Far Right

Even as the ‘extremist’ AfD seeks further election gains in Germany, Europe’s leaders can learn from Sweden’s dangerous embrace with far-right ideologyDon’t get This Is Europe delivered to your inbox? Sign up hereEurope’s focus turned nervously to Sweden on Sunday, after an explosive election in Germany just a week earlier placed a far-right party, officially classed as “extremist”, on the brink of power in a German state for the first time since the Nazi era. A party with neo-Nazi roots has been pulling the government’s strings in Sweden for the last four years – would the country’s general election put the far right formally in government? Or would enough Swedes opt for a gear change, having seen the Sweden Democrats’ hardline (some would say poisonous) agenda in action?Votes were still being counted on Wednesday but it was immediately clear that the far-right Sweden Democrats had suffered a setback; their first loss of support among voters since it entered parliament for the first time 16 years ago. The party slipped from being the country’s second biggest party to its third. Continue reading...

• Sweden's extreme right lost voter support in a recent weekend election for the first time in over 15 years. • Party leader Jimmie Akesson stated on election night that the party lost several percentage points compared to its results from four years ago. • This decline marks a shift for the party, which has now ceded its position as the second-largest political force in the Nordic country.

Neck-and-neck with Lula in polls, Flávio Bolsonaro fires up his base in the bellwether state of Minas Gerais – starting at the scene of his father’s stabbingA giant banner of Brazil’s incarcerated former president Jair Bolsonaro fluttered in the morning breeze as his eldest son, Flávio, touched down at an airfield on the fringe of a city that will soon help decide the future of one of the biggest democracies on earth.“Brazil is rudderless. Brazil has no president and Brazil needs a president – and that president is Flávio Bolsonaro,” the far-right senator declared as he waded into the flock of supporters who had gathered to welcome him to Juiz de Fora, one of the largest cities in the battleground state of Minas Gerais. Continue reading...

The Sweden Democrats slipped to third after decades of growth, but their hardline positions have already reshaped the political mainstreamSwedish centre-left opposition widens lead to three seats with 95% of votes counted – liveSince the party was founded in 1988, the story of the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD) has been one of such continuous growth that a triumph in Sunday’s general election seemed inevitable.In 2022, they capitalised on electoral gains – and the desperation of right-leaning parties to form a minority administration – and almost made their way into government. A supporting role in prime minister Ulf Kristersson’s Tidö coalition earned the party, which has neo-Nazi roots, huge influence and mainstream acceptance by the political establishment. Continue reading...

Country heads to the polls as latest polling shows 0.3-point gap between left and right wing blocsin StockholmHej, that’s hello in Swedish, from Stockholm, where I spent this morning eating Swedish pastry and meatballs talking to voters about the country’s prospects as they cast their votes in today’s parliamentary elections. Continue reading...

Party with neo-Nazi roots is in line for key ministerial positions if rightwing bloc wins the electionVoting is under way in Sweden in a high-stakes election that could lead to the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD) entering government for the first time.It comes after an unusually heated and polarised campaign punctuated by personal attacks between leaders, accusations of misinformation and Maga-inspired ads. Polls suggest an extremely tight race, with one showing just 0.3 percentage points between the left and right blocs. Continue reading...

Authorities were caught off guard by the disruption, which they labelled a ‘protest’ despite mass intimidation tacticsTo anybody watching the videos of a group of masked men, all wearing black, descending on the port of Dover last weekend, it was immediately obvious that something novel and disturbing was happening: a mass intimidation in uniform not seen in Britain since the 1930s.Yet to the police and the rest of the UK’s intelligence apparatus, the arrival of the men chanting “stop the boats” was a surprise, despite the fact that residents of a village 18 miles away tried to report that dozens of men were congregating there on the Friday, threatening to go to Dover and “attack Muslims”. Continue reading...