Wednesday, November 07, 2007

Part 6: Brief history of anti-establishment parties in Sweden

I will here tell the story of three anti-establishment parties, critical of the hegemonic (and thoroughly twisted) immigration policy of Sweden:

  • New Democracy
  • The New Party
  • The Sweden Democrats
In part 4 and part 5 I have shown how the power, in Sweden, over whether a new party can enter the political system lies entirely with the media.
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New Democracy

New Democracy (Ny Demokrati), founded in 1991, became a media favorite from the very start. The party was actually created in media, in a live TV debate program (Siewert Öholm's "Svar direkt"). The party had a dual leadership: Bert Karlsson, a record company and amusement park owner, and Ian Wachtmeister, a Count and former CEO of different Swedish companies. Both already colourful medial figures, and there was simply too much good stuff to write about them for media to stay away. The profile issues of the party were restricted immigration, substantial tax-cuts and red tape reduction. Their style was populistic, intending to make politics less boring and more accessible for the common man. E.g. they demonstrated, at square meetings, how governments expenses could be cut, by stacking beer cases. And railed against "crocodile politicians" from the mainstream parties, who were said to resemble crocodiles in that they were "all mouth but no ears."

This was the first anti-establishment party in Swedish history. So it fulfilled a real need, and got 6.7% of the votes and entered the parliament (passing the 4% threshold). But they would have gotten nowhere if it hadn't been for all the the media attention they got.

With its 6.7% New Democracy held the balance of power in the parliament between the socialist and the center-right blocs. The long tradition of socialist governments got it's second break since 1934, and a center-right government was formed. It was a multi-party government of four parties, but New Democracy was not part of it. They were even shunned an excluded by the other parties, and by now also by the media (immigration politics, you know). At the election night when the victory was celebrated, the leader of the Liberal Party left the TV sofa in protest, when Ian and Bert entered the studio to sit down among the other non-socialist parties.

The Liberal Party got full power over the department of immigration in this government and launched the Swedish era of mass immigration for real. The Social Democrats had held back somewhat up until then, but the Liberal Party opened the floodgates wide open. And the third-world immigration tripled (nominally asylum seekers, but documents are not checked, and they all get permanent residency). So this was the effective result for the immigration politics of the election in 1991. Today, under the new center-right government of Reinfeldt, we are back at this extremely high rate, of close to 80,000 permanent residencies handed out per year (close to 1% of our population coming in every year), of which the vast majority are third world "refugees" (mostly Muslims). While the number of job market immigrants has been less than 7,000 for the last 20 years -- in total! This immigration is highly restricted in Sweden thanks to the immense power of the trade union, who won't let them come her and "take our jobs". In the last 20 years we have had about 800,000 third world "refugees" and their family coming here, which corresponds to 9% of our population.

By 1994 the chaos that a new party with mostly unexperienced people meant, and the effects of being isolated by the other parties, and of a dual leadership of two strong personalities became too much for New Democracy. Ian and Bert couldn't get along anymore and they parted ways, and both left the party, which almost immediately dissolved, and never again played a role in Swedish politics.

The New Party

Before the election in 1998 Ian Wachtmeister had started a new party called The New Party (Det Nya Pariet). He had learned from his previous mistakes and based the core of the party on serious academics, such as Ingrid Björkman and Jan Elfverson (both subsequently co-authors of the excellent book Exit Folkhemssverige in 2005).

But the Swedish media had also learned from past mistakes, and decided to suppress the new party completely. The news papers ignored the party's press conferences and meetings, and simply didn't write about them. This was very effective. Myself I didn't even hear about this party until a few years later. If less than a few percent of the electorate know about the existence of a party, it is of course completely impossible for that party to become part of the political system, and receive enough votes to enter the parliament.

Media silence about new parties is the main key in creating the closed system that Sweden is. Media silence completely undermines the efforts of new anti-establishment parties, that the elite does not want to exist in Sweden (a sensible anti-establishment party is the most formidable enemy to them). It renders their election campaign completely meaningless. But in order to make the PC system a real fortress, armoured in steel, some more things are needed. The idea is that they should not only fail their election campaign (as in: failing to even participating on the arena), but be fully discouraged to continue at all.

The New Party held over 100 meetings in squares and public places, all across Sweden. These meetings were routinely sabotaged by leftist "activists", organizing riots, using rattles and whistles to make it impossible for the speakers to be heard, all while the media and the legal system turn their blind eye to it. Very effective. And ordinary people passing by would think that this is probably a Nazi-like party since those "youths" are so upset about them, and nobody in the media comes to their defense.

Ian Wachtmeister's the New Party got 25,000 votes in the 1998 election. A complete failure. Ian Wachtmeister left politics, and never tried again. If all arenas of democratic debate is completely blocked to you -- the media and public meetings -- what can you do? Nothing! The Swedish system had shown its effectiveness as a PC fortress armoured in steel.

The Sweden Democrats

A power so omnipotent as the Swedish PC system, still need their punching bags to hit at, to appear as bravely standing up in a righteous fight against evil. The ideal such punching bag is an enemy that is: i) completely harmless, but ii) can be made looking completely evil through the light of the political theater. The Church, in the old days, urgently needed the heretics and the satanist, as part of their theater. The people need not only bread, but circuses. It's important that the power appears as acting bravely against evil (for the sake of the theater: pick an imagined evil, a real evil could be a real problem), so that people can be rallied and channel their attention away from real issues.

The Sweden Democrats was appointed by the PC elite to be the main such punching bag, back in the '90s. Precisely because it was not a Nazi party, it became the perfect member of the cast to make the connection between ordinary people's worries about mass immigration and Nazism. And of course, once the connection had been made, people with a negative self-image, i.e. anti-Semites, skinheads etc., seeked to become part of the punching bag. The Sweden Democrats was founded in 1988. Soon New Democracy had their success in the election of 1991 attracting all the people concerned about mass immigration. The Sweden Democrats became a haunt of outcasts, loners, and losers in the beginning of the '90s. The perfect punching bag. And the more it was punched, the more people with a negative self-image were attracted to the party. But the party was also home to the completely sensible people who had seen the problems of mass immigration much earlier than all the other, but who had therefore been viciously stigmatized as racists, and therefore had nothing more to lose by being officially stamped as racists.

This is a political theater in perfect harmony. The omnipotent power is not threatened, and everything is peaceful. Real threats, such as The New Party, are mercilessly suppressed, and the people do not even know about their existence. Still the people get their fill of circus, thanks to the presence of punching bags, such as the Sweden Democrats, mercilessly vilified by the inquisitors at Expo.

The elite controls the whole theater. The whole point of the media attention, that the Sweden Democrats gets, has been to show it up as an example of how not to do. The weak point in this setup is of course that the people must know about the existence of the punching bag. What if the people would vote for the "evil" party anyway, as a way to protest against the establishment? What if the frog jumps across the stream even if it's explicitly forbidden to do so?

After 9/11, more and more people have seen the urgency of the Islamisation of our country, and how it is connected to the regime of mass immigration that is pushed upon us by the elite. This, and also the changes that they can see happening in Denmark since 2001, made more and more people decide to do something about it. To start with they started to protest by voting for the "evil" party. But casting a protest vote every four years, is simply not enough. People have joined the party and transformed it. The transformation was completed by the election of Jimmie Åkesson as the new leader of the party in 2005. This was possible just because the people of Sweden knew this party existed. And there was no other anti-establishment party available on the arena. And as I have shown in this article, there couldn't have been.

If you are treated like Cinderella, and are only handed one piece of clothing by your haughty stepmother, you cannot afford to throw it away no matter how ugly it is. Your only option is to make the necessary alterations to it, to change it to a nice dress, worthy of a pretty girl.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this briefing, ConSwede. I'll do a similar story on the Finnish anti-establishment parties, if I ever have the time and the energy (which is doubtful). Anyway, in Finland we have Perussuomalaiset ("True Finns"), Itsenäisyyspuolue ("Independence Party") and Suomen Kansan Sinivalkoiset ("Blue-White Finns"). The first has an agrarian background, the second is a one-cause anti-EU party, and the third is somewhat racist and xenophobian, led by a madman.

Realisti said...

The Swedish situation is unlikely to result exclusively from the media silence and the resistance from the existing political elite. If people were totally tired of the parties, it would certainly collapse the voting percentage. This has not happened. On this basis, it appears that the majority of people are quite happy with the way things are in Sweden. As unbelievable as it is.