"Shortly after the first TV debate in the campaign for next year's Swedish election, there was a startling announcement. Anna-Karin Hatt, the leader of the Centre party, the standard-bearer for liberal centrism in Swedish politics, announced her resignation, citing an unbearable number of threats and harassment. Hatt was an emerging voice in Swedish politics, but had been able to lead the Centre party for only five months before she made a speech announcing that she felt forced to leave her job for the safety of her family. Her speech was short on specifics, but she referred to clear physical threats not just from trolls behind a screen, it has come much closer than that. She said she felt obliged to look over her shoulder in public spaces and no longer felt safe in her own home."
"Hatt's announcement came just three years after her popular predecessor, Annie Loof, left the party leadership for the same reason: extremist hate, neo-Nazi threats, online trolls and offline stalkers. Loof was about to deliver a speech at a political festival in Gotland in 2022 when another speaker at the event, a politically active psychiatrist, was stabbed to death. The man convicted of her murder had planned to kill Loof. In interviews at the time of her resignation, Loof said that she felt huge relief at having got out of politics without being physically harmed. The way she talked about her experience of public life sounded less like politics in a healthy democracy than a panicked swim among sharks."
Anna-Karin Hatt resigned as leader of the Centre party after five months, citing an unbearable volume of threats and harassment that imperiled her family's safety. She reported clear physical threats extending beyond online trolls, feeling forced to look over her shoulder in public and unsafe at home. Her resignation followed the 2022 departure of predecessor Annie Lööf, who left amid extremist threats, online harassment, and an assassination plot that targeted her. The hostile environment combines far-right extremism, neo-Nazi threats, trolls, and offline stalkers. Women in Swedish public life are being driven out by coordinated and violent intimidation, reflecting a global pattern of threats used to silence women in politics.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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