The Sweden Democrats: Rise of Swedish Nationalism - and how to deal with it

The Rise of the Sweden Democrats

As of the general election of 2010, Swedish voters gave the "Sweden Democrats" (a fringe nationalist movement with its roots in various outright racist groupings) a 5,7% mandate in parliament.
With a weak minority centre-right coalition government, the Sweden Democrats have risen to become kingmakers in several important intraparliamental votes.

The Sweden Democrats campaign on a platform of curbing immigration and emphasizing a diffusely defined set of conservative values associated with "traditional Sweden". With a general image make-over and the brushed-up stewardship of even-tempered party leader Jimmie Åkesson the party has to a large extent managed to disassociate itself from it's racist beginnings.

Åkesson's skillful management of this very motely crew has however  not succeeded in preventing several outspoken party officials from causing a string of PR-disasters, the recent culmination being a video recording of high ranking party officials in a drunken brawl with racist overtones.

The Sweden Democrats populist anti-immigration policies traditionally attracted a small number of under-educated working class males, but have recently been growing their middle-class base, chiefly at the expense of the Moderates (centre-right) and Social Democrats (centre-left).

While it is self-evident that the established parties would not take kindly to the newcomer, it should be noted that there was a public outcry of unprecedented magnitude when the results of the election were made final and the Sweden Democrats got their parliament seats.

It is not part of the self-image of the Swedes to have a nationalist party taking place in parliament. Parties of this kind have been common in many European countries for decades - but Swedes like to think of themselves as morally superior to this tendency.

The Swedes, being morally homogenous by tradition and clearly culturally shocked at this turn of events, saw the election followed by fierce media campaigns celebrating multiculturalism and slamming the Sweden Democrats with the intention of beating them back to where they came from.

The established parties fell over themselves to display their distance-taking from the Sweden Democrats - sometimes to the point of outright clownery: the then leader of the Left-Party, Lars Ohly, refused to have his makeup put on in the same room as Åkesson prior to a televised election-night debate.

Later, the short-lived and gaffe-prone post-election opposition leader Håkan Juholt managed to cause another stir when refusing to participate in a debate on national television as it was made clear that the studio layout, which put the governing coaltition parties on one side and the opposition on the other, meant Juholt had to stand next to Åkesson.

The following two years has seen a generally positive trend for the Sweden Democrats, with the latest poll numbers ranking them a hefty 8,7% of the popular vote. Capitalizing on the indignation following a slightly earlier poll, which awarded the Sweden Democrats a two-figure rating, evening newspaper Expressen invited Åkesson to participate in  weekly political webcast-forum Bar & Politik and then strategically released the scandalous video of drunken Sweden Democrat party officials wielding iron bars while using derogatory terms for non-ethic Swedes and referring to a hapless female passer-by as a "whore".

The outright schadenfreude lasted for about two weeks (the "Åkesson" hashtag briefly trending globally on Twitter), after which it could be noted that the Sweden Democrats had still not dropped in the polls, but stood firm and possibly had grown marginally.

What is causing the Sweden Democrats to surge?

It should now be clear that neither of the tactics employed so far (exclusion exemplified by politicians, and slamming media reports by journalists) have managed to put even a dent in the SD poll numbers.

In an interesting turn of events, journalists are now turning to analyse why the Sweden Democrats are growing, and the explanations are many:

• It is because journalists and politicians are accepting the premises of the SD-world-view in debating them
  
• It is because journalists and politicians are refraining from debating SD and thus making them into martyrs
  
• It is because the media has focused on SD's growth in the polls, that this has become a self-reinforcing tendency
  
• It is because SD has become part of the establishment and thus have become a more viable alternative
  
• It is because SD is not part of the establishment and can capitalize on being the underdog
  
• It is because the economy is not good enough.

The last item on the list was published in Swedens largest daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter 30/11/12 (article in Swedish here) - a front page feature tracking the SD poll numbers correlation to the number of redundancies in the workforce, implying disgruntled unemployed voicing their frustration by coming out in support of SD, a questionable argument as the DN correlation is weak and does not substantiate casuality, as shown by a more detailed graph over a longer time:

The common denonimator for the above explanations is that they all desperately avoid the central premise: that the Sweden Democrats are claiming an incrementally larger share of the 25-30% of Swedes that partially or fully share their views on immigration issues (Demoskop, Lifestyle and Value survey 2012). The root of the problem lies in identifying why these views are becoming prevalent and countering them with hard facts and solutions, rather than protecting the sense of Swedish moral superiority by looking for external causes for the SD-surge - as it apparently is unfathomable to think a large chunk of the Swedish demography is not all that keen on diversity after all.

What factors are contributing to this shift towards an anti-immigration sentiment?

One cause is the clash between a long tradition of homogenous, centralist social engineering and the sprawling diversity of multiculturalism. This clash might have been compounded buy the rapid rate of change Sweden has been undergoing since moving from an isolated socialist industrial manufacturing nation up until the late 1980's, into a modern, open and liberal intelligence-driven economy. When culturally conditioned for conformism and a sense of moral superiority, diversity might by the disantvantaged be percieved as a provocation.

Heavy-handed and outdated bureaucratic regulations of employment limit the number of legitimate ways low-skilled workers can gain entry to the labour market. This lack of opportunity traps the uneducated in dependence on benefits, and has created large clusters of unemployed residential areas where black-market career paths become an attractive alternative to the out-of-reach legitimate labour market.

High minimum wages tells the labour market "if you are less skilled than this, you cannot work". It is also difficult and expensive to let people go, which impair recruitment risk-taking. With potential extra overheads associated with employing staff with limited knowledge of the Swedish language, this poses a massive disantvantage for non-ethic Swedes when competing for already scarce jobs.

The framework for the Swedish labour market regulations was put in place during the industrial era, with the aim of fostering a class-less and fiscally egalitarian society. In modern times, it has ironically become one of the strongest mechanisms for the creation of a new underclass, as it protects the interests of the native middle-class which is also armed with a full-fledged Swedish school-system education.

Desiring  to avoid wage-dumping by preventing immigrants to compete on price (which would encourage recruitment risk taking) long-term benefit programs and adult-education programs have been put in place with the aim of raising the employability of the low-skilled to meet the wage and job security standards.
Naturally, demand outstrips supply, and the general quality of many of these programs are questionable. It also cements the perception of immigrants as an expensive burden for the tax-payer.

The dissonance between the desire to welcome diversity and the rigidity of the labour market is contributing to a segregation and polarisation of society which provides a platform for parties such as the Sweden Democrats, who emphasize ethnicity as the defining characteristic of social and financial challenges arising from immigration, rather than socio-economic structure and a lack of opportunity.

A percieved lack of safety is by Sweden Democratic voters often presented as a reason for their stance. The city of Malmö, incidentally the current home of this blogger, has received a very negative portrayal in the media, with a focus on criminal gangs and shoot-outs. While not all fear-mongering, the crime rates are statistically generally on the decline and it is hard to determine the real causes for the perceived lack of safety. As a returning citizen of Malmö after 10 years of absence, there is an observable change in as much as loitering large groups of young men have become established in certain parts of the city, where previously there was no such behavior. If this is enough to rattle the Swedes' sense of security, or if there are more actual threats lurking, remains unclear.

The clip below (Swedish only, no subtitles) shows TV-journalist Janne Josefson interviewing two SD-voters living in Almgården, a poverty-stricken blue-collar residential area with a 35% local support for the Sweden Democrats, adjacent to the infamous Rosengård in Malmö. Ridicule or dismissal of these ladies would be easy and counter-productive: they are light on hard facts and heavy on opinion, but their perception of lack of safety is legitimate and very concerning. A general sense of being abandoned by the traditional political parties who talk fondly of multiculturalism but offer little in the way of solutions for those trapped in poor and crime-ridden areas clearly paves the way for the Sweden Democratic hardline approach where the immigrants themselves are painted as the problem to be removed.

Abridged transcript:

"What do you think of the development of Malmö?"
"Horrible, what will things be like in 20 years?"
"What are you thinking of?"
"You really need to keep an eye on your children..."
"What are you thinking of?"
"There has been enough going on out here... it is horrible. I grew up here, you used to be able to play outside at any time. Now people barely dare to walk their dogs at night."
"Why is that?"
"Crime, addiction... old people worry about getting mugged."
"Is this something you have read, or experienced?"
"I have experienced a lot..."
"Who do you feel is responsible for this development?"
"Who to blame... immigrants, tougher punishments for criminal behavior might be needed... we need to draw the line somewhere."
"People would call you anti-immigrant for saying that..."
"They can call me what they want, if people mistreat me I won't stand for it. We vote Sweden Democrat, but we are not racist or anything, we just need someone to start drawing the line out here."

Capitalizing on fears like these, and offering simplified scape-goat solutions is the hallmark of populists everywhere. Confusing the demographic group of a criminal with the cause for his crimes represents an extremely ugly form of collectivism, where the acts of an individual is attributed to race and heritage rather than being the responsibility of the individual and his or her situation. Explaining the structural nature of the problem, and applying long-term solutions through economic and labour-market reform is unlikely to impress the citizens of Almgården, it is however better than not doing anything except for hoping that the Sweden Democrats will go away if we want it badly enough.

The Sweden Democrats represent an anti-globalisation, xenophobic and protectionist line of thought, that certainly would wreak havoc on the economy if implemented even partially.

This blogger might be biased as a businessman, but wary of the anxiously failing attempts to counter the Sweden Democrats with moral derision and social exclusion, it is my firm conviction that the bottom line is a hard but fair master. When in doubt, look at the balance sheet: clearly everyone stands to gain from free trade and free migration - and it is difficult to have one without the other.
Crunch the numbers, creative incentives and opportunity and make the thing work as a business rather than a patronizing and polarizing charity: It is hard to imagine anything more humiliating than being reduced to victimhood and dependence on government-alms, trapped in a social system that prevents one from taking legitimate charge of the situation - by and large, this is how many immigrants come to be treated by the Swedish welfare system.

As the old Persian saying goes: "Let the Caravan Broker the Peace"