Leftists in Stockholm are on the attack against the populist Sweden Democrats, saying its “high-ranking members love Putin,” and that a vote for the party “is a vote for the Kremlin.”
Their ‘reason?’ A bogus article in a national newspaper that looks to have been written by a pupil with some years left at school.
The piece, published this week by Expressen, criticises SD for “forging closer ties with the British party Reform UK—which has been repeatedly exposed as doing the Kremlin’s business.”
Even if you were to accept that Reform—Britain’s biggest party in the polls—is “doing the Kremlin’s business,” it is surely worth noting that figures from the Social Democrats, which group has responded angrily to this piece, have also held meetings with its officials. The ‘journalist’ here conveniently omits this fact.
But the idea that, as the paper puts it, Reform has “distinguished itself for expressing praise for Vladimir Putin” is itself ridiculous. Beyond the occasional (often phoney) mainstream media report, this theme is almost never discussed in Britain. On the contrary, Reform leader Nigel Farage has distinguished himself—at home and abroad—for bringing about the UK’s split from the EU, for demanding more rigorous border controls, and altogether hailing sovereignty from foreign powers.
Expressen no doubt knows all this, but pushes the line anyway. In the same way, establishment papers and politicians have been pursuing the narrative that Hungary’s Viktor Orbán is benefitting from Russian interference ahead of a key election next month, despite there appearing to be nothing substantial to back this up.
Responding to the Expressen hit-piece, Swedish writer Chang Frick said: “This is a style study in fabricated ‘news’ where journalists … aren’t really engaging in journalism but rather covert political spin.”
Det här är en stilstudie i påhittade ”nyheter” där journalister, i det här fallet David Baas, inte egentligen sysslar med journalistik utan förtäckt politiskt spinn.
Såhär: Reform UK leds av Nigel Farage. Och Farage är mannen som låg bakom Brexit, kanske den största politiska… https://t.co/90o2Qu7FLD
SD MP Dennis Dioukarev added that the report was “nonsense with zero news value, and [author David] Baas knows it.”
Michael Curzon is a news writer for europeanconservative.com based in England’s Midlands. He is also Editor of Bournbrook Magazine, which he founded in 2019, and previously wrote for London’s Express Online. His Twitter handle is @MichaelCurzon_.
