[mnsc]

That question mark is not needed. Sverigedemokraterna is very much in the same vein as the Danish People's Party and currently rates at about 10% in opinion surveys. They haven't changed the Overton Window very much since all other parties have a pretty solid front of not supporting Sverigedemokraterna but they most certainly have shifted the window a bit to the right.

[mjn]

I think they're a bit different from Dansk Folkeparti (DF), mostly in having considerably more questionable roots, which I would guess doesn't help their acceptance in the party mainstream. They have made an effort to clean up their image in the past few years, expelling a number of the extreme-right elements, but the party's roots in the far-right scene makes them a bit anathema to respectable society. The origins of the party, and much of their '80s and early-'90s crowd, came out of the "subcultural right", movements like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevara_Sverige_Svenskt, norse-pride and white-power metal bands, the motorcycle club scene, etc.

When Mikael Jansson defected from the Center Party and took over Sweden Democrats in 1995 he began a purge of the openly extreme-right elements of the party in order to turn it into a respectable anti-immigration movement, but it didn't really solidify until the past few years. Even in recent years they have had a struggle to keep those types out of the party, for example their youth leader from 2007-2010 (Erik Almqvist) was embarrassingly videotaped singing white-power music at a retreat, and was finally forced out of the party earlier this year (weirdly, for someone who opposes immigration, he reportedly emigrated to Hungary after resigning).

DF by contrast has different origins, culturally rooted in something more like old-person Danish culture, rather than youth radical-right culture. They have a vaguely mythologized idea of 19th-century or early-20th-century Danish culture, as they imagine one's grandfather in a small town in Jutland might have lived. They generally therefore view the radical right-wing scene as negative, as equally a deviation from traditional quiet Danish values as immigrant crime is. This has let them keep those elements out of the party more credibly, because it's not only for image that they do it, but because their base actually culturally dislikes the far-right (especially anyone associated with the metal or biker scenes, who they see as culturally un-Danish).

Not that I myself would vote for DF (as an immigrant in Denmark they aren't out to make life easier for me), but I somewhat understand their appeal better; they are more of a rural "traditionalist values" party than a radical nationalist party. I find it harder to understand how SD would get similar support, unless people either don't realize their association with the far-right subculture, really believe that their transformation is completed, or are just lodging protest votes.

[Svip]

I think Sverigedemokraterna's support arise from the fact that the issue of immigration is generally seen as taboo in public Swedish debate, so the political parties at best avoid it. It also makes sense for this reason, that Sweden has a far more hardcore and aggressive extreme right scene than Denmark has (even if not more hardcore or aggressive, it is a lot larger).

Because in Denmark, immigration can be part of public debate without being shunned, while in Sweden, it's hard to get any sort of ground in this debate without being labelled a racist.

So now, some of them are trying to be more 'reasonable' about it with the party Sverigedemokraterna. I assume because they haven't made any progress publicly in Sweden by just being seen as extremists. And more and more figures are beginning to tell Swedes that immigration is not an issue you can ignore, thus Sverigedemokraterna's support is rising, because it's the only party that wants to talk about it.

But I am confident, that most of its votes are 'protest votes', to get the other parties to talk about it.

[hobbe80]

This is a typical talking-point of Sverigedemokraterna - the claiming that discussions around immigration are taboo in Swedish media. The major issue with this is that it's not actually the lack discussions about immigration (immigration-related actions and decisions by the government and the municipalities are frequently debated in "mainstream media" and commented on by editorials) - it's simply the fact that the majority of the Swedish people don't agree with the policies suggested by Sverigedemokraterna. If you listen to someones arguments and rejects them, are you then avoiding the debate just because you have rejected the arguments?

I will say that the Swedish population has become more polarised over this question - both the number of people who claim "immigration is good for Sweden" and "immigration is bad for Sweden" has risen over the past 10 years, shrinking the middle. There is also a strong correlation between education and attitude to immigration (in 2011, 56% of the people who had only 9 years of education agreed that reducing the number of asylum seekers to Sweden is good while only 22% of those with a university-degree agreed with the statement). This might explain some of the frustrations showcased by the people supporting Sverigedemokraterna and other anti-immigration parties - they might simply lack the ability to debate in the way public debates are typically held and coherently express their ideas in a convincing way.

[Svip]

Even if the case is that immigration is public debate in Sweden (and I don't doubt that), Sverigedemokraterna's success (in addition to the underdog status given by the media) is in part due to a feeling of taboo for their point of view. A frustration boiling to blow the lid.

The lack of immigration debate in the 1990s is what caused Dansk Folkeparti to gain enough support, that from 2001 to 2011, they could control the Danish government. So even if Sweden's immigration debate is happening, immigration debates always happen too late.

(But this is not unique to immigration.)

[darkbot]

That's not true. There is a vivid debate around immigration and asylum issues in both old fashioned- and social media.

Sverigedemokraterna is big because a large slew of the Swedish population is slanting toward racism and are prone to accept simple "solutions".

[jeltz]

You oversimplify things. While you are to some extent correct I do not think that was the main reason for their surge in the last election. One contributing factor was the bullying from media and the other parties before the election where they were not allowed to participate in debates, all parties declared they would never cooperate with SD, and several newspapers ran anti-SD articles the day of the election. This strategy backfired heavily since everybody loves an underdog, and the faulty idea that if everyone wants someone silenced they must have something important to say.

There are also other factors like that some people genuinely seem to believe that SD has cleaned up their act.

EDIT: I am personally strongly pro-immigration (much more so than any party in Sweden) and I have to disagree about there being much debate about immigration in traditional media. There is a lot in social media though, so I have no idea where all the racists get their idea that they cannot debate immigration issues anywhere.

[mnsc]

Ok, I did not know this, thanks for a good explanation. But do you agree that they seem to point the blame stick in the same direction? That immigrants are the threat to the "true original culture"? Or are DF more truly critical towards subcultures that maybe are ethnically "right" but immoral on a traditional conservative value scale, eg. bikers/punks?

[mjn]

Oh I agree, there's no doubt they're both mainly riding a populist backlash against immigration, especially Muslim immigration. I think the parties themselves differ considerably more than the broader wave they're riding, which has more common origins.

DF really do seem to be critical towards "ethnic Danish" subcultures they view as deviant as well, especially in the past year. There's currently a bit of hand-wringing over biker clubhouses (residents don't like having one nearby), and they've been getting out in front of that populist backlash too, which plays well among their base for different but related reasons. It's sort of Public Enemy #2 in things that are ruining Denmark, from their perspective.

Here's a recent story (via Google Translate, note that "rocker castle" means "biker clubhouse"): http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre...

[mercurial]

As another immigrant in Denmark, thanks for the detailed explanations of the difference between the two.

[yesbabyyes]

I think they have opened the Overton window quite a bit. Today, established journalists and writers such as Herman Lindqvist, Ulf Nilsson, Stina Dabrowski, Elisabeth Höglund and Per Gudmundsson to name a few, use language and ideas borrowed from the far right -- things like referring to people as "ticking bombs" or arguing in a roundabout way that they (some with some of the biggest platforms in the country) can't state what they _actually_ think -- that they are somehow being repressed.