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From a conservative perspective, it is not only the (more or less) unchangeable that is permanent, but also change.
A functioning pendulum never stops moving. Its power lies in the fact that it constantly generates its own counterforce. First it falls in one direction, then it falls back in the other. Only to then repeat the first fall once more, and then back again, and back again.
In politics and ideology, it is obvious that history to some extent functions like a pendulum movement. Dominant tendencies in politics and culture often create their own counterreactions. This is seen in short-term perspectives, where opposing trends often replace each other within a few years or perhaps a decade. But it can also be discerned in larger perspectives.
After the expansive and forward-looking 16th century, when the Renaissance modernized European society and drove a series of changes in culture, religion, statecraft, and technology, we had a more stagnant, religious, and authoritarian 17th century. In the 18th century, we looked forward again. The Enlightenment urged us to believe in progress, reason, science, and objectivity. And then in the following 19th century, subjectivity, mysticism, and history returned with the cultural movement known as Romanticism.
In some European countries, the political debate in recent years has been largely about criticism of migration. Especially in countries that have long had a high level of immigration. Great Britain is one example. France is another. Sweden is a third. This has been a natural and expected backlash against the openness towards international mobility, globalization and migration that we have seen for 30 years.
And in Sweden in particular, the country has been governed in recent years by a right-wing government that, among other things, has taken on the task of changing the direction of migration policy. Under the leadership of the right-wing nationalist Sweden Democrats and their party leader Jimmie Åkesson, the Swedish parliament has introduced a series of new laws that are intended to make the country in the north less attractive to migrants, especially from the global south.
Protests from the political left and from other leading strata of society have been limited. Many have understood that the policies pursued over a couple of decades were too irresponsible. The previously well-ordered Sweden had problems with workplace crime, gang crime, exclusion, Islamism and unemployment. Migration policy needed to be reformed.
But that’s how it happened. What usually happens. The pendulum swung back. Suddenly, seven months before the parliamentary elections to be held in September, the media began reporting on deportations where teenagers are allowed to leave the country while their parents are allowed to stay. Suddenly, it was not the migration critics who had the wind in their sails in the media, but those who were now criticizing the new migration-critical policy.
Many thought that the new policy was unreasonably harsh. Of course, Sweden must limit the volumes of people coming to Sweden, especially when it comes to refugee immigrants. But to brutally deport people who no longer have the right to stay is not humane.
The three government parties and the Sweden Democrats – who are outside the government but are part of a formalized collaboration – had difficulty defending the deportations and soon backed down. Both Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (from the liberal-conservative Moderates) and Sweden Democrats leader Jimmie Åkesson explained that the new strict migration policy is in place, but that it may of course need to be adjusted in detail.
This is the first time that the Sweden Democrats have had to reap a so to speak negative success from their own migration-critical policy.
Because the root cause of the sudden emergence of at least a small pendulum movement back in Swedish migration policy is that Sweden has now been moving in the direction that the Sweden Democrats have wanted for a couple of years. And the party leader has hinted in several interviews that a continued strict migration policy can sometimes also require compromises and adjustments.
Maybe it is the case that sometimes the pendulum simply must swing back a little. Then it is perhaps better to follow that movement to possibly be able to slow it down instead of pushing for the pendulum to move in the same direction all the time. Because it never does.