(JTA) — A right-wing Swedish alderman said his party “hates Muslims” because of Jewish politicians and that Jews control the White House.
Mikael Hoglund, an alderman in the city council of Upplands-Bro, near Stockholm, said in an interview published Wednesday in the magazine Expo Idag that the Sweden Democrats “hates Muslims” because of Jews. Hoglund singled out one of the party’s prominent lawmakers, Kent Ekeroth, who said in 2010 that his mother was a Jew of Polish descent.
"Ekeroth runs the Islam thing within the Sweden Democrats," Hoglund said. "But I am not a Jew so I’m not fixated on Muslims. They contribute to the country."
Hoglund, who said he may leave the party to join a neo-Nazi movement, also said that in the United States “it is the Jews who are pulling the strings.” He cited President Obama’s three-day visit to Israel this week. “He must do well in Israel to do well at home," Hoglund said. "They have the power. But that’s life.”
Hoglund was elected in 2006.
Sweden Democrats, a pro-Israel, rightist party, opposes what it calls as “the Islamicization of Sweden.” It crossed Sweden’s 4 percent voting threshold for the first time in the national election of 2010 and entered parliament with 20 out of 349 seats. It is also represented in 612 out of Sweden’s 12,978 municipal councils.
Willy Silberstein, the chairman of the Swedish Committee Against Anti-Semitism, called Hoglund’s statements “the archetype" of longstanding anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. "I thought we had progressed in 2013,” Silberstein said.
