Steady poll lead continues for Alliance

It'll be terrible if SD actually get in with 7.5% and manage to gain influence at the Riksdag. Of course it could just be a temporary affair as with New Democracy in the early 90s but in the worst case they'll be reelected and end up being included in government at some point like DF in Denmark. It's also disappointing to see the Left Party fall and the red-greens remain far behind. It'll be 4 more years of privatisation, welfare cuts and growing inequality with Reinfeldt as PM.

I think its equally terrible if the Left party get back into the Riksdag. Their leader is someone who cried when the Berlin Wall came down and who has at best, a tenuous attachment to the idea of parliamentary democracy.

Somehow we still have this rather strange view that loonies on the left are somehow misguided but with their hearts in the right place, but that the loonies on the right are just plain evil. Both groups are full of hate albeit at different targets.

The Left Party haven't been communist for decades, it's a just a label that's thrown around by the right to discredit those who stand up for justice and equality and who fight for the rights of ordinary people. And to call Lars Ohly an opponent of parliamentary democracy is plain ridiculous. It was the Moderates who once opposed giving the vote to women and the poor and who were full of Nazi sympathisers in the 30s and 40s so if anything they're the party that should be most ashamed of its historical record.

Try not to twist my words - its a very intellectually dishonest way to argue. I did not call Lars Ohly an opponent of parliamentary democracy. I said that he had at best, a tenuous attachment to the idea of parliamentary democracy. There is quite a difference in meaning between the two sentences.

Here are a few quotes from Ohly:

Marxism-leninismen är ett bra, riktigt och viktigt begrepp.

Vi får aldrig acceptera ett demokratibegrepp som står höjt över klasskampen.

Kuba är ett fantastiskt exempel på hur man under mycket fattiga förhållanden kan uppnå folkligt deltagande och ekonomisk rättvisa.

Det kan vara så att inskränkningar av de demokratiska fri- och rättigheterna är den enda möjligheten för arbetarklassen att slå vakt om den största demokratiska reformen vi känner till - avskaffandet av utsugningen och kapitalismen.

The thing is.... most of us don't need a lifetime of experience to persuade us of the primacy of parliamentary democracy. It shouldn't be something to which we supposedly "convert" in middle age. Similarly, I wouldn't trust any party with a leader who spent much of his/her life defending fascism, as "ett bra, riktigt och viktigt begrepp."

Your argument about the Moderates is something a strange one since I don't think anyone active in that party in the 1930s and 1940s plays a role today, unlike many members of the Left party who most certainly were around prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall.

However, since you've raised the topic of parties with dodgy histories then I'm sure you're aware of the Kirunasvenskarna. For any readers who aren't, they were a bunch of idealistic communistics sent to Russia in the 1920s and 1930's to build the communist paradise. Sadly, and predictably with the hindsight of history, many of them were executed and others sent to prison camps. The fortunate few who managed to return were ostracised by their Swedish communist friends because, after all, things couldn't possibly be so bad in the workers' paradise - the returnees simply must be lying. That particular issue is still alive today btw. Lars Ohly (unsurprisingly enough) got into quite some trouble recently for dodging an apology to the families of those who returned for the treatment they received from the party when they came home. Hence, if one wishes to carry your argument through to a logical conclusion then I'm afraid the Left party, with its attachment to the Soviet killing machine, doesn't fare much better than the Moderates in early twentieth century history.

Hej Stuart is this the same Lahrs Ohly ? Seems at least some people say he isn't a big fan of democracy at least in Cuba and the Eastern Block .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lars_Ohly#Nacka_Skoglund

From what I've read there are differing opinions within the Left Party. Ohly is more on the traditionalist wing of the party and did call himself a communist until about 10 years ago but the party as a whole dropped the term communist in 1990 and had been criticising the repressive nature of Soviet style communism for decades before that. If Ohly did say these things then I would certainly disagree with him but I don't know how long ago it was and in what context he said it - people can clearly change their minds over time. Certainly in a recent interview he said very clearly that Cuba is a non-democratic society and that while it may succeed at some things (such as providing health care to its people), its political system is totally unacceptable and the opposite of what the Left Party would like to see in today's Sweden.

I know very well that the Left Party did in the past defend Stalin and try to hide the truth about what was going on in Eastern Europe but that was decades ago. I mention the Moderates here not to justify Left Party's historical record of supporting communist repression, but to make the point that right-wingers have no right to attack the Left Party today for something that happened decades ago while completely ignoring their own history of Nazi sympathisers and of opposing the most basic democratic rights and freedoms for ordinary people.