Anti-Immigrant Sweden Democrats Party Surges in Polls Amid EU’s Eurosceptic Wave

Listing to Starboard in Sweden of all places

sverigedemokraterna / Instagram

The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats have gained ground in a recent poll, pulling almost even with the ruling Social Democrats, ahead of an election in September. Similar parties have won recent elections in Slovenia and Italy.

The poll, conducted for Sweden’s Expressen newspaper and published Monday, has put the Sweden Democrats in second place, with 21 percent of the vote, the highest score in the party’s history. The liberal Social Democrats, currently in a coalition government with the Green Party, are still in first place but polling at 23.1 percent.

The surge in popularity for Sweden Democrats is attributed to voters leaving Social Democrats for other left-wing parties, but also to the country’s open-door migration policy, which has been accompanied by a crime wave.

Gang-related gun murders –overwhelmingly carried out by men with migrant backgrounds– have surged from around four per-year in the early 1990s to 40 last year. Rapes and anti-Semitic attacks by Muslim immigrants have also surged. Grenade attacks were up 550 percent last year from three years prior.

Just last week, Rakmat Akilov, an asylum seeker from Uzbekistan, was given a life sentence for a truck attack last year. Akilov plowed a truck down a busy shopping street in Stockholm last April, killing five people and injuring almost a dozen others. Among the dead was an 11-year-old girl. He said he acted on behalf of Islamic State.

“I often use Sweden as a deterring example,” Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Swedish television in January, warning about the dangers of unchecked immigration.

In April, a poll by Demoskop revealed that immigration is the top issue for Swedish voters ahead of the election. Law and order is the third most important issue, while integration comes in fourth. On immigration and integration, voters have the most confidence in the Sweden Democrats party.

The Social Democrats party seems to be be focusing on other issues, however. On Monday, Stockholm’s city council voted to ban ‘sexist’ advertising in public spaces, including ads that "show a stereotypical image of gender roles.” The council is run by the Social Democrats and Moderate Unity Party, described as “liberal conservatives.”

The Sweden Democrats’ rise appears to be tracking the broader swing in support towards parties critical of immigration across the European Union. Italy got a Eurosceptic government at the end of May, which immediately took a tough line on immigration. Over the past weekend, the Italian navy turned back a French ship that rescued 629 migrants in the Mediterranean, criticizing the EU leadership in Brussels for leaving Italy to bear the brunt of Europe’s migrant problem “all by itself.”

Last week, Slovenia’s anti-immigrant SDS-EPP party won the general election there, with 28 percent of the vote. The SDS-EPP has promised to lock down the Slovenian border and ban the wearing of the burqa in public. They have received open support from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a long-time crusader against immigration and the Brussels establishment.

The Sweden Democrats still face an uphill battle to get into government. Sweden’s establishment parties have long refused to enter into coalition with them. Electoral math still favors a loose alliance of centrist parties, currently polling 38.5 percent, while a leftist coalition around the Social Democrats is polling at 36.2 percent.

"The important thing for us is to get as much of our policy through as possible, and then it does not matter who we get it through with,” said party leader Richard Jomshof. “Anything is possible.”

'Islam Doesn't Belong to Germany': German Interior Minister Talks Tough on Immigration

Berlin lists a little further to starboard

Seehofer outlines tough new measures on immigration and deportation of Muslim migrants.

Newly-appointed Interior Minister Horst Seehofer has said that “Islam doesn't belong to Germany.” The comments contradict previous remarks from his own chancellor, Angela Merkel.

Seehofer was sworn-in on Wednesday, following protracted negotiations to form a new German government, and made the remarks in an interview with Bild on Friday. Seehofer, chairman of the Christian Social Union (CSU) in Bavaria, also outlined a number of tough new measures to curtail immigration and make it easier for Germany to deport failed asylum seekers.

Seehofer said he would implement a “master plan for quicker deportations” and seek to classify more countries as ‘safe,’ therefore making it easier to deport people to their country of origin. “My message is: Muslims need to live with us, not next to us or against us,” the minister said. “Of course the Muslims living here do belong to Germany.”

An estimated 4.4 to 4.7 million Muslims live in Germany, many from a Turkish background. More than a million middle-eastern migrants have arrived in the country since 2015 after Chancellor Merkel adopted an open-door policy.

The recent surge in popularity for the right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been linked to German dissatisfaction with Merkel's policy, coupled with fears of a large-scale terrorist incident following the Berlin Christmas market truck attack which killed 12 people in 2016.  

Gains have been made by right-wing and anti-immigrant parties in a host of European countries over the last year, most notably in Austria, Denmark and France where National Front leader Marine Le Pen lost a close-fought presidential race to centrist Emmanuel Macron.

Is Ontario Shifting to the Right, or Just Up-Righting?

Tanya Granic Allen

We recently documented Europe's 'listing to starboard' - a clear response to far-left policies and actions of governments which were leading their countries into cultural suicide with uncontrolled Islamic migration.

Islamization is not a big problem in North America, yet, although it is rising and perhaps some people's excessive reaction to that problem is a bigger problem. 

In Ontario, the Premier, Kathleen Wynne, is a lesbian, a Liberal, and far to the left of any premier who has gone before, even the NDP 's Bob Rae, who was an absolute disaster. Liberals are supposed to be centrists and NDPs leftists. But Wynne has taken the provincial Liberal party far to the left of even the NDP, just as Justin Trudeau has taken the federal Liberals far to the left of the federal NDPs.

As pointed out in a recent post, when you steer a ship to port (left), it will list (lean) to starboard (right). It is not Islamization that has caused this list but the use of the educational system to inflict a far-left version of cultural progress, or social engineering on Ontarians.

Wynne employed, among others possibly, the Deputy Minister of Education, Benjamin Levin, to write a new curriculum with regard to gender equality and bullying. But Levin had to step down as DM after he was charged with and convicted of having child pornography. Levin is a paedophile!

His curriculum was very much about normalizing homosexuality and transgenderism from a very young age. This is bolstered by libraries across Canada embracing drag queens, in full costume, going into classrooms and reading to little children as if that is supposed to be anything close to normal. 

There is little mention of child sex abuse - safe touch/unsafe touch, who to tell and how to tell, etc., etc. in the curriculum. Nor is there any mention that gender dysphoria is a disease and there are options to deal with it. They teach that it is quite normal for a man to look down at his scrotum and decide that he is a woman. Extreme liberalism!

Wynne's other big problem is having sold 50.1% of Hydro One, a Crown Corporation until then. Hydro One is the primary electrical distribution company for Ontario. Hydro One suffers from aging infrastructure and consequently, rates jumped spectacularly after the sale. Many homes are paying several hundred dollars per month for hydro even after measures to reduce usage.

Wynne's solution to this issue, after nightmare stories came out of people being, or threatening to be cut off because they couldn't pay the extraordinary increase in their bills, was to reduce everyone's hydro bill by 25%, which will be underwritten by the government. Consequently, all taxpayers in Ontario will pay for the increased hydro rates for decades to come.

Now the story really gets bizarre:

In 2017, Hydro One agreed to acquire U.S. energy company Avista for C$6.7 billion in cash! Where did they get $6.7 bn in cash? Why didn't they invest that money into Hydro One's aging infrastructure? Where will they get the money to invest in Hydro One's infrastructure?

Christine Elliott

Ontario Conservative Party leader Patrick Brown put forward an idea to fix the Hydro One problem, and with Kathleen Wynn's approval rating down around 12%, it appeared he would get a chance to employ that solution after a provincial election in June. Then #MeToo came along (2nd story on link) and Patrick Brown suddenly and dramatically resigned just a few months before a provincial election. He went kicking and screaming, then joined the race to be his own successor, and a few days later, withdrew from that.

Caroline Mulroney

That sounds more like BC politics than Ontario. Nevertheless, the extremely rushed leadership convention occurred last week with 3 high profile and very different contenders, plus one relative unknown. The list included Christine Elliott, the wife of the late, and very popular, federal Finance Minister under Stephen Harper, Jim Flaherty; Caroline Mulroney, the daughter of long-retired Prime Minister Brian Mulroney; and Doug Ford, the brother of the late, internationally infamous, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford. 

The 4th candidate was a dark horse with no political experience and no pedigree. She is, however, the head of a parental rights group called PAFE - Parents As First Educators. It was clear Tanya Granic Allen was not going to win the contest and Canada's left leaning media often completely ignored her in their 30 second sound bites they call news. But Granic Allen made a significant impression in the few opportunities she had and received a number of 1st choice selections on the leadership ballot.

The ballot was structured to choose 1st, 2nd, 3rd choices so that in the event of no-one getting enough votes on the first count, the candidate with the fewest 1st place votes would drop off and their ballots would revert to their 2nd choice. Most of Granic Allen's voters chose Doug Ford as their 2nd choice and that was enough to push him ahead of Christine Elliott in a very close race.

Doug Ford, an outsider to provincial politics except that his father was once a backbench MPP, was the most right wing of the candidates with the exception of Granic Allen. He stated that he would change school curriculum to reflect societal norms rather than extreme left-wing ideologies. He also stated that he would allow MPPs to bring forward bills challenging the right to abortion. Both of these positions are probably due to Tanya Granic Allen's presence and forceful presentations on the candidacy platforms.

Granic Allen hasn't decided if she will run for MPP in June, but if she does, I would expect her to be a powerhouse of an MPP, possibly in the cabinet, and a possible successor to Ford sometime in the future if she can survive the disdain of Canadian media.

When a ship lists to starboard because it is steering to port there are only two options: continue to steer to port and go around and around in circles, or, steer to starboard until the ship is upright again. Ontarians deserve an upright ship for a change.