https://www.svt.se/nyheter/val2018/sverige-gar-till-val-2018

So far the votes in 6002 out of 6004 districts total has been counted.

The Red-Green block has so far gotten 40,6% of the votes, and the right-wing Alliance has gotten 40,3%. The Sweden Democrats has gotten 17,6 of the votes.

That means that it looks like the Red-Greens will have 144 seats in the parliament, the Alliance will get 143, while SD will get 62 seats. Since the parliament has 349 seats that means neither block has a big enough majority (174+ seats) to pass a budget (and therefore form a government) on their own.

There will be an additional 50k preliminary and expat votes coming in on Wednesday, but they're unlikely to sway the result much.

The Red-Greens would probably require the support of The Center and Liberal parties to stay in control, but they're unlikely to support a government with the Leftist Party in it (the Leftists has gained votes while the bigger Social Democrat party has lost some).

On the other hand, the major party of the Alliance block (the Moderates) wouldn't be able to form a government without the support of the nationalist SD. But while the Christian Democrats (KD) might be okay with that, the Center and Liberals probably wouldn't. Although the Moderates + KD with the support off SD would have a majority of seats, that move would likely be hugely unpopular with some of their voters. edit: this is false, my bad. This would still be a minority government with only 44.4% of the seats.

The Alliance party leaders have been clear that they want to depose the current prime minister, Stefan Löfven, who is also the party leader for the Social Democrats. He has also been quite adamant about not resigning unless he's forced out by vote, which can't happen until in two weeks when the parliament opens again.

No one wants to be merely supporting a government in the opposite block and no one (except maybe M and KD) wants to work to work together with the Sweden Democrats.

We're in quite a pickle here.

As long as they keep producing fish, we’re good

Sweden is the most liberal country in the world but even there populists are gaining.

Quote from: Desty on September 10, 2018, 01:21:09 PM

Quote from: Flee on September 10, 2018, 01:19:11 PM

Glad to see SD didn't gain as much as some of the polls suggested.

What's wrong with SD?

Why not ask your sister?

Don't talk about my sister 

Also it feels like no matter who I'd vote for the results wouldn't mean shit

I can add that the Green party (MP) is dangerously close to the 4% limit with 4.4% of the votes (you have to have at least 4% to sit in the parliament, to prevent a ton of small parties with only one or two seats). So the additional votes coming in tomorrow could potentially cause them to be kicked out (haven't done the math on it though).

Quote from: Aether on September 12, 2018, 11:34:44 AM

Quote from: Flee on September 10, 2018, 02:00:50 PM

-Being populist and nationalist.

What exactly is so terrible about representing ordinary citizens? Or being proud of your country/nationality?

I'm not a very patriotic person but I don't have anything against anyone who is.

I think it's very disingenuous to pretend that's what populism and nationalism are actually about. Populism is as much about caring about the ordinary citizen as soviet communism was about true equality and abolishment of social classes while those in power were just "more equal" than others and lived in wealth and decadence. On paper and oversimplified it sounds wonderful. Hell yeah, the normal, fair and honest citizens take on the sick and corrupt elite. Who could possibly be opposed to that? But in reality, it's a lot different. And I'll quote something I said in some other thread.

The problem lies more with the tactics being used that are almost inherent to populism. Deliberately targeting the uneducated with waves of propaganda. Riling up latent feelings of discomfort and fear to focus on a convenient and simple scapegoat. Manipulating the complaints of the disenfranchised to serve particular interests. Relying primarily on misinformation and misleading claims to gain support. Oversimplifying complex and multifaceted issues into biased and one-sided snippets of inadequate information. Waging a figurative war on all those who disagree by painting them as elitist bureaucrats looking to keep the pure people down. Deliberately ignoring evidence to the contrary and making bold claims and problems on things known to be nearly impossible. Supporting what at first sight appears to be true according to the gut feeling of the least qualified to judge an issue while dismissing the well researched and substantiated findings of highly qualified experts with years of experience. It's emotion over reason and logic.

Additionally, it is typically opposed to institutions of power, checks and balances, human and civil rights and so forth. Way too often, it is a movement aimed at using misleading claims and misinformation to convince the gullible and uneducated that their complaints will disappear if only the distant and unreachable elite keeping the common man down is taken care off and both expertise and knowledge make way for the impressions of poorly qualified men, only to then replace them with equally distant and elitist leaders of their own that will continue to manipulate them for their own gain and escalate the war on "the other".

I've thought this for years and have only grown more convinced over the years. Populism is one of the, if not the single greatest, threat(s) to western democracy and its core values. It's what brought us Trump and Brexit and hundreds of other smaller pains. This is a perfect example. Anti-vaxx crowds have been gaining popularity in Italy. This has led to thousands of infected children with preventable diseases and several fatalities. A law was proposed to stop this and require more common vaccinations before allowing children to enroll in public schools. Everything looked set until the populist party gained more power in the recent elections. As always, it's anti-science. Anti-intellectualism. Anti-experts. Who cares about facts and actual medicine? Thousands of uninformed people are susceptible to anti-vaxx BS, so why not run with it? Paint the "medical elite" as the bad guys, attack people who get their children vaccinated, describe vaccine policies as "useless and sometimes dangerous", give a platform to anti-vaxx personalities, fan the flames by campaigning against the corrupt elite coaxing you into injecting your children and distributing blatant BS information linking it to autism, depression, cancer... They painted something as commonsense as a vaccine policy for public schools as corrupt elitists trying to line their own pockets and keep the common man down by exposing the children to illness and interfering with the lives of ordinary people. And they succeeded. No extensive vaccine policy anymore. It's a u-turn on vaccine requirements and the first step down a path that medical organizations in Italy fear will lead to the complete removal of a vaccination policy. The country accounts for only around 10% of the EU population yet has almost 30% of its measles infections in the past few years - a number that's been on the rise. That's real populism for you. "Representing the ordinary citizens" my ass. It's a kick in the teeth for anyone who values truth, reason and sensible policy. And the most ironic part is that it happens on the backs of those who ultimately pay the greatest price.

And nationalism is more straightforward. It's got nothing to do with being proud of who you are or where you're from. It's a pretty extreme ideology that generally revolves around the idea that your people are inherently better than the rest and that your national identity should be protected at the cost of others. It goes far beyond reasonable restrictions on immigration and cultural protections and casually flirts with racism and xenophobia every step of the way.

Are they not defined as such?

If some politician wants to put on a charade of populism but isn't actually really for the people he purports to represent then he's not really populist, is he? I'm sorry, there may be a lot of shady "populist" politicians but they aren't shady for wanting to represent the ordinary citizen. They are shady for whatever corrupt practices they have. If they don't actually care about the people of their country then they're not truly populist.

By all means call out politicians for all of their corruption but don't act like populism is a package deal with that corruption. It's not an inherently negative thing. Crooked politicians just use it as a method of getting what they want.

As for nationalism. I think we're just in total disagreement with what it actually is. I know a lot of nationalistic people, who are very proud of their country, heritage etc. but very few of them view themselves as superior to people from other nations. I don't see in any why why being proud of your country would inherently mean you have to think its people are superior to those of other nations. I, personally, don't see any reason for me to feel proud of some immutable characteristic I have no control over like what country I was born in, but I certainly don't think it's as terrible as you are saying.


I'm not being disingenuous here, this is how I view both populism and nationalism based on how they are defined and how I have experienced them. I can only think that we must have significantly different life experience to see these things so differently. I'm perfectly capable of recognizing when a political or ideological movement has issues like the ones you've stated, so long as the evidence for it is apparent, but I don't think it's wise to assume that something will always have characteristics that aren't inherent to it. I'm also not very fond of the meaning of ideas being warped by things that aren't becoming of those ideas. This has happened to the idea of liberalism here in the US and it's frustrating to see so many people criticize liberals for things that don't actually represent what liberalism is actually supposed to be about. I feel like this same thing is happening to both populism and nationalism among other ideas.

Regarding your point about communism. I don't think the totalitarian nightmare that played out in many countries was what communism was supposed to truly be no, I just think it's impossible to create a utopia like that because humans will inevitably push back against what it's supposed to be and it will devolve into the horrors that took place and still do today.

With populism, I don't see why there couldn't be a genuine politician that would truly want to represent the ordinary citizen. For "real" communism it requires an entire society to go along with it to have it function properly. It only takes a single genuine person to have a true populist politician which is vastly more feasible. I don't expect there to actually be any genuine populist politicians, mainly because I think politics has been totally corrupted by money and special interests, but I don't think it's nearly as impossible for one to exist as you make it sound.

So no I disagree that the issues you speak about are inherent to populism, I just think they continue to happen because of the state of the current system and our societies. Scrutinizing corrupt politicians is, in no way something I am against, but I think they should be scrutinized for their actual specific corrupt practices,  and not simply applying a blanket term to them that is supposed to encompass all of those practices. I'm not a fan of blanket terms in general because I feel like a lot of the nuance of any idea or movement is lost with them.

In regards to nationalism, I've always understood it to be mainly about pride in one's nationality and wanting to maintain their nation's culture and its ability to govern itself. There are many people I know, a lot of them in my family, that would identify as nationalist in that sense, but they wouldn't consider themselves superior to the people of other nations. So when you imply that supremacy is inherent to nationalism and someone accepts that, they would look at my family and see them as supremacists when they identify with nationalism, even though they are not.

I don't think attributing these negative characteristics to both populism and nationalism as though they are inherent to them is conducive to understanding many of those that identify with them with clarity. It's not that I think anyone who identifies with them is automatically good for doing so, I just think these ideas, with how you define them, cast a wide net of negative connotations over a great deal of people who identify with them that don't actually believe or practice those negative aspects. I think it would be better if people focused far less on these blanket terms when trying to address issues and focused on the specific issues instead.

On social justice, I have no problem with it. It's fine. What I oppose is authoritarianism and the trampling of liberty. With political correctness, I believe that there is technically no reason anyone actually has to feel offended by anything. We're only human so we will inevitably be offended by something, and that's perfectly understandable, but words ultimately only have as much power over our emotions as we let them have. People would be better off it they just learned to let go of their outrage at offensive speech. I see that kind of outrage as a weakness of character. Political correctness gives into that weakness and perpetuates it, which is why I don't like it. The fact that it has a tendency to infringe upon a person's right to freedom of expression is just an added negative.

Ultimately I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this one. Just be careful when you oppose these ideas rather than individuals who identify with them because not everyone you oppose will be the way you might view them.