Or consider this one by Andrew Brown at Foreign Policy on the political transformation of Sweden:
Beginning in the 1950s and 1960s, Sweden began accepting labor migrants chiefly from Finland, though also from the Balkans. This didn’t produce any great social problems, perhaps because the process was agreed on with the country’s powerful unions, which did not feel that their members’ jobs were threatened by it. Political immigration first got underway in the 1970s, with Latin American refugees from the coup against Augusto Pinochet’s Chile and other left-wingers. They were followed by Kurds and Assyrian Christians fleeing the Iran-Iraq War. Then came refugees from the Balkan wars, from Lebanon, from Somalia and the Horn of Africa, and finally from Syria.
Many Swedes look at members of these latter groups and see people who are an awkward fit with the traditional national family—not least because they assume the immigrants have loyalties that transcend it. Whether that is true, of course, is impossible to know for certain. But the mere possibility of diluted national loyalty among some portion of the population may have weakened the unquestioned bond Swedes previously felt between patriotism and socialism that had been implicit in the concept of folkhemmet from the beginning.
Immigration wasn’t the only factor, of course. Who the immigrants are, their motives, and their expectations matter as well. Finns aren’t Swedes; the Finnish language isn’t even Indo-European. But Finns share many cultural traits with Swedes among which is that they are both at least culturally Lutherans and see something wrong in accepting a bigger handout from the government than you really need. Can Sweden’s system of payments and benefits survive the absence of such a cultural consciousness? That’s what the next election and the coming years will tell us.
Additional factors that have contributed to the change include decreased deference to authority, the end of Sweden’s lengthy post-war boom, and more general openness in the society.
Interesting article.
Quillette has an interesting piece today by a Swefish journalist on the political effects of this:
https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/swedens-general-election-turmoil/
One of the things that’s missed when you believe in the inexorable march of progressive values is that events take place for reasons. The Swedes put their system into place for reasons that prevailed at the time when they adopted it, they maintained for reasons that prevailed then, and will abandon if present circumstances lead them to do so.
But if you believe Progressive Values to be unassailable, just, and universally true, they must transcend events. The shift in Sweden is wrong, and boycotts of lutefisk and rusks are in order, until they repent of their ways.
It’s irrelevant regarding American political sentiment. Sweden doesn’t matter.
Also, the writer is an idiot to call Pinochet a left-winger.
South Africa and Apartheid mattered. Swedish intolerance is different only in degree.
Interesting paper linked at Marginal Revolution, that concludes that the Swedish Democrats arose from a coalition of two disparate groups: (1) vulnerable outsiders impacted by the 2006-2012 social insurance austerity program built around incentivizing work and reducing cheating the system; (2) vulnerable insiders employed in jobs impacted by the 2008 financial crisis, who may not have lost their jobs, but are employed in areas that are shedding jobs are at risk of automization or other downsizing.
I don’t know enough about Swedish politics to judge, but its an interesting suggestion that the political response to the 2015 immigration crisis might need to be framed in terms of pre-existing economic insecurity and the deligitimization of the existing political establishment.
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/09/rise-swedish-democrats.html