The Swedish Horror Election

"2 mg reliefs muslim hatred & islam phobia"

A couple of more days remain until the Swedish scandal election and I'm starting to feel like I'm in part of something like The Truman Show. For those who don't know; Sweden is about to write a dirty chapter in its politics history. Sverigedemokraterna (SD), or the Swedish Democrats, is a minor "national democratic" (according to themselves) party with controversial, to say the least, opinions about immigration. It's a one matter party that masks its intentions with 101 rethorics and tactics to frighten people into voting for them. According to Jimmy Åkesson, SD:s most ignorant party leader, means that islam is Sweden's biggest threat. He claims that Sweden is loosing its identity because of a "islamation" of society, where muslims are intentionally working on "taking over" Sweden and the rest of the western world.

On a question if wearing a scarf makes you less Swedish, Åkesson replies that that is up to that person - and the people around her - to decide, but yes, it's possible that she looses a bit of her "Swedishness". I wear a scarf most days, although not of religious reasons. I grew up in Sweden. My last name ends with -son and I celebrate Midsummer every year. A piece of fabric on my head doesn't make me less Swedish, for whatever reason I wear it, does it?

The reason to why SD wants a hugely restricted immigration politics, is (they say) the economy. They are ignorant to the research stating the profits that immigrants bring Sweden. The second reason is criminality. According to the party, immigrants are over represented in criminality registers. This is also a lie, and all opposing parties that have tried to reason with them have put forward statistics proving the opposite, but they try to avoid even this with vague responses like "I haven't looked into this specific statistics, so I cannot comment on that". Naturally, the frightening tactics they use, draw a lot of people that aren't very initiated in politics and therefore fall for simple, rediculous, rethorics.

Recent opinion pools indicate that SD will reach the four percent limit to enter the Parliament and it genuinely scares me knowing that my fellow compatriots - my neighbors - are letting this happen. It is freightening to see the similarities to the racial politics that shadows the 30's and onward in Sweden. Last week a SD Parliament candidate said that immigrants have an "aggressive gene". Does that sound familiar? It should; Hitler was saying similar things. Only difference is that for him jews was the focus group and for SD it's muslims. Not surprisingly, Åkesson doesn't have to say much about his fellow party member's statement and calls it a mere trifle.

To make things worse, SD are trying (although not very hard) to mask its real intentions in promises of a more worthy life for the "real" Swedes, particulary the elder ones. But not even their other ideas of change makes much sense. They want to lower the minimum age for penalty from 15 to 12, something that shows ignorance about criminality. They want to reintroduce the administration of corporal punishment and imagine to send Swedish prisoners to Russian prisons if there isn't enough room in Swedish ones.

Today I had a discussion with a social democratic party worker, and she assured me that although they would be forced to have debates with SD, they would never cooperate with them. That gave me some hope, that even if the nightmare would come true, and SD would really enter the Parliament, our leaders will be sensible enough to realize that a party with dangerous ideas like them, can never get enough power to actually change something.

I'm ashamed of what's happening, and it saddens me beyond anything right now that my beloved Sweden are getting more and more foreigner hostile. SD is contradicting human rights, the equality of all humans. In my opinion, everyone is equal, meaning that those who needs to flee their home country for whatever reason, should be welcomed with open arms and treated with repect and dignity, just as they would do the same to us. I have lived in developing countries, among muslims and where I was the only western person. I got treated with nothing but respect, even when my beliefs and opinions were completely different from theirs.

Yes, I am upset and I felt that I had to put my thoughts into words. Maybe I can reach out to a person or two, and get them to be extra consequent in this election. It's not right to make a protest vote, for whatever reason. You may have bad experiences with immigrants, or maybe you have something personal against different religions, but that is not a reason to encourage hate, hostility and oppression.