In a historic shift, the anti-immigrationism Sweden Democrats (SwD) has become its nation’s most popular party just nine years after first winning seats in parliament, a new poll finds. According Swedish polling company Demoskop, the SwD has an almost two percentage point advantage over the Social Democrats, which has dominated the Nordic country’s politics since the 1930s.

As the Telegraph reports:

According to a poll published on Friday in the Aftonbladet newspaper, the populist party now has the support of 24 percent of voters, compared to just 22.2 percent for the Social Democrats, the lead party in the country’s current coalition government.

“I’m not surprised. I’ve long argued we would be the biggest party sooner or later,” party leader Jimmie Åkesson told the Aftonbladet newspaper.

“We’ve been talking constructively over gang criminality, escalating insecurity, and a migration policy that doesn’t work for so many years.”

…The Social Democrats have been the biggest party in every election in Sweden since 1914, with the party building the country’s generous welfare society over more than 40 years of unbroken rule from 1932 to 1976.

Lena Rådström Baastad, party secretary for the Social Democrats, said voters had clearly been affected by a spate of explosions in several Swedish cities and by the shooting of 15-year-old boy in a pizzeria in central Malmö earlier this month.

“It’s a damned tough situation right now, so I’m not surprised when you consider what we’ve got against us, with gang murders, shootings and explosions. It’s us, as the ruling party, who has to pay the price.”

What Baastad didn’t say is that the “gang murders, shootings and explosions” — not to mention the Islam-dominated “no-go zones” and sexual attacks on women — are occurring in what was one of the world’s safest nations prior to a certain phenomenon: massive Third World, largely Muslim immigration.

With native Swedes long having a below-replacement-level fertility rate (<2.1 children per woman), their country’s population has swelled from a bit more than eight million in 1970 to more than 10 million today almost entirely due to (im)migration. The result is that once-homogeneous Sweden’s foreign born are now almost two million strong, constituting 18.5 percent of the population.

This demographic and cultural sea change has fueled the SwD’s rise — despite the left-leaning, mainstream media’s best efforts. That is to say, the press typically describes the party as “far right,” as exemplified by the Telegraph, the Local, and DW. Yet, in reality, the SwD embraces standard Western European statism; in fact, one of its criticisms of immigration is that it’s “wrecking” Swedish social welfare.

Yet opposing immigration and advocating a “Swexit” referendum, giving Swedes the opportunity to leave the European Union, earns the party the far-right label. Why? One reason is that Western Europe’s norm is “leftism.”

To understand this more fully, realize that “liberalism” and “conservatism” are relative terms, reflecting different political positions in different times and places. The two labels describe processes more than ideologies, with conservatism being the process of ever trying to preserve the status quo (ever unsuccessfully) and liberalism being the process of ever trying to change it. Thus were an American conservative and a Soviet liberal in the 1950s both anti-communist, with the former upholding the United States’ status quo and the latter opposing the Soviet status quo.

As for Western Europe, its status quo is basically a more advanced version of the godless, “statist” deviation from Truth metastasizing in our country.

When the SwD isn’t being stigmatized as “far right” (in reality, it’s the “partially right” opposing the all wrong), it’s called “anti-immigrant,” as Reuters does here. Reasonable? Or is this like labeling a family resistant to squatters on its lawn “anti-neighbor”?

Consider: The Beijing government has in recent decades flooded Tibet with ethnic Chinese in an effort to Sinicize the captive land. Now, would anyone contemplate calling the Dalai Lama and other Tibetans opposing this “anti-Chinese” or even “anti-immigrant”?

In fact, the left-wing New York Times wrote in 2003 that Beijing was strengthening Tibet with diversity.

Just kidding.

The Gray Lady actually wrote, matter-of-factly, that China was “trying to reshape Tibet.” Meanwhile, the left-wing Guardian reported approvingly in 2008 the Dalai Lama’s assertion that China’s action had the effect “of diluting Tibetan culture and identity.”

Yet when Westerners complain about (im)migration reshaping their countries and “diluting” their cultures and identity, they’re xenophobes, bigots, and haters. That is, when they’re not neo-Nazis.

For it’s diversity über alles everywhere — except anywhere beyond the West.

Image: screenshot from Sweden Democrats website