Stupidity, continued

Think about the signal this sends to those who were responsible and strived to reduce their energy usage, invested in more efficient heating systems and similar. They are punished, money is given to the most irresponsible people. People will conclude that there is no point in acting responsibly, just keep using electricity and the government will reward you.

5/?

Still, the obviously stupid idea of giving money to those who use most energy was supported by both sides in the debate before the election. Nobody even tried to argue what should have been obvious.

6/?

Failure to understand or care about concepts of freedom and civil libirties

The organization Civil Rights Defenders has stated the obvious fact that the new government's plans are not in line with civil libirties, human rights and so on.

Hardly surprising given that the new government is leaning on the Sweden Democrats, a nationalist party with nazi roots, pretty clear that they want an authoritarian society.

7/?

Sadly, the new direction away from civil liberties and towards authoritarianism was not in focus in election debates; big parties were again assuming that people in Sweden generally no longer care much about human rights.

So, Swedish politics is a complete shitshow.

There used to be near consensus in Sweden that freedom and human rights should be protected. No longer so.

Gah. If you can think of anything to make us feel better about any of this, please let me know.

8/8

Oh and one more thing: the "Liberal" party is part of the new government, so the "Liberal" party is now advancing Sweden's new authoritarian agenda, reducing civil liberties as desired by nationalists.

What does "liberal" even mean then, going forward? Words are losing their meaning.

#svpol

@eliasr
Basically we now have two conservative options, one that dreams back to folkhemmet of the 1960s, and one that thinks that the 1930s was the high point in european history...

@eliasr sorry if I’m nitpicking here, but people currently in party leadership are nazis - this is not (only) an historical issue. Jörgen Fogelklou (party head in Gothenburg) has literally written that “the Jew is the root of all evil” and “sieg heil”. Oscar Sjöstedt (party spokesman on economic issues) has gone to concerts in support of convicted nazi terrorists. When it was revealed that the leadership in Järfälla are nazis, the first one to go was the whistleblower

@prosaluxemburg Thanks for commenting.

Regarding current party leadership, the party leader Åkesson is usually more clever and careful about how he talks but the fact remains that he joined the party around a time when their official policy was that people they considered foreigners should be deported regardless of if they had Swedish citizenship. That apparently sounded good to him, so good that he wanted to join and represent such a party.

@eliasr yes, this also feels like an important aspect that is discussed too rarely: most of the party leadership joined a party that was openly nazi, and stayed there. Any claim of having rethought their stances since must be seen in the light of them remaining in the same political environment the entire time.