On Sweden – David Stavrou in Haaretz:

Last year, Israel’s ambassador to Sweden, Ziv Nevo Kulman, made it clear that Israel does not have relations with parties that have “roots in Nazism.” But it wasn’t only about the past. In recent years, Sweden Democrats officials were quoted as saying things like “Let the Arabs get paid for raping feminists – that way they’ll do some good.” And “Can no one stand on Öresund Bridge [which connects Denmark and Sweden, and which refugees cross to claim asylum] with a machine gun?!” Senior party official Björn Söder, meanwhile, likened homosexuality to having sex with animals and questioned the true “Swedishness” of Sweden’s estimated 20,000-strong Jewish community. Another local politician, Gunilla Wassénius, signed a petition claiming that Sweden is infiltrated by Zionist interests driving a genocide against white people. Furthermore, party leader Jimmie Åkesson, Richard Jomshof (the newly elected chairman of the Parliamentary Justice Committee) and others have issued openly Islamophobic and xenophobic statements.’

Read the article here.

There is this persistent illusion about the far-right. That these political parties and movements are moderate or will become moderate as soon as their hunger for power becomes real.
That there are only a few minorities or maybe only one minority they despise, I’m talking here about the European far-right, and that these political parties sooner or later will become mainstream.

Needless to say, extremism can become mainstream.

Sometimes it really helps to get rid of some of the most comfortable but also most dangerous illusions.