The Sweden Democrats, a far-right party with an anti-socialist platform that seeks to limit immigration to the Scandinavian country, could win up to 25 percent of the vote in Sweden’s upcoming September elections, NBC reports.
Should that happen, such a result would “likely earn the Sweden Democrats more seats in Parliament than any other single party,” NBC’s Alexander Smith said.
Although the party reportedly had white supremacist and neo-Nazi ties in its early years, its leader since 2005, 39-year-old Jimmie Akesson, “claims to have kicked the extremists out of the party, pulled up its roots in white-supremacist and neo-Nazi activism, and turned it into a slick electoral machine that has doubled its vote every four years,” The Guardian reported in 2014 after the party took 13 percent of the vote in that year’s election.
This year, the Sweden Democrats could double that and become a sizable force for the destruction of socialism in Sweden’s fractured, many-party system.
Further, Akesson, who called the European Union “a large web of corruption,” has pledged to conduct a “Swexit” referendum directly after the September elections, should his party win a majority.
Leftists around the world are more than a little concerned. “This is Sweden,” NBC noted, “something of a lodestar for leftists around the world.”
The NBC coverage took note of a summer festival at Sölvesborg Castle the party held last week, where 4,000 gathered to hear speeches, heavy metal music, and an address by Akesson.
“He’s the only politician I can trust,” a retiree named Jan told NBC. “We need him for our country. I don’t have so many years left, but for my children and for my grandchildren. Why should we care about Islam? Sweden is not an Islamic country. Why should we be influenced by one of the worst ideologies in the world? Jimmie is the only one who can save Sweden.”
The party’s meteoric rise of late can be traced to the backlash against the wave of immigrants. Upwards of 200,000 immigrants — mostly from Muslim countries — were brought to Sweden by its socialist government since the 2015 European border crisis.
The immigration crisis, Sweden Democrats claim, has increased crime, drained public services, and diluted their culture.
“I think that’s pretty obvious,” said a man when asked why he supports the Sweden Democrats. “They will stop the Muslim invasion. The whole of Islam is wrong. I’m pro-Swedish.”