Sweden

In the newspapers today, there is much talk of Sweden turning to the 'far-right.' The Times has a picture of skinhead nutters on the march, giving the impression that Swedes are about a day away from goose-stepping down Drottninggatan. The myth of Sweden going all Nazi is a myth that’s hard to puncture because no one has a good word to say about the Sweden Democrats, who are hoping to finish first. They'll not end up in government, because no one would enter coalition with them. But their electoral success baffles the outside world. There is no agreed definition of "far-right" and the term is lazily used: dramatic, but serves to cloud understanding of what's happening in Europe.

A few weeks ago I wrote in this space about the case of Elin Ersson. She is the young Swedish woman who caused adulatory headlines around the world when she stood up on an airplane and refused to sit down until an Afghan man was taken off the flight. Not that Ersson is some awful racist. Far from it, in her own eyes. Ms Ersson refused to be on the same place as the Afghan man because the Afghan man was being deported from Sweden and Ms Ersson wanted to stop this from happening. In her own words (filmed on her own phone, natch) the man was being sent to his ‘death’ because his country of origin is ‘hell’.

If the Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigration party, triumphs in the country’s general election on 9 September it won’t be thanks to Vladimir Putin, no matter how many Swedes fear his drones are trying to swamp them with internet propaganda. It will be Elin Ersson wot swung it for them – along with the police and authorities at Gothenburg Airport. Ms Ersson filmed herself refusing to sit down on a Turkey-bound plane until a failed asylum-seeker, who was being deported to Afghanistan, was removed. He duly was.    Students have been doing this sort of thing for decades, of course – albeit without the benefit of live-streaming on social media, but just why did the airport authorities make it so easy for Ms Ersson?

In what I promise won’t become a regular feature, I thought it worth issuing an update under the heading ‘I told you so’. It relates to two recent, connected pieces of news. The first comes from Italy where the government is now threatening to close its ports. The ongoing influx of migrants from Africa is once again threatening to overwhelm the country, with almost 13,000 people arriving last weekend alone. Once again the Italians are being made to bear the burden of decisions made at EU-level and exacerbated by activist NGOs. The result is a country once again approaching breaking-point.

Last Friday, only hours after the terrorist attack in central Stockholm, police found themselves pelted by rocks in the city’s largely immigrant Tensta neighbourhood. The following evening, officers were once again attacked, this time in Hammarkullen in Gothenburg. On Sunday, a familiar story: rioters aimed Molotov cocktails and a fire bomb at police as unrest broke out in the area. In the days following the truck attack, Swedish newspapers had been full of defiant headlines: ‘Stockholm stands united’ and ‘Love conquers all.’ But the subsequent violence put paid to much of that: ‘Unity’ and ‘love’ are, for many Swedes, not the words that spring instantly to mind.