Sweden’s right-wing government is struggling to tackle gang violence
IN Sweden it’s a new year with a new-ish government, but many of the same problems remain. Especially when it comes to gang violence. Although the country set a dark record in 2022 – with more than 60 people killed by guns – 2023 hasn’t seen much in the way of improvements. A spate of attacks over the New Year period and the first week of January has resulted in further shooting deaths and destruction caused by explosives in Stockholm’s suburbs.
None of this is new to Swedes. The Nordic nation has long grappled with growing gun violence, largely related to the organized crime networks that operate throughout the country. What is more recent is the political fringe of the government now responsible for reducing it. Right-wing Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson came to power after a parliamentary election last September, with key support from the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD), a party with neo-Nazi roots. Both SD and Kristersson’s Moderates ran on a platform of being tough on crime, underpinned by promises of tougher punishments and tougher immigration controls. As I have written beforethis campaign was very effective with voters – so effective, in fact, that despite the extraordinary popularity of Sweden’s former Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson, her centre-left minority government was ousted.
But as Kristersson’s coalition government and its far-right supporters in SD (now parliament’s second-largest party, behind Andersson’s Social Democrats) are learning, campaign promises on issues as difficult and urgent as tackling widespread gang violence are not. as easy as winning elections. There were 388 shootings nationwide in 2022 — but 112 of them happened in September or later. And the issue has not become less pressing for voters (not least because the gang violence has become apparent directly and negatively affect housing pricesespecially in the capital Stockholm).
Yet the underlying problem is not that the government and its far-right supporters are failing to deliver on their campaign promises; as the The Swedish journalist Karin Pettersson pointed out in it New statesman in November it is really about the prime minister’s “myopic focus on immigration and crime has hidden other, but equally important and problematic, major changes in Swedish society”. Among those changes: a widening inequality gap, privatization of schools, gutted social services and a lack of affordable housing. With little intention of addressing these root causes of segregation (itself a key factor in gang violence), Sweden’s right-wing government will continue to struggle to address the main problem it has promised to solve.
This article was first published in the World Review newsletter. It comes out every Monday; subscribe here.
[See also: European diplomacy in the 21st century, with Catherine Ashton]