Stockholm’s swimming pool sauna is a great vantage point from which to watch Swedish society. No one, or almost, comes there naked. This is a notable development. And this partly explains the contradictory result of the general elections last Sunday, September 11. The Social Democrats come first, have their best score for twenty years (30.5%) but will not be able to govern. The classic right (19%) is retreating, overtaken by the extreme right (20.5%) to whom it reaches out without wanting to govern with it. Twenty years ago, public sauna enthusiasts mostly presented themselves in the simplest device, without the slightest embarrassment. Around the 2010s, more than half came there – real heresy – in underwear or swimming shorts. Today, it is not uncommon – it happened for example last week – that 100% of men go there dressed in this way.
This change in mores reflects the immigration policy adopted in the mid-1970s by the Social Democrats under Olof Palme, consisting in welcoming political refugees from all over the world (Chileans, Iranians, Kurds, Somalis, Eritreans, Syrians, etc.) who peaked in 2014-2015 with the reception of 163,000 refugees – an all-time high in Europe in proportion to population. One thing is clear: Latinos, Africans or Arab-Muslims do not have the same relationship to nudity as the peoples of the North.
In a few decades, Sweden, formerly ethnically homogeneous, has become a multicultural country in the same way as France. And this even though the Scandinavian kingdom has no colonial tradition or immigration. For the majority of Swedes, their country today is different from that of their childhood. This new deal puts tension on the famous “Swedish model” which is based on the idea that everyone benefits from it… and that everyone contributes to it. However, as the review points out Sound förnuft för skattebetalarnai.e. “Common sense of taxpayers, “1.3 million people depend on social assistance” and “1 in 5 children does not have the level at the end of primary school”. geographical – in other words, the ghettoization of the suburbs – accentuates the problem.The idea that some benefit from the system without participating in it makes its way into the minds and disturbs the habits of this well-regulated society.
The impossible normalization of the Swedish far right
This explains the progression of the curiously named Sverigedemokraterna, or The Democrats of Sweden. Nothing has stopped their progress since their breakthrough in the Riksdag (unicameral parliament) twelve years ago. The figures are there: 5.7% in 2010, 12.9% in 2014, 17.5% in 2018. With 20.5% today, they are now the second political party in the country which has eight – a fragmentation which explains the need to form coalition governments and to negotiate constantly.
Outgoing Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson outside parliament in Stockholm on November 24, 2021
afp.com
The secret of far-right leader Jimmie Akesson? He denounced before the others the failures of the integration policy, the ghettoization, the rise of delinquency, the explosion of criminality (more than 250 settling of scores in the middle of the street since the beginning of the year, with 47 dead and 80 injured) and, finally, the feeling of “cultural insecurity” caused by the telescoping of a certain Muslim machismo with the notion of equality between men and women.
The trouble is that a good part of the founders of Sverigedemokraterna in the 1970s were negationists fascinated by Hitler – which differentiates this formation from the Danish extreme right, born of an anti-tax movement with Poujadist overtones. An excellent debater who never loses his calm, Jimmie Akesson, who has chaired The Democrats of Sweden since 2006 (he was 27 at the time), may well condemn and systematically expel activists or members of his party who make racist remarks on the networks. social, it remains almost impossible to get rid of such a heavy and toxic unconscious heritage.
The leader of the classic right and likely future Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson pays dearly for having broken the “sanitary cordon” against the far right in 2019 and reaching out to the Sverigedemokraterna. Here it is passed on its right! Part of his electorate “preferred the original to the copy” by voting for the extreme; another refused the rapprochement with this party, tinged with brown, and opted for the Center Party, the Liberals or the Christian Democrats. It is now up to Ulf Kristersson, a somewhat opportunistic character, to form a minority government with these last two parties. The extreme right will not enter the government since Kristersson has excluded him for a long time knowing that he would be blocked during the vote of confidence in parliament.
The extreme right, which will weigh in parliament on the budget, is therefore not “at the gates of power”, as it is written almost everywhere in the European press. Moreover, if 1 out of 5 Swedes voted for the Sweden Democrats, it is twice less than Marine Le Pen’s score in the presidential election. And 4 out of 5 did not vote for the extreme right (the Left Party, formerly communist, collects less than 7%). Also, it is not certain that Ulf Kristersson, whose party, called Moderaterna (The Moderates) is down 5 points, manages to form a government that wins the vote of confidence in parliament, scheduled for September 27 at the earliest. If that fails, it will be up to outgoing Social Democratic Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, who is very popular, to form a government.
Over 100,000 people learn Swedish for free
At the municipal sauna in Stockholm, where the temperature cheerfully reaches 100 degrees, the gradual disappearance of nudity also tells another story. Admittedly, new Swedes wear underpants. But they are in the sauna! Little by little, they assimilate local mores, sweat in the sauna, dine at 6 p.m., arrive on time for appointments. In short, they become Swedish. Better, thanks to the teaching of “languages for all” set up in the 1960s, foreigners over 16 years old study August Strindberg’s idiom for free, the first step towards the very dynamic job market. Each year, more than 100,000 people follow the courses of the public organization Svenska for invandrare, or SFI, or: “Swedish for foreigners”.
The pragmatism of the Swedes is real. They want to integrate their foreigners, not expel them. And some weak signals speak volumes. The very successful Swedish series from Netflix Snabba Cash (Easy cash, 2021) which tells the dark side of the suburbs with its violent dealers, has recently brought out several actors from diversity. Not two or three, not five, not eight, but twenty at once, including a good number of migrants, for some who arrived less than five years ago!