that benefits the Muslim perpetrators and punishes the victims (and to think this government calls itself a "feminist" government!). A few years ago, an iman in Jerusalem spoke hatefully of Europeans and declared that Muslims from the Middle East could "seed" their women!

One reason there is a strong populist movement is because Europeans are sick and tired of the lack of gratitude on the part of the Muslim immigrants. In angry demonstrations militant Muslims have carried signs that read "DEATH TO THE WEST," "No Democracy We just want Islam!" "EUROPE IS THE CANCER ISLAM IS THE ANSWER," "SHARIAH THE TRUE SOLUTION FREEDOM GO TO HELL," "ISLAM WILL DOMINATE THE WORLD FREEDOM GO TO HELL," etc. Why would anyone who hates the West so much want to immigrate to a Western country?

Here's a little math problem: The native Europeans have a low fertility rate while the Muslim immigrants have a high fertility rate (as the iman mentioned above declared with considerable glee). What does the future hold for Europe a few decades from now? What happens when the native Europeans become minority groups in their homelands? Ethnic cleansing against the new minority groups?

[appalachiablue]

2. Dear Sweden: Learn a Lesson From the US and Reject Corrosive Dystopianism

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2018/09/08/dear-sweden-learn-lesson-us-and-reject-corrosive-dystopianism