Sweden had an election on Sunday. And the Left won. Kind of.
But really, Sverigedemokraterna won. Which means that no one won. People are angry,
confused, defiant, deflated, surprised (some people, unfortunately, are also
happy). Politicians are refusing to work with SD. Pundits are urging
cooperation with SD. And these reactions are legitimate in response to the tide
of nationalistic right-wing politics reaching Swedish shores.
Many English-language accounts of the election (Bloomberg and The Economist come to mind) seem convinced that Sweden’s change of
heart was just out of sheer boredom. The articles spend time praising the
economic gains, the growth in GDP, the tax cuts, the privatization. From an
American perspective or a fiscally conservative perspective, these things are
good. But these articles seem to forget that it is was over six million Swedes
who voted. And that for decade upon decade, Swedes have embraced taxes and a
social welfare state. It wasn’t a bunch of American or British citizens voting
with American and British values. Plus, they seem to have forgotten that
Alliansen, the incumbent government, received almost 40% of the Swedish vote. It
just wasn’t enough. Swedish voters didn’t just wake up on Sunday and think, I’m
bored. I want to throw turds at the Swedish political system.
So while they many not have thrown turds because they were
bored, Swedish politics is covered in turds now. And I don’t have any idea how
to clean up those turds, despite several years as a janitor back in high school.
But politicians better start talking to the people who voted for
Sverigedemokraterna and better figure out real quick how to convince them that
the concerns they have for Swedish society are not best served by voting for a
racist party. Convince them that the structural systems in place do not allow
for one group of people to judge themselves better than another. That means
actually getting something done. Something accomplished. Something that makes a
difference in the everyday lives of a whole lot of people. I’m not interested
in whether or not 800 000 people in Sweden are overt racists. I’m really not
all that interested in even having that conversation (just like others who have
written here
and here
in Swedish). Plenty of people are having that conversation. It doesn’t really
matter whether we can look at Herr Sven Svensson from Skåne and say for sure
that, yes, fictional Sven is a racist. What does matter is that over 800 000
people feel that their interests are best served by a party that holds such
strong anti-immigrant opinions. Because those anti-immigrant opinions foster
hatred and fear and racism. And when you feel like an immigrant (even if your
passport says otherwise), you start to notice. Especially when you realize that
because you have a Swedish name, white skin, and speak decent Swedish people
never, ever, ask: where are you really from?
But that question pops up a lot in this country. And there
is plenty of academic work exploring that question when it comes to identity
formation and identity politics. We can have that discussion too, but right
now, it feels way more personal than theory and academics. I have so many
friends in this country who were not born here and are immigrants and get that
question. Friends who were born here, but were born to a foreign parent and get
that question. Friends who were born here but spent time in other countries as
an immigrant. Friends who are now having children of their own, who will be
born to a foreign parent. It hits a bit close to home. Mostly because that is
me. And my brothers. And my dad. And my mom. Especially my mom.
My mom is a badass. She’s taught hundreds of elementary
school kids. She’s run marathons. She reads books like the printed word is
endangered. She learned Swedish as an adult and dusts it off every time she’s
in Sweden like it’s no big deal. She’s taken a sexually active teenage woman to
Planned Parenthood years and years ago, only to be verbally accosted by the
young woman’s parents, despite her role as a social worker. She’s raised upwards
of one hundred thousand dollars for cancer research. She’s also raised three
boys, two dogs, and one Swedish husband. She’s a badass.
But she’s also American. Not Swedish. So she’s an immigrant.
Or was at least. For about eight years, she was an immigrant.
When the third largest political party in Sweden, the party
that is claiming the biggest gains in Swedish politics, wants to decrease
immigration by 90% (without explaining exactly how) it says to me that all
those friends might not have been allowed in to this country. And that means my
mom might not have moved here. And that gets personal.
We can pretend that 13% isn’t a lot. That 87% of voters did
NOT vote for Sverigedemokraterna and that’s a good thing. That it’s unlikely
that they’ll be able to push through any of their hardcore election promises. That
they can’t even find enough people to fill some of the seats they’ve won at
various levels of government. Fine. Those are all fun little tidbits to
remember, but all the while a racist party is normalized in Swedish politics.
But those fun little tidbits are not really the point. Instead, the point is
that Sverigedemokraterna have seen a steady increase of votes, percentage of
the vote, and seats at all levels of government since their founding in 1988
when they only received 1 118 votes. They’ve inserted their coded language into
the mainstream discussion. They’ve turned to fear mongering and blaming the
other, whoever the other may be. Suddenly, 800 000 people have succeeded in
making hundreds of thousands of other people feel unsafe. And that matters a
lot. Because it’s not just happening here in Sweden. It’s happening throughout
Europe.
Convincing our fictional friend, Herr Sven Svensson from
Skåne, to not vote for Sverigedemokraterna is a good start. But that doesn’t
mean it ends there. It doesn’t mean that suddenly, those turds have been
cleaned off Swedish politics. Turds leave a mark. And Sverigedemokraterna have
inserted a brown streak in the red, green, and blue, of Swedish politics. The
risk is that that brown streak will remain unless something happens. And quick.
Welcome to Sweden. And a rising tide of right-wing
nationalism.
Does there not need to be a distinction made between disagreeing with 1) immigration policies, and 2) Refugee policies? A non-racist person may disagree with the policies of continuing Sweden's past refugee policies. We are a small country, and there needs to be a more rational examination of how many, and for how long, we continue to admit refugees from anywhere for whom we have few resources in place to help become assimilated. I voted somewhere near the middle of political spectrum, and not for the SDs, I am not a right-wing, racist troll. The term racist is too easily thrown about to discredit people with whom one disagrees. We need to have a rational, not emotion-laden, discussion on these matters.
ReplyDeleteBra skrivet Hairy! I voted for F! (in earlier elections I voted Miljöpartiet) and the results of this election, and all the shit that's happening in Europe and the rest of the world, just left me scared for the future...
ReplyDeleteFascinating article. There indeed needs to be a deeper, more meaningful dialogue with the people in order to solve the real problems. SD, like our American "Tea Party" is very deceptive. Such is the nature of politics.
ReplyDeleteA great set of comments. And, as always happens with this sort of thing, I'm kind of torn. I'm torn byt he whole freedom of speech thing, because I'm not an absolutist when it comes to that. So what happens when you get people who spew hate speech? And then there's the philosophical questions about democracy. What room do parties have n a democracy that were voted in by a democratic process, even though their policies are anti-democratic?
ReplyDeleteI don't have any good answers to any of these things. But I do want to see more of the parties figuring out what it is that attracted people to SD. Because I really really really want to believe that it wasn't just the thought of cutting immigration by 90%...