A government crisis in Sweden

By that I mean that the Swedish government has fallen and a snap election has been called for the first time in fifty years. Whether that is a crisis or not I leave readers to determine.

EUObserver ticker gives the news baldly:

Sweden's minority Social Democrat government may fall on Wednesday, prompting new elections, after only two months in office. The political crisis results from the far-right Sweden Democrat party announcing its support for the centre-right Alliance opposition bloc's alternative 2015 budget. The Alliance and the far-right hold a majority together.

Reuters gives us more in a more up-to-date story:

Sweden will hold its first snap election for more than half a century in March after a far-right party helped defeat the center-left minority government's first budget in parliament on Wednesday.

Formed after a fractured September election that handed the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats the balance of power, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven's Social Democrat-Green coalition has been widely viewed as Sweden's weakest government in decades.

Shunned by mainstream parties, the Sweden Democrats have threatened to make Sweden effectively ungovernable unless the country adopts tough immigration policies like those of nearby Denmark, including a 90 percent cut in asylum seeker numbers.

Of course, shunning a party that has some electoral support is never a good idea but the Swedish main-stream parties are not the first to make that mistake.

The issue here is not anything seriously evil but whether Sweden should continue its open door immigration policy, given that it puts the famed Swedish welfare model under strain and has caused a number of problems with communities that have no intention to integrate into the Swedish society. Indeed, some have demanded that Swedish society should adjust to their standards.

At the very least, this should be debated and, as things stand, the Sweden Democrats are making sure it will be.

The rise of the Sweden Democrats has also threatened to break a decades-old agreement across the political spectrum on an open door policy for refugees. Former Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has called Sweden a "humanitarian superpower".

Mattias Karlsson, the acting head of the Sweden Democrats, vowed his party would turn the upcoming election into "a referendum for or against increased immigration to Sweden".

Sweden was the biggest per-capita recipient of asylum seekers and refugees last year, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

It is entirely possible that the instability caused by a certain blindness on the part of the main stream parties will continue after the next election. It is all a new experience for Sweden.

Some readers might like to recall what was on this blog on the subject in September.

Sweden voted more or less as predicted ....

.... though I understand that the bien pensants of that country are in shock. Well, they should have read this blog. The obvious conclusion we can draw from the results is that nobody has won.

Results show Stefan Lofven's opposition party is set to return to power, but with no clear parliamentary majority.

They give the centre-left bloc 43.7%, ahead of 39.3% for Fredrik Reinfeldt's centre-right ruling coalition. The far-right Sweden Democrats were at 13%.

Mr Reinfeldt admitted defeat and later handed in his resignation letter.

He also confirmed that he would step down as leader of the conservative Moderate Party.

Earlier on Monday, Stefan Lofven spoke briefly to Swedish media as he left his home in central Stockholm.

There will be a coalition, of course, but it is not clear who will be in it. The one thing we do know is that the party described as "far right" by our own media as well, the Swedish Democrats, will not be in it, with Mr Lofven rather snootily explaining that 87 per cent did not vote for them. Of course, on that basis, he ought not to be the Prime Minister either as rather a large proportion of the electorate even of those who turned out, did not vote for his party.

Luckily, this blog has its own Swedish correspondent, who sent us this information:

Although the opinion polls had foretold a massive left-green majority for months, ousting the centre-right government, the last couple of polls had indicated that neither side would gain a majority and the Swedish Democrats would hold the balance of power in the new parliament. This came to be, though there were some interesting surprises:

1) The winners, the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Left Party in total increased by 0.1% (and that's before the last postal votes are counted, so it may be ±0 in the end). Thus, the left didn't increase one iota from the catastrophic results of 2010.

2) The Feminist party managed to gain 3.1% (mainly votes from Stockholm and the university towns). This was not enough to get a seat in the parliament (4.0% needed). The votes were gained from previous non-voters and from the Left party and the Greens. However, even if we add the Fi votes to the other votes of the left it barely makes 47%. Gone are the days when the Swedish political landscape was dominated by the parties from the left. So much for the political winds blowing from the left.

3) All the parties making up the government received a hiding, mostly the Moderates (Cons), but still their 23,2% would have counted as a very good result prior to the last two elections.

4) And the winners were the Swedish Democrats with 12,9%. The Swedish commentariat is dumbfounded. Sooo much!!! And true, not a single opinion poll had put the SD above 10.5% (and that was only one or two among many), but in reality there was no need to be surprised. The betting companies had even odds for about 12.5%, so one wonders why it was so much harder for the polling companies to get it right.

As I wrote last, all the other parties refuse to cooperate with the Swedish Democrats, which given the other political, ideological and personal hang-ups will probably mean that Sweden will enter either a Belgian period (no government) or an Italian period (many governments).

Well, well. Swedish politics may well turn out to be quite interesting in the next few months. If it ends up with no government for any length of time the argument for governments being an absolute necessity will be considerably weakened.

Not altogether surprising

It seems that Swedish Democrats, Sweden's anti-immigrant party is set for serious gains in the coming elections. As usual, it is hard to work out exactly where the party stands in political terms as its policies are a mixture of many different ideas but, broadly speaking, they appear to be social conservatives and in favour of promoting Swedish culture as against multi-culturalism. They have also voiced the far from controversial opinion that not all immigrants are anxious to become part of Swedish society.

They have two seats in the European Parliament, which amounts to nothing very much but they may well come third in the Swedish Parliament despite (or perhaps because being banned from union posts and from participating in Stockholm's Gay Pride, whose support for communities that wish to ban them and, if possible, execute them, seems unbounded).

An assassination attempt?

This is not a story from Egypt, Libya or any other Middle Eastern or North African country but from Sweden. A number of Swedish media outlets and blogs reported the story that is given here in English by Blazing Cat Fur

Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who is on the death list of the terrorist network Al Qaeda because of his cartoons of Mohammed's escape an attack on Wednesday.

Vilks was with journalist Teresa Eder in the gallery Rönnquist & Rönnquist in Malmo doing an interview when an unknown man entered the gallery. He said he wanted to show Vilks a few works of art that were in a red suitcase. Vilks' bodyguard denied access to the man and asked him to show the contents of his suitcase in front of the gallery. When they discovered a firearm in it, they overpowered the man, five minutes later the Swedish police on site.

My immediate thought was (after the routine one of why have I not seen any reports of this anywhere else) that clearly Allah is protecting that man. This is not the first attempt and they have all been unsuccessful. Long may that continue.

However, there is a curious addendum to the story, which is so daft that it might actually be true: it seems that the whole thing was a misunderstanding and the seventy-year old weapon was the work of art in question or, at least, one of them.

More good news for some countries

The euro's popularity has sunk to an all-time low in Sweden. No, that country is not a member of it, having voted against nearly ten years ago but, apparently, surveys of attitude are conducted twice a year and was again last month.

But in Sweden, the euro is on the table twice a year via a survey by the Swedish statistical agency that asks people how they’d vote if a referendum were held “today” on joining the euro. The results of the survey conducted in November just came out. Sobering results: 82.3% would vote against joining the euro, only 9.6% would vote for it, and 8% were betwixt and between. The euro’s descent into utter unpopularity hell set a new record.

Meanwhile, in Iceland

The chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the Icelandic parliament, Árni Þór Sigurðsson, told the Icelandic media yesterday that he thought that Iceland's accession to the European Union should be slowed down until after the general elections scheduled in April next year and even put aside.

Sigurðsson is an MP for the Left Green Movement and a senior member of the party which forms the current Icelandic government with the Social Democratic Alliance. The SDA is the only political party in Iceland that favours EU membership.

This is not all. The President of Iceland has told CNN  that letting the banks fail was the right decision and has helped the Icelandic economy enormously.

Now, according to [President] Grimsson, "Iceland is better placed to benefit by maintaining our present position, rather than to let the EU speak on our behalf."

Apparently, he is not too happy about the future of Icelandic fisheries, should that country join the EU. (And well he might be unhappy. As I keep telling my Icelandic friends, quite unnecessarily, just look at what happened to our fishing.)

The 69-year-old president pointed to Norway and Greenland -- two other Arctic economies and non-European Union members -- as role models.

He said he would not hesitate to veto a parliamentary decision to seek EU membership, a promise he told CNN he had based five successful presidential runs on.

What, I wonder, are the chances of Iceland joining the European project?

All pupils must be equal ...

... even if it means no prizes for anybody. This story from Sweden is raising hackles, particularly at Falun where a school cook was told that she had to cut back on choices in vegetables and stop producing her own loaves of bread for two reasons.

Apparently, her meals that sound delicious, varied and very healthy somehow "comply with the directives of a local healthy diet scheme which was initiated in 2011". Or so says the municipality and who should know better than a bunch of bureaucrats with too much power and no knowledge of anything useful.

Secondly, and most importantly, the meals are too varied and too tasty (though, apparently, not too expensive). Other schools, says Katarina Lindberg, head of the unit responsible for the school diet scheme do not have such meals and the diet scheme was developed "to improve school meals overall and to try and ensure everyone does the same". Of course, the notion of other schools improving their standards is alien to the bureaucratic mind and the pupils in Anika Eriksson's school have to suffer as a result.

Take that Ms Toynbee

One of the best things that happened to the Telegraph is that it acquired Tim Worstall as columnist. I am rather astonished that the editor had the good sense to offer Tim a slot. He and I do not necessarily agree every time but we do dislike the same people, Polly Toynbee being high on the list, though I do realize that it does not place us into a particularly select group.

Yesterday's column had an interesting title: Let's give Polly Toynbee the Britain she wants. I have always assumed that Polly Toynbee envisages a kind of Soviet society where she and her friends and relations would be exempt from the poverty and misery that she would like to inflict on everyone else and have always enjoyed the thought that in the Soviet Union even the bosses had a constrained life that was much poorer than average existence in the West.

However, Mr Worstall has gone one better: he has taken Ms Toynbee at her word. Apparently the silly cow Grauniad columnist has expressed the wish of seeing the same social and economic balance that one can find in the Nordic countries.

She clearly knows nothing about Nordic countries. Presumably she did not read Graeme Leach's paper on economic lessons from Scandinavia that might have surprised her about the level of taxation and regulation in those countries.

Perhaps she will read Mr Worstall's collection of facts as opposed to myths so beloved by the Guardinistas.

Let's change policy to achieve that laudable aim. We should copy the Finnish education system, for example – it is, after all, the number one such system in the world. There they divide into academic and vocational at 16 and there's none of this nonsense that all must go to university – that's reserved for the small fraction that are indeed academic. Or the Swedish system of education vouchers. Parents decide on the school they want children to go to and the local council stumps up the fees – whether it's a public or private school.

From Denmark we'll take a couple of policies. Privatise the ambulance and fire services certainly. They've been working well there for nigh on 90 years. We'd want their taxation system as well: the national income taxis 3.76% and the top national rate is 15%. True, total income taxes are high but the rest is levied by the commune, a political unit as small as 10,000 people. At that scale, taxation is subject to the Bjorn's Beer Effect. If you know that it's Bjorn who levies your taxes, Bjorn who spends your taxes and also know where Bjorn has his Friday night beer, then he's going to spend your money wisely. Otherwise he can't go out for a beer on Friday, can he?

From all of them we'll take the abolition of the national minimum wage, fornone of the EU Nordics has one.

Sweden has also abolished inheritance tax, gift tax and the wealth tax. Those sound like three excellent ideas to copy.

We'll have to raise VAT as well, of course: for this is something that people don't seem to realise about Nordic tax systems. In many ways they are more regressive (yes, regressive, not progressive) than our own. This is because those countries follow the basic economics of taxation. You need low corporate and capital taxation, moderate income taxation and high taxes on consumption.

I suspect Ms Toynbee will have fit if she reads that. I also suspect that she will go on peddling her nonsense without bothering to find out any facts.

Troubles with that fiscal compact treaty

Poland is being troublesome again. (Not that it ever lasts too long but while they grumble people listen.)

Donald Tusk, Poland's prime minister, is threatening to keep his country out of the nearly-finalised treaty on greater economic discipline, in a dispute over the right to attend eurozone summits.

Poland is insisting that it should be allowed to attend eurozone summits even though it is not expected to adopt the euro for several years. Tusk told Polish radio on Tuesday (24 January): “If Poland does not win an appropriate status of participant in the eurozone meetings, which would give us a feeling that we take part in the decision-making process, ...we will find it difficult to sign the fiscal pact.”

While it is not unreasonable for the Polish Prime Minister to demand those rights but he is not going to get them. Poland is not in the eurozone and that is the way the colleagues will regard the matter. Mr Tusk should have foreseen this problem when he first agreed to the proposed "treaty", which, as we know is not a treaty because that was "vetoed" by the Boy-King.

He has been lecturing the colleagues on something or other at Davos but even now he will not do the right thing and that is demand a full IGC and a completely new treaty. As CNN reports

Hungary, Sweden and the Czech Republic also expressed reservations about treaty change -- but left the door open, pending parliamentary debate.

Whether anything comes of those reservations is a moot point but it is good to know that somebody will have parliamentary debates about the new proposals.

Once again, I am not sure what to make of it

Volokh Conspiracy reports that the "the Swedish government recently apologized to its Baltic neighbors for its previous whitewashing of Communist atrocities in the region". About time, too, one might think. Then one looks at the link and realizes that the only thing the Swedish government is apologizing for is "turning a blind eye" to the post-War occupation of the Baltic countries, which was somehow omitted from Swedish (and, to be fair, many other) history text books, not actual Soviet atrocities or the truth of who really fought the Nazis in those countries towards the end of the war. We have a long way to go before we all face up to the truth about Communism and western collaboration. The discussion on the Volokh site is unusually interesting.

Definitely a terror attack

Not surprising really, but it is good to see that the Swedish police appear to be reasonably sensible in their approach. Carl Bildt' idiotic twitter message is a joy for those of us who collect political vapidities.

Not sure yet

News of two car explosions rapidly following each other in central Stockholm. One person dead and two injured. The way the dead one is described raises the probability that it may well have been somebody actually in one of the cars, which contained gas cylinders. Waiting for further news.

UPDATE: There were earlier rumours but the Guardian goes for it:

A Swedish news agency said it had received an email warning, ahead of the explosions, in which a threat made against Sweden and its population was linked to the country's military presence in Afghanistan.

The TT agency said the warning, which comprised sound files in Swedish and Arabic, was also sent to Sweden's security police (SAPO) and was received 10 minutes before the blasts.

It also referred to caricatures of the prophet Mohammed by Swedish artist Lars Vilks, who became the subject of death threats and at least one assassination plot after cartoons appeared in a Danish newspaper.

It definitely looks like one of the perpetrators is the dead body.

The Swedes are shocked

Well, some Swedes are. To be precise, the ones who spoke to the BBC correspondent appear to be in shock.

BBC regional reporter Damien McGuinness said the success of the far right has shocked many voters in Sweden.

Winning 20 seats in parliament, the Sweden Democrats have obviously touched a nerve, he adds.

The party appears to have tapped into voter dissatisfaction over immigration, says our correspondent, with the result undermining the image of Sweden as a tolerant and open-minded country.

Given that the Sweden Democrats [in Swedish] managed to get those 20 seats because people voted for them, even though they were apparently not asked to take part in any of the official debates, I cannot quite see that there is anything shocking about it all. As for Sweden being a tolerant and open-minded society, that is a matter for debate. But, however one looks at it, tolerance and open-mindedness needs to be reciprocal. When a sizeable or, at least, vociferous proportion of the 14 per cent that is Sweden's immigrant population, refuses to accept those tolerant and open-minded ideas but insists on imposing its own non-tolerant world-views, the question is altered.

The Wikipedia entry on the party has been locked for obvious reasons and is, therefore, just a shade out of date as it has not the election results. What it tells us about the party does not sound so absolutely horrifying: they are against Sweden joining the euro but so are most Swedes; they want to renegotiate Sweden's membership of the EU but so do many Swedes though it is not clear how they are going to do it; they believe in freedom of speech for all even people who draw cartoons of Mohammed; and, as all political parties, their views are a hotch-potch.

Reuters points out that the Swedish result with the Centre-Right party remaining the largest though lacking overall majority as well as the so-called far-right winning those crucial 20 votes point to the various problems socialist parties have had recently in Europe. Since my definition of socialism would probably be different from Reuters I am not sure I would agree entirely. After all, very few of the so-called right-wing parties are anti-socialist in any real sense of that expression. Still, it is true that within the very narrow parameters of European politics, electorates seem to go for the right.

To sum up: the Centre Right alliance under the Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, has won 172 seats, which means a minority government or a coalition with another party. Nothing on earth, says Prime Minister Reinfeldt, will make him form a coalition with those nasty Sweden Democrats. He prefers that Greens, who are definitely on the left, are socialists and opponents of any kind of a free economy. But the Opposition with its 157 votes maintains that the alliance there stands firm. We shall see.

Swedish students show good sense

This was sent to me by a reader of the blog, who was naturally rejoicing that good news came out of Sweden. I have a soft spot for the Scandinavian countries so I am a little less surprised. Well, no. As it happens, I am astonished.

To start with we have the usual and unutterably tedious story of Swedish dockworkers deciding to boycott Israeli ships, in protest against the treatment of the one ship of the Gaza flotilla that refused to obey international rules and was raided after Israeli servicemen who boarded it were attacked.

Bjoern Borg, the union's chairman, said they were calling for an international investigation into the May 31 raid and added Israel's recent easing of its Gaza blockade was insufficient.

"We don't think it is far-reaching enough," he said. "We want them to lift the blockade".

Borg said stevedores in the southwestern port of Gothenburg had already refused to handle about a dozen containers containing cargo from Israel or goods destined for it.

However, officials said they expected the boycott to have a minimal impact on Swedish-Israeli trade, which accounts for 0.2 per cent of the Nordic country's
total imports and exports.

The goods most likely to be affected will be fruit, vegetables, spices and skin care products on their way from Israel to Swedish shops.

So, not only is this blockade of very little significance, though some Swedish shoppers might be somewhat annoyed, it also demonstrates the sublime indifference of Swedish (and other Western) trade unionists to the facts of life. The truth is that there is only one country in the Middle East that has free trade unions with all the rights Mr Bjoern Borg and his members take for granted, and that is Israel. Hamas does not believe in having trade unions and yet the Swedish stevedores support them.

However, the story does not end there as the Wall Street Journal writes.

That Sweden's dockworkers' union staged a week-long protest against Israel in the wake of the Turkish flotilla incident is hardly surprising. But the response of a 2,500-strong student union that supports Sweden's leading Moderate Party is worth noting. Last month, the student union showed Israel some welcome support by offering to load and unload Israeli cargo themselves. The students slammed the longshoremen in a press release and declared that "It is Hamas's fault that people are suffering in Gaza, not Israel's."

Their statement contains more clarity on Palestinian-Israeli relations than most anything we've heard lately from Europe's grown-ups. Stockholm has been particularly vociferous in denouncing Israel's efforts to defend itself, with Swedish Foreign Minister and Moderate Party elder statesman Carl Bildt having called for an investigation into Israel, and telling the Swedish press that Israel's Palestinian policy is "catastrophic" and "leads to one problem after another." All of which is pro-Israel compared to statements from Mr. Bildt's colleagues on the left.

Gustaf Dymov, 24, who chairs the contrarian student union, stressed in a phone interview that the offer to scab on the boycotting dockworkers was almost entirely for show—but then, so was the "boycott" itself, since very little cargo actually passes between Israel and Sweden by sea. Mr. Dymov says that's what outrages him the most: "It's very obvious [the dockworkers] did this not out of a will to support the Palestinians but to show hatred toward Israel."

Mr Dymov may not have much of a future in politics but is shaping up to be a very fine person, indeed, one who understands what freedom is about.

Interesting news from Sweden

Thanks to the excellent Powerline blog that I have quoted once or twice before, I find some interesting news from Sweden. It would appear that the Swedes are thinking of further cuts in income tax in order to boost the economy.

Sweden, I hear you cry? Socialist, nanny-state Sweden? Well, actually, there are interesting anomalies in the Swedish system, not least to do with it education that gives more freedom to parents than our own does.

Now, it would seem, the Swedish government is considering the seemingly unthinkable: that high taxes do not help the economy and do not bring in enough money for the government to do what it is supposed to do (whatever that might be).

Sweden's centre-right government on Saturday announced income tax cuts of 10 billion kronor to stimulate the job market, its primary objective.

Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and three other ministers in the four-party coalition said the reduction would mean most wage earners would have 200 to 250 kronor (20 to 25 euros, 29 to 36 dollars) more in take-home pay every month.

The proposal, to be presented to parliament on Monday as part of the 2010 budget bill, is the fourth leg of a tax cut programme introduced in January 2007 to stimulate employment.

As John Hinderaker of Power Line says:

It's an interesting comparison: Sweden experimented with the nanny state, learned that it was devastating to the economic and moral health of its people, and is moving back toward individualism. Here in the U.S., we had the world's most dynamic economy, and the lesson we took away from that--some of us, anyway--was that we were doing something wrong and needed to socialize everything. Curious.

More than curious. But it does not apply to Britain, sadly, as the country abandoned individualism some decades ago.

This a tricky problem

Both this blog and EUreferendum are vociferous in their support for freedom of speech, even if it means support for revolting specimens like Holocaust deniers. (The Boss of EURef and I have written about this too often to be able to link but those postings are out there.)

In particular, we were strongly involved in the "war" of the Danish cartoons, supporting the right of Danish newspapers to publish those cartoons and applauding the Danish government's refusal to become involved.

On the other hand, we have pointed out a few times that some of the anti-Semitic anti-Zionist anti-Israeli cartoons, especially on the left of the political spectrum, do resemble those that appeared in Der Stürmer of ill memory. Who can forget the infamous cartoon in the Independent of Ariel Sharon eating Palestinian babies? Herr Goebbels would have been proud of this revival of the old blood libel but the Press Complaints Commission did not deem it anti-Semitic, accepting the newspaper's explanation that they were merely being satirical and had not intended to cause quite so much discontent.

You can argue that freedom of the press should mean just that and anyone can publish anything they like, which raises the question about the absence of those Danish cartoons in any British media outlet. It also raises the question of what the point is of the Press Complaints Commission, but that is for another posting.

We now have a problem in Sweden. There are many good things about that country: their furniture design is superlative, their food is pretty good, and they were defeated by the Russians at Poltava, thus causing Peter the Great and some excellent poetry by Alexander Pushkin. They produced some astonishing singers and I do not mean ABBA. Pippi Longstocking and Karlsson on the Roof are among the best characters in children's literature. Swedish plays and Swedish politics, on the other hand, I find depressing.

The newspaper Aftonbladet comes under the second category. It is an evening paper of many years' standing, somewhat on the left of the political spectrum, being social-democrat and part-owned by the trade unions. Incidentally, I find it astonishing that although it is not the largest circulation Nordic newspaper, it still had 1,425,000 daily readers in 2006. I cannot quite work out whether that number applies to copies sold or whether the usual calculation of two readers per copy is used.

Aftonbladet published an article that accused the IDF on evidence that could be called dubious, that is Palestinian stories that have been denied by the people who had told them and a spurious link with a possible crime in the United States, of killing Palestinians in order to cut out and sell their organs. Naturally enough, the story was picked up by Arab media and the odd Russian writer who maintains that being Jewish allows him to produce rubbish of this kind.

The Israeli government has demanded an apology from the Swedish government, which it refused to give and, though the journalism is clearly shoddy and nastily unpleasant, we have to agree that a government cannot apologize for newspaper articles in a free country. Whether the Swedish government would behave the same way if those cartoons had been published and some Arab countries had demanded an apology is open to question.

In particular, I suspect, the Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt, would have reacted differently. In fact, he did react differently. Though on his blog posting on the Aftonbladet affair, Mr Bildt talks much about freedom of the press and refers rather vaguely to the cartoons, he does not apparently mention that at the time the Swedish government was in favour of shutting down the website of the one newspaper that had dared to publish them.

The Italian Foreing Minister, Franco Frattini, has announced that the EU should condemn the newspaper for its article, adding that he had met Mr Bildt to discuss the situation and to encourage the Swedish Presidency to issue a condemnation of anti-Semitism. Mr Bildt has denied that any such discussion had taken place, informing the media that there is some Italian misunderstanding here. (What are these people on?)

Yossi Klein Halevi in the Jewish World Review sums up the various details and suggests that the Israeli government should use the story to highlight the growth of anti-Semitic (shum mishtake shurely - musht mean anti-Israeli) sentiments in parts of Europe and, particularly, on the Left. He also thinks that the Swedish government should have condemned the article without interfering with rights of publication. I am not sure about the second point. Governments should stay out of such rows but they should do so no matter who is being offended.

The most important point the article makes is about modern anti-Semitism, which does not need to be linked to nazism or neo-nazism:

Aftonbladet’s editor, Jan Helin, wrote that he was not a Nazi or an anti-Semite. The first claim is no doubt true, the second debatable. Contrary to widespread assumptions among Europeans, one does not need to be a Nazi to be an anti-Semite. Contemporary European anti-Semitism has two spiritual roots: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The big lie of Zionism as Nazism and of the Jewish state as successor to Nazi Germany originated in Moscow, and became an essential part of Soviet ideology following the 1967 Six-Day War. Of the two versions of modern European anti-Semitism as they exist today, the far more pervasive — and dangerous — is the Soviet version. The rise of Western European anti-Zionism, then, is a posthumous victory for the Soviet Union.

If the result of the Aftonbladet scandal is an understanding of that simple point, it will not have been in vain. But I am not holding my breath.