44 Europe The EconomistNovember 28th 2020
2 The party is planning for the long term.
Its leaders swap notes with American Re-
publicans. Mr Karlsson has set up a think-
tank. Mr Kroon runs a fast-growing federa-
tion for students. Many are “tired of politi-
cal correctness”, he says, and need “a new
home” outside the “opinion corridor” of
socially acceptable (ie, left-liberal) views.
At the national level, centre-right par-
ties have resisted the temptation to cut a
deal with the Sweden Democrats, though it
would give them a swift path to power. But
the taboo is fading. Local politicians have
already taken the plunge. The Sweden
Democrats enjoy power or a share of it in
several towns, especially in the conserva-
tive south. Some of their local leaders are
risibly incompetent. But others are eager to
show that they are not scary and can handle
the humdrum tasks of government.
The party’s showcase is Solvesborg, a
town of 17,000. The mayor, Louise Erixon,
is the ex-partner of the party’s national
leader, Jimmie Akesson. She is popular,
pro-business and unashamedly populist.
She boasts of hiring more security guards,
banning begging and barring visits to nurs-
ing homes to protect the elderly from co-
vid-19. She favours drug tests in schools,
and repatriation for immigrants “who re-
fuse to be a part of [Swedish] society”. She
accuses the mainstream parties of weaken-
ing “good old Swedish togetherness”. She is
thought to have national ambitions.
Ms Erixon came to power thanks to a
deal with the centre-right Moderate party,
whose national leaders opposed it. But a lo-
cal one, Emilie Pilthammar, went ahead,
for bread-and-butter reasons. Ms Piltham-
mar says she wanted to bring down a cro-
nyist left-wing administration, boost local
business and provide more choice in child
care. However she later fell out with Ms
Erixon, who she says would give council-
lors only a few minutes to read key docu-
ments before making a decision on them—
something she says was bad for democracy.
(Ms Erixon denies this.)
Mr Karlsson is “very optimistic” that the
Sweden Democrats will gain a share of na-
tional power, perhaps after an election in- Nils Karlson (no relation) of Ratio, a
research institute, predicts that the centre-
right will not join a formal coalition with
them but might form a looser arrange-
ment, whereby the Sweden Democrats
“consent” to a centre-right government in
exchange for policy concessions. “That
scares me a lot,” he adds.
Meanwhile, the mainstream parties
have all but adopted the Sweden Demo-
crats’ policies on shutting out new refu-
gees. Mattias Karlsson’s suggestion that
Sweden does not send Afghans back to Af-
ghanistan would come as news to Jacob
(not his real name), who was deported last
year. His claim to asylum appeared water-
tight: he arrived in Sweden as a 14-year-old
orphananda memberofa persecutedmi-
nority.HehadfledAfghanistanafterhisfa-
therdisappeared(andwasprobablymur-
deredbytheTaliban).Hehasstudiedhard,
learnedSwedishandstayedoutoftrouble.
He is nowback in Kabul taking maths
classes.“YesterdaywhenI wasinschool,a
rocketexplodedoutside.Andagaintoday.
It’shard,”hesays.TheSwedishfamilywho
tookhiminwhilehewasinSweden,the
Winbergs,havefoundhima permanentjob
ata trendyvegetarianrestaurantinStock-
holm.Intheory,heshouldgeta workvisa
andbeallowedtoreturn.ButHansWin-
berg,anacademic,fretsthatthegovern-
mentisdoingeverythingit cantokeepref-
ugeesout.“Theclimatehaschanged,”he
says.“Thisispainfultomeasa Swede.”But
manySwedeswelcomeit. 7SWEDEN
NORWAYFINLANDESTONIA
LATVIALITHUANIADENMARKMalmoSolvesborgGothenburgCopenhagenNorwegian
SeaBaltic
SeaHelsinkiVilniusTallinnOslo
StockholmRigaArcticCircle250 kmI
n august acriminal clan set up road-
blocks in Gothenburg to catch members
of a rival gang. The police intervened and
made several arrests, but failed to charge
anyone. The gang war in Gothenburg even-
tually ended not because the cops stopped
it, but because the gangsters negotiated a
truce. Swedes are shocked to see such in-
stances of the forces of law and order losing
control of the country’s streets.
Sweden remains exceptionally safe—its
murder rate is only a fifth of America’s. But
a surge of spectacular gang crimes has cap-
tured public attention. This summer two
Swedish teenagers were tortured and rapedin a cemetery in a so-called humiliation
crime. In the first half of this year 20 peo-
ple, mostly young men, were killed in 163
shootings. A study in 2018 found that a man
aged 15 to 29 in Sweden is ten times more
likely to get shot than in Germany.
The problem is concentrated in highly
segregated immigrant neighbourhoods. In
Husby, a suburb of Stockholm, more than
80% of the population are migrants or the
children of migrants, most of them from
Iraq, Somalia, Syria and Turkey. The scene
of ugly riots seven years ago, Husby is offi-
cially classified as one of 22 “extremely vul-
nerable areas” prone to crime and violence.
Unemployment in such neighbourhoods is
high. Thanks to restrictive labour rules, it
is hard for unskilled newcomers to find
jobs. Many teenage boys skip school; gangs
offer a sense of purpose and belonging.
Around half the street-gang members
are foreign-born; 85% have an immigrant
background. The gangs are loosely organ-
ised, without a strict hierarchy. Their fre-
quent use of extreme violence is a sign of
immaturity, says Amir Rostami of Stock-
holm University. More mature gangs in
Germany are less violent, he explains, be-
cause it is “bad for business”.
Many native Swedes are calling for
tougher policing. So are many immigrants,
who suffer most from crime. Sweden has
only two cops per 1,000 inhabitants, com-
pared with three in Germany. The govern-
ment recently decided to hire 6,000 more
police and 4,000 in supporting jobs by- Erik Nord, chief of the Gothenburg
police, wants 10,000 more officers (and the
4,000 support staff ), and more camera sur-
veillance too. The police were only recently
allowed to tap criminals’ phones.
Operation Hoarfrost, launched after the
fatal shooting of a 15-year-old in November
last year, brought in police from across
Sweden to crack down on crime in Malmo,
a southern city. In recent years the culprit
has been arrested in only 20% of gangland
murders. The city hopes that more officers
and better policing methods will improve
this dismal record.
Sweden is also trying to learn from
nearby Denmark and Germany. “We want
to follow the Danish model,” says Johan
Forssell, an mpfor the centre-right Moder-
ate party, pointing out that gang members
from Stockholm who committed a murder
in Denmark were sentenced to 20 years in
prison, whereas in Sweden they would
have got four years in a social institution
because they were under 18.
Police from Sweden went to Essen and
Berlin, German cities with high levels of
clan criminality, to study local policing. In
particular, the Swedes are considering Ger-
many’s tougher gun laws and its methods
for confiscating criminal funds. It will take
time to reverse the trend, says Mr Rostami,
but Sweden is belatedly confronting it. 7
STOCKHOLM
Sweden struggles to curb gang violenceSwedish gang violenceSegregated cities