I’d imagine if you really pressed them their issue is that those social welfare programs might benefit immigrants and non-whites. So they’d rather burn it all down than help someone they find to be unworthy of such assistance.
But you never achieve the ethnostate.
Far right ideaology is defined by who it excludes, because you have to have that inferior class to put yourself above.
So if you get rid of all the "non-whites" then it doesn't become a magic utopia for white people, but rather you start to redefine white...then suddenly the Irish stop being white again. And it continues until it devours itself
I do find it interesting that you can get a finger on the pulse of the general health of the white power movement by seeing whether their definition of whiteness has expanded lately.
All of those second klan bigots are rolling in their graves now that Catholics and even some Latin people are considered white.
"Well well Proud Boys, I see you're bolstering your ranks with Latinx - yeah I fucking said it - people now. I'm glad to see you're embracing diversity."
These aren't exactly the greatest minds of the nation. And the Nordic far right also hates queer purple, trans people and so on, so they wouldn't be short of people to sneer at.
There is a strain of far right anti immigrant politics in Scandinavian countries that do boil down to "welfare state for white people" that has a good amount of electoral support and is seen as legitimate (as long as they remember to not say the "white" part out loud). Not dissimilar to Orban in Hungary, or other parties like that. The Sweden Democrats, Dansk Folkeparti, parts of the Norwegian Progress Party - although the latter has a nutjob libertarian wing that I'm personally grateful for. A party that manages to be seen as offering a strong welfare state (and I think also a degree of egalitarian values) but without those pesky immigrants could get worryingly popular.
I think Roberts talked about how the original Nazis had a strain of this mindset as well. They were literally socialist nationalists who wanted socialism but only for Aryans. Hitler wiped them out during the Night of Long Knives.
Not unless you’re going by a very soft definition of socialism like the kind the right wing of the US uses (any social welfare program is socialist)
There were strasserists of course who did advocate some socialist ideas and I’m sure some others who had class based political views, but it was never mainstream Nazi ideology to advocate for public ownership of production. Critiques of capitalism were mostly critical of the people in charge, their personal greed and other flaws, not with the system of private ownership. This was of course highly tied to antisemitism, with Jewish capitalists being portrayed as having the worst of these traits and other industrialists were complicit in their greed.
You’re not entirely wrong, in the earlier period before coming to power Nazis were willing to allow much more variety of economic theory in their ranks as long as you hated Jews and believed Germans to be supreme, and then anyone too far left was purged after they no longer needed as many allies. But the wording “the original Nazis were socialists” is incorrect and contributes to the liberal narrative that socialism is a breeding ground for fascism
We already had “irish” before the great immigration wave, we have sami, romani and finlandic swedes whose lived here for centuries and further back. They would just go back to those again.
When I was in middle school, I came across a book that talked about the Know Nothings. I glossed over the usual list of "undesirables" they railed against (Jews, Blacks, Hispanic, etc) but "Catholic" gave me pause (I was raised Catholic). Italian was another (my grandmother was 2 when she arrived at Ellis Island).
If I had been born 100 years earlier, I'd be considered mixed-race member of a minority religion. I've kept that in the back of my head whenever all that nonsense about the "white race" comes up.
This is 100% the reason and honestly the reason why those countries have those welfare programs to begin with. It’s not that they’re just inherently more liberal and high-minded than anywhere else, it’s that there’s no cultural boogeyman that their moneyed class can blame everything on. It’s easy to trick poor white Americans to vote against their own self interests when you tell them that the minorities they’ve been taught to fear will also benefit, but when even the poorest of your society shares your culture, it’s suddenly not “free handouts to lazy so-and-sos,” it’s “helping out our own”
Kind of disagree with this analysis. The capital holders didn’t “give” workers here anything because we were nice and white. They never give anything to the working class.
Workers organized,mobilized, won elections and claimed those benefits. Just like workers everywhere. We had strong unions and a very strong labor party. In Norway’s case, petro-riches kept the good times rolling,so even our conservatives didn’t really think it was worth the risk of pissing off the working class by dismantling welfare.
For sure it is easier to malign non-white recipients of welfare here(like anywhere else,I guess), but race is not really a part of the origins of the Nordic model.
I agree the analysis is a little simplistic, but it is true that working class movements in the US and other places faltered at times because the capitalist class was able to manipulate people within the working class against the movement by stoking their racist anxieties.
This isn’t to say the thing that a lot of racists will that Nordic Model and such “only works” because of their “homogeneous society” or any other bullshit like that. In many ways diversity and solidarity can create many advantages for a more equitable society. But that racism exploit in particular is not as easy for capitalists to leverage in a society where there is not a significant percentage of a minority group that is in the lower class, and that could very well have made it a lot easier for democratic socialists in the Nordic countries to organize.
I apologize for using the word “give,” I didn’t mean to imply that these sorts of welfare programs are products of corporate goodwill or something. Just that it’s much easier for politicians and capitalists to sow discord among the working class and prevent those sorts of collective actions when they can convince them that it’ll also help a minority they’ve been taught to fear, and distract them from the fact that it’s actually the capitalists themselves.
Fair enough!
You are right in that ethnicity plays a role in today’s situation. You are also bang on with right voting lower class white people not recognizing that they are next once the “foreign elements” are “put in their place”. That holds as true here as in the US.
That makes sense actually, had a discussion with a coworker who's not the brightest crayon on the snack table. He said he would prefer a government that cuts labour law and Healthcare if it means his family is safe from a woke agenda. He couldn't explain the definition of woke, and then blamed queer immigrants for the price of groceries
>So they’d rather burn it all
Seeing how far right operates in general, I'd say they just use those inmigrants as an excuse to remove those programs and move the money elsewhere (ahem, tax cuts, privatisation, etc.). Like all far right parties do.
Seriously? You are going to judge the whole of Europe on the basis of a couple of cucks?
The majority of people know that our state works because lift everybody up. Sweden has some issues now, a lot because they lacked the language to speak about the issues when they arose.
It's well documented that people become less supportive of social welfare that involves wealth redistribution as diversity increases.
In white majority places, this is driven by racism in addition to regular old xenophobia.
The right wing in Scandinavia has spent decades and millions on making people believe that the welfare state is the natural state, and not something won with hard political struggle by workers against the forces of capital.
At least in my country if the left tries to claim much in the way of credit, they will immediately get a media shit storm from the right and most of the press for pushing biased propaganda.
This strategy has worked so well that a majority of the people now truly believe that conservative parties have the peoples best interest at heart and that the left is only interested in increasing taxes for everyone , government overreach and doomed planned economics.
People in important positions with huge paychecks have very little understanding of history and how the welfare state was created. This really scares me.
For the furthest right they seem to believe their freedom consists of being left alone by the state to such a degree that they can remain ignorant and easily led by strong men. Fury road with no armed women or minorities is apparently paradise. (This last part isn't all that serious, as I'm too tired to go in depth after a long day, but I fully believe the rest of what I wrote. )
It's because historically the Nordic countries have been pretty singular, racial and demographic wise.
With increases in immigration people have an 'other' to point to and say 'hey they are leaching off our social programs, we should stop these programs so 'those kinds' of people don't take advantage of them.'
Its like a modern version of the welfare queen myth to scare people into things that damage their own quality of life in the hope of hurting people they are scared of. Once you make things bad for people then not only can you blame a minority but you can also present yourself as a singular solution to people's problems. This is a similar pattern to the US with Reagan removing social services leading to Trumps populist rhetoric.
I spent six months as a student in Sweden in college. My take from *average* people was a general displeasure with the lack of integration into Swedish society of many of the people that they had allowed to migrate to their country. The Swedes can be very liberal, but they also have a strong sense of community and nationality. Many of the migrant communities have remained *very* insular - and with their "ghettos" being basically suburbs outside of cities (the reverse of the United States) - it stays pretty easy to do that.
Makes for some *amazing* food though, as Swedish cuisine doesn't get you very far...
I think basically this.
Sweden is super liberal, but under that liberal and not far under is what i call "violently Swedish" any holiday is treated with some form of sacrosanct. You have to follow the rules, if anything Sweden is the country the bible south wishes it was.
The integration is a massive part, I moved here 10 years ago, and was lucky to have the small issues I had other after me not so lucky, even being an EU migrant.
Part of it is the stoic "you help yourself" which oddly isn't a cross nation thing. Simple things like SFI (Swedish for immigrants) is really dependent on your town or place even, it can be great or really shit. I think Sweden is great, but as a nation that welcomed people it kinda opened its doors to an empty room and wondered off. Then shocked Pikachu face when they created basically ghettos.
I can go on about the systems, as it's quite a thing for me.
I also moved here from another EU country (14 years ago). Think you are sorta right.
My take on the issue of integration is that immigrants that moved here or sought assulym were rarely able to secure any sort of job until they were nearly fully fluent in swedish. This wasn't the fault of the person but of society sorta demanding it. Therefore people become reliant on the state, whereas a person might not need to actually be fully fluent to do a job and may in fact benefit from learning a language both at SFI and in a workplace. This of course didn't apply to employers with a real international focus, where speaking English or Swedish wasn't an issue.
Absolutely.
But also needing Swedish or a Swede to navigate a system that is enshrined. You can't live without a number (you can but it's hard work) your existence is in that number. You can get sfi with no number but no one tells you that. You can get a bank account with no number. But people just won't. It's maddening.
>I think Sweden is great, but as a nation that welcomed people it kinda opened its doors to an empty room and wondered off. Then shocked Pikachu face when they created basically ghettos.
This really hits the nail on its head. Since the 1970s we have had an incredibly generous immigration policy, which worked well when close to no-one came here. Our system is (was) built upon the idea that the 100 people fleeing here from the Balkans or wherever will be integrated swiftly by maybe going to SFI for a few hours per day, since they will be surrounded by Swedes who will share their culture and norms with them.
While I really like that we kept our open-door-policy for as long as we did, we really should have foreseen that 100 000 Somalis (or whichever culture) all living together in the same suburbs won't integrate themselves into the majority culture by maybe going to SFI a few hours per day. Our handling of it has been disastrous, and I blame the right as much as the left for not preparing anything when we clearly saw the rate of migration skyrocketing for years.
I am proud of our generous migration policies, not so much of our handling of the situation that everyone must have understood would arise..
Yeh. The handling is and was appalling. I tried sfi and basically didn't get on with a teacher not speaking any English or explaining language, yeh I'm dyslexic but still it wasn't a great experience.
I do think that the way Sweden handles laws is quite an issue the rape law and explosion law makes it seem really bad. I see the issue in local Facebook's where locals, really go with dog whistles .
Unrelated we had the angry Dane in town, I also distinctly remember seeing NF march, it was like 6 guys, we had Jimmy the 1st year I was here and not many people. Last time it was a massive rally.
>I tried sfi and basically didn't get on with a teacher not speaking any English or explaining language,
I hope (and think) it's become better, but all I heard from migrants I talked to was that they sang kindergarten songs and drank coffee for a few hours. Nothing preparing them for any sort of work. Some loved it of course, but most felt frustrated to be stuck there.
>I do think that the way Sweden handles laws is quite an issue the rape law and explosion law makes it seem really bad. I see the issue in local Facebook's where locals, really go with dog whistles .
I don't know what you mean by this. Could you elaborate?
>Unrelated we had the angry Dane in town, I also distinctly remember seeing NF march, it was like 6 guys, we had Jimmy the 1st year I was here and not many people. Last time it was a massive rally.
Haha, the Angry Dane^™️. That's horrible to hear. It sounds like you live in Skåne? The Nazis and their rallies generally thin out the further north you come, so I've been spared.
5-10 years ago it was bad for me. I hear it is really really site specific, might be shit might not be. But it's just language, not culture, which is hard in any situation to say what's "right"
What I mean about the laws are that in most places rape is piv, in Sweden what would be groping/assault is rape, so numbers look really high and IMHO the association of rape rape, not assault, this isn't to reduce the severity of event, just explain how I see.
The same with explosions, iir an explosion is anything called in that's a bang, and or police heard. So a firework is an explosion, a bomb is. So lots of explosions are not really bombs, kids and fireworks etc. once again yes it might be a targeted firework but it's not reported well.
No sir. No I'm more northern. We had the Easter riots.
Quick Google search shows they are most represented in Norway and make up ~1% of the Norwegian population. This is about the same as full non-mixed indigenous Americans' representation in the US according to the census bureau.
Looking at some other quick numbers over 80% of Sweden is white, Norway is about 80% and Finland the same. I'd consider these numbers pretty singular considering America sits at 58% white (this number excludes Hispanic or latino white for whatever thats worth, with those included its about 75%).
Asking about the Sami is basically like saying "What about *insert native American tribe?"* in the United States when talking about race/ethnicity.
Yes, it matters, but it is a fraction of a fraction. Also, the Sami are *way* north, so they can just kind of do their thing if they stay out of the way of any natural resources...
Problem with that is that northern Sweden is full of natural resources, and the Sami are regularly getting shafted.
Both forest logging and mining impact Sami people a lot, and while it's better now than before, their voice is still disproportionately small.
They have this idea that the only people on social welfare are foreigners - specifically non white foreigners - and they are just really eager to make life for non white people as miserable as possible. On account of being racist assholes.
I'm a little unclear as to your confusion. The answer to the question is in the question. They're far right shit heads, so they want far right shit head policy, simple as.
Even far right shitheads have internally consistent self-justifications for what they believe in. Bad people don't think they are bad people. We all, every Human on Earth, act first in ways we believe will benefit us and then everyone else. How we define what that benefit is differs from person to person.
By reducing people you disagree with to automatons carrying out illogical tasks you dehumanize those people *in your mind* and set you up to have preconceived notions about them. Try to keep in *your* mind that we all (just about) operate on our own \[roughly\] internally consistent criteria. Every single one of us has deeply held beliefs and those beliefs, while maybe incomprehensible to someone else, don't always just stem from "Well, fuck you buddy!"
Marjorie Taylor Greene is about the more reprehensible person in congress, and as slimy and I personally think she is I believe she is acting in a way that she believes will benefit Her and her people. From where I'm sitting what she defines as a benefit, and who she qualifies for those benefits, seems horrendous to me. That does nothing to change the fact that in her mind she is acting with absolute righteousness. She isn't evil for the sake of being evil, she doesn't think of herself as evil or doing evil-- she thinks she knows the way to best order society and is working towards achieving that goal-- just like everyone else in the world.
The Sweden Democrats are walking the slack tight rope of co-operating with right wing parties that wants to dismantle warfare, wanting to strip immigrants of all welfare and simultaneously increasing the welfare that large parts of their base subsist on.
To say that their policies on welfare issues is fractured doesn't even begin to describe it.
Happy cake day! And 100% correct
The right wants richer billionaires; it’s less easy to exploit people when they are more vulnerable. Regulations and people’s welfare go hand in hand at keeping the wealthy from their goals.
Some people are just opposed to governments providing welfare and regulation. The reasons, justifications, etc. for those positions are varied, but that's basically the jist of it.
I will back my city sold all of it’s snow trucks to a private contractor, the thinking was that it will cost less to contract it because now the city will not have to pay 401k and such, the money will be invest in social things or on tax break. 10 years later and the unions are laughing in the face of the new mayor, it cost a shit load of money to manage snow in winter way more that if we had keep our trucks and our employees.
Right wing thinking start (normally) with good intentions but end with new rich.
The argument that money should go to « our » people first is a good one too, right wingers don’t care. They only want to take a jab at social program to axe them completely after. Because in the end for them life is a combat and you shouldn’t have a head start in combat even if they themselves have a head start.
It’s racism, but not just that.
Here in Denmark, they’re trying to dismantle the government subsidy system for students (a monthly grant to make it so that many students can live off a part time job while studying), and making it so that people can’t start one education, change their mind and start a new one; at least not while retaining their ability to get the subsidy for the duration of their education.
Some of it is racism, yes. But some of it is also just greed; they want to make our countries more capitalistic like the US, basically pulling the ladder up behind themselves.
It’s fucked.
I’m Canadian and I’ve lived in the US for almost 10 years now. Let me tell you, what people outside of Canada think of Canada and what people inside of Canada think of Canada have nothing to do with each other. Far-rights are gonna far-right, and they couldn’t give less of a shit about how the international community perceive their country’s policies.
I also have a few friends in Sweden and the Netherlands. There’s a sense of complacency about social safety nets, just like in Canada. They’re taken for granted, and thus not protected enough, and thus have been slowly eroding by conservative agendas over the past 30-40 years. It’s the same trend everywhere.
Its a little like Self-Important Patriots who like to promote Democracy, the Constitution, Small Government, and Freedom of Speech but when the get politically active they advocate for Autocracy, the Bible, a Government big enough to tell you what Gender you are, and the repression of speech that hurts their feelings.
We all live with some level of cognitive dissonance, its just more noticeable in some people than others.
Because people are super racist. And as a fellow swede ridiculously stupid.
It is the same as the right wing insanity in the US some people just don't have any empathy for anybody else or their struggles/ needs for support.
It’s not just a lack of empathy. Many of our right wingnuts honestly believe that they struggled massively with no help to get where they are, and that struggle made them a “better stronger person.” They think removing the social safety nets will encourage the lower classes to be able to do the same. [For reference see Donald Trump building an empire all on his own with just a tiny million dollars from his father]
Then throw some Jesus sprinkles on top by way of prosperity gospel (belief that “good” Christians are rewarded by god with success and “bad” people are punished with poverty struggles) and you have a jambalaya of the highly privileged telling the less privileged that they deserve to suffer. When people think god is making the decisions, they’ll justify all sorts of insanity. Not sure if this is quite as powerful a factor in Scandinavia, so be glad you’ve never heard of Joel Osteen.
In my experience, I disagree the people I have known that fell into right wing circles here have been young white men that have never struggled and because of that can't understand their own privilege.
I want to an agricultural school we're most people were raised on their family farm and because if that had zero exposure to any kind of diversity both racially or sexuality or any other group right wingers hate.
For example if you have a family farm that you have worked at as much as you can all your life you naturally have a job after school and because it that you never need any kind of social system assistance. They see this as the natural way for everyone.
As a swede that sadly has lost friends to right wing nonsense, Christianity is not as big of a factor as in the US in my experience at least.
There are crazy Christians here, too, but there is less overlap than it appears to be in the US from an outside perspective, at least.
Here They go straight to neo nazism instead without religion as a stepping stone/excuse.
My saying they struggled may have been lost in translation. These people feel like they struggled. They believe that they overcame insurmountable odds and succeeded despite being given no advantages. Usually in reality their biggest struggle was not having their mom to do their laundry anymore. The right wing feels like they endured just as much adversity as someone who isn’t white and grew up in poverty. Or they faced just as much discrimination as someone who is not cisgender and escaped a childhood of abuse. An existence like that is so alien to them they cannot even conceptualize it.
The poison comes when those people don’t want to admit that much of their success in life comes down to being lucky. When you can lay the blame for the sufferings of others on them, you don’t have to feel bad or do anything about it because those people deserve it.
Capital interests don't want happy workers that feel secure. You can't squeeze everything out of a person until you ruin all their social safety nets.
Then they have to be grateful for any job they can get. Kind of like the US.
Because racism.
Also, the far-right as coopted a lot of right wing liberal talking points of welfare not necessarily being bad, but under attack of massive fraud and scams from immigrants/non-whites. But I think when push comes to shove the far right would sell out the welfare state in a second if it secured their power or it made the life of non-whites worse. They don't REALLY care for the working class. They're just useful idiots.
It's not only Sweden that is slowly dismantling the welfare state, but the rest of the Nordics as well.
Denmark's govt decided without consulting the rest of the Parliament, to take one bank holiday away in order to fund the military. They are also cutting into public social assistance. And the PM, a Social Democrat (you know that party that used to be for the workers) just said that people should forget about working less so more work reforms will come and bad ones for that matter.
Also, it's already much easier to get laid off in Denmark than in a lot of other European countries, even though you get a pretty decent unemployment benefit if that happens (they call it flexicurity - flexibility & security).
Finland's current govt (consisting of a far-right party, yay) is also going for some pretty bad work reforms like making it easier to dismiss employees, relaxing regulations on fixed-term contracts, making the first sick day a day without pay, reducing unemployment benefits, restricting political strikes, capping wage increases based on export sector wages and easing local bargaining.
Then comes Norway who are also on par with dismantling the welfare state and becoming more neoliberal. The healthcare is in decline and the govt is not doing enough to stop that, they are also affected by the lack of affordable housing and the rising cost of living. Also, last year there were 38 people murdered in the country, the highest number in 10 years. And as of today, there have been 24 people killed since the beginning of the year, people killing their family members (incl. children) and then themselves, men and women killing their partners etc. There seems to be something that has been tipping people over the edge.
So yeah, we're all in a race to the bottom, so let's see who gets there first, yay!
In Finland?
Finns have to correct me if I'm wrong, but It seems people were not happy about the level of public debt has grown under the previous govt, they were also not happy with the climate change policies of the previous govt (thinking that they've gone too far). And the same old same old, fear of immigrants (despite the fact that they have taken much less refugees per capita than the rest of the Nordics).
It is kinda fascinating. Here in Denmark the welfare state as we know it have always been contentious, and the current iteration is a far cry from perfect.
We do have a strong workers identity and as such a tradition for unionization and so on.
The welfare state pushback, is mostly from the center right but in the early 70es a party founded on a ‘taxation is theft’ platform (the forward party) with a charismatic leader, Mogens Glistrup, a consummate dickhead, who went to jail for tax evasion came about. They were HARD right anarco capitalist nationalists and very anti muslim.
They won a landslide victory in 73, I think, and sort of petered out. From them arose such luminaries as Pia Kjærsgaard, who formed the core of the danish people party, a populist far right party who mainly ran on an anti immigrant (read Muslim) platform.
They had a niche appeal to the working class Danes, who by and large are racism-adjacent. At the turn of the century former head of state Anders Fogh, another anti government, tax slashing, all around dickhead, formed a coalition with DPP as DPP was still technically on the economic far right as well (though they ran heavily on elder care and animal welfare as well as racism) then 9/11 happened and their popularity exploded - over the next 15-20 years they were basically king makers, untouchables really. Enabling a haaaard right turn all in all. This led to our current beloved leader and absolute worst person, Mette
Frederiksen to do what is possibly the most astute manouver in modern danish politics. She is ostensibly on the left, leader of the biggest danish party the social democrats. They are the historical political embodiment of the danish worker. Now a neo liberal, new public management horror show but a LOT of people still buy into the old fashioned worker party schtick
As DPP saw themselves as untouchable, they decided to push this a bit more and gain even more influence. Straight off a historically huge election win their leader agreed to make a public parlay with Mette Frederiksen. The message was
‘We aren’t opposed to working together” which was supposed to make the center right party acquiesce more power to DPP. What happened however was that Mette Frederiksen sent a nationwide message to every single voter of the DPP that she and the social democrats had adopted the DPP’s stance on immigration (again read Muslims).
This essentially siphoned all but a handful of
Voters from DPP, who had always attracted racist workers or voters who didn’t give two shits about economic governance as long as they got to hate
Muslims. The DPP was always a bit of a dirty secret, not polite company, so seeing a possibility to be represented by a mainstream party was a huge temptation for most people who voted DPP
before.
This has left us with a on paper, center left social
Democrat party who were already very much center right, neo liberal dog shit, which now is also hardcore anti Muslim. With a base that again is comprised of what is essentially right wing racist. They are very much calling the shots in terms of policy overall and meet very little push back from the left, which is essentially comprised of a single party that have become bogged down in the sheer amount of causes that are relevant.
Right now, the most likely next head of state in Denmark is either faux left wing Mette F, centrist but really anti tax pro business and farmers Lars Lokke or Anarco capitalist libertarian and Jordan Peterson fan Alex Vanopslach.
Or as someone succinctly put it; because of racism.
When we talk about the Nordic "far right", are we talking about the mainstream political parties on what would be considered the far right here?
I can only speak for Norway, but the Progress Party here (FrP) love the idea of cutting taxes and all the typical rhetoric. It turns out that's kind of a bad idea, though, as it turns out those pay for cool shit we get. They know it, too, and they know they'd get eaten alive if they actually touched people's socialized healthcare, unemployment, all that. Basically, they stick to talking about people who don't *deserve it*. They like to sit around making up scenarios where immigrants come here with their 16 children, all of whom are just going straight on unemployment. Shit like that.
There's always a few poisoned brains out there who will absolutely reject reality. That's why you need constant vigilance. Peace is actively maintained, never eternal.
what the far right in Finland say, is that they think there’s too many workshy people just leeching off welfare, including drug addicts who the system enables. they also accuse immigrants of abusing the system, and say the generosity if the aystem attracts immigrants who specifically seek out Finland for the generous benefits.
it’s a fundamental disagreement on the efficacy of the system. in my view, it works as intended. not perfect, people slip through the cracks, but at least there’s fewer cracks and they’re more narrow.
but of course, in power, the reality dawns that there isn’t a magic lever they can pull where they can just cut the parts they hate that doesn’t either 1. hurt a lot of people that don’t fit their model of bad recipient, or 2. involve a method of means testing that costs way too much money to implement 3. break the Finnish constitution or the European agreement on human rights.
so, as just a practical matter they just pick option 1, justify it by just saying it’s about cutting abuse, and then dodging responsibilty. last time they were in power, they split towards the end of the elction cycle, and everyone who was in the caninet splintered off to a party that died. and the new guard, who dutifully voted for every cut and deregulation, can just shift the blame to the other guys.
[ed] a tl;dr. the idea of welfare cuts sounds good to a lot of people who don’t think about the actual rubber meets road reality of it. it’s easy to run on, but problematic to implement.
I’d imagine if you really pressed them their issue is that those social welfare programs might benefit immigrants and non-whites. So they’d rather burn it all down than help someone they find to be unworthy of such assistance.
This is exactly it. I'm sure they would want to reinstate social welfare when they have achieved their ethnostate.
But you never achieve the ethnostate. Far right ideaology is defined by who it excludes, because you have to have that inferior class to put yourself above. So if you get rid of all the "non-whites" then it doesn't become a magic utopia for white people, but rather you start to redefine white...then suddenly the Irish stop being white again. And it continues until it devours itself
I do find it interesting that you can get a finger on the pulse of the general health of the white power movement by seeing whether their definition of whiteness has expanded lately. All of those second klan bigots are rolling in their graves now that Catholics and even some Latin people are considered white.
"Well well Proud Boys, I see you're bolstering your ranks with Latinx - yeah I fucking said it - people now. I'm glad to see you're embracing diversity."
These aren't exactly the greatest minds of the nation. And the Nordic far right also hates queer purple, trans people and so on, so they wouldn't be short of people to sneer at. There is a strain of far right anti immigrant politics in Scandinavian countries that do boil down to "welfare state for white people" that has a good amount of electoral support and is seen as legitimate (as long as they remember to not say the "white" part out loud). Not dissimilar to Orban in Hungary, or other parties like that. The Sweden Democrats, Dansk Folkeparti, parts of the Norwegian Progress Party - although the latter has a nutjob libertarian wing that I'm personally grateful for. A party that manages to be seen as offering a strong welfare state (and I think also a degree of egalitarian values) but without those pesky immigrants could get worryingly popular.
I think Roberts talked about how the original Nazis had a strain of this mindset as well. They were literally socialist nationalists who wanted socialism but only for Aryans. Hitler wiped them out during the Night of Long Knives.
Not unless you’re going by a very soft definition of socialism like the kind the right wing of the US uses (any social welfare program is socialist) There were strasserists of course who did advocate some socialist ideas and I’m sure some others who had class based political views, but it was never mainstream Nazi ideology to advocate for public ownership of production. Critiques of capitalism were mostly critical of the people in charge, their personal greed and other flaws, not with the system of private ownership. This was of course highly tied to antisemitism, with Jewish capitalists being portrayed as having the worst of these traits and other industrialists were complicit in their greed. You’re not entirely wrong, in the earlier period before coming to power Nazis were willing to allow much more variety of economic theory in their ranks as long as you hated Jews and believed Germans to be supreme, and then anyone too far left was purged after they no longer needed as many allies. But the wording “the original Nazis were socialists” is incorrect and contributes to the liberal narrative that socialism is a breeding ground for fascism
Wasn't the Aryan ideal blonde hair and blue eyes, which did not even include Hitler?
Exactly. You have to have someone pick the fruit in hot weather, empty the trashcans, clean the toilets, make the coffee...
Kelly Osborne moment
She did come to mind. Though Florida's agriculture is in trouble too, without slaves, sorry, unskilled labour.
I kind of think with the right wing mindset being what it is they would end up viewing anyone who needed social welfare as unworthy of help anyway.
We already had “irish” before the great immigration wave, we have sami, romani and finlandic swedes whose lived here for centuries and further back. They would just go back to those again.
When I was in middle school, I came across a book that talked about the Know Nothings. I glossed over the usual list of "undesirables" they railed against (Jews, Blacks, Hispanic, etc) but "Catholic" gave me pause (I was raised Catholic). Italian was another (my grandmother was 2 when she arrived at Ellis Island). If I had been born 100 years earlier, I'd be considered mixed-race member of a minority religion. I've kept that in the back of my head whenever all that nonsense about the "white race" comes up.
Racists really jumped the shark when they let the irish be white.
That's certainly the case with the far right in the United States.
This is 100% the reason and honestly the reason why those countries have those welfare programs to begin with. It’s not that they’re just inherently more liberal and high-minded than anywhere else, it’s that there’s no cultural boogeyman that their moneyed class can blame everything on. It’s easy to trick poor white Americans to vote against their own self interests when you tell them that the minorities they’ve been taught to fear will also benefit, but when even the poorest of your society shares your culture, it’s suddenly not “free handouts to lazy so-and-sos,” it’s “helping out our own”
Kind of disagree with this analysis. The capital holders didn’t “give” workers here anything because we were nice and white. They never give anything to the working class. Workers organized,mobilized, won elections and claimed those benefits. Just like workers everywhere. We had strong unions and a very strong labor party. In Norway’s case, petro-riches kept the good times rolling,so even our conservatives didn’t really think it was worth the risk of pissing off the working class by dismantling welfare. For sure it is easier to malign non-white recipients of welfare here(like anywhere else,I guess), but race is not really a part of the origins of the Nordic model.
I agree the analysis is a little simplistic, but it is true that working class movements in the US and other places faltered at times because the capitalist class was able to manipulate people within the working class against the movement by stoking their racist anxieties. This isn’t to say the thing that a lot of racists will that Nordic Model and such “only works” because of their “homogeneous society” or any other bullshit like that. In many ways diversity and solidarity can create many advantages for a more equitable society. But that racism exploit in particular is not as easy for capitalists to leverage in a society where there is not a significant percentage of a minority group that is in the lower class, and that could very well have made it a lot easier for democratic socialists in the Nordic countries to organize.
I apologize for using the word “give,” I didn’t mean to imply that these sorts of welfare programs are products of corporate goodwill or something. Just that it’s much easier for politicians and capitalists to sow discord among the working class and prevent those sorts of collective actions when they can convince them that it’ll also help a minority they’ve been taught to fear, and distract them from the fact that it’s actually the capitalists themselves.
Fair enough! You are right in that ethnicity plays a role in today’s situation. You are also bang on with right voting lower class white people not recognizing that they are next once the “foreign elements” are “put in their place”. That holds as true here as in the US.
That makes sense actually, had a discussion with a coworker who's not the brightest crayon on the snack table. He said he would prefer a government that cuts labour law and Healthcare if it means his family is safe from a woke agenda. He couldn't explain the definition of woke, and then blamed queer immigrants for the price of groceries
Hey, that’s exactly like America!🇺🇸
>So they’d rather burn it all Seeing how far right operates in general, I'd say they just use those inmigrants as an excuse to remove those programs and move the money elsewhere (ahem, tax cuts, privatisation, etc.). Like all far right parties do.
That's an awful lot like what happened in the US, in fact.
It’s the same thing that happened after the civil rights movement in the United States.
Mmhmm. Europe and its generous aid for citizens only worked until the melanin hits a certain level. Then the racism comes out.
Seriously? You are going to judge the whole of Europe on the basis of a couple of cucks? The majority of people know that our state works because lift everybody up. Sweden has some issues now, a lot because they lacked the language to speak about the issues when they arose.
It's well documented that people become less supportive of social welfare that involves wealth redistribution as diversity increases. In white majority places, this is driven by racism in addition to regular old xenophobia.
^THE ^ANSWER ^IS ^RACISM
That makes sense
The right wing in Scandinavia has spent decades and millions on making people believe that the welfare state is the natural state, and not something won with hard political struggle by workers against the forces of capital. At least in my country if the left tries to claim much in the way of credit, they will immediately get a media shit storm from the right and most of the press for pushing biased propaganda. This strategy has worked so well that a majority of the people now truly believe that conservative parties have the peoples best interest at heart and that the left is only interested in increasing taxes for everyone , government overreach and doomed planned economics. People in important positions with huge paychecks have very little understanding of history and how the welfare state was created. This really scares me. For the furthest right they seem to believe their freedom consists of being left alone by the state to such a degree that they can remain ignorant and easily led by strong men. Fury road with no armed women or minorities is apparently paradise. (This last part isn't all that serious, as I'm too tired to go in depth after a long day, but I fully believe the rest of what I wrote. )
It's because historically the Nordic countries have been pretty singular, racial and demographic wise. With increases in immigration people have an 'other' to point to and say 'hey they are leaching off our social programs, we should stop these programs so 'those kinds' of people don't take advantage of them.' Its like a modern version of the welfare queen myth to scare people into things that damage their own quality of life in the hope of hurting people they are scared of. Once you make things bad for people then not only can you blame a minority but you can also present yourself as a singular solution to people's problems. This is a similar pattern to the US with Reagan removing social services leading to Trumps populist rhetoric.
I spent six months as a student in Sweden in college. My take from *average* people was a general displeasure with the lack of integration into Swedish society of many of the people that they had allowed to migrate to their country. The Swedes can be very liberal, but they also have a strong sense of community and nationality. Many of the migrant communities have remained *very* insular - and with their "ghettos" being basically suburbs outside of cities (the reverse of the United States) - it stays pretty easy to do that. Makes for some *amazing* food though, as Swedish cuisine doesn't get you very far...
I think basically this. Sweden is super liberal, but under that liberal and not far under is what i call "violently Swedish" any holiday is treated with some form of sacrosanct. You have to follow the rules, if anything Sweden is the country the bible south wishes it was. The integration is a massive part, I moved here 10 years ago, and was lucky to have the small issues I had other after me not so lucky, even being an EU migrant. Part of it is the stoic "you help yourself" which oddly isn't a cross nation thing. Simple things like SFI (Swedish for immigrants) is really dependent on your town or place even, it can be great or really shit. I think Sweden is great, but as a nation that welcomed people it kinda opened its doors to an empty room and wondered off. Then shocked Pikachu face when they created basically ghettos. I can go on about the systems, as it's quite a thing for me.
I also moved here from another EU country (14 years ago). Think you are sorta right. My take on the issue of integration is that immigrants that moved here or sought assulym were rarely able to secure any sort of job until they were nearly fully fluent in swedish. This wasn't the fault of the person but of society sorta demanding it. Therefore people become reliant on the state, whereas a person might not need to actually be fully fluent to do a job and may in fact benefit from learning a language both at SFI and in a workplace. This of course didn't apply to employers with a real international focus, where speaking English or Swedish wasn't an issue.
Absolutely. But also needing Swedish or a Swede to navigate a system that is enshrined. You can't live without a number (you can but it's hard work) your existence is in that number. You can get sfi with no number but no one tells you that. You can get a bank account with no number. But people just won't. It's maddening.
>I think Sweden is great, but as a nation that welcomed people it kinda opened its doors to an empty room and wondered off. Then shocked Pikachu face when they created basically ghettos. This really hits the nail on its head. Since the 1970s we have had an incredibly generous immigration policy, which worked well when close to no-one came here. Our system is (was) built upon the idea that the 100 people fleeing here from the Balkans or wherever will be integrated swiftly by maybe going to SFI for a few hours per day, since they will be surrounded by Swedes who will share their culture and norms with them. While I really like that we kept our open-door-policy for as long as we did, we really should have foreseen that 100 000 Somalis (or whichever culture) all living together in the same suburbs won't integrate themselves into the majority culture by maybe going to SFI a few hours per day. Our handling of it has been disastrous, and I blame the right as much as the left for not preparing anything when we clearly saw the rate of migration skyrocketing for years. I am proud of our generous migration policies, not so much of our handling of the situation that everyone must have understood would arise..
Yeh. The handling is and was appalling. I tried sfi and basically didn't get on with a teacher not speaking any English or explaining language, yeh I'm dyslexic but still it wasn't a great experience. I do think that the way Sweden handles laws is quite an issue the rape law and explosion law makes it seem really bad. I see the issue in local Facebook's where locals, really go with dog whistles . Unrelated we had the angry Dane in town, I also distinctly remember seeing NF march, it was like 6 guys, we had Jimmy the 1st year I was here and not many people. Last time it was a massive rally.
>I tried sfi and basically didn't get on with a teacher not speaking any English or explaining language, I hope (and think) it's become better, but all I heard from migrants I talked to was that they sang kindergarten songs and drank coffee for a few hours. Nothing preparing them for any sort of work. Some loved it of course, but most felt frustrated to be stuck there. >I do think that the way Sweden handles laws is quite an issue the rape law and explosion law makes it seem really bad. I see the issue in local Facebook's where locals, really go with dog whistles . I don't know what you mean by this. Could you elaborate? >Unrelated we had the angry Dane in town, I also distinctly remember seeing NF march, it was like 6 guys, we had Jimmy the 1st year I was here and not many people. Last time it was a massive rally. Haha, the Angry Dane^™️. That's horrible to hear. It sounds like you live in Skåne? The Nazis and their rallies generally thin out the further north you come, so I've been spared.
5-10 years ago it was bad for me. I hear it is really really site specific, might be shit might not be. But it's just language, not culture, which is hard in any situation to say what's "right" What I mean about the laws are that in most places rape is piv, in Sweden what would be groping/assault is rape, so numbers look really high and IMHO the association of rape rape, not assault, this isn't to reduce the severity of event, just explain how I see. The same with explosions, iir an explosion is anything called in that's a bang, and or police heard. So a firework is an explosion, a bomb is. So lots of explosions are not really bombs, kids and fireworks etc. once again yes it might be a targeted firework but it's not reported well. No sir. No I'm more northern. We had the Easter riots.
>Sweden is super liberal Lol no. By American definitions maybe, but not in the, you know, actual Liberalism sense.
>Swedish cuisine doesn't get you very far... ^*ouch*
>It's because historically the Nordic countries have been pretty singular, racial and demographic wise. what about the Sami people?
They have all traditionally oppressed the Sámi pretty hard. There's a reason there's estimated to be less than a hundred thousand Sámi currently.
Quick Google search shows they are most represented in Norway and make up ~1% of the Norwegian population. This is about the same as full non-mixed indigenous Americans' representation in the US according to the census bureau. Looking at some other quick numbers over 80% of Sweden is white, Norway is about 80% and Finland the same. I'd consider these numbers pretty singular considering America sits at 58% white (this number excludes Hispanic or latino white for whatever thats worth, with those included its about 75%).
Asking about the Sami is basically like saying "What about *insert native American tribe?"* in the United States when talking about race/ethnicity. Yes, it matters, but it is a fraction of a fraction. Also, the Sami are *way* north, so they can just kind of do their thing if they stay out of the way of any natural resources...
Problem with that is that northern Sweden is full of natural resources, and the Sami are regularly getting shafted. Both forest logging and mining impact Sami people a lot, and while it's better now than before, their voice is still disproportionately small.
They have this idea that the only people on social welfare are foreigners - specifically non white foreigners - and they are just really eager to make life for non white people as miserable as possible. On account of being racist assholes.
I'm a little unclear as to your confusion. The answer to the question is in the question. They're far right shit heads, so they want far right shit head policy, simple as.
Even far right shitheads have internally consistent self-justifications for what they believe in. Bad people don't think they are bad people. We all, every Human on Earth, act first in ways we believe will benefit us and then everyone else. How we define what that benefit is differs from person to person. By reducing people you disagree with to automatons carrying out illogical tasks you dehumanize those people *in your mind* and set you up to have preconceived notions about them. Try to keep in *your* mind that we all (just about) operate on our own \[roughly\] internally consistent criteria. Every single one of us has deeply held beliefs and those beliefs, while maybe incomprehensible to someone else, don't always just stem from "Well, fuck you buddy!" Marjorie Taylor Greene is about the more reprehensible person in congress, and as slimy and I personally think she is I believe she is acting in a way that she believes will benefit Her and her people. From where I'm sitting what she defines as a benefit, and who she qualifies for those benefits, seems horrendous to me. That does nothing to change the fact that in her mind she is acting with absolute righteousness. She isn't evil for the sake of being evil, she doesn't think of herself as evil or doing evil-- she thinks she knows the way to best order society and is working towards achieving that goal-- just like everyone else in the world.
[Nobody ever thinks they’re the villain of the story.](https://youtu.be/ToKcmnrE5oY?si=RN71WfKmb_m0aSov)
The Sweden Democrats are walking the slack tight rope of co-operating with right wing parties that wants to dismantle warfare, wanting to strip immigrants of all welfare and simultaneously increasing the welfare that large parts of their base subsist on. To say that their policies on welfare issues is fractured doesn't even begin to describe it.
The right is not known for policies that improve society
Happy cake day! And 100% correct The right wants richer billionaires; it’s less easy to exploit people when they are more vulnerable. Regulations and people’s welfare go hand in hand at keeping the wealthy from their goals.
Some people are just opposed to governments providing welfare and regulation. The reasons, justifications, etc. for those positions are varied, but that's basically the jist of it.
Providing welfare _to people they don't like_ and _regulating them_.
I will back my city sold all of it’s snow trucks to a private contractor, the thinking was that it will cost less to contract it because now the city will not have to pay 401k and such, the money will be invest in social things or on tax break. 10 years later and the unions are laughing in the face of the new mayor, it cost a shit load of money to manage snow in winter way more that if we had keep our trucks and our employees. Right wing thinking start (normally) with good intentions but end with new rich. The argument that money should go to « our » people first is a good one too, right wingers don’t care. They only want to take a jab at social program to axe them completely after. Because in the end for them life is a combat and you shouldn’t have a head start in combat even if they themselves have a head start.
It’s racism, but not just that. Here in Denmark, they’re trying to dismantle the government subsidy system for students (a monthly grant to make it so that many students can live off a part time job while studying), and making it so that people can’t start one education, change their mind and start a new one; at least not while retaining their ability to get the subsidy for the duration of their education. Some of it is racism, yes. But some of it is also just greed; they want to make our countries more capitalistic like the US, basically pulling the ladder up behind themselves. It’s fucked.
that makes sense more people being educated means more Doctors and Scientists
Those programs help everyone, not just the *right* people.
I’m Canadian and I’ve lived in the US for almost 10 years now. Let me tell you, what people outside of Canada think of Canada and what people inside of Canada think of Canada have nothing to do with each other. Far-rights are gonna far-right, and they couldn’t give less of a shit about how the international community perceive their country’s policies.
Canada only looks good because it’s next to the United States of America.
I also have a few friends in Sweden and the Netherlands. There’s a sense of complacency about social safety nets, just like in Canada. They’re taken for granted, and thus not protected enough, and thus have been slowly eroding by conservative agendas over the past 30-40 years. It’s the same trend everywhere.
People don’t know what they’d be missing until it’s gone — this happens all the time! See also Brexit and the like.
Its a little like Self-Important Patriots who like to promote Democracy, the Constitution, Small Government, and Freedom of Speech but when the get politically active they advocate for Autocracy, the Bible, a Government big enough to tell you what Gender you are, and the repression of speech that hurts their feelings. We all live with some level of cognitive dissonance, its just more noticeable in some people than others.
You'll find idiots everywhere.
Because people are super racist. And as a fellow swede ridiculously stupid. It is the same as the right wing insanity in the US some people just don't have any empathy for anybody else or their struggles/ needs for support.
It’s not just a lack of empathy. Many of our right wingnuts honestly believe that they struggled massively with no help to get where they are, and that struggle made them a “better stronger person.” They think removing the social safety nets will encourage the lower classes to be able to do the same. [For reference see Donald Trump building an empire all on his own with just a tiny million dollars from his father] Then throw some Jesus sprinkles on top by way of prosperity gospel (belief that “good” Christians are rewarded by god with success and “bad” people are punished with poverty struggles) and you have a jambalaya of the highly privileged telling the less privileged that they deserve to suffer. When people think god is making the decisions, they’ll justify all sorts of insanity. Not sure if this is quite as powerful a factor in Scandinavia, so be glad you’ve never heard of Joel Osteen.
In my experience, I disagree the people I have known that fell into right wing circles here have been young white men that have never struggled and because of that can't understand their own privilege. I want to an agricultural school we're most people were raised on their family farm and because if that had zero exposure to any kind of diversity both racially or sexuality or any other group right wingers hate. For example if you have a family farm that you have worked at as much as you can all your life you naturally have a job after school and because it that you never need any kind of social system assistance. They see this as the natural way for everyone. As a swede that sadly has lost friends to right wing nonsense, Christianity is not as big of a factor as in the US in my experience at least. There are crazy Christians here, too, but there is less overlap than it appears to be in the US from an outside perspective, at least. Here They go straight to neo nazism instead without religion as a stepping stone/excuse.
My saying they struggled may have been lost in translation. These people feel like they struggled. They believe that they overcame insurmountable odds and succeeded despite being given no advantages. Usually in reality their biggest struggle was not having their mom to do their laundry anymore. The right wing feels like they endured just as much adversity as someone who isn’t white and grew up in poverty. Or they faced just as much discrimination as someone who is not cisgender and escaped a childhood of abuse. An existence like that is so alien to them they cannot even conceptualize it. The poison comes when those people don’t want to admit that much of their success in life comes down to being lucky. When you can lay the blame for the sufferings of others on them, you don’t have to feel bad or do anything about it because those people deserve it.
Capital interests don't want happy workers that feel secure. You can't squeeze everything out of a person until you ruin all their social safety nets. Then they have to be grateful for any job they can get. Kind of like the US.
People on the right aren't there because they've actually thought about or understand what they're talking about.
Ask the US what happens when you slowly start cutting social programs/spending
Because racism. Also, the far-right as coopted a lot of right wing liberal talking points of welfare not necessarily being bad, but under attack of massive fraud and scams from immigrants/non-whites. But I think when push comes to shove the far right would sell out the welfare state in a second if it secured their power or it made the life of non-whites worse. They don't REALLY care for the working class. They're just useful idiots.
Here’s the thing about the far right: they’re dumb
It's not only Sweden that is slowly dismantling the welfare state, but the rest of the Nordics as well. Denmark's govt decided without consulting the rest of the Parliament, to take one bank holiday away in order to fund the military. They are also cutting into public social assistance. And the PM, a Social Democrat (you know that party that used to be for the workers) just said that people should forget about working less so more work reforms will come and bad ones for that matter. Also, it's already much easier to get laid off in Denmark than in a lot of other European countries, even though you get a pretty decent unemployment benefit if that happens (they call it flexicurity - flexibility & security). Finland's current govt (consisting of a far-right party, yay) is also going for some pretty bad work reforms like making it easier to dismiss employees, relaxing regulations on fixed-term contracts, making the first sick day a day without pay, reducing unemployment benefits, restricting political strikes, capping wage increases based on export sector wages and easing local bargaining. Then comes Norway who are also on par with dismantling the welfare state and becoming more neoliberal. The healthcare is in decline and the govt is not doing enough to stop that, they are also affected by the lack of affordable housing and the rising cost of living. Also, last year there were 38 people murdered in the country, the highest number in 10 years. And as of today, there have been 24 people killed since the beginning of the year, people killing their family members (incl. children) and then themselves, men and women killing their partners etc. There seems to be something that has been tipping people over the edge. So yeah, we're all in a race to the bottom, so let's see who gets there first, yay!
why did the far-right parties get elected?
In Finland? Finns have to correct me if I'm wrong, but It seems people were not happy about the level of public debt has grown under the previous govt, they were also not happy with the climate change policies of the previous govt (thinking that they've gone too far). And the same old same old, fear of immigrants (despite the fact that they have taken much less refugees per capita than the rest of the Nordics).
why has the public debt grown?
It is kinda fascinating. Here in Denmark the welfare state as we know it have always been contentious, and the current iteration is a far cry from perfect. We do have a strong workers identity and as such a tradition for unionization and so on. The welfare state pushback, is mostly from the center right but in the early 70es a party founded on a ‘taxation is theft’ platform (the forward party) with a charismatic leader, Mogens Glistrup, a consummate dickhead, who went to jail for tax evasion came about. They were HARD right anarco capitalist nationalists and very anti muslim. They won a landslide victory in 73, I think, and sort of petered out. From them arose such luminaries as Pia Kjærsgaard, who formed the core of the danish people party, a populist far right party who mainly ran on an anti immigrant (read Muslim) platform. They had a niche appeal to the working class Danes, who by and large are racism-adjacent. At the turn of the century former head of state Anders Fogh, another anti government, tax slashing, all around dickhead, formed a coalition with DPP as DPP was still technically on the economic far right as well (though they ran heavily on elder care and animal welfare as well as racism) then 9/11 happened and their popularity exploded - over the next 15-20 years they were basically king makers, untouchables really. Enabling a haaaard right turn all in all. This led to our current beloved leader and absolute worst person, Mette Frederiksen to do what is possibly the most astute manouver in modern danish politics. She is ostensibly on the left, leader of the biggest danish party the social democrats. They are the historical political embodiment of the danish worker. Now a neo liberal, new public management horror show but a LOT of people still buy into the old fashioned worker party schtick As DPP saw themselves as untouchable, they decided to push this a bit more and gain even more influence. Straight off a historically huge election win their leader agreed to make a public parlay with Mette Frederiksen. The message was ‘We aren’t opposed to working together” which was supposed to make the center right party acquiesce more power to DPP. What happened however was that Mette Frederiksen sent a nationwide message to every single voter of the DPP that she and the social democrats had adopted the DPP’s stance on immigration (again read Muslims). This essentially siphoned all but a handful of Voters from DPP, who had always attracted racist workers or voters who didn’t give two shits about economic governance as long as they got to hate Muslims. The DPP was always a bit of a dirty secret, not polite company, so seeing a possibility to be represented by a mainstream party was a huge temptation for most people who voted DPP before. This has left us with a on paper, center left social Democrat party who were already very much center right, neo liberal dog shit, which now is also hardcore anti Muslim. With a base that again is comprised of what is essentially right wing racist. They are very much calling the shots in terms of policy overall and meet very little push back from the left, which is essentially comprised of a single party that have become bogged down in the sheer amount of causes that are relevant. Right now, the most likely next head of state in Denmark is either faux left wing Mette F, centrist but really anti tax pro business and farmers Lars Lokke or Anarco capitalist libertarian and Jordan Peterson fan Alex Vanopslach. Or as someone succinctly put it; because of racism.
When we talk about the Nordic "far right", are we talking about the mainstream political parties on what would be considered the far right here? I can only speak for Norway, but the Progress Party here (FrP) love the idea of cutting taxes and all the typical rhetoric. It turns out that's kind of a bad idea, though, as it turns out those pay for cool shit we get. They know it, too, and they know they'd get eaten alive if they actually touched people's socialized healthcare, unemployment, all that. Basically, they stick to talking about people who don't *deserve it*. They like to sit around making up scenarios where immigrants come here with their 16 children, all of whom are just going straight on unemployment. Shit like that.
How much do you want to bet they only want to cut social spending for immigrants?
There's always a few poisoned brains out there who will absolutely reject reality. That's why you need constant vigilance. Peace is actively maintained, never eternal.
Isnt it thw same in americs, to other degrees.
Its just bigotry, it's not a mystery.
what the far right in Finland say, is that they think there’s too many workshy people just leeching off welfare, including drug addicts who the system enables. they also accuse immigrants of abusing the system, and say the generosity if the aystem attracts immigrants who specifically seek out Finland for the generous benefits. it’s a fundamental disagreement on the efficacy of the system. in my view, it works as intended. not perfect, people slip through the cracks, but at least there’s fewer cracks and they’re more narrow. but of course, in power, the reality dawns that there isn’t a magic lever they can pull where they can just cut the parts they hate that doesn’t either 1. hurt a lot of people that don’t fit their model of bad recipient, or 2. involve a method of means testing that costs way too much money to implement 3. break the Finnish constitution or the European agreement on human rights. so, as just a practical matter they just pick option 1, justify it by just saying it’s about cutting abuse, and then dodging responsibilty. last time they were in power, they split towards the end of the elction cycle, and everyone who was in the caninet splintered off to a party that died. and the new guard, who dutifully voted for every cut and deregulation, can just shift the blame to the other guys. [ed] a tl;dr. the idea of welfare cuts sounds good to a lot of people who don’t think about the actual rubber meets road reality of it. it’s easy to run on, but problematic to implement.