Last year, a baby named Emanuel was born in Sweden. Before his first birthday, his parents were told that Emanuel could no longer stay in the country. The department of migration ordered his removal, alone, to Iran – despite the ongoing war. Emanuel’s parents were legally in the country. They had Swedish residency permits, but the laws that allowed them to stay were tightened after the baby’s birth, and the family got sucked into a Kafkaesque maze of official hurdles, designed to limit migration to Sweden.
A 74-year-old British man with dementia was told to leave the country after 25 years. Another British man, on a generous World Bank retirement pension, was also told he was not welcome to reside permanently in Sweden because retirement money does not count as salary for the purposes of new income thresholds for migrants. The young, the old, vulnerable people, the wealthy: all are the target of harsh and often aggressive immigration policies. And Sweden’s leaders remain unyielding. “We cannot adjust the law based on each and every personal fate,” Ulf Kristersson, the prime minister, said, commenting on a series of hardline immigration decisions involving children.
Martin sees cruelty in this, but I see desire to save the Swedish nation from the oncoming blight that progressive fools like him have made of it.
Swedes vote in a general election on Sunday 13 September and, according to opinion polls, the centre-left opposition has a slight lead. But even if there is a change of government, many previously unthinkable far-right ideas are now comfortably embedded in the mainstream of Swedish politics.
It’s another thing to add to the list of ‘far right’ markers, the recognising of what unfettered immigration has done to a once pristine country, as encouraged by people like Martin, who of course didn’t stay to enjoy the results of his experiment.
The story of the transformation that now blights Sweden goes back to 2022, when the conservative bloc won that year’s Swedish general election, but only with a tiny margin.
It also launched an attempt to redefine modern Sweden, marking profound policy shifts on immigration, crime, climate and energy, schools and healthcare.
As a Swede who lived in the US for two decades, I was reluctant to admit that my birth country had changed.
Not as reluctant as you're proving to be to admit why it's changed, Martin.
I brushed away alarming anecdotes as isolated cases, or a brief departure from the status quo. Surely, Sweden would remain itself, guided by the progressive, egalitarian and humanitarian ideals that defined the country and its public life – at least on the surface – when I was growing up.
There must be some way to blame others for this, if only you look hard enough?
Only 15% of Swedes approve of Donald Trump. And yet ideas quite similar to Trump’s ethnonationalism now define much of contemporary Swedish politics, and are challenging our democratic foundations.
Yes, and for much the same reasons.
If this authoritarian turn can be widely accepted so quickly in Sweden, where the democratic and humanitarian foundations were until recently solid, it can happen anywhere.
And will happen everywhere, as those who can’t afford to flee overseas like you, or don’t want to, start to fight back against the insanity inflicted on them.
In just a few years, conservatives have distanced themselves from their two most recent prime ministers, Fredrik Reinfeldt and Carl Bildt, who advocated a more inclusive, centre-right liberalism.
Because such policies don't, can't, work in the face of sustained hostile immigtation from the Third World, and to even ptopose them thows into doubt your claim to be conservative.
This embrace of rightwing populism has also led to a departure from Sweden’s ambitious climate politics and a general turn away from scientific consensus.
Because the people have figured out that's a lie as big and ruinous as the 'we need immigrants' one!
