No worries - it's was a simply misunderstanding, no big deal.
Yes, in that you're right.
But it still doesn't excuse the fact that people vote for a neo-Nazi party.
I've said it for years - if you're actually JUST "concerned" by immigration policy (which is what basically everybody who votes for SD will ever admit to) - then don't vote for a f***ing neo-Nazi party that will never in a million year get anything done on that or any other issue anyway!
Because here's the deal:
Yes, there's a consensus in Swedish politics about the immigrations policy. That's not in any way, shape or form undemocratic as SD have been whining about for decades - it's just the fact that all other parties happen to agree on that issue. They're entitled to in a democracy.
If people are unhappy with that they could start a new party.
But people who whine about immigration are lazy and the vast majority of them can't actually be bothered to DO anything about it - especially not in a boring, democratic form.
Some of them are just fine throwing Molotov-cocktails at an asylum home or beating up some poor immigrant kid if they're at least four against one - but they can't be bothered to register a party and sit through endless meetings and formulate policy proposals on issues other then "get the immigrants out!".
So they vote for the only party that bothered to do that - and that happens to be a neo-Nazi one.
But they of course won't admit that they'd ever vote for fascism, so they refuse to accept that fact - no matter how many times the party shows what's really behind the facade they try to put up.
In that way it's exactly like Trump. Most of his voters aren't really hardcore neo-Nazis - they just voted for a man who brought those people along with him into office.
But they don't want to admit they did of course, so they refuse to accept what they really voted for.
Now the consequences of this in Sweden is that all the people that voted for SD has just thrown their votes away.
Because Sweden has a system of proportional representation that means that SD got it's just shy of 13% of the votes and that of course entitles them to exactly no influence at all - unless they can form a coalition with one or more other parties.
But since they're neo-Nazi's no one else will touch them with a ten foot pole, so their only hope of ever getting to power is gaining 50% of the vote - which will never happen.
The SD-party leadership has actually just made the situation worse by insisting they get to influence policy in any coalition. If they had been at all smart, they would have played the long game and just given up their support for free to the right (which are the one's they support anyway) for a number of years, without actually demanding very much.
That way they could have ingratiated themselves with the right and maybe hoped to wash of the Nazi-stench over time.
But no, after the last election they publicly proclaimed they would never again support the right if they didn't get to influence their policy's - and everyone of course knows that just means immigrations policy, since that's the only issue they actually care about.
The problem with this grand standing is that it makes it even harder for the right - some of whom would actually be OK with working with the neo-Nazis on some issues - to ever do that.
Because SD want them to publicly grovel for them, to treat them as a valued partner and an equal - at the same time as the party's elected officials are still spouting antisemitism, homophobia, racism and not one but several of their members of parliament are under criminal investigation for different things.
Now the leader of the largest right-wing party actually went out and tested the waters on this - pressed by low polling numbers and members of her party that don't care if they cooperate with Nazi's as long as they get into power.
The public response was that her party's poll numbers only plummeted even further and her coalition partners in the other right-wing parties all distanced themselves from that move.
Cooperating with or even saying you would be open to potentially cooperate with SD is a third rail in Swedish politics - as it should be, because this is still a neo-Nazi party we're talking about!
People pretend they've changed and they're not actually openly fascist anymore but the soundbites and internet posts from elected representative just keeps on coming.
There are massive amounts of people in the party that have absolutely NO idea what actually constitutes racism - that's why they keep messing up and have to try and claim the racist thing they just said wasn't actually racism at all.
And the party's platform still talks about a "inherent essence" common between "certain groups of people" that defines these people. This is just straight up biological racism in a fancier wording. The original Nazi's claimed it was all in the blood - the SD-party's official platform today says it's in this "inherent essence" - but it's just the same thing. To them a Swede is an Aryan and nothing else - it doesn't matter if you where born here.
Many Swede's - as most Europeans - take the Eurovision Song Contest fairly serious and when a Swedish artist named Loreen won a few years ago the SD-party's secretary tweeted out a single word in response to someone congratulating Sweden on the win - "Sweden?".
Because to him Loreen - who was born in Sweden and has lived her whole life here - can never be Swedish enough, because she has a slightly darker skin then him.
Most Swedes don't want that kind of despicable racists running our country and that's why SD is and remains anathema to most Swedes.
0
@Mickey
No worries - it's was a simply misunderstanding, no big deal.
Yes, in that you're right.
But it still doesn't excuse the fact that people vote for a neo-Nazi party.
I've said it for years - if you're actually JUST "concerned" by immigration policy (which is what basically everybody who votes for SD will ever admit to) - then don't vote for a f***ing neo-Nazi party that will never in a million year get anything done on that or any other issue anyway!
Because here's the deal:
Yes, there's a consensus in Swedish politics about the immigrations policy. That's not in any way, shape or form undemocratic as SD have been whining about for decades - it's just the fact that all other parties happen to agree on that issue. They're entitled to in a democracy.
If people are unhappy with that they could start a new party.
But people who whine about immigration are lazy and the vast majority of them can't actually be bothered to DO anything about it - especially not in a boring, democratic form.
Some of them are just fine throwing Molotov-cocktails at an asylum home or beating up some poor immigrant kid if they're at least four against one - but they can't be bothered to register a party and sit through endless meetings and formulate policy proposals on issues other then "get the immigrants out!".
So they vote for the only party that bothered to do that - and that happens to be a neo-Nazi one.
But they of course won't admit that they'd ever vote for fascism, so they refuse to accept that fact - no matter how many times the party shows what's really behind the facade they try to put up.
In that way it's exactly like Trump. Most of his voters aren't really hardcore neo-Nazis - they just voted for a man who brought those people along with him into office.
But they don't want to admit they did of course, so they refuse to accept what they really voted for.
Now the consequences of this in Sweden is that all the people that voted for SD has just thrown their votes away.
Because Sweden has a system of proportional representation that means that SD got it's just shy of 13% of the votes and that of course entitles them to exactly no influence at all - unless they can form a coalition with one or more other parties.
But since they're neo-Nazi's no one else will touch them with a ten foot pole, so their only hope of ever getting to power is gaining 50% of the vote - which will never happen.
The SD-party leadership has actually just made the situation worse by insisting they get to influence policy in any coalition. If they had been at all smart, they would have played the long game and just given up their support for free to the right (which are the one's they support anyway) for a number of years, without actually demanding very much.
That way they could have ingratiated themselves with the right and maybe hoped to wash of the Nazi-stench over time.
But no, after the last election they publicly proclaimed they would never again support the right if they didn't get to influence their policy's - and everyone of course knows that just means immigrations policy, since that's the only issue they actually care about.
The problem with this grand standing is that it makes it even harder for the right - some of whom would actually be OK with working with the neo-Nazis on some issues - to ever do that.
Because SD want them to publicly grovel for them, to treat them as a valued partner and an equal - at the same time as the party's elected officials are still spouting antisemitism, homophobia, racism and not one but several of their members of parliament are under criminal investigation for different things.
Now the leader of the largest right-wing party actually went out and tested the waters on this - pressed by low polling numbers and members of her party that don't care if they cooperate with Nazi's as long as they get into power.
The public response was that her party's poll numbers only plummeted even further and her coalition partners in the other right-wing parties all distanced themselves from that move.
Cooperating with or even saying you would be open to potentially cooperate with SD is a third rail in Swedish politics - as it should be, because this is still a neo-Nazi party we're talking about!
People pretend they've changed and they're not actually openly fascist anymore but the soundbites and internet posts from elected representative just keeps on coming.
There are massive amounts of people in the party that have absolutely NO idea what actually constitutes racism - that's why they keep messing up and have to try and claim the racist thing they just said wasn't actually racism at all.
And the party's platform still talks about a "inherent essence" common between "certain groups of people" that defines these people. This is just straight up biological racism in a fancier wording. The original Nazi's claimed it was all in the blood - the SD-party's official platform today says it's in this "inherent essence" - but it's just the same thing. To them a Swede is an Aryan and nothing else - it doesn't matter if you where born here.
Many Swede's - as most Europeans - take the Eurovision Song Contest fairly serious and when a Swedish artist named Loreen won a few years ago the SD-party's secretary tweeted out a single word in response to someone congratulating Sweden on the win - "Sweden?".
Because to him Loreen - who was born in Sweden and has lived her whole life here - can never be Swedish enough, because she has a slightly darker skin then him.
Most Swedes don't want that kind of despicable racists running our country and that's why SD is and remains anathema to most Swedes.