One of the political parties that had a couple members at the Counterjihad Brussels 2007 conference was the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna). The U.S. blog http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com (aka LGF) has suggested that the Sweden Democrat party has “disturbing connections.”

I. BACKGROUND

Bruce Bawer, the respected author of While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within, has written favorably of the Sweden Democrats in “While Sweden Slept”:

[...]Only one sizable party in the country, the Sweden Democrats, articulates most Swedes’ concerns about their country’s immigration and integration policies. Again and again, it has been the object of breathtakingly undemocratic treatment by the political establishment. Earlier this year, for example, the government closed down the Sweden Democrats’ Web site because it had published a cartoon of Muhammad. Stig Fredriksson, head of the free-speech organization Publicistklubben, complained bitterly. But the incident was hardly reported in Sweden - and, of course, barely caused a ripple abroad. If the Bush administration had closed down a Democratic Party Web site¸ there would be scare headlines and editorials thundering about dictatorship - and rightly so. But when Sweden’s rulers did it, it was apparently acceptable - because they did it in the name of political correctness.

Sweden Democrats have been the targets of events that recall China’s Cultural Revolution. Staged “people’s protests” by members of the “youth divisions” of other parties have led to the firing of Sweden Democrats from their jobs. A few weeks ago, a junior diplomat was dismissed when it became known that he was a member of the party and had criticized his country’s immigration policy. On several occasions, thugs loyal to the ruling parties have broken up Sweden Democratic meetings and beaten up party leaders. And this is a nation in which a party led by an admitted communist was, in recent memory, part of the ruling coalition.

The Sweden Democrats enjoy considerable public sympathy. But given Sweden’s oppressively conformist political climate, that sympathy is of necessity largely sub rosa. Mr. Friedman has suggested that one reason why the party has no seats in Parliament is that Swedish elections aren’t really secret - other people at the polling place can look at your ballot and see which party you support. The stigma attached to voting for the Sweden Democrats is just that strong. Another reason is that the major parties have worked together vigorously to keep the Sweden Democrats out of the public square. The success of this collaborative effort is reflected in the fact that Sweden is the only major Western European country whose legislature contains not a single representative of a party critical of its immigration policies.[...]

They are definitely a party on the rise (see their official website here). Sweden Democrats on the Malmo City Council (Malmo has seen severely increased levels of crime due to unlimited immigration and failed assimilation) have suggested paying immigrants to leave and banning future immigration. Their success in the 2006 election (2.9% of the popular vote) gave them access to state funding. They are represented in over half of municipal governments. In October 2007, they launched a nationwide drive to change immigration policies at the local levels. In a poll of over 5,000 Swedes in September 2007, they were the third most popular party among Swedish men, putting them (for men) ahead of the Christian Democrats, the Green Party, the Centre party, the Left party, and only .1 percentage point behind the Liberal Party. Swedish popular opinion is tending against “multiculturalism” - in a recent poll, 49.8% said that headscarves should be banned at the workplace and in schools.

Most analysts across the political spectrum agree that the Sweden Democrats will gain seats in the Parliament in the next election, making them a potential tie-breaker on votes contested between the two coalitions now in power.

Fortunately, Conservative Swede, who participated in the Counterjihad Brussels 2007 Conference, has written a series of brief articles linked and excerpted below, a must-read about the Sweden Democrats and the sorry state of political resistance to Islamisation in today’s Sweden.

First, some documentary background on the Sweden Democrats, provided and translated by Ted Ekeroth, Sverigedemokraterna’s treasurer in Lund, in southern Sweden, who also participated in the Counterjihad Brussels 2007 conference. Ekeroth is pro-Zionist and Jewish, and a recipient of the 2006 Herzl award of the World Zionist Organization, “given annually to outstanding young men and women in recognition of their exceptional efforts on behalf of Israel and the Zionist cause.”

II. DOCUMENTS ON SWEDEN DEMOCRATS, AND ON THEIR POSITIONS ON ISRAEL

1. An overview presentation about the party

2. 2006 Sweden Democrats motion in defense of Israel (opposing Church of Sweden’s position against Israel )

3. 2005 Sweden Democrats press release demanding immigration policy change to prevent increased anti-semitism

4. 2006 statement by Bjorn Soder, party secretary of the Sweden Democrats, supporting Israel in the 2006 war with Hezbollah

5. Excerpts from an essay by Dan Wickstrom on the past Nazi affiliations of leaders of many other Swedish political parties and from an essay on past racist policies of other Swedish parties

6. A brief history of the Mengel leaflet fundraising incident..

7. A 2004 editorial by Ekeroth on Arafat

III. SERIES ON SWEDEN AND SWEDEN DEMOCRATS

Conservative Swede’s Series on Europe, Sweden and the Sweden Democrats

(Excerpts below - but read the whole series - an investment of a few minutes, and the right and proper thing to do, given the severity of the LGF allegations)

Part 1: Counterjihadism changing the European political map

[...]Since November 2001 a government backed by the Danish People’s Party is ruling in Denmark. With the 9/11 attacks and the far-going Islamization of Europe as background, European nationalism is no longer a fringe issue. Now there is real substance to it, and a real critical mass of popular support has emerged, and the good example of the Danish People’s Party has shown the way.In this process we see new parties emerging, the original nationalist parties transforming, and old traditional parties joining. In the last decade we’ve seen the creation of the UK Independence Party, Philippe de Villiers’ Mouvement pour la France, and the Danish People’s Party, to name a few. Nationalist parties, such as the Sweden Democrats, have been transformed (more about that later). Traditional parties such as the Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) have joined. Also Partido Popular in Spain takes a strong anti-Jihad position with their Foreign Affairs Spokesman Gustavo de Arístegui. There are many more examples. Many reasons for hope.[...]

Part 2: Sweden Democrats and Hollywood Nazis

[NOTE: This article provides clear refutation of the link between Sweden Democrats and a photo of a woman in a Nazi uniform at http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com]

[...]Worries and warnings have been raised that we had invited crypto-Nazis to the Counterjihad summit in Brussels. One of the prime examples mentioned of such an alleged crypto-Nazi is Ted Ekeroth of the Sweden Democrats. This claim is completely ridiculous. Ted Ekeroth is a Jew and Sweden’s most high profile pro-Zionist. For this he was awarded with the prestigious Herzl Award last year.[...]

[...]I google “Tina Hallgren Bengtsson” and find this Wikipedia page in Swedish. It tells us that she left the Sweden Democrats (SD) in 1996 and joined Nationalsocialistisk Front (NSF), the Nazi Party. The picture above is from 1996, so this suggests to me that the picture has been taken during one of the Nazi rallies of NSF. This is the typical modus operandi of Expo, to paint the tendentious image that the photo is from an SD meeting. I can assure you that if this were a valid claim–that SD indeed have had meetings where people attended in Nazi uniforms–it would have been all over the Swedish MSM. But it’s not. This kind of photo+caption of Expo instead serves another purpose: as the pretext for leftist stormtroopers (Antifa) before harassing SD individuals by swinging an axe into their door, or rocks through their windows. Or when they violently sabotage public meetings of SD. And to these leftist stormtroopers it doesn’t matter that SD is Sweden’s most pro-Israel party, to these leftists the Israelis are Nazis too. [...]

Part 3: It’s a riddle

[...]As Edmund Burke said “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Good and decent people do not want to be ostracized, i.e. being socially “killed” and lose their job etc., for opposing Islamization. The do not want to have “Racist!” and “Nazi!” hurled after them. They do not want to be beaten up by leftist stormtroopers, while the establishment is looking the other way. So if we are all going to be good people, we should just do nothing, and evil will triumph, in form of Islamo-leftism.Nevertheless, during the last two decades three frogs have tried to jump in Sweden. The first two were effectively stopped by the omnipotent power of the Swedish PC system. The third frog is the Sweden Democrats. It made a successful jump in last year’s election — after essentially having been jumping up and down for almost two decades. And next election in 2010, nothing can stop it from jumping right into the parliament.[...]

Part 4: The effect of the Constitution in Sweden

[...]So who decides in Sweden who will participate in presentations/debates on TV? Obviously all the 41 parties cannot participate. By tradition the parties that are represented in parliament participates, and nobody would accept otherwise. But among the new parties, which will participate? And who will decide?

The answer is the the whole power of this decision lies with the journalists of the Swedish Television. We know from other countries how the journalists are a guild where conformism is strong, and almost all think alike, even more so in Sweden. Furthermore, the Swedish Television is owned by a foundation where the board members are appointed by the government. No, Sweden definitely doesn’t have a system of checks and balances. And for the last seven decades the Social Democrats has been in power in a total of 60 years, so the board of the Swedish Television is just one of the many long arms of Swedish state socialism.[...]

Part 5: Sweden and Denmark, closed and open systems

[...]There’s simply no diversity in Swedish media, and they essentially all write the same things. Also the supposedly “independent Moderat” (i.e. the most right-wing you get) Svenska Dagbladet wrote in 1975, when the US withdrew, the Vietnam was liberated. When it comes to people and individuals who have concerns about the mass immigration, they are simply blocked out. The are not allowed to write columns or letters to the editor. Even advertising is refused. And if they are ever mentioned, the journalistic guild has agreed to always tag the prefix “xenophobic” before every mentioning of them. At the Swedish Television this was even written down in their guidelines, regarding the Sweden Democrats.[...]

Part 6: Brief History of Anti-establishment parties in Sweden

[...]After 9/11, more and more people have seen the urgency of the Islamisation of our country, and how it is connected to the regime of mass immigration that is pushed upon us by the elite. This, and also the changes that they can see happening in Denmark since 2001, made more and more people decide to do something about it. To start with they started to protest by voting for the “evil” party. But casting a protest vote every four years, is simply not enough. People have joined the party and transformed it. The transformation was completed by the election of Jimmie Åkesson as the new leader of the party in 2005. This was possible just because the people of Sweden knew this party existed. And there was no other anti-establishment party available on the arena.[...]

Part 7: The New Party and how it was crushed

For Westerners living far away from Europe, it can sometimes be very hard to grasp the gravity of the political situation in particular European countries. People from Eastern Europe have in recent memory the reaction from some such Westerners, when they heard about how there was no food to buy in the food store: “So why didn’t you go to another food store to buy food?” In the same manner we have recently heard across the Atlantic the (in another context perfectly sensible, but here not at all applicable) objection, that the Swedish anti-jihadists, instead of joining and co-operating with the Sweden Democrats (who everybody knows and agrees has some very problematic things in their past), should have started a fresh new party undoubtedly free from any historical baggage of real, imagined or distant neo-Nazi connections, or anything of the sort.

[...] And Hans Bergström continues: ‘this is unparalleled for a democracy and a state governed by law. Fifteen coarse meeting disturbances. The worst in Lund. Broken campaign trucks and fifteen murder threats against a political party in the middle of an election campaign in Sweden did not result in one single preliminary investigation. In the majority of places the police remained entirely passive. In some cases they put up gigantic riot barriers that also hindered the holding of an ordinary political meeting. Everything in order to avoid having to intervene against political hooligans having no understanding that freedom of assembly belongs to democracy.[...]

In conclusion - the Sweden Democrats are a small party on the rise. They have rejected their extremist past. They are represented in over half of local municipalities. They have the approval of European experts such as Bruce Bawer. They demonstrate strong support for Israel and opposition to anti-Semitism. They will probably enter Parliament in the next election. They are uniquely - in their country - opposed to Islamisation and unlimited immigration, which in Europe is inexorably tied to Islamisation.

These are not disturbing connections . They are real-world signs of progress.