Sweden Democrats

So, like, we're a big spectrum when it comes to this, but it's all, you know, traditional classical liberals, right, which are now [laughs] conservatives or traditional conservatives.

Or a little bit of, uh, don't mind the populist right either, but within moderation, right? Like, so we had the moderates, we had the Christian Democrats, and we had the Sweden Democrats from Sweden there last year, who now unfortunately this year lost the election.

Very, very tight race.

Um, but you know, so we tried to figure out new avenues of cooperation to see what kind of, you know, international network and community we, we, we get together because I think this is equally important.

They were the rebellion of the plain folk of this country against the elites who had caused so many of our problems, but were still doing so well.

And, and it has continued since, and it explains the rise of the National Rally of Le Pen in France, and also of the AFD in Germany, of the Sweden Democrats, uh, in Sweden.

Not the Social Democrats, the Sweden Democrats.

Of, uh, Madam Meloni's party in Italy.

It's had an enormous political impact, which is not over yet.

The center party has made a big thing out of how it wants a broad centrist coalition.

It doesn't want to associate with any of the fringe parties like the Sweden Democrats on the far right and the left party on the left.

So

yeah, it's tricky.

I mean, Ulf Christesson, who's the moderate leader and the incumbent prime minister, he, on his side, just the right-wing bloc, it doesn't have enough votes, or it doesn't have enough seats in parliament.

And their best hope then is to try to lure the center party back into the right-wing fold.

But the center party has drawn such a clear line against working with the Sweden Democrats in any shape or form.

And the Sweden Democrats obviously don't want to give up their chance at having maybe ministers in a right-wing government.

Uh, the right wing, far right neo-Nazi bloc, 173 seats.

So just before we started talking here, the former Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who lied to a Holocaust survivor and said that he would never talk to the Sweden Democrats, just resigned as prime minister.

So their government, the T dog government as it was called, is over.

Uh, that was a, a minority government that was supported by the Sweden Democrats, and basically the Sweden Democrats were a racist tail wagging the dog and making everything about immigration, and that's where the buyer's remorse came in.

So really what this was, Tony, was this was a referendum on h- on how racist Sweden wants to be at the moment, right? And the answer is not as racist as the last government, but pretty racist all the same, right? So it's interesting the way that the sort of pieces fell out because the Sweden Democrats went too far.

It got to the point where, uh, now we're seeing a lot of this, and another important thing to think about is that this is all reflected in Germany and in Irish politics and in Jimmy Goebbels O'Callaghan and what he says and that, right? They're all doing the same thing.

It's not these things wh- when European leaders meet up, this is what they're talking about, and they go back to their respective countries, and unless you're reading the news in these respective countries, you wouldn't realize this is what's happened, right? But they were trying to create this hostile environment in Sweden for people, and there is a point where, you know, nobody wants a scrounger, nobody wants a rapist, nobody wants a, a child abuser, and that kind of thing, right? But all the laws that were being passed immediately started to catch family fathers, one of whom I think is being deported next Tuesday, who's a neighbor of mine, didn't live too far away, has children in this country and was working away and everything else like that.

We'll make it more difficult to become a citizen.

I'm very modest, you know, when talking to Germans about this.

But I really do believe, having covered the Sweden Democrats, having covered Marine Le Pen, having covered Hert Wilders, having covered Nigel Farage, that you exclude people you actually make them more attractive.

And that if there's some way to make them complicit in government, you tend to dilute them.

Now, it doesn't always work, but it's pretty much what we just saw work in Sweden.

I mean, partly because they have toyed with all these things.

I mean, Sweden has just had an election which has, you know, it's a parliamentary system, so there are lots of parties, but the center-left has come back.

And the Sweden Democrats, the far-right party which tried to move to the center, has been punished.

And I think that's encouraging.