The radical right has been sprouting up across Europe and in 2010, by winning 5.7% of the national vote, they permeated onto Swedish soil as well.
For this week’s Democracy in the News post I will discuss radical right-winged politics in Sweden, specifically the Swedish Democrats (SD). The SD are a radical right populist party that runs on a platform of militant xenophobic nationalism, has a hard-line approach to immigration policy reform, and calls for a return to Nordic homogeny.
I’m not here to argue either for or against radical right populism, and as of yet I’m not prepared to call the SD undemocratic, but I do recognize a cause for concern with this shift in Swedish democracy; especially when politics translates into violence. To put my concern into perspective, one must understand that the SD was formed in the late 1980s with the merger of a number of racist, Nazi, and other anti-democratic groups. This means that many senior ranking SD have joined the party back in its fascist roots.
The article I have chosen involves a scandal incriminating three rogue Swedish Democrats who were caught on film terrorizing the streets of Stockholm with weapons, violence, and racial slurs. Most concerning about all of this is that these were no low-level party members; one assailant, Erik Almqvist, held the position of economic policy spokesman.
Almqvist’s career with SD has since been terminated as a result of the incident. But I cant help but wonder if he has been dismissed for his actions or if he has been dismissed for being caught.
I agree with Mackie when in Schumpeter’s Leadership Democracy he argues for the intrinsic value of democracy. Its just that I cannot seem to find any intrinsic value in the Swedish Democrats.
Schumpeter advocates for the competitive election of leaders but he seems to neglect how the leaders should step down once their term or time in office has expired. Can it still be democracy if we terminate the positions of those who act undemcoratically even though the public supported their election or their party’s election into power? This is the other side to the argument. We may have a democracy in electing a country’s leaders, but is it still a democracy if those leaders fail to conform to the public’s expectations, theoretical expectations and the rule of law?
I appreciate the comment. I, like most democratic citizens, believe that political elites should not be allowed to rule with impunity. But i think the issue gets contentious when it comes to setting actual limits on authority and determining appropriate recourse in proportion to the extent of the conflict.
i actually wrote a blog on this already called, “Its quite soon that you’ll be leaving, Mr Mayor”.