It’s disheartening that a lot of the things we get (rightly!) upset about in US politics we are just numb to and cowed under when it happens here in Sweden. ICE raids, shutdowns of BLM protests, profiled stop-and-frisk, political leaders mocking climate activists, fossil lobbying, deforestation, ocean exploitation and pollution, abuse of indigenous groups, propping up tyrannical and genocidal regimes abroad, union busting, increasing poverty, worsening wealth gaps, climate recklessness, fossil industry subsidies, factory farms, segregationist politics, huge military industrial complex, overfull prisons, racist “fair and balanced” right-wing media, and an appified society propping up the network effect overlords.
S, the biggest party on the so-called left has long been fiscally blairite; unwilling to undo the ratchet effect horrors of the fiscally thatcherite right. Selling out what we had built together. Now as the right wing (currently in charge but slightly behind in the polls ahead of the 2026 election) is taking a speedrun into racism, they’re eager to dive right in on that. When the stop&frisk “zones” were first introduced there was some mild oh-no-that’s-wrong naysaying from S which quickly shifted to a “we would’ve made the zones even bigger and crueler” song you could barely make out for the proverbial bloom in their mouths.
That’s not to say I suggest voting for the right wing block as if they were a lesser evil version of themselves. That’s an illusion created by S’ eagerness to get dragged all the way through the Overton window. But ultimately the villains doing that dragging are the right-wing parties and they’ll go even further if they get reelected.
Arguably a lot of the problem rests with the electorate, with the general public. Media has a big responsibility there. People have long been subject to racist flimflam and climate downplaying and self-righteous hypocritical nationbuilding. Things that are absolutely hecked up mad world have been normalized.