Sweden Democrats Reflect Europe’s Rightward Trend

Not only did the Social Democrat-led alliance fail to win its customary majority; the right-wing alliance is now radically altered, too. It may still be fronted by the center-right Moderates, but its largest component is now the hard-right Sweden Democrats. The margin between the left and right blocs may be as tight as a single seat, and it is unlikely to be wider than three; final confirmation won’t come until after Wednesday, when the votes of expats and late-arriving mail-in ballots are counted. But the taboos that governed political affiliation in what was until very recently a high-consensus, highly conformist society have been breached.

As recently as the 2018 elections, the Sweden Democrats were beyond the pale. The problem wasn’t only that, like most of Europe’s “new right” parties, they originated on the neofascist fringe in the ’80s. It was more that their leader,

Jimmie Åkesson,

who moved them to the center, also alienated the Moderates by speaking so bluntly about immigration, Islamism and crime. As a result, the Moderates refused to consider an alliance after Mr. Åkesson received the third-largest share of the votes in 2018. That allowed the Social Democrats to form an incoherent government whose unifying principle was demonizing Mr. Åkesson and the Sweden Democrats as racist.

Not long ago, Sweden was so notoriously safe that it might even have been a bit dull. Today, it is exceptional in all the wrong ways. Between 2013 and 2017, Sweden had Europe’s highest number of reported rapes per capita. In 2021, according to Sweden’s National Council for Crime Prevention, Sweden had the second-highest number of deadly shootings per capita among 22 European nations (after Croatia) for the preceding four years. Ten years ago, Gothenburg University’s annual survey, “Society, Opinion and Media,” found that law and order was Swedes’ lowest priority. This year, it is their top priority at 41%. Next comes healthcare at 33% and “integration and immigration” at 31%. These three concerns are effectively a single issue, the cascade effects of immigration.

The end of the Cold War changed Sweden from the hermit kingdom of Scandinavia into a sought-after destination for immigrants. The Swedes had an exceptionally high confidence in two contradictory values, the superiority of the Swedish way and the desirability of multiculturalism. They expected that their mostly Muslim immigrants would sooner or later assimilate into Sweden’s culture of pacifist homogeneity, so their mosques and southward-pointing satellite dishes would soon fade away. They were wrong. Sweden, like most European Union states, is now socially balkanized. One reason the Social Democrats lost on Sunday is that a new Islamist party, Nuance, took as much as a quarter of the vote in some inner-city districts.

In 2014 a Moderate prime minister,

Fredrik Reinfeldt,

told Swedes to “open their hearts.” Sweden proceeded to accept more immigrants per capita than any other European country. The asylum system, schools, hospitals, police and courts are overwhelmed. Sweden’s population, which was less than nine million in 2000, has surpassed 10 million for the first time in its history.

The public’s hearts have hardened. Support for the Sweden Democrats has risen for nine consecutive elections. Mr. Åkesson is still described as “far right,” but he campaigned on the centrist consensus: The exceptional aspects of Swedish life won’t survive without tighter immigration, stronger policing and sentencing, and assertive policies on culture and integration. Even the centrist parties now grudgingly agree.

Magdalena Andersson,

leader of the Social Democrats, has called Mr. Åkesson a racist but also decried the breakdown of Swedish society into ethnic enclaves that she called “Somalitown” and “Chinatown.”

The right’s margin of victory would be wider if the Center Party, an amalgam of free-market farmers and metropolitan liberals, had sided with its natural partners to the right. But Center’s leader,

Annie Lööf,

joined the left coalition in the 2018 government in order, she insisted, to keep Mr. Åkesson out of power. This year Ms. Lööf ran as the candidate of the “broad center.” Her party was the biggest loser on Sunday, even in Värnamo, the town where she was born.

The losers of the left alliance view the triumph of the Sweden Democrats much as the Romans viewed the arrival of Attila’s hordes. Really, Sweden was exceptional in holding off this moment for so long. Their neighbors in Denmark have already domesticated their new right party into government. The Danish People’s Party served in a right-liberal coalition government from 2001 to 2011, and the 2015 elections made it Denmark’s second-largest party. It seems Sweden is no longer an exception to Europe’s new rule.

Mr. Green is a Journal contributor and a columnist for the Washington Examiner.