In early April 2015, the Sweden Democrats accused its youth league, the Sweden Democrat Youth, of having relations with the white power organization Nordic Youth. In response to these alleged relations, SD threatened to expel several leading members of SDU. SDU's leader Gustav Kasselstrand, and its deputy leader William Hahne, were eventually expelled from the party onApril 27. They both denied the accusations of relations with extremist groups, and claimed that SD's parliamentary group leaderMattias Karlsson wanted to get rid of them after Hahne defeated the leadership's preferred candidate for the SDU chairmanship in Stockholm. Following the initial expulsion of the youth wing's chairman and deputy chairman, the mother party launched its own leadership candidate to compete against Jessica Ohlson, who was considered an ally of Kasselstrand and Hahne, and warned that the party would break all ties with SDU if Ohlson were to be elected chairman. On September 12, 2015, Ohlson defeated the party's preferred candidate for the SDU chairmanship, and the party shut down SDU's website and broke all relations with its youth wing. It then established a new youth organization, Ungsvenskarna and announced that every SD member who remained a member of SDU would be expelled. Ohlson herself was officially expelled alongside five other SDU members on October 25, but continued to serve as chairman of SDU, which went on to become an independent organization.
Founding and defections
In early 2017, Sveriges Radio reported that SDU members had filed a party registration application to the election authority. The party was eventually registered on December 13, 2017, with Kasselstrand, Hahne and Ohlson in central positions. It was then officially launched on March 5, 2018; at the same time, it announced that it would participate in the 2018 elections. Two Sweden Democrat members of the Riksdag, Olle Felten and Jeff Ahl, defected to the party later that month. According to the rules of the Riksdag, Felten and Ahl are considered independent MP's, meaning that Alternative for Sweden is not officially represented in the parliament. Mikael Jansson, former leader of the Sweden Democrats, also defected on April 9, citing the mother party's recent lack of resistance to NATO as his main reason. Before the 2018 elections the party was one of the largest in terms of social media interactions and expected to enter the parliament after the elections, with leader Gustav Kasselstrand asking people on Twitter to prepare for "Sweden's biggest political earthquake in modern times". However, the party failed to enter parliament by a large margin, receiving just 0.31 out of the 4.0 percent needed to get past the election threshold. On election night, the party was reported to have been kicked out of the Persian restaurant it had rented in order to celebrate the election results. It did not participate in the municipal elections.
Since 2018
After the 2018 election, the party participated in the 2019 election for the European Parliament, but failed to gain a seat. In March 2020, the party's deputy chairman and founding member William Hahne resigned from his position, after he had been revealed by Expressen to run a webshop selling surgical masks for a price 759% higher than the regular one during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ideology and policies
On its website, party leader Gustav Kasselstrand describes Alternative for Sweden as a swedish nationalist party and lists three key issues:
AfS is non-interventionist and displays hard Euroscepticism; it considers the EU a threat to Sweden’s independence. It seeks to rearm the military and form a Nordic defense alliance, instead of making Sweden dependent on NATO. It wishes to restrict welfare benefits to Swedish citizens, shift from progressive to flat income tax, replace the differentiated VAT rates with a fixed rate, re-nationalise all schools, and combat the idea of a cashless society. AfS also wishes to make the country self-sufficient and end the use of fossil fuels, citing both environmental protection and national security reasons. AfS has been described as right-wing, far-right and right-wing populist by Svenska Dagbladet, while Dagens Nyheter has described the party as nationalist and right-wing populist. Bloomberg News has described the party as social conservative and far-right. The ideology of the party has also been described as close to the identitarian and alt-right movements.
