[In 2006, of those aged 18-21, 11% supported the Green Party and
10% supported the Left Party. By 2022, these figures dropped to 5% and
10% respectively. In contrast, those in this age cohort supporting
Nazi-founded SD increased from 3% to 22%.]
[[link removed]]

WHY THE SWEDISH LEFT WILL CONTINUE TO LOSE  
[[link removed]]


 

Jonathan Michael Feldman
September 29, 2022
CounterPunch
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ In 2006, of those aged 18-21, 11% supported the Green Party and 10%
supported the Left Party. By 2022, these figures dropped to 5% and 10%
respectively. In contrast, those in this age cohort supporting
Nazi-founded SD increased from 3% to 22%. _

Early sticker used by the Sweden Democrats with the slogan Bevara
Sverige Svenskt (“Keep Sweden Swedish”) –,

 

THE LEFT’S LOSS

How did the Swedish Democrats (SD), a party with roots in the Nazi
movement
[[link removed]],
become Sweden’s second largest political party?  The Swedish left
continues to fail in reinventing itself.  The result is continuing
failure.  This trajectory has been apparent for at least twelve
years, dating to the 2010 parliamentary election
[[link removed]]. 
A further reminder was provided four years later in the 2014
parliamentary election
[[link removed]],
but nothing was done then either.    This essay explains how a
comprehensive solution to problems of regional, uneven development
could potentially help win over voters supporting extremist parties in
Sweden—and potentially benefit left parties which have failed to
promote comprehensive solutions to development challenges.  The
development challenges contribute to political extremism attached to
multi-ethnic suburban communities and extra-urban regions,
particularly in Southern Sweden.

In the near time, the left will continue to lose because all left
parties in Sweden are stuck in fossilized social movement formations
tied to national growth, globalization without sufficient attention to
declining regions, identity, complaints about welfare state reductions
without attention to wealth creation, and deconstructions of the
negative consequences of state or corporate actions.  The failure to
address ongoing problems constitutes what the American
sociologist William F. Ogburn
[[link removed]] termed
a “cultural lag” in his essay, “Cultural Lag as Theory,”
published in 1957.  An alternative to this absence of accelerated
learning requires a deeper understanding of how the right gains power,
i.e.  how uneven development triggers maladies, and how the direct
social control of business, media, and the economy itself is the key
to breaking the vicious cycle of extremist power.  This cycle relates
to how uneven development and diversion of resources into militarism
triggers crime and an opportunity cost on development.  These factors
in turn encourage various forms of extremist politics, this politics
in turn push policies that further aggravate uneven development and
extends extremism. A similar pattern can be seen in the United States
where neither major political party has significantly much to offer in
terms of gross economic inequality
[[link removed]], decaying
urban areas
[[link removed]],
and neglect of rural communities
[[link removed]].

In the Swedish parliamentary elections held on September 11, 2022, the
final distribution of parliamentary seats was as follows: The right
bloc won 176 seats with 49.6% of the vote and the left bloc won 173
seats with 48.9% of the vote.  While the Social Democrats, the
largest left party, gained seven parliamentary seats, the supporting
parties such as the Left Party and Center Party lost a total of eleven
seats (although the Green Party gained two seats).
The anti-immigration and nationalist party
[[link removed]] SD
gained the most seats of all, eleven seats, while the Moderate Party
(which will likely head the new government) actually lost two seats.

The reasons for the continuing loss in power relative to the right
bloc as a whole are complex.   One problem is that the Social
Democrats prioritized a military mobilization as part of a false
understanding of the Ukraine conflict and in part to neutralize the
right bloc by taking the question of military transfers to Ukraine,
increased military budgets and joining NATO off the agenda.  Very
much like Joe Biden’s championing of military responses to unite a
fragmented country, the Social Democrats have tried to leverage the
Ukraine conflict to bolster their domestic political standing.  At
the same time, the Social Democratic leadership accused its opponents
of trying to politicize security questions. As a result of this
militarization, energy was diverted from addressing key problems were
related to uneven development.  These development problems create
societal losers and drive or sustain crime (or a politics of crime and
race/immigration) facilitating the acceleration of SD’s accumulation
of power.  The mobilization around the war issue was used to divert
attention from the failure of the state to systematically address
crime problems.

A KEY PROBLEM: MILITARY MOBILIZATION IN THE FACE OF UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT

The September 11th election was actually the second Swedish election
this year.  An informal “election” regarding militarism was held
related to parliamentary decisions to send weapons to Ukraine and join
NATO.  In this election, on the first vote to send weapons, all
political parties but the Left Party voted to send Ukraine weapons. 
Subsequently, on a later vote the Left Party decided to support such
weapons shipments.  In April 2014, only 28% of Swedes polled believed
the country should join NATO.  That was shortly after Russia’s
February 2014 incursion into Ukraine.  This year in a matter of
months public opinion on NATO shifted rapidly
[[link removed]],
breaking a long-standing formalized non-alignment policy.  By January
2022, the support figure rose to 37%, 41% in February (the month
Russia launched the current war), increasing further to 45% in April,
then 58% in May and then 64% in July.  This rapid mobilization,
together with SD’s rise as Sweden’s second largest party,
indicated how various weaknesses of the Swedish model were being
exposed.  These weakness center on the lack of power for
anti-militarist culture, the tolerance of a permanent war economy, the
erosion of a peaceful diplomatic engagement which opposes (as opposed
to lives peacefully with) military-directed foreign policy and a
long-term engagement with NATO
[[link removed]].

The Russian invasion, Social Democrats’ failure to oppose the
right-bloc’s push to join NATO, and an extensive mainstream media
bias against NATO critics and in support of NATO advocates helped turn
the tide in favor of NATO.  The Social Democrats had hoped to
“neutralize” the politics of NATO by taking away a right-bloc
talking point.  The other left parties by supporting weapons systems
to Ukraine, similarly abandoned any idea of Sweden playing a
diplomatic role above the fray of weapons transfers.  Any voices
against increased military spending were drowned out. Meanwhile, the
military build-up took place despite Sweden’s falling behind in key
environmental objectives (increasing emissions in 2021 compared to
2020
[[link removed].])
and serious problems in uneven development in two key areas.  These
development failures also helped promote the right-bloc and helped
them win the election.

CRIME, RACISM AND POLITICS

The first development failure was in the area of crime and ethnic
integration.  As   Isabella Kwai and Amela Mahovic at _The New
York Times_ explained: “ in cities like Stockholm, Malmo and
Gothenburg — where a higher proportion of migrants have settled
compared with the rest of the nation — the media and residents alike
point to two separate worlds: a polished city center emblematic of the
nation’s wealth, and poorer, ethnically diverse outer suburbs where
police officers carry tourniquets to stem gunshot wounds.”

A study about Swedish crime published in 2021 found that
[[link removed]] “there
are approximately four homicide-related deaths per million inhabitants
per year in Sweden, compared to a European average of approximately
1.6.” Swedish television has conducted an extensive survey of
Swedish voters over the last several years.  In 1998 only 40% of
Swedes ranked law and order as being of high importance for their
choice in the parliamentary elections. This figure increased to 45% in
the 2018 elections and 50% in this year’s elections.  For questions
related to refugees and immigration, the respective percentages for
high importance were 19%, 41% and 29%.

These two issues (crime and migration) have been central to the rise
of SD.  During the recent election, law and order was ranked the top
issue for voters in SD, the Moderate Party and the Christian
Democrats, being the second most important issue for Liberal Party
voters.  In contrast, for the Social Democrats the issue was ranked
10th, for Center Party Voters 11th, for Green Party voters 15th and
for Left Party voters 16th. According to a Swedish Television poll,
33% of voters thought the left parties had the best politics
concerning law and order policies, but 52% of voters thought the right
parties had the best politics.

Danielle Lee Tomson at the Brookings Institution outlines
[[link removed]] key
ways SD’s rise related to racism and crime.  SD arose “against
the backdrop of de-industrialization, public spending cutbacks, rising
unemployment, and the violent breakup of Yugoslavia that caused an
influx of refugees.”  The party “called for restricting
immigration across the board, not just of Muslims.”  One poll found
that “59 percent of Swedes with a positive opinion of the Swedish
Democrats” expressed an unfavorable opinion of Muslims in Sweden. 
In contrast, only 17 percent saw Muslims negatively among “those
with a negative view of the Sweden Democrats.”  SD members have
linked their support for the party to “personal experiences of crime
or new refugees in their children’s small class, impacting the
quality of education.”

Crime has been linked to immigration. Andrew Sullivan, the American
commentator explains how migrants have been linked to crime.  He
recently wrote: “The vast majority of migrants, it is vital to note,
do not commit crime. But a big majority of violent crimes in Sweden
are now committed by migrants — who comprise just a fifth of the
population. The vast majority of refugees are young men
[[link removed]] —
the demographic most prone to mayhem.”  One study
[[link removed]], by
Göran Adamson, found that “58 per cent of those suspect for total
crime on reasonable grounds” were immigrants.  Furthermore,
“regarding murder, manslaughter and attempted murder, the figures
are 73 per cent, while the proportion of robbery is 70 per cent.”

In April Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson declared
[[link removed]] that
Sweden had failed to integrate many of the immigrants received over
the past two decades that that had led to gang violence and parallel
societies.  Prior to her declaration “many Swedes were
shocked…after violent riots left more than 100 police injured.”
This “violence erupted after a Swedish-Danish politician burned the
Quran at a rally and sought to hold more in several
immigrant-dominated neighborhoods.” A number of immigrant dense
suburban areas have been identified as zones of high criminality.

Amber Beckley at Stockholm University, a leading expert on the links
between immigration and crime in Sweden, points out
[[link removed]] that
immigrants and non-immigrants commit crime for the same reason. 
Beckley has shown
[[link removed]] that
“young male children of immigrants do not seem to be inherently
violent as a result of coming from a war-torn country.” In
addition,  “it is not the age at immigration, but the family
situation that seems to dictate criminal propensity.”  Moreover, 
“threats of deportation and stricter immigration policies do not
seem to deter criminality.” Finally, “high home country human
development was a protective factor against crime.”

SOCIAL EXCLUSION

The social exclusion of immigrants is a partial reason for a critical
crime wave which has shaped electoral outcomes. Magnus Dahlstedt, a
leading research on ethnicity and migration in Sweden, explains the
underlying issues
[[link removed]]as
follows:  “Among local actors, there is a strong focus on framing
suburban areas and their inhabitants both as a problem, and as a site
where solutions are to be directed. Here, the main focus is on what
could be described as the effects or state of social exclusion—for
instance in the form of distrust, apathy, and criminal
behaviour—that is geographically tethered to suburban areas.
However, what is left un-problematised are the mechanisms generating
the effects or state of social exclusion, which is the main focus of
the discourses that arise within interviews with youths.”

Social exclusion is a defining characteristic for many immigrants.
In the first quarter of 2021
[[link removed].],
unemployment among persons born in Sweden was only 4.6% but 20.0% for
the foreign-born.  For the year as a whole
[[link removed]] the
shares were 5.4% and 19.5% respectively, with the unemployment rate
27.6% for those born in Asia and 33.1% for those born in Africa. 
A comprehensive study
[[link removed]] of
immigrants’ labor market conditions by Benjamin Friedrich, Lisa
Laun, and Costas Meghir published by the Institute for Evaluation of
Labour Market and Education Policy last year investigated patterns in
the 1985 to 2016 period.  The authors found: “A larger share of the
immigrant population has relatively weak labor market attachment,
working fewer hours or having more frequent unemployment spells, but
there is also a higher share of workers with tertiary education.” 
There are a number of highly educated immigrants, but many of the
newest immigrants have low skill levels.  In addition, “while
native workers experience substantial convergence in earnings between
age 25 and 30, immigrants barely do by their mid-30s and later. This
is consistent with natives quickly moving into stable employment,
whereas a large share of immigrants still faces precarious employment
at later stages of the life-cycle.”

Another form of social exclusion refers to how SD voters outside the
big cities tend to correlate significantly with regions having high
unemployment, absence of new business development, and a lack of
personal investment capital.  This uneven development has not been
linked to any aggressive development plan and does not fit into the
vocabulary of any significant number of politicians. The historically
dominant parties, the Social Democrats and Moderate Party both
developed by cooperating with industrial interests and supporting
globalization manifested in expanding exports and EU membership. 
These parties support industrial development, but that project fails
to deliver to key regions because of a significant investment gap.

THE INVESTMENT GAP

The investment gap refers to a propensity to dramatically increase
military budgets and invest insufficient amounts in wisely designed
policies to integrate both immigrant background areas and even regions
where SD voters are highly significant. The Social Democratic
government argued
[[link removed]]  “that
more resources and employment opportunities” needed to be invested
in “integrating the segregated, immigrant-heavy suburbs that ring
major cities where the gun violence has been concentrated.   A
recent summary
[[link removed]] of
labor market integration barriers “faced by highly educated
immigrants”  lists “poor knowledge of the Swedish language, lack
of [a] social network, discrimination and lack of recognition of
immigrant’s educational qualifications.”  In a 2007 study
published in _The Swedish Economic Policy Review_, Lena Schröder
argued for improvements in “the functioning of the legal system for
combating discrimination as well as proactive measures to change the
attitudes and behaviour of employers, trade unions, landlords,
street-level bureaucrats and the general population.”  Various
scholars
[[link removed]] point
to racism in Sweden as extensive or growing.

These problems have been understood by various scholars for over
fifteen years if not more.  As persons with non-European backgrounds
are demonized, it is far from clear how the necessary but
significantly delayed investments to change conditions will be made. 
As Schröder explained “as long as the main problem is considered to
be the immigrants themselves, there is only a weak impetus for
necessary and urgent changes in integration policy, public
institutions and employer attitudes and behaviour.”  In any
case, a study
[[link removed]] by
Pieter Bevelander and Nahikari Irastorza showed successful integration
of some immigrant groups over a longer period of time.  Key areas of
immigrant absorption include health, social services, and veterinary
services, which provide opportunities for both middle and high skilled
work.  Manufacturing and construction provided some of the better
paid jobs, but these sectors have faced periodic problems.

The outgoing prime minister Andersson supported investments in the new
green sectors tied to industrial development, precisely the
investments which might have created opportunities for new immigrants
(provided the necessary training and employment programs were in
place). An analysis
[[link removed]] of
seven key industrial companies, including green projects tied to
battery manufacturer Northvolt and H2Green Steel, in the two most
northern counties of Sweden, Norrbotten and Västerbotten showed that
they would create only 17,270 news jobs in the 2022-2026 period. 
While significant, it is worth nothing that total unemployment in the
first quarter of 2022 was about half a million persons
[[link removed]]. 
In 2015, about 10% of the population in Norrbotten was born overseas,
but many of these came from Finland
[[link removed]]. 
For Västerbotten, the percentage was 9%.
[[link removed]] 
Therefore, immigrants would unlikely capture a significant share of
these jobs and even with relocation the number of jobs was far smaller
than the unemployment problem.

In contrast, many more jobs could be created by expanding investments
in alternative energy, a growing sector in Sweden but one that has not
grown sufficiently to compensate for electricity shortages.  One
reason is the emergence of a European Union trading system in which
Sweden exports its electricity.  Domestically
anchored _cooperative_energy projects might solve this problem by
bypassing a market logic and directly feeding electricity and wealth
to immigrant-dense areas.  Yet, this kind of discourse is either
non-existent or did not show up in any noticeable proposals by any
political party.  A key problem are rules that artificially inflate
the costs [[link removed]] of wind power
distributed to customers in Sweden.

An article
[[link removed]] by
Paula Neudling, a right-wing commentator, explains the other aspect of
criminality.  While delusional about SD’s rehabilitation, she does
explain clearly the extent of the crime problem. Much of the crime
wave in Sweden, including extensive bombing of buildings, is traceable
to criminal gangs.  There have been almost 500 bombings since 2018, a
key factor contributing to the right-wing victory in parliamentary
elections. There are now about 40 criminal clans operating throughout
Sweden.  Neudling notes that “police are struggling to maintain
control of some 60 immigrant-majority neighborhoods…where gangs and
clans compete with the state for local authority.  A few years ago
hand grenades were used in bombings and presently bombs “are often
home-made IEDs.  The Swedish government introduced a thirty-four
point program to combat criminal gangs in 2019
[[link removed]],
but these measures did not reverse the tide of bombings and shootings.

Various criminologists offer competing explanations for how to combat
these gangs.  One explanation is to increase police investments.
Nevertheless, despite the government initiatives (like those promoting
green industrial jobs), they have been too little, too late.  I
compared the number of cases of deadly violence (DV) and deadly
violence with a gun (DVG)
[[link removed]] to
the number of actual (non-civilian) police
[[link removed]] from 2012 to 2021.
In 2012, the DV ratio was .34% but increased to .53% by 2021.  The
DVG ratio was .09% in 2012 but .21% in 2021 (the highest proportions
were 2020, with DV .59% and DVG .23%).  DV increased by 54.6% over
the ten year period, DVG increased by 146.2%.  While the number of
cases of deadly violence increased by 66.2% and the number of cases of
deadly violence with a gun increased by 164.7%, the number of police
increased only 7.5% during this ten year period.   Any comprehensive
policy must increase investments in both policing and long-term social
inclusion measures.  In contrast,  the Swedish military budget
increased by 46.1% in real terms, an increase of $2.265 billion 2020
dollars (according to my analysis of Swedish military budget data).

The danger of the misaligned budget priority is rather dangerous for
Swedish democracy.  As building explosions blur the line between
everyday criminality and terrorism, the political elites have
gradually moved to militarize immigrant dense suburbs. In July 2016,
SD proposed
[[link removed]] the
use of the police’s National Task Force (_Nationella insatsstyrkan_)
in the suburbs to fight crime.  The _Nyheter24_ website referred to
this as a “military force.”  This police group is a militarized
unit whose main task was then to oppose terrorism
[[link removed]].
In October of 2017, twenty members of the Moderate party made a
proposal to “let the military go in to support the police in
crime-prone suburbs,” according to a community newspaper
[[link removed]].
 That year a report
[[link removed]] by
Linus Gustafsson and Magnus Ranstorp identified how the counties
containing Sweden’s three largest cities, together with Örebro
County, contributed 80 percent of foreign fighters in Iran and Syria.
There were about 300 people from Sweden who “travelled to Syria and
Iraq to join terrorist groups such as the Islamic State (IS) and, to a
lesser extent, al-Qaeda affiliated groups such as Jabhat
al-Nusra.”  While some have criticized
[[link removed]] Ranstorp
in another context,  we can see another case of how failed
integration could accelerate urban militarization.

By January 2018, Jimmie Åkesson, then and now SD’s party
leader, supported sending the military into the suburbs to break
organized crime
[[link removed]].
Thereafter Åkesson was supported by then Social Democratic Prime
Minister Stefan Löfven who explained that it was not his first choice
of measures to deploy the military, but he was “prepared to do what
[was] necessary to ensure that serious organized crime goes away.”
By June of last year, about 80% of Swedes expressed “no objections
against deploying armed forces to assist the police in defeating the
rise in violent crime,” according to a Gothenburg University study
[[link removed]].

THE FUTURE IS BLEAK

Political short-termism has led to explosive policy solutions.  In
this cycle, politicians help generate crises as there is no leadership
or public support for comprehensive measures.  Then, a crisis emerges
which is addressed by militarist measures.  Here we see how the
failures of the left and right to substantially eradicate the root
causes of crime (in failed integration and under-policing) through
comprehensive measures are followed by proposals for increased
militarization.  These failures represent a division of labor between
the left establishment and the far right which in the long run benefit
the latter far more than the former. While the right-wing parties push
the war against crime and increases in military budgets, so too do the
Social Democrats while other left parties have nothing meaningful to
say about either crime or how their support for militarism is an
opportunity cost against social inclusion or necessary police
increases.   Investments in outlying SD-rich voting areas have been
inconsequential.

Swedish Television polls show how the youngest voters are moving away
from the left parties and into the hands of the far-right,
Nazi-founded SD.  In 2006, of those aged 18-21 about 11% supported
the Green Party and 10% supported the Left Party.  By 2022, these
figures dropped to 5% and 10% respectively (a drop of 6%).  In
contrast, those in this age cohort supporting SD increased from 3% to
22% over this time period (the only party among youth experiencing
radical growth during these years).  A recent poll by Ipsos in Italy
found that “two-third of young people” thought “the that fascist
regime of almost a century ago had certain advantages,” according to
a recent Swedish Television news report
[[link removed]].
 A European trend may be emerging.

The left parties failed to sufficiently innovate on crime and the
Social Democrats’ short-sighted militarist championing was a
gamble.  Rather than mobilize the nation sufficiently around SD and
crime threat, the Russian threat rose in importance.  Yet, once the
war issue was neutralized (by the push for arms transfers, increased
military budgets and NATO) voters could focus on other things, i.e.
the looming crime and bombing wave. In this election defense questions
were considered important by only 31% of voters (in contrast to 50%
concerned by law and order).

The left’s ability to act fast on green investments is constrained
by popular opinion and a decentralized political system that empowers
naysayers. Local government decisions can easily block or constrain
wind power.  In 2021, a news report
[[link removed]] explained
that 65% of Swedes supported “more wind farms” a decrease from 80%
 “a decade ago.”   A backlash involving local opposition and a
lack of participatory governance in designing these projects explains
part of the problem.  In contrast, in Dutch cities like Nijmegen,
windmills can be seen throughout the urban landscape. While the Green
Party wanted to limit localities’ ability to block windfarms, their
limited political clout effectively renders such ideas meaningless.
The right bloc promoted nuclear power as the key palliative, despite
the significant costs and delays attached to nuclear power station
development.  Given nuclear plants’ vulnerability during war (as
seen recently in Ukraine), it is remarkable that the Moderate Party
campaigned both on the Russian’s ability to threaten Sweden and the
advantages of nuclear power.

The superficiality of political debate on crime, integration, and
energy feed public opinion and parties that harvest superficial
understandings. The media provide free platforms to these parties who
help manufacture voters saturated in superficiality.  The education
system has a limited capacity to promote critical thinking and its
“pluralism” and growing aversion to radical ideas further
undermines any counterweight to the mass media.  At the same time,
the far right is relatively effective in using social media.  The
peace movement, environmental groups, unions, and civil rights
community have failed to coalesce in creating an alternative media
platform to combat mass confusion.  Instead, the default is serial TV
appearances where each kind of group makes its special pleadings
without connecting the dots.  In contrast, very much like the Bush
and Trump presidencies in the United States, the Swedish right links
issues of war, plundering the environment, (soft or hard) racism, and
crime, in a coherent (as in connected) package of misinformation.

The right has been helped by missteps by the left and the political
confusion among certain immigrant groups.  While the Green Party is
often the most articulate on ecological issues, its credibility in the
past has been damaged by former member (and Minister) Mehmet
Kaplan’s links to Turkish Islamists
[[link removed]] and
member Ali Khalil’s support for the Muslim Brotherhood in social
media
[[link removed]].  After
the election, a September 20tharticle
[[link removed]] in
the tabloid _Expressen_by Nima Gholam Ali Pour, Rashid Farivar and
Nima Rostami  (three immigrant background members of SD) claimed:
“The left has pursued a policy that promotes Islamism, parallel
societies and honor oppression, which primarily affects
immigrants.”  They argued that the biggest threat facing the
Swedish community was “the left’s identity politics and the racism
of low expectations.”  They claimed that the left-liberals’
policies “led to the segregation, high unemployment and cultural
exclusion…among migrants” and “paved the way for systemic
crime.”  They argued that left-liberals’ unrealistic and extreme
migration policy which failed to include an “impact analysis”
generated “enormous social problems, great insecurity and a growing
dissatisfaction among both ethnic Swedes and immigrants.”  They
argued that “left-wing liberals … legitimized groups in Swedish
society that have spread Islamism and the oppression of honor
codes.”

The ethnic SD members writing in _Expressen_ linked multiculturalism
to “the establishment and legitimization of reactionary Islamists”
as well as “parallel societies with their own moral police that want
to control women’s sexuality and rights.”  They also argued that
the new immigrant-led party, _Nyans_, was “an Islamist party with a
voter base exclusively in neighborhoods with a large population from
MENA countries.” The founder of _Nyans_ was expelled from the
Center Party for association with the Gray Wolves, an
ultra-nationalist organization based in Turkey (which has been
described as a Turkish government tool to persecute Kurds
[[link removed]]).

The left bloc is largely reactive and has failed to create sufficient
institutional spaces or networks to accumulate power to promote
policies outside established frameworks (tied to corporatist alliances
between incumbent businesses and the state). The Neoliberal frameworks
are compromised, too slow to respond, and often disproportionately
empower some combination of polluters, racists, militarists and
technocrats.   As I have long argued, the left should marshal their
political power to create _regional demonstration projects_ to
illustrate how an alternative society might look like.  I repeat what
I argued already twelve
[[link removed]] years
ago in _Counterpunch_: “The left has failed to create the kind of
institutional platforms that organize the relatively autonomous
cultural, media and economic power necessary for promoting
individuals’ (or societal) advancement, ethnic integration and
industrial development of regions that seem abandoned to political
parties that remind many of the Nazis. The extreme right fills the
vacuum with lies and myths that selectively tap into the truth and
expose the limits of the current left and right discourses.” 

THE WAY OUT

The only way out of this morass is for progressive forces, members of
the immigrant community and even alienated members of the working
class to create three kinds of new institutions. These can emerge
locally but extend themselves nationally. Economic, political and
cultural power must be accumulated to build an alternative to the
status quo.  As Roberto Saviano explains
[[link removed]],
“The far right can succeed in Italy because the left has failed,
exactly as in much of the world, to offer credible visions or
strategies.  The left asks people to vote against the right, but it
lacks a political vision or an economic alternative.” One hopes
that mainstream or left parties would learn from their mistakes and
figure out why they lose votes to extremists.  Knowledge will only
advance with some kind of alternative power block.  A part of the
power that drives truth can come in three areas.

First, on the economic front these groups must organize consumption
and production cooperatives involved in direct delivery of clean
energy
[[link removed]] to
bypass parasitic utilities driven by market prices and food
cooperatives tied to farmers and socially responsible restaurants to
bypass inflated food prices. Second, on the media front, a new
progressive media platform
[[link removed]] should
be created that shows how diverse issues are linked and expose the
limitations of both the incumbent left and right.   Finally, the
consumption and media networks could be linked to patronage of
socially responsible banks and a parallel political movement that
could redirect local procurement to cooperative formation
[[link removed]]. 
More economic democracy and cooperatives are needed to produce and
anchor jobs locally and deliver jobs in areas facing uneven
development.  In the U.S., one Tufts University study
[[link removed]] found
that “fewer rooftop solar photovoltaics installations” existed
“in African-American and Hispanic-dominant neighborhoods than in
white-dominant neighborhoods, even when controlling for household
income and home ownership.”  Nevertheless, there has been growth of
solar energy even in Taliban controlled Afghanistan
[[link removed]].
So the Swedish left could take a lesson from that.

_JONATHAN MICHAEL FELDMAN specializes in research related to
political economy, disarmament, green economics and studies related to
democracy. Recent research focuses on reindustrialization via the mass
transit sector in the United States, social change in Iran, and
transnational networks related to state-building or development in
Palestine. He writes periodically for Counterpunch and xxxxxx. He is
an associate professor at The Department of Economic History and
International Relations at Stockholm University._

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