It is election day and I will closely follow the outcome on TV during the evening. My biggest concern this election is the Sweden democrats, a racist party that is very likely to enter the Swedish parliament. They have been successful in getting their racist message across even if the established parties have chosen to mostly ignore their opinion. I just read a very interesting article in the guardian which deals with the success of the Sweden democrats. It points to the fact that the party has skillfully bypassed traditional media which has enabled them to state facts which are divorced from reality.
In another publicity stunt, the party released a report claiming to prove, from government statistics, that immigrants were five times more likely than native Swedes to be convicted of rape. What the statistics actually show is that they are five times as likely to be investigated for rape, but experts point out that this may be due in part to racism in the criminal justice system, and that the absolute numbers are very small: when the Sweden Democrats claimed that 10% of the rapists convicted in their survey were Iraqi, they were talking about 12 men. If 0.04% of native Swedes are investigated for rape in one year, the corresponding figure for immigrants is 0.22%."
It is important to bare examples like this in your mind so that you always can argue against a party like the Sweden democrats and Let us hope that the Swedish voters will continue to keep this racist party in the shadows where they belong.
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