19-year-old Hugo Johansson has, during his short life, witnessed Sweden deteriorate further but wants to use politics to improve society and increase safety. For this, he is mocked, including by the public broadcaster.

In 2015, 163,000 asylum seekers came to Sweden from the Middle East, and the controls that were already lacking were loosened completely. That would become the final nail in the coffin for all ambitions of integration and a Swedish Sweden with high trust and strong cohesion, as it had been just a few decades earlier.

A few years before the migrant crisis, Hugo Johansson was born, and he has seen Sweden go from bad to worse during his upbringing. Now 19, Hugo is listed as number seven on the Sweden Democrats’ ballot for this autumn’s municipal election in Skövde. He is already active in the youth wing and has held a political assignment in the municipality since last autumn as a deputy in the municipal council, after a party colleague resigned.

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“It’s going to be great fun to lead both Skövde and the Sweden Democrats forward, incredibly exciting to represent them in Skövde’s largest political body,” he told Skaraborgs Allehanda in February.

“I want to bring back Sweden as it used to be. I want the next generation to have it as good as I did during my childhood. That’s the main reason I am engaged in politics.”

SR Reporter Reacts

The fact that a 19-year-old who grew up during the migrant crisis, with everything it entailed, considers Sweden to have been more peaceful in the past was, according to P4 Skaraborg, something worth a major feature.

Speaking to the public broadcaster, Johansson says that he quickly realized it was a fun job in the municipal council.

“Just working on issues for other people, seeing real change, that’s what’s rewarding,” he says.

Reporter Carolina Bladh then references the interview in Skaraborgs Allehanda, stating that she was “taken aback” when Johansson expressed his wish to return to the safer Sweden he remembered from his youth.

“What I meant was, of course, safety. When I was little, the worst thing people could talk about was Hells Angels and Bandidos up in Stockholm.”

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