Sunday, September 11, 2022

Jimmie Akesson leads Sweden's soaring far-right

AFP - 

As leader of the far-right Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Akesson has steered his party from "pariah" to heavyweight whose support is indispensable if the right-wing bloc wants to govern after Sunday's election.


The leader of the Sweden Democrats, Jimmie Akesson (R), celebrates at the party's election night gathering in Nacka, near Stockholm© Jonathan NACKSTRAND

The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats soared to become the country's second-biggest party in the legislative vote, garnering 20.7 percent with 94 percent of electoral districts counted.

With his impeccably coiffed brown hair, glasses and neatly-trimmed beard, the casually-dressed 43-year-old looks like your average Swede.

That's par for the course for someone who in 17 years as party leader has transformed an often-violent neo-Nazi movement known as "Keep Sweden Swedish" into a nationalist party with a flower as its logo.

"He wants to give the impression that he's an ordinary guy... who grills sausages, talks normally and goes on charter trips to the Canary Islands", Jonas Hinnfors, a political science professor at Gothenburg University, told AFP.


In his 17 years as party leader Akesson has transformed an often-violent neo-Nazi movement into a nationalist party with a flower as its logo© Jonathan NACKSTRAND

"He does everything he can to not come across as an intellectual or well-educated," he added.

Akesson was raised in a middle-class family with an entrepreneur father and a mother who worked as a nursing assistant in Solvesborg, a town of 9,000 people in southern Sweden.

It was there, in rural Scania's small towns and farmsteads, that SD built its stronghold, amid concerns about the heavily immigrant-populated city of Malmo nearby.

- 'Zero tolerance' -

Akesson joined the Sweden Democrats in the 1990s after a disappointing teenage stint in the main right-wing party, the conservative Moderates.

After leaving Lund University without a degree, he took over the SD party leadership in 2005, when voter support was steadily around one percent.

The party underwent a major makeover, replacing its blue-and-yellow torch logo with an anemone, and vowing to rid itself of its racist and violent roots.

It later announced a "zero tolerance" policy against racism in 2012, though critics regularly denounce the attempts as superficial.

In August, an investigative report by Swedish research group Acta Publica found that 289 politicians from parties represented in parliament were involved in either racist or Nazi activities, a large majority of them -- 214 -- from the Sweden Democrats.

Controversies regularly flare over the party's errant members, but it has managed to steadily climb in the polls nonetheless.

It won 5.7 percent of votes when it entered parliament in 2010, 12.9 percent in 2014 when it became Sweden's third biggest party in parliament, and 17.5 percent in 2018.

Its rise has come alongside Sweden's heavy immigration. The country of 10.3 million people has welcomed around half a million asylum seekers in the past decade.

The party has stolen voters from both the conservative Moderates as well as the Social Democrats, especially among working class men.

In addition, the fight against crime, which has long been one of the party's main issues, was for the first time one of voters' top concerns in Sunday's election amid a soaring rise in gang shootings.

"I think (our success) can be explained by the fact that people don't think the other parties take their problems seriously", Akesson told AFP at an election rally in Stockholm in August.

- 'The most influence' -

Akesson, who once said Muslims were "the biggest foreign threat since World War II", has over the years watered down the party's rhetoric and policies, like other nationalist parties in Europe, according to analysts.

Once in favour of a "Swexit", the party in 2019 abandoned the idea of leaving the European Union due to a lack of public support.

And while other European far-right parties have expressed support for Russian President Vladimir Putin, SD has come out in favour of Ukraine in the war and expressed support for Sweden's NATO membership bid, a notion it had opposed until Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

According to Hinnfors, the Sweden Democrats have gone from a party "that says no to everything to a party that considers the parliamentary situation and is beginning to see where they can have the most influence, possibly cooperate, and make the fewest possible compromises".

Akesson's meteoric career success has, however, taken its toll.

In 2014, he admitted to an online gambling addiction, and then took a six-month leave from politics after suffering from burnout.

A fan of crime novels and whose favourite foods are pizza and fries, Akesson is divorced and has an eight-year-old son.


Anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats leader eyes right-wing election victory

Issued on: 12/09/2022 -
01:35
Supporters of the Sweden Democrats react on the results of the exit polls at the Elite Hotel Marina Tower in Nacka, near Stockholm, Sweden, September 11, 2022. © Agence TT News, via Reuters


Text by: NEWS WIRES

The leader of Sweden's anti-immigration Sweden Democrats early on Monday said the right-wing bloc of political parties was likely headed for victory following Sunday's election for parliament.

"Right now it looks like there will be a change of power," Jimmie Akesson said in a speech to party members.

Sweden's right bloc inched into the narrowest of leads with around three-quarters of votes counted after Sunday's general election, with results pointing to a new government after eight years of Social Democrat rule.

The figures show the Moderates, Sweden Democrats, Christian Democrats and Liberals winning 175 seats in the 349-seat parliament against 174 for the centre-left.

In further evidence of a shift to the right, the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats are set to overtake the Moderates as Sweden's second biggest party and the biggest in the opposition - a historic shift in a country that has long prided itself on tolerance and openness.

"Now, for the first time, we have a real chance, a real possibility to ... be, not just an opposition party, but to sit in and be an active part in a new government that takes politics in a completely new direction," Sweden Democrat party secretary Richard Jomshof told public broadcaster SVT.

With overseas and some postal votes yet to be counted and the margin between the two blocs wafer-thin, the result could still change and may not be clear until the middle of the week.

Earlier an exit survey by public broadcaster SVT gave Andersson's centre-left bloc 49.8% of the votes against 49.2% for the opposition right-wing parties.

Opinion polls have shown the race as a virtual dead heat throughout much of the campaign and exit polls can differ from the final result. A TV4 poll on election day also showed the centre-left commanding a narrow lead.

Campaigning had seen parties battle to be the toughest on gang crime, after a steady rise in shootings that has unnerved voters, while surging inflation and the energy crisis following the invasion of Ukraine have increasingly taken centre-stage.

The SVT exit poll showed Jimmie Akesson's Sweden Democrats, which demand that asylum immigration be cut to virtually zero, with 20.5% of the vote, up from 17.5% at the previous election.

While law and order issues are home turf for the right, gathering economic clouds as households and companies face sky-high power prices had been seen boosting Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, viewed as a safe pair of hands and more popular than her party.

"I have voted for a Sweden where we continue to build on our strengths. Our ability to tackle society's problems together, form a sense of community and respect each other," Andersson said after voting in a Stockholm suburb.

Andersson was finance minister for many years before becoming Sweden's first female prime minister a year ago. Her main rival, Moderates leader Ulf Kristersson, had cast himself as the only candidate who could unite the right and unseat her.
Into the mainstream

Kristersson has spent years deepening ties with the Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigration party with white supremacists among its founders. Initially shunned by all the other parties, the Sweden Democrats are now increasingly part of the mainstream right.

The prospect the Sweden Democrats having a say in government policy or joining the cabinet, has divided voters.

"I'm fearing very much a repressive, very right-wing government coming," Malin Ericsson, 53, a travel consultant, said earlier on Sunday at a voting station in central Stockholm.

The strong result for the Sweden Democrats fit a pattern of gains for the anti-immigration right wing across Europe where Italy looks poised to elect a conservative bloc including Giorgia Meloni's Brothers of Italy (FdI) and Matteo Salvini's League later this month. Read full story

"I have voted for a change in power," said Jorgen Hellstrom 47, a small business owner, as he voted near parliament. "Taxes need to come down by quite a bit and we need to sort out crime. The last eight years have gone in the wrong direction."

Kristersson had said he would seek to form a government with the small Christian Democrats and, possibly, the Liberals, and only rely on Sweden Democrat support in parliament. But it may be hard for him to snub a party that is set to be bigger than his own.

Whichever bloc wins, negotiations to form a government in a polarised and emotionally-charged political landscape are likely to be long and difficult.

Andersson will need to get support from the Centre Party and the Left, who are ideological opposites, and the Green Party as well, if she wants a second term as prime minister.

(REUTERS)

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