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Alternative for Sweden

From EverybodyWiki Bios & Wiki


Alternative for Sweden

Alternativ för Sverige
AbbreviationAfS
LeaderGustav Kasselstrand
Deputy leaderMikael Jansson
Party secretaryYvonne Lindholm
FoundedMarch 5, 2018; 6 years ago (2018-03-05)
Split fromSweden Democrats
HeadquartersStockholm, Sweden
Ideology
Political positionFar-right[16][17][8][18][19][20][14]
Colours
  •      Dark blue
  •      Yellow
Riksdag
0 / 349
European Parliament
0 / 21
County councils
1 / 1,597
[21]
Municipal councils
1 / 12,780
[22]
Website
alternativforsverige.se

Alternative for Sweden (Swedish: Alternativ för Sverige, AfS) is a right-wing populist political party in Sweden.[23] It was founded in March 2018. The party was founded by Gustav Kasselstrand and William Hahne.

Alternative for Sweden was founded by members of the Sweden Democrat Youth, who were collectively expelled from the Sweden Democrats in 2015.[24] As its primary questions, it advocates forced repatriation of one million immigrants and Swedish withdrawal from the European Union.[25][26]

AfS ran in the Swedish general election in 2018, but failed to enter the Riksdag. With 0.31% of the vote, AfS is the second largest party without representation in the Riksdag.[27] In the 2019 European Parliament election in Sweden the party ran on an anti-EU platform, receiving 0.49% of the vote. In November of 2020 AfS announced their intention to run in the 2021 election to the Church of Sweden council.[28]

History[edit]

Background[edit]

In early April 2015, the Sweden Democrats (SD) accused its youth league, the Sweden Democrat Youth (SDU), of having relations with the Far-right and Ethnonationalist organization Nordic Youth (Swedish: Nordisk Ungdom).[29] In response to these alleged relations, SD threatened to expel several leading members of SDU. SDU's leader Gustav Kasselstrand, and its deputy leader William Hahne, were eventually expelled from the party on April 27. They both denied the accusations of relations with extremist groups, and claimed that SD's parliamentary group leader Mattias Karlsson wanted to get rid of them after Hahne defeated the leadership's preferred candidate for the SDU chairmanship in Stockholm.[30]

Following the initial expulsion of the youth wing's chairman and deputy chairman, the mother party launched its own leadership candidate to compete against Jessica Ohlson, who was considered an ally of Kasselstrand and Hahne, and warned that the party would break all ties with SDU if Ohlson were to be elected chairman. On September 12, 2015, Ohlson defeated the party's preferred candidate for the SDU chairmanship, and the party shut down SDU's website and broke all relations with its youth wing. It then established a new youth organization, Ungsvenskarna (Young Swedes) and announced that every SD member who remained a member of SDU would be expelled. Ohlson herself was officially expelled alongside five other SDU members on October 25, but continued to serve as chairman of SDU, which went on to become an independent organization.

Founding and defections[edit]

In early 2017, Sveriges Radio reported that SDU members had filed a party registration application to the election authority.[31] The party was eventually registered on December 13, 2017, with Kasselstrand, Hahne and Ohlson in central positions. It was then officially launched on March 5, 2018; at the same time, it announced that it would participate in the 2018 elections. At the time of the launch, the party was described as drawing inspiration from Alternative for Germany, the Freedom Party of Austria and the French National Rally.[32]

Two Sweden Democrat members of the Riksdag, Olle Felten and Jeff Ahl, defected to the party later that month.[33] According to the rules of the Riksdag, Felten and Ahl are considered independent MP's, meaning that Alternative for Sweden is not officially represented in the parliament.[34] Mikael Jansson, former leader of the Sweden Democrats, also defected on April 9, citing the mother party's recent lack of resistance to NATO as his main reason.[citation needed]

Before the 2018 elections the party was one of the largest in terms of social media interactions and expected to enter the parliament after the elections, with leader Gustav Kasselstrand asking people on Twitter to prepare for "Sweden's biggest political earthquake in modern times". However, the party failed to enter parliament by a large margin, receiving just 0.31 out of the 4.0 percent needed to get past the election threshold. On election night, the party was reported to have been kicked out of the Persian restaurant it had rented to celebrate the election results.[35] It did not participate in the municipal elections.[36]

Since 2018[edit]

After the 2018 election, the party participated in the 2019 election for the European Parliament, but failed to gain a seat.

In March 2020, the party's deputy chairman and founding member William Hahne resigned from his position, after he had been revealed by Expressen to run a webshop selling surgical masks for a price 759% higher than other commercial sellers of surgical masks during the COVID-19 pandemic.[37]

Ideology and policies[edit]

On its website, Alternative for Sweden lists three key issues:[38]

  1. Repatriation of immigrants
  2. Democracy and politicians
  3. Law and order

It is critical of the current political establishment which it accuses of being naive and overly politically correct. Alternative for Sweden accuses "the Left" of hijacking societal institutions to rewrite history.[39]

Unlike the Sweden Democrats, Alternative for Sweden is non-interventionist and displays hard Euroscepticism which it considers the European Union a threat to Sweden's independence and seek to call for the country to leave the EU. It also seeks to rearm the military and form a Nordic defense alliance, instead of making Sweden dependent on NATO. It wishes to restrict welfare benefits to Swedish citizens, shift from progressive to flat income tax, replace the differentiated VAT rates with a fixed rate, re-nationalise all schools, and combat the idea of a cashless society. AfS also wishes to make the country self-sufficient and end the use of fossil fuels, citing both environmental protection and national security reasons.[38]

AfS has been described as right-wing, far-right and right-wing populist by Svenska Dagbladet,[16][17][6] while Dagens Nyheter has described the party as nationalist and right-wing populist.[2][5] Bloomberg News has described the party as social conservative and far-right.[8] The ideology of the party has also been described as close to the identitarian[40] and alt-right movements.[41][42] During the 2019 European Parliament election party leader Kasselstrand was endorsed by the far-right European party Alliance for Peace and Freedom (APF) on Facebook.[43] The party is affiliated with Identity and Democracy.[citation needed]

Notable members[edit]

Elections[edit]

Riksdag[edit]

Year Votes % Rank Seats +/- Notes
2018[27] 20,290 0.31 #10
0 / 349
 New Extra-parliamentary

European Parliament[edit]

Year Votes % Seats +/- Notes
2019[44] 19,178 0.46
0 / 20
 New Extra-parliamentary

References[edit]

  1. ↑ Sverige, Alternativ för (June 1, 2019). "Alternativ för Sverige går starkt framåt i EU-valet – ökar över hela landet". Alternativ för Sverige.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Tidigare partiledare lämnar SD – värvas av Alternativ för Sverige". Dagens Nyheter. April 9, 2018. Retrieved April 9, 2018.
  3. ↑ https://www.fhs.se/download/18.aa44b1740d51053bc784/1599031490867/Fr%C3%A5n%20Nordiska%20motst%C3%A5ndsr%C3%B6relsen%20till%20alternativh%C3%B6gern%20-%20en%20studie%20om%20den%20svenska%20radikalnationalistiska%20milj%C3%B6n.pdf
  4. ↑ https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1282945/FULLTEXT01.pdf
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Riksdagsledamot utesluts ur SD för "samröre med rasister"". Dagens Nyheter. March 15, 2018. Retrieved April 9, 2018.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 "Avhoppen till Alternativ för Sverige". Svenska Dagbladet (in svenska). Retrieved April 9, 2018.
  7. ↑ "Politisk vilde går till högerpopulistiskt parti – Helagotland".
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 "Far-right defections seen making Sweden's nationalists palatable". Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg. April 9, 2018.
  9. ↑ https://utur.eu/
  10. ↑ "Vår politik".
  11. ↑ https://utur.eu/
  12. ↑ "Vår politik".
  13. ↑ "Försvar och säkerhet".
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Merrill, Samuel (April 14, 2020). "Sweden then vs. Sweden now: The memetic normalisation of far-right nostalgia". firstmonday.org. First Monday.
  15. ↑ "AFS: "Islam hör inte hemma i Sverige!"".
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 "Nya högerpartier utmanar – "blir en historisk kväll"". Svenska Dagbladet (in svenska). February 28, 2018. Retrieved April 9, 2018.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 "Inget alternativ för SD – när riktigt inflytande är målet". Svenska Dagbladet (in svenska). March 18, 2018. Retrieved April 9, 2018.
  18. ↑ Gianluca Mezzofiore and Rory Smith (August 30, 2018). "Sweden: Twitter bots have doubled ahead of elections". CNN.
  19. ↑ "TV4-profilen Lennart Matikainen kandiderar för Alternativ för Sverige". nyheter24.se (in Swedish). Nyheter24. April 9, 2018.CS1 maint: Unrecognized language (link)
  20. ↑ "Steve Bannon reveals plans to visit Sweden to "learn from" the nation's far-right party". mediamatters.org. Media Matters. April 2, 2018. Archived from the original on July 26, 2019.
  21. ↑ "Politisk vilde går till högerpopulistiskt parti – Helagotland".
  22. ↑ "AFS närvaro i Växjöpolitiken skapar oro".
  23. ↑ "Kasselstrand: SD slits isär av destruktiva strider".
  24. ↑ "Kasselstrand vill in i riksdagen" (in svenska). December 18, 2017. Retrieved March 29, 2018.
  25. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXJllIuSrZc
  26. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/altforsverige/posts/1461284274263833
  27. ↑ 27.0 27.1 "Röster – Val 2018" [Votes – 2018 election]. data.val.se (in svenska). Retrieved September 15, 2018.
  28. ↑ "Starka reaktioner på att Alternativ för Sverige ställer upp i kyrkovalet".
  29. ↑ "Kasselstrand och Hahne utesluts ur Sverigedemokraterna - Nyheter (Ekot)".
  30. ↑ Kärman, Jens; Larsson, Mats J. (April 28, 2015). "SDU-topparna ger inte upp – nu går de vidare". Dagens Nyheter (in svenska). pp. 8–9.
  31. ↑ Radio, Sveriges. "Uteslutna sverigedemokrater bildar nytt parti – Nyheter (Ekot)". sverigesradio.se.
  32. ↑ Kasselstrands nya parti ska ta väljare från SD (in Swedish)
  33. ↑ "Riksdagsledamot lämnar SD – blir politisk vilde". Dagens Nyheter (in svenska). March 27, 2018. Retrieved March 27, 2018.
  34. ↑ Så arbetar ledamöterna (in Swedish)
  35. ↑ Omni, Ines Micanovic / (September 10, 2018). "AFS angrepp på persisk restaurang möttes av hån". Svenska Dagbladet – via www.svd.se.
  36. ↑ "AFS beställde tio miljoner valsedlar". www.expressen.se.
  37. ↑ "William Hahne lämnar – efter hårda kritiken". www.expressen.se.
  38. ↑ 38.0 38.1 Vår politik (political platform; in Swedish)
  39. ↑ https://alternativforsverige.se/om-oss/ (about us page; in Swedish)
  40. ↑ "Die Situation in Schweden". May 26, 2018.
  41. ↑ https://frivarld.se/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/AfS-f%C3%A4rdig.pdf
  42. ↑ Stern, Alexandra Minna: Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right Is Warping the American Imagination, page 7
  43. ↑ "Alliance for Peace and Freedom". en-gb.facebook.com.
  44. ↑ "Val till Europaparlamentet – Röster" [Votes – 2019 election]. data.val.se (in svenska). Retrieved June 15, 2019.

External links[edit]

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