
Downtown Malmö. If Nigel Farage, Donald Trump and Katie Hopkins are to be believed, this city is an interracial war zone
In the third and final part of a series of posts about modern Sweden (parts one and two can be read here and here), I look at immigration, and the crime problems that many neo-cons claim it has caused. The reality is very different. Angst about rising crime, in what remains one of the safest countries in Europe, is but one of many Swedish paradoxes.
Amidst many differences between Britain and Sweden, one area of similarity stands out: both countries are fixated on migration. The nationalistic, Eurosceptic and anti-migration Swedish Democrats show no sign of peaking as UKIP have in Britain, and are expected to make big gains in the September 2018 national and regional elections. The latest opinion polls put the Swedish Democrats’ support at almost 25%, second only to the governing Social Democrats and ahead of the traditional centre-right Moderate Party. A few polls have even put them in first place, ahead of the Social Democrats.
A decade ago this would have been unthinkable. The Swedish Democrats were founded in 1988 but spent more than 20 years in the far-right wilderness, not winning any seats in the Riksdag – the Swedish parliament – until 2010. Continue reading