The problem with the Sweden Democrats

Pretty inflated. Jimmie Åkesson, Sverigedemokraterna party leader, with his hot air balloon near Stockholm, August 18th

Can it be possible to “disenchant” a right-wing populist party through cooperation with a government? This is one of the questions about which the Riksdagsval on September 13th, the election for the Riksdag, Sweden's unicameral parliament, will reveal a lot. The bourgeois coalition of Christian Democrats, Liberals and the conservative coalition party Moderaterna has been a minority government since 2022, which has so far received parliamentary support from the right-wing populist to right-wing extremist Sverigedemokraterna (Sweden Democrats, SD). According to the latest survey, this Tidö camp, named after the castle of the same name where the four parties directly or indirectly involved in the government decided to work together, could face defeat, according to the latest survey. The Social Democrats, the Left, the Greens and the Center would together come to 50.6 percent, while Tidö only achieved 47.3 percent. The result of the Liberals will be particularly important as they could fail at the four percent hurdle.

For the SD, the support of the government was quite a success. Many of their demands were met – the age of criminal responsibility was lowered from 15 to 14 in serious cases, stricter migration policies were enforced, juvenile penalties were toughened and police powers were expanded. Similar to the Saxony-Anhalt AfD, the SD see themselves as a patriotic bulwark in a culture war against social pluralism. In their election manifesto, they threaten, among other things, with the withdrawal of state funding for organizations and media that do not correspond to their ideological guidelines. According to the wishes of the SD, the "Sverigehus", the Falun-red wooden house known from children's series such as "The Children of Bullerbü", is to be placed under special protection; The building permits previously required for this should either be simplified or completely abolished.

In contrast to the Sverigedemokraterna, the AfD has never "tried to become house trained," writes Håkan A. Bengtsson from the Arenagruppen think tank. The difference, however, is “more of a degree.”

Sweden has already taken a step forward in the fight against public broadcasting, which is particularly despised by the SD: in the new Public Service Act passed in 2025 and the broadcasting mandate for 2026 to 2033, the requirement to design the program with particular consideration of impartiality and objectivity was removed. At least Swedish newspaper publishers are not unhappy about another drastic intervention: the publishing of long, purely text-based news articles on the websites of public broadcasters has been regulated. In the future, such texts will only be allowed to appear if they complement the actual core activity, i.e. broadcasts. The broadcasters also have to give an account of these text contributions every year. Print media, particularly local newspapers, had repeatedly complained that public news websites represented strong taxpayer-funded competition for daily and weekly newspapers.

However, the SD don't want to leave it at that. The election manifesto states that the public broadcasters should be “slimmed down but better”. The Sweden Democrats want them to only broadcast news, information, social and educational programs as well as reports on crisis preparedness and national security. Entertainment programs, sports and other commercially usable formats should be reduced. In the current election campaign, this part of the culture war took up a lot of space, and the election is therefore also seen as a decision about the position of public broadcasting.

Håkan A. Bengtsson, the head of the left-liberal Swedish think tank Arenagruppen, compared the SD and the AfD in an essay last week. He pointed out that the SD chairman Jimmie Åkesson had said several times that the voters did not like the cooperation with "the bourgeois parties" and that the SD were not. According to Bengtsson, the governing parties had probably hoped that the SD would be transformed through cooperation. And in fact the »SD tried to get rid of members who expressed anti-Semitic and other extreme views. But at the same time, these views have a tendency to continually re-emerge,” leading to “a continuous stream of new revelations, exclusions, and retractions.”

In contrast to the SD, the AfD never "tried to be house trained," writes Bengtsson. The difference, however, is “more of a degree than a fundamental one.” Nevertheless, according to current polls, the SD will probably be among the election losers for the first time on September 13th and will lose around one percentage point compared to the 20.5 percent of the vote won in 2022. One of the reasons why the SD appears to be hardly winning new voters despite its considerable political influence is the party's contradictory relationship with Russia.

Russia is now considered a serious military threat, as was most recently demonstrated in August when the public television station SVT exposed the machinations of a pro-Putin troll network that deliberately spread false information about alleged election fraud and Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson

Although Sweden's accession to NATO was hotly debated in 2022, today even the Left and the Greens, who back then vehemently advocated a continuation of the neutrality policy, are against leaving the alliance. Russia is now considered a serious military threat, as was most recently demonstrated in August when the public television station SVT exposed the machinations of a pro-Putin troll network that deliberately spread false information about alleged election fraud and Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson. On X and other platforms, the group posted fake video clips bearing the logos of reputable European newspapers.

The fake news was usually only clicked on a few hundred times, but research by the French agency for countering foreign digital influence and disinformation, Viginum, showed that clicks were not the creators' goal. Rather, the films are specifically and en masse forwarded to fact-checkers in order to make their work more difficult.

However, Russia's hybrid attacks are more serious. On September 4th, SVT reported on increased threats to Swedish defense companies, so far mainly through cyberattacks and disinformation. Shortly before this, Expo magazine had reported on SD connections to Russia. Polina Malaberg, an employee of the SD parliamentary group in the Constitutional Committee, spread Russian propaganda on her social media accounts for more than ten years. She has been working for the party since 2017 and was also there when her boss, MP Pavel Gamov, traveled to Russia as an observer of regional elections at the invitation of “actors close to the Kremlin” (Expo). Malaberg has good connections with the party leadership; she lives with Gustav Gellerbrant, who played a key role in bringing about the Tidö agreement. She is also active in a Russian-speaking Stockholm theater network, which, according to the magazine, is connected to the Russian Ministry of Culture. Åkesson reacted irritably to the Expo publication and said that they did not know whether sensitive information had reached Russia.

According to Håkan A. Bengtsson, this irritation could also stem from the fact that there are serious fears within the SD that voters could turn to other right-wing parties. For example, the Örebroparti, which has a good chance of being elected to the Reichstag. Founded by Markus Allard, a former leftist, it is characterized by its very own mix of right and left populism, nationalism and social demands. With an election success, the party could develop into a competitor for the SD in the near future. In other words: whether they are included or kept out, there will continue to be no shortage of populist parties.