Episode Transcript
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to another episode of Talking Strategy, Making History. I'm Daraka Larimore hall and with me, as always, is esteemed Professor Emeritus Richard Flax. How are you doing, Dick?
[00:00:27] Speaker B: I'm doing fine and eager to get into this conversation.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: Excellent. Well, today we have a very special guest joining us, taking some time away from his parental leave from Oslo, Ali S. Bhati. Ali is a former member of the Swedish Parliament for the Left Party, a democratic socialist party with radical roots that often cooperates with Social Democrats and Greens in progressive governance in Sweden, but also with a lot of ties and activist background in Norway, where he's currently living and working for a trade union affiliated think tank. So we're really grateful to have you here with us, Ollie, to give us a little update on how goes things in on the Nordic front, you could say so. Welcome.
[00:01:17] Speaker C: Thank you. So happy to be able to be with you.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Excellent. So we'll just jump right in. What like we've been, you know, talking a lot on the show about, well, about the Nordic model as a, as sort of something for progressives and socialists in the United States to be paying attention to. Not just as a sort of fantasy or an abstraction, but like, hey, what, what's really going on politically? What kinds of strains and compromises and conflicts are going on in the real world?
And you know, one thing that has come up, you know, is such a parallel between European and American politics right now is just the driving force of migration, immigration, integration, racism, xenophobia, as kind of. Yeah, the, the, the, the giant sucking sound that's like driving politics to the right. So what's the sort of current state of things in say in Norway, Sweden, Denmark in terms of the balance of power, right and left and what, what role this, this new dimension of politics is, is playing?
[00:02:25] Speaker C: Yes, so like if you, if you're talking about those Scandinavian countries on the surface, I mean talking about who's in government and how the parliamentary, parliamentary situation looks like it's. There are differences, of course. So Norway has a social Democratic government that was just reelected. Denmark has Social Democrats governing together with centrists. And Sweden has a very much a right wing government right now with three like center right parties of the old, but very much dependent on like the biggest party that's not in government, but definitely needed to have a government is the Sweden Democrats, which is probably the, the party in the political party in the world that has the, with neo Nazi roots that has the biggest electoral success. So it's a very, very strange situation in one sense but underlying this, in all the Scandinavian countries you still have quite strong welfare models that were built up during the. Mostly during the decades after the Second World War, which still are functioning in most ways, even though they have been under very much pressure and attack from different, during different eras. Basically like, but definitely post 1990, I would say. But as you were saying initially, the discussion, the discourse about immigration is extremely important to understand the political dynamics of what's going on.
It's, it's much more that than actually like real issues having to do with like labor participation or poverty or where people live or. And don't live. All of these things have of course have been like racialized forever. But there's nothing saying that these things have become like worse or huge problems that cannot be solved or just popped up. But the political discussion about them, the discourse about them has really changed and is playing an important role in all of these three countries. In different ways, of course. But like for instance in Sweden, I would say that Sweden was a little bit of an outlier before 2010. There was not a political party from the ultra right or right wing populace of parties represented in the national parliament.
But now I would say like Sweden is in many ways like the worst in terms of what kind of policies that are being introduced, but also what kind of rhetoric that is being normalized actively by people in government positions. Like how you talk about the problems of the country, how you pin them to, to visible minorities.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: So late, late to the party. But like hold my beer.
[00:05:34] Speaker C: Yeah, and, and like if you, if you take a step back and, and think about how Sweden's political economy has, has changed, it's, it's a bit of the same story. Like Sweden was bit later than other Western countries to you know, give in to neoliberalism, like more, more like in the early 90s rather than early 80s.
But when they, when that happened it was much more institutionalized, like how you constrain the ability of the state to actively promote progressive policies.
It's like the institutionalization, sorry, of the idea that politicians should not interfere in, in the important aspects of the, of, of the economy and that you needed to like have supply side economics, etc. And, and this is, this has sort of definitely had a big impact on income inequality in Sweden and all the problems that always follow with that. So in general you can say about the Scandinavian countries and definitely Sweden as like the prime example of that.
You still have a lot of things going on that make these countries more egalitarian than many other Western countries. But the rate of change to the worse has, especially in Sweden been dramatic. So both in terms of income inequality and definitely in terms of wealth inequality, where Sweden now is like one of the countries in the world that is most, that is where wealth inequality is the greatest.
So, so you have like several tendencies going on. But, but they have been pointing towards an attack against the foundations of the Nordic social model, even though that model still persists and is very much popular within the general public. And that's like right wing parties that want to forward their positions. They need to find other ways than just saying that this system need to go and it's very bad. And hence the popularity sort of finding the anti migrant rhetorics and taking it quite a long way.
[00:08:10] Speaker A: Dick, did you want to.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Well, so the, just to follow what you just said, the migrant issue is defined by the right as a threat to welfare benefits for the traditional working class population. Is that part of their appeal?
[00:08:28] Speaker C: Definitely, yes. And you can see that very concretely in Sweden like now the government is talking about some kind of benefits cap which is, it's strange, no one knows exactly how it's going to be constructed but, but the rhetoric about it has been very much like it's, it's possible for families with very, very big, big families, a lot of children to, to cash in a lot of benefits and that's not fair. So that's like the, the rhetoric about it. But everyone can sort of see in statistics if they really want to see that these examples are very much constructed. It's extremely few persons that actually fit that description. And introducing that kind of cap would simply be a very effective way of creating huge number of poor families basically.
And of course many of them will have foreign born background, but many will have also not foreign born background and you can go on with all kinds of benefits. Like if you attack the right for, for sick leave, for instance, it's, it's easier to, to say that okay, there's some kind of fishy, fraudy stuff going on here and, and migrants might be overrepresented in that. But, but actually changing the system to divorce would like hit and affect huge proportions of, of the population regardless of where they actually born. So this is like the, how the pointing to a scapegoat which is a visible minority can be used very effectively to make changes that would not have been able to find public support at all.
[00:10:10] Speaker A: We wouldn't know anything about that here in the United States. Wow. Yeah. So can you speak a little bit to the response from the left particularly you know, say the parliamentary parties of the left in these countries to the rise of the right and as you say, like it's a sort of different timescale maybe starting, you could say first in Denmark, then in Norway and then in Sweden. But, but you know, these are all countries with powerful social democratic parties, partners in other tendencies in the left that have like, governed more than they haven't over the last, you know, several decades.
What has been their response? What, how are they, how are they dealing with this?
[00:11:00] Speaker C: Yeah, your, your description of the time gap is, is what I would start with.
You're absolutely correct, of course, that this shift in the public discourse started in, in Denmark and has sort of gone back and forth between these countries. But, but the social democratic answer to, to this has mainly been, well, not much short of disastrous, I would say. I mean, because it's been riddled by weakness in like self confidence and the ability to understand how a change of discourse would, is not possible to, to get something good out of it.
When actually go into the field where the, the all the rules are set by a right wing and another kind of right wing that you would know from the three first decades after Second World War, then you, you will have a huge trouble in finding, finding your way forward.
So it's, it's, it's been a story of, of gradual acceptance of, of the basic tenets of this way of thinking that you need to say, you need to start by saying that immigration is untenable.
You need to have fewer people coming in in order to be able to better the integration and using the same words and same ways of thinking as the right, which actually is like very concisely and very effectively working against any form of objective integration. So that's the whole point of racist politics, is to allow integration to happen in all the different fields of, of of, of society and of life. And you can see that when, when it doesn't matter if, if you actually have a change, for instance, in the labor market where you have quicker way into the labor market for people coming as refugees, it doesn't matter. Goalposts will move. So now there will be like, okay, that's not how you get, become a real suite or real thing.
For that you need to like not be a Muslim or not be a visible practitioner of, of, of any like adm. Religion or, or other kind of social markers. But and even if people do like adapt very much and become assimilated, even like in a, in a rather, sometimes rather tragic way, then the goalpost will move again. So that's not the point here. The point is that these people on the ultra right, they are aiming for an understanding of social hierarchies that is like the opposite of what progressive politics would see as a goal, not a goal, but as a direction for its policies.
So what has happened basically is that when social Democrats accept that kind of reasoning and that kind of way of doing politics, they either lose a lot of support or they might win elections, but they will not deliver on what was supposedly the way they sold this into their own base, saying that, okay, we have to accept this, but we do this to be able to save more of our, our core values and the systems that are working for us.
[00:14:40] Speaker A: Immigration, so we can preserve the model.
[00:14:44] Speaker C: Exactly. And that's not going to happen. Of course. There's something important here that I think left and sometimes has like a liberal left or many groups within what you would call the left have also done a lot of wrong things about. But, but that's on the, on the level of thinking and the level of organizing rather than level of actually ruling. But the idea that, that you, you, you oppose racism and oppose racist policies only by like talking about it and pointing towards it as, as being racist is of course a possible dead end. You need to, need to find the kind of ideas, policies, slogans that actually can, can point to people living their lives together as, as a society and just being like, just to use a very strange and unprecise word. But to just, just be on the woke side of talking won't be a way to, to, to organize more people. But that's something completely different from, from just not understanding and not doing things about racist discourse as a, as a direct destructive force in any kind of social interaction and political being in a society.
[00:16:02] Speaker B: So recently, are there political expressions going on organized way along the lines that you're saying would be, would be necessary? I mean, are there positive things that you can point to either within the left broadly or within, within the Social Democratic Party itself?
[00:16:25] Speaker C: Yes, sure.
So it's never been like just monolithic way of going forward with only one kind of policies. There's always been opposition to this kind of thinking both within the Social Democratic parties, even in Denmark, but definitely in Norway and Sweden.
And it's been important developments on the left of these parties when you have a parliamentary system. So you will have possibility of having smaller but important parties within the political mainstream. So I would say, yes, I would say that both in Norway and Sweden and Denmark, you will have people thinking about these issues and also organizing along more correct or more effective ways to do this.
And when you have a country, especially like Sweden, where you have a, I mean you have a very big migrant population and diverse migrant population, but you have it in the other two countries as well, then it's really important to sort of, you can't go on pretend to be a progressive party and completely forget about the kind of reality that these people will meet.
But on the other hand, when you have a big migrant population and you do know that even in the United States it's not automatically so that they will vote progressive, but they don't feel that this is something good.
[00:17:57] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:00] Speaker C: So you need to work, I mean seriously. And it's an uphill battle, but it's a battle worth taking. And yes, it's been like just now in Sweden there was an interesting and sort of telling development where the right wing government presented, has presented number of proposals that would take migration policies already pretty harsh and doesn't let so many people in and make it harder and harder. So there has been a number of cases where people who have lived all or most their lives in Sweden as children, they become 18 and they are now facing expulsion from the country if they don't have a right to stay.
Like have their own personal asylum reasons. So if their parents don't are considered not having right to stay in Sweden, they can be expelled. And this has created a lot of tension within like communities. People like, okay, this guy's been in my class for like all my school life. Who is going to be expelled when he's 18? What's, what's going on here? And so the, there was presented a contra proposal from the left party, the Green Party and also the, the sort of center party, which is a liberal party.
And it was expected that the big opposition party, Social Democrats in Sweden would, would of course say that okay, this is, this is not good. We're, we're gonna vote for this contra proposal. But the party leadership suddenly said no, we're not going to do that because it's very important to keep the signal that Sweden needs to have regulated migration policies, et cetera, et cetera. Extremely strange.
There was actually a big uproar within the Social Democratic Party not only by like the leftmost elements in the party.
[00:19:57] Speaker A: But like yeah, very, very mainstream folks. And my Facebook explodes folks.
[00:20:02] Speaker C: Yeah, people like in the leadership of local governors governments in Sweden and the party leadership had to sort of backtrack their stats.
It's not necessarily leading to any concrete change if there is not someone from the other side of the aisle changing their minds. But it's extremely important for what kind of discussions that had afterwards.
But this is kind of indicative for how the Social Democratic leadership has been dealing with this, with this issue. And a lot of times they've been like trying to attack the government from the right on this issue, saying that, okay, we were actually saying even earlier than you that we needed to do a lot of things about pressing migration down, et cetera, et cetera. And all of this is of course it does make migration policy very bad and against a lot of like, intentions of international treaties that Sweden has been like in the forefront of. But of course the main effect is within the country is like affecting people who are already here, already living in Sweden. Like that's the kind of pressure that will be felt like on their bodies every day. I mean, I talked with my parents, my, everyone living in Sweden also. I feel the same thing in Norway. Not that as much, but still I do. That is always you, always when, when, when there's anything happening and there's any problem, any social problem, any economic problem being discussed, the first thing you need to like clear, the first hurdle you need to clear is that this should not be pinned on the migrant population because there will be, there will be political forces wanting to do that, wanting to do that.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:54] Speaker C: And that's, and, and it's so important that you, as, as a person living in these, in these countries or as a general progressive, wherever you're born, you can feel that the, your first instinct would not be okay now. It'll be failed by the mainstream center left parties. That's, that's you, you need to be able to feel that you can trust them to take the, at least the point of departure would be a better one than where you land and what kind of compromises you need, of course, always. But the first impulse needs to be okay, this is not going the right way.
[00:22:34] Speaker B: Right. So I'm actually struck by the particular example you were giving.
In this country we have this concept of the dreamers, that is people who are, who were brought here as children without being documented.
And the dreamer movement was the idea that these are innocent people, they are not at fault, they should be integrated and provided the same kind of educational opportunities that other young people get and so forth. And even Trump has made noises about, oh yeah, the, the dreamers.
So it's funny that it's more than funny, it's disturbing in a way that this, the policy you're talking about actually is the reverse of this in a very weird way. But you're saying there is almost a reflexive sympathy for these people who would be the target of that policy and that that's something that could be politically mobilized I guess is what you're saying.
So I'm quite not really well informed about two things interrelated in my mind. One, what is in fact the, who are the migrant people who constitute the main, what are the main ethnic backgrounds of people who are migrants in these countries? To what extent does that actually define, I mean the opposition?
Where does racism come into play specifically with respect to that question? And then are they part of the electorate? Could they be part of the electoral process? Are they, are they, what is the rights of voting for migrant people and could they be a political force or are they becoming a political force?
[00:24:34] Speaker C: Yeah, so it's quite different between the countries.
But you could say like in Sweden, like almost one in five person is born in another country than Sweden. But in that population of course you have big numbers coming from other Nordic countries. Finns used to be a very big influx earlier on and of course many still. But you have also waves of migration like from Iran and Iraq. In the 80s the, you had this huge number of course coming in 2015 and they were from Syria and Afghanistan and you've had also, even after like making it much harder to stay in Sweden there's been continued influx of people from Syria and for many years of course been also people from Somalia.
But, but you have also in Sweden big number of people that came from the Latin American situations in the, in the 70s and 80s in, in Norway you have large group of people from Poland. They're not refugees but they, they are foreign born. And now Ukraine of course both in Sweden and Norway and Denmark. In Denmark you have Iraqis and Syrians, big, big groups. But when you go further back of course like there's very big Iranian minority in, in, in Sweden because during the 80s war, Iran, Iraq and the years after the 79 revolution there was, there were a lot of Iranians that were, came to all, all sorts of countries. But, but Sweden was had together with Germany rules that made it more possible to stay here and it was a popular place to go for political refugees. So it's a mix.
But racism has always been there. But it's changed sort of course you can't forget the collapse of Yugoslavia of course very important especially for Sweden. So mid-90s big groups coming from former Yugoslav countries and Kosovo.
So, so, so basically you've always had had like prejudices and racism being, being a part of, part of the social life of, of. Of people. And I would say like. And there, there are, there's research about this also.
Of course it's hard to pinpoint. But the, the normal like day to day prejudices are probably much less today than they were in the 80s or 90s, like because much bigger proportions of the population have actually met people coming from other countries and lived close to them. And some things are just considered not. Okay, that were not so much so in the, in the 70s or 80s or 90s in the public understanding. But the, but it's the politicization of racism as a, as an, as a like organizing principle for a political party or political movement that has become much more normalized now in comparison with what it was in the 80s and 90s.
[00:27:49] Speaker B: How it just to. Sorry, but how is that expressed specifically the political depth?
[00:27:55] Speaker C: Yeah, that's by normalization of racist discourse in politics. So what can you actually say and how can you talk about migrant populations? Like things that are said now by the people in government positions in Sweden now which come from like center like the old Conservative Party or even the Liberal Party which is in the government.
Those things could not be said in the 90s by other than like very fringe right wing extremist groups like talking about the ideas of re migration or that there is this inherent problem with people from less advanced cultures coming in big numbers to Sweden.
[00:28:41] Speaker A: Yeah. Normalization of making distinctions between non western immigrants and western immigrants in policy and not just discourse has been totally shocking.
[00:28:51] Speaker C: Exactly. And that would, that's, that's like also in Normania. So, so, so these, these things have, have definitely shifted. And the idea that, okay, we've been, we haven't been able to talk about these issues like as if, as if that was the case. It's not that it's been forbidden to talk about it. It's been like an idea of civility that is fundamental to any kind of democratic discourse has now been put under. It's actually been like seen as something of something bad or something suspicious much more than it used to be. But coming back to your question about migrant population being a political force. So yes, people who are citizens are able to vote.
And even if you're not a citizen after certain amount of years, is it different from different countries? In Sweden it's just three years. I think you're able to actually vote in the municipal elections. But the reality is that people who are only able to vote in municipal elections quite often don't do that.
Sometimes they don't even know that they can vote in municipal elections. But also there's this socioeconomic factor that we know is very strong and has become much stronger compared to the 80s, is that people living in areas dominated by, by migrants, but also people with migrant background and especially if they have lower incomes, more unemployment and so on, they don't vote. They just, they don't use their right to vote. So there was, we, we did as. When I was active in the left party, we, we had this, we ran the data actually for just the last elections when the right wing won, that if you had the same, just even the same participation rate than the elections before, it's very high in Sweden. But, but anyway, like it went down just a little bit, a few percentage points, then you would have a different composition of the, of the parliament. And definitely if you had like people in areas where I grew up in like Stockholm suburbs where like still 80, 90% would vote for the left or center left parties, but the participation rate is like 30 percentage points, so 40 percentage points lower there than the, than the richest parts of town where people vote right wing. So, so that's a big, that's a big issue. But it's, it's not about active voter suppression suppression. Yeah, but it's, but it's, but it's, but if you listen to the Sweden Democrats and like radical right thinkers in, in those countries, you can actually see those things being discussed. Like how can we. Is. Have we done too much to get people to go to vote? Is that partisan thing to do? And these kind of things.
[00:31:50] Speaker A: I just wanted to point out. Well, just, just one thing about the, for listeners and especially about the minority communities in, you know, in the Nordic countries, is that they're primarily made up of, of, of refugees or the descendants of refugees, not immigrants in the sort of legalistic sense in the U.S. right. So, you know, as you said, there's like some Polish migration for those, the countries that are in the eu. There's, you're, there's just like the, the worker migration that happens within the eu. But, but you know, the Somali community, the former Yugoslav community, Iranians, Kurds, like all these groups that you would meet en masse are people who have been let into the country through a refugee program, you know, seeking safety from civil wars and repression and so forth. And I, I have to say it's an impressive thing to get to a percentage of the population as diverse as Sweden has become, like through a refugee program. Right, that is an impressive thing. And, and it just sort of puts into context the debate in the United States where like the right wing is just completely cut off and destroyed our right. Like we don't take refugees except white South African racists. Like it's, you know, and, but our diversity is much more the product of yeah you could say traditional workforce migration, immigration and so forth.
And I don't know, I'm just wondering if that plays into the debate differently or shapes the debate around these issues differently or if like all any sympathy for where people were coming from and so forth has just been sort of eroded.
[00:33:41] Speaker C: Yeah, it's, it's, it's complicated because of course you're right that there's been like the asylum migration to, to, to Sweden has been extraordinary in some senses that, and, and Sweden has been much more open to that since the, from the 70s onwards, like mid-70s onwards.
But it's always been also elements of other kinds of migration. So like with Finns big, big groups coming, this was a combination of things. And also like you had Yugoslav and Greek and even Italian migration when Sweden's industrial wonder was like going forward post Second World War. So but, but, but yes it does affect the social composition of, of the foreign born population that many come from, from asylum background. And, and what, what this discourse, what, what the racist discourse does is that it tries to undermine the idea that people who come here for asylum have actual asylum rights. So that's like they're not real refugees even though they get refugee status. That's, that's the kind of, kind of saying that goes on and like Sweden Democrats used to say that okay, no, we just want to. And also like right wing populists in Denmark and Norway as well used to say that no, we just want to make this system better by helping the real refugees that they're very few, but we can help them better if we sort of weed out the not real, non real refugees.
Of course what happens is that this just erodes and destroys the idea of asylum rights that came to realization post World War II because of and through the atrocities that were committed and the understanding that there needs to be an individual right to actually leave your country and say hey, I want to be somewhere else.
And of course these flows will change by when reality changes. Of course it's different a different kind of migration from Afghanistan contra what was from like the junta in Chile. But, but still the, the need to try to leave your country and, and relieve the threats to your life is, is different. But, but so, so it makes it a bit more complicated. But, but, but still I think on a, on a discourses disc the people on the right that attack this system don't really care.
They are actually trying to delegitimize the international system for asylum. And the European Union is doing that as a whole in many ways. But now we have the US and things that you couldn't think were possible are happening on a daily basis.
So I don't know what the system does generally will. Will be in just even a few, just a few years. But I do know that there is this absolute need for any progressive movement to fight for that, for a system of asylum, but also fight for the lives and human rights and rights as citizens for people living in our communities among us. Otherwise we will have no possibility to.
To have a progressive development like thinking that we could just exclude people of color and we could build a social democratic paradise. That's not going to happen.
[00:37:21] Speaker A: Also, it'd be really shitty music.
[00:37:24] Speaker B: It would be like, that's true.
So.
[00:37:28] Speaker A: No.
[00:37:28] Speaker B: So I'm still trying to get my head around. Here's this.
[00:37:32] Speaker D: You mentioned before, if refugee and migrant.
[00:37:38] Speaker B: Minorities were participating as using their voting rights, they would really be a force for changing the political direction of say, Sweden, maybe all these countries.
And what I'm trying to get my head around is are there forces within the parties that are saying, yeah, let's make that our strategy and bring the. Bring, bring that about. Bring, you know, organize in those communities. I'm pretty sure that's Jaraka's message when he goes over there to try to help people.
[00:38:12] Speaker A: Well, it's not just. It was my job to do that.
[00:38:15] Speaker B: Your job.
[00:38:16] Speaker A: So I have a lot of thoughts about what the leadership, how much the leadership really wanted it to be done. But.
[00:38:22] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's what I'm trying to understand. So what, what are the barriers to that being recognized by the leadership of these parties as a direction they need to move in?
[00:38:36] Speaker C: Sure there are internal barriers and there are some inherent racism and cowardice on some levels. But there's also this. If you look at it like from several sides, there's also this point that when you have a diverse migrant population, you will have also people that will not be interested primarily in progressive politics and maybe won't see racist politics as a threat to them. And there's this very real problem that when you have racist policies and racist discourse becoming more important, then you will have these layers within the migrant population where you could actually find people being attracted to. To. To racist discourse.
Exactly. Because they find themselves being not at the bottom of this hierarchy. So you've had this developed. I Mean, I come from the Iranian community. A lot of very progressive people have, have come from that minority, that community and still do. But there's also a lot of really right wing tendencies within this community because you have people who have like settled down in Sweden and they, they have a good position in society. And when racism gets more important in your ordinary life, you could find it a solution to actually be like siding with the racist. Because you see, it's not me, it's not about me. It's about those Somalis or those Afghans that are poor and they just come and we should have less of fewer of them, et cetera, et cetera. So that, that kind of dynamics also, also happens. So it's not, it's not an automatic thing that people go, but, but it's a huge potential there that every progressive party, the Social Democratic Party needs to, needs to address and it needs to do something with.
[00:40:36] Speaker A: Also. I mean, I would just add it's the same, I mean really, generally it's you, you do understand it, Dick. It's exactly the same stuff as happens in the United States. It's like they just, they. Within 20 years of going there, I saw like American politics be just like replicated, you know, really quickly. And so there's the dynamic that Ali was talking about of like, you know, there's a political grouping we have in our mind of like people, whatever we want to call it, people of color, minority groups, people with migrant backgrounds, but that's like people who are Muslims, Christians, you know, secular atheists, people with, you know, coming from inter ethnic struggle from another part of the world and then being placed right next to their antagonists and so forth. And so, you know, it's just like here there's not like an im, a monolithic immigrant voting bloc. And you know, we know like Republicans can pick them off, et cetera. So anyway, so there's all of that. But I, the other piece is like the, the Social Democrats as a party are, you know, similar to the Democratic Party, trying to be a national party, like win nationally, win in rural areas and urban areas, win like a coalition of voters that's like a cross section of Swedish society. And so right now the leadership is super, super focused on how to win back voters. They've lost to the right in more rural areas, in less, less diverse areas, et cetera. This like white working class that everyone's freaking out about worldwide. And so, so they're like messaging to them about migration and crime and integration and so forth. And as Ali pointed out, like with Increased like a message that is, you know, very similar to the right wing's message. And then it's like, then go into the cities and get like hyper turnout from our base of amongst immigrant voters in the suburbs and, and so forth in the urban areas. And like you can imagine what a conflict that is. Like it, it's a difficult thing to attract both of those groups in a national message. I'm saying that sort of sympathetically, I'm being very diplomatic and saying like that's a hard thing to do because it is.
But I think they've, you know, shot themselves in the foot a lot. But again, I just want to say like normalize that.
This debate that we have amongst Democrats about like do we need to get the white working class back by being anti woke or do we need to boost turnout in the cities or can we take minority voters for granted or should we or blah. I mean it's really very, very similar but with like even less political experience on these questions, you know, so you have people who've just like never thought about these things at all trying to figure it out and yeah, not all of the experiments go well.
[00:43:45] Speaker C: Yeah, but that's, that's also the point here is that like you, we do know from European elections like the last 20 years or so is that adapting to that kind of right wing agenda is also almost always failing electorally. Yeah, because you engage in kind of dynamics that is, it's really hard to sort of outwing the populist right from the right on those issues to start with. And also there's this problem that, that kind of, there's so much fantasies going on about the white working class that is degrading in many ways. And also like you give up the idea of social solidarity and if you do that, you will have, you will lose the confidence of real existing people, both white and non white.
Yeah, that's the reason.
[00:44:46] Speaker A: Dick. Dick, did you want to say something there?
[00:44:48] Speaker B: I always take some hope from the way these issues have played out in California because 30 years ago the right wing in California seemed to be riding high on an anti immigrant agenda. But they succeeded, that right wing agenda succeeded in unifying the immigrant populations of California electorally. So we end up with very powerful forces now of Latino and of Asian American communities who are much more on the liberal left side now than they were 30 years ago all across the board. And the labor movement in California revived around immigrant labor in la.
And so I guess what you were saying just now about solidarity being a message, you know, does seem There are lessons in this country, just the recent New York election where, I mean, that was truly remarkable. Mamdani won with a socialist identity, but also a million Muslim voters now in New York City were part of his electoral base, along with all the lefty and even some Jewish voters, a large part of the young Jewish population.
So I guess I'm saying you could get very depressed because immigration's not going to go away. I mean, we're going to have a much more severe set of questions about that because of climate change and its effect on population. So one might be depressed about where the politics is going, but I guess we gotta have some hope in a politics of solidarity being able to be revived, and not simply in moral terms, but in the realistic, practical terms of what working people of any stripe ethnically need.
And I guess that leads me to this housing question. Cause I'm, you know, I've always thought, well, the Swedish housing policy was really a good model that we ought to be aware of in this country.
And as I understood it, it was a kind of entitlement to having housing available.
20% of your income was. Was the key to Swedish housing policy. And that meant not public housing just for poor people, but social housing for anybody who, you know, wants to take advantage of it. So now, as I understand it, there's a big crisis in Stockholm and maybe throughout the Sweden in terms of the availability of affordable housing. And so I was curious about how that came about.
What can you tell us about that? Because housing is a very big political issue now in this country and there is no agenda in the mainstream for dealing with the housing crisis other than incentivizing private development, which is not going.
[00:47:58] Speaker C: To work and is abundance, abundance, abundance.
[00:48:03] Speaker A: Sorry, go ahead.
[00:48:05] Speaker C: Yeah, well, this is a hugely interesting issue and we would need maybe another hour to discuss it, but just try to.
Yeah, so, yeah, I would say that the housing policies of post World War II Sweden were like probably the biggest achievement for reformist social democracy in some sense. Because Sweden went from being one of the countries in Europe where the housing conditions were the direst to by far becoming one where the average population could live in very, very good standard housing. And that came about by very active reformist politics. So basically you used. You made huge public investments and combined it with an idea of how you wanted the housing market to develop. Never having an idea to take away private ownership of housing, but introducing a big element of public housing or social housing that was not intended to go to the poorest in society, but could be housing for any Sort of income rate, just a big portion of housing in all urban areas basically or all cities that were being built this way. And there was this municipal element of creating public housing companies but that were fully owned by the municipalities and that would function differently from normal housing companies but and also a regulation, a kind of negotiating the housing.
When you lend, the price cannot be set by the. By the. What do you call it? I just lost the word in English. But the market by the. By the landlord. The landlord can't like enterprises one sidedly. So all of this has, I mean the basics of this is still there but there's been a huge attack against the system in, in many waves. Basically starting from the, from the, from the 80s and in Stockholm for instance you've had right wing leaderships of the of of, of the town selling out. I mean, I mean privatizing basically big chunks of these, of these housing modules. And this gives like a lot of money for in the first, first time this happens to the people who have been living there. They can sort of own their own, their own house and that house of course the value of it goes up and it makes them personal wealth. But that just happens once. So basically you, you've given away billions of kroner of value and privatized it and you will lock in those people in those in that system. That's nothing to, to say about. Thatcher knew this would happen. But like it's really. You go from another point of departure. But it's, but still it's, it's there. So the when, when, when the when right wing governments have discussed even changing the laws that, that sort of make arrangements like this possible that has been very unpopular. So they've had to sort of stop.
There was even a government crisis a few years ago based on, on that issue that the left party sort of initiated from that point of rule. But still it's there. And you know there is no solution to the current crisis or problem other than making it a necessity or a thing that the state actually gets involved in. You will not be able to solve this crisis without actually confronting the idea that housing is a market product like any other, because it's not. So it never will be. But there will be market forces surrounding it of course, but you will not have proper housing for, for people in general if you don't in one way or another get involved with, with not only public money but also a public understanding that this is not just a good that can be traded like any other good on the, on the market.
So either if you. If, if you go, yeah, like Finland, they had the system more like this. They took it away, but now they are trying to save the effects of it by like pumping in a lot of public money in, in benefits or so. So people get money if they have high, high rent to pay.
So that's possible.
[00:52:53] Speaker B: Like.
[00:52:54] Speaker C: But rent vouchers, yes, rent vouchers of some sort, but it costs a lot of, but preserve some of the, some of the aspects of that kind of system that you had before. But, but it's expensive on, in another scale. And you won't solve the problem of actually making housing more of something that is fundamental to your life. Like we, we know that housing is, is not, it's not like something you can take away and consume somewhere else. It's like when you live somewhere, it is part of social relations, community.
What kind of roads go there, what kind of public transport goes there, what kind of dynamics between different groups of people will occur. And if you take away the public pressure from it, you will have less integration, you will have secluded areas, you will have the rich trying to get away from society in some aspects and you will have a lot of bad things happening around that.
You have that a lot in Sweden now and you have a big deficit of building. And just say one last thing is that you can see that in the macroeconomic level that Sweden has stepped back from using public money for housing. So the public debt is lower and lower, but you have this austerity politician says this is great.
But on the other hand you have private debt, household debt going up and up and up. And that's just a mirroring of the, of, of higher prices for, for buying a house, basically.
So this is an area of, of, of fight in, in the, in the future. And I think it's, it's really important that progressive forces have an idea of how to, how to solve these issues. And, and don't, don't think that this is, this is too big a problem to solve because obviously if you could do it in the 60s and 50s, you will be able to do it now. You don't have less resources, but you need to have another public and political discourse about it.
[00:54:56] Speaker B: So are there political forces coming together around what you just said? In other words, this is what I'm not clear on.
We can look highly critically and see what the tremendous gaps are between current policy and where it could go. And yet I'm not hearing that there's an organized throughout Europe. It seems to me this is based partly, I'm not very well informed. I don't understand the weakness of the left in popular terms in Europe based on what we see is possible. I just don't understand.
[00:55:36] Speaker C: I was quite optimistic and it was an important thing that on a defensive level when there was this attack on the system in Sweden, that there was this good alliance is being formed to actually say that this is not. This should not happen in more offensive. I mean, in terms of just going forward with this, I think this is part of a more general problem that the left feels weakened and has not been able to present those big thoughts that are not just theoretical, but are like, we actually want to change big things in society and we have an idea of how to do that. But I do think that there is and I hear, I mean, I see people talking very intelligently about these issues in certain circles and I'm sure that if there is a more general sense of stepping forward for the left, for instance, if there is a win in the elections, but not just the win in the parliamentary elections, but more of a, of a step forward for a left leaning political discourse, this is one of the issues that needs to be better addressed. And there is big, big potential in it, I think. But it needs a lot of footwork. It needed an understanding of the labor movement and the Social Democrats being a force for actually changing people's lives together in the post war era. And that's not the place we're in now. We're just trying to like not become fascists, just, just pushing back against a fascist wave. So. But, but that's part of, that's part of, that's an important part I would say, of, of like dealing with real problems in people's life and giving hope for a better future.
[00:57:23] Speaker A: And maybe to wrap up here, I would say I follow the party leader of the Swedish Left party on social media and I saw that she was posting up, posting a bunch of stuff about Joran and making connections to his campaigns around and his like arguments around affordability and issues in Sweden. So I'm always happy to see like we're often used as a, as a bad example with good reason. It's always nice to see American things used as a good example. So one too many Zorans, I guess is how we're going to fight back.
[00:58:00] Speaker B: We are here.
[00:58:02] Speaker A: Well, thank you again, Ali, for your time. Thank you for your friendship over the years and your insightfulness. I mean, I think I know I've learned so much from you over the years about politics in the Nordic countries and also more broadly thinking about ways that different parts of the left can come together in a crisis moment like this. So I appreciate you talking with gray Social Democrat like me across party lines for so many years. So thank you. Anything you want to say last, last word to the American audience, our giant American audience.
[00:58:42] Speaker C: I'm just delighted to hear you and to be able to talk to you today. And there's a lot of hope also in the following American politics right now. I listened to the episode where you talked about what's going on in Minneapolis and of course it's so tragic and so and so dark in many ways, but also the solidarity being shown in those communities is just extremely inspiring in many ways. So word, let's see the best in each other.
[00:59:17] Speaker B: Thank you very much. I'm so grateful to have a chance to meet you and to learn from you, which has been quite a lot.
[00:59:25] Speaker D: One more word.
[00:59:26] Speaker B: If you regularly listen to the podcast, you know we like to end with a little bit of music that's pertinent.
[00:59:33] Speaker D: To what we've been talking about.
[00:59:35] Speaker B: Here's what I want to add to this podcast.
[00:59:38] Speaker D: This time our guest Ollie was present on Utoya island near Oslo in 2011 when Anders Breivik arrived and he slaughtered 77 children and teenagers in this island, which was the site of a Social Democratic Party camp, a training and workshop kind of place.
Breivik is a white nationalist, furiously racist. He went to trial in Norway, and in 2012, as his trial was going on, a crowd of 40,000 people gathered near the courthouse, led by folk singer Bjorn Nilsson.
Bjorn Nilsson had taken a Pete Seeger song called My Rainbow Race some years earlier, translated into Norwegian, and it was a song that expressed the sense of solidarity and of sharing the planet, sharing the land across ethnic, racial and other divisions. That's the concept of a rainbow race.
And Nielsen led that crowd of 40,000 in the singing of that song in defiance of Breivik in front of the courthouse. Then that experience is what I wanted to share as we close this episode of talking strategy, making history.
[01:01:34] Speaker C: Loved heart, so long to say.
