The Swedish Prime Minister and, no doubt, other members of the Swedish liberal elite, are getting worried. After having things all their own way and running the country for decades, they're in danger of losing power. A party with an anti-immigration stance, Sweden Democrats, is expected to win a significant proportion of the votes in the imminent General Election and Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has been chucking mud. He's 'warned' voters about the dangers of what he sees as extremism and fascism, and said that a vote for the Sweden Democrats would be "dangerous" and "counterproductive".
This is, of course, not the first time that a ruling elite has reacted to the rise of a bit of competition in this way. In the UK, Ukip has been accused of being extremist, alarmist, racist and more while in France, Germany, Italy, Hungary and Austria right wing parties have been similarly maligned. In their desire to keep power at all costs, the establishments of these and other countries impugn any right wing group, referring to them as being extremist, 'far right', nationalist, racist, fascist, and even comparing them with Hitler's NAZIs.
That it is the 'soft left' which is attacking anyone who is vaguely right wing in this way might be expected, but why is it that those on the right do not habitually refer to the left wing in similar terms ? Communist, Stalinist, Leninist, Maoist, elitist, or simply 'far left' could be levelled as slurs against most supposedly liberal but actually left wing governments with as little relevance or truth as the words used to denigrate parties of the right. For some reason, politics of the liberal-minded soft left is automatically 'good' while anything which is 'bad' is immediately labelled as being 'right wing', and anything that is 'right wing' is automatically 'bad'.
In the USA, whatever Barack Obama did was considered 'good' by the ruling elites, to such a degree that he was even awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace before he'd actually done anything. In contrast, Donald Trump has been vilified since before he was even elected and is now subjected to every possible slur, regardless of what he actually does. Trump is also accused of one of the new slurs, 'populism', which seems to be an invention of the left designed to apply to politicians who do what their electorates want, and yet is considered 'bad'. In other words, the liberal elite knows what is best for us and must be allowed to carry on doing it, regardless of what we, the people, actually want.
In the UK, something similar has happened with Brexit. The liberal establishment is desperate to keep us in, or at the very least closely tied to, the European Union, regardless of the result of the referendum. Their arguments include claiming that the people were misled by the right wing 'Brexiteers', that we did not understand what we were voting for or that we'd vote differently now. Worse still, supposed right wingers such as many members of the Conservative government have shown themselves to be, in reality, members of the soft left, liberal elite in disguise, as they have done their best to undermine Brexit in pursuit of continued membership of the strongly socialist and centralizing European Union.
We should start calling spades 'spades' and we should stop accepting that 'mother knows best'. The EU is an abomination and wanting to leave it is not 'populist', although the likes of Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell most certainly are. Wanting to control the extent of immigration is neither nationalist, racist nor populist, it is common sense. Donald Trump may be erratic and rather unusual as President of the US, but he's not the lunatic that the left wing portray him as; his policies are only portrayed as being 'populist' by those who don't like them. The condescending arrogance of others, such as Christine Lagarde, Mark Carney, Messrs Juncker and Barnier, and others, should be clearly stated; these all have the same dislike for the 'populist' views of the people they claim to act for.
Here's hoping that the Sweden Democrats really do cause a few waves, and that the 'populist' backlash which has been building momentum over the last few years in many parts of the world continues to build.
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