Sweden’s Migration Turn

Sweden has seen a massive increase in immigration in the 2000s under governments of both left and right, a product of (take your pick) generosity, naïvety, and a self-congratulatory sense of mission (the belief, which has manifested itself in different ways over the years, that Sweden was a moral or, more modestly, humanitarian superpower) supplemented, under center-right governments between 2006-14, by a sort of libertarianism.

That “sort of” libertarianism did not extend to free speech, a notion that can be tricky to reconcile with the traditional Swedish fondness for consensus. Under the center-right prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, a politician as blinkered as he was arrogant, Sweden’s åsiktskorridor (“opinion corridor”), an idea not dissimilar to that of the Overton Window, saw the boundaries of “acceptable” political discussion narrowly drawn by the center right as well as by the left.

About the Author

Andrew Stuttaford

Andrew Stuttaford is the editor of National Review's Capital Matters.

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Sweden has seen a massive increase in immigration in the 2000s under governments of both left and right, a product of (take your pick) generosity, naïvety, and a self-congratulatory sense of mission (the belief, which has manifested itself in different ways over the years, that Sweden was a moral or, more modestly, humanitarian superpower) supplemented, under center-right governments between 2006-14, by a sort of libertarianism.

That “sort of” libertarianism did not extend to free speech, a notion that can be tricky to reconcile with the traditional Swedish fondness for consensus. Under the center-right prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, a politician as blinkered as he was arrogant, Sweden’s åsiktskorridor (“opinion corridor”), an idea not dissimilar to that of the Overton Window, saw the boundaries of “acceptable” political discussion narrowly drawn by the center right as well as by the left.