Kent Ekeroth, who previously lavished praise over Hungary and its Prime Minister for "standing up for Europe," has revealed plans to ultimately move to the central European country, the daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet reported.
Kent Ekeroth, who is known for his poignant criticism of Stockholm's immigration policy, which he has deemed far too generous, ventured that Sweden has a lot to learn from Hungary.
"For starters, they have no immigration. That's the most important thing. And they value their own culture highly and the foundations of the European civilization," Ekeroth said, explaining his move.
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Yet another reason for the move to Budapest was existing threats against him in Sweden, Ekeroth claimed.
This is not the first time Ekeroth has praised Hungary as a shining example. In a passionate parliament speech in February this year, partly in Hungarian, Ekeroth thanked "Honorable Viktor Orbán" for "standing up for Europe." Ekeroth also acclaimed Hungarians as a people who "once fought the Turks" and were now "fighting the liberal leftist forces with George Soros in the lead."
Ekeroth was elected to parliament as an active member of the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats (SD), who have long been the Nordic nation's only party opposing mass immigration. However, his name is now conspicuously absent from the SD list for the upcoming autumn election, as Ekeroth plans on moving to Hungary once his term as an MP runs out.
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During his time with Sweden Democrats, Ekeroth has been no stranger to controversy and is known for his bellicose ways. In what later became known as "the iron pipe scandal," a video dated 2012 featured Ekeroth alongside party colleagues arming himself with iron bars after arguing with a drunken man. In the aftermath of the scandal, Ekeroth took a voluntary "time out" from politics.
Upon his return, Ekeroth had to take another "time out," this time on the party's request, after being fined for hitting a man in the face in a queue to a Stockholm nightclub in 2016. Although the verdict was eventually overturned, as Ekeroth was found to have acted in self-defense, the SD leadership suggested that the party's reputation had been damaged anyway and insisted that Ekeroth leave his duties in the justice committee.
"I'm going to stay [in Hungary], at least for a while, until the situation has calmed down a bit in Sweden," Ekeroth said, citing the lack of personal security once he finishes as an MP.
Incidentally, Ekeroth's twin brother Ted was previously reported as having procured property in Budapest and planning to move there, according to the magazine Paragraf. Former Sweden Democrat Erik Almqvist, who was also involved in the "Iron pipe scandal" is already living in Budapest.
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Hungary has previously locked horns with the EU over Budapest's non-conforming attitude to the migrant crisis, with the Hungarian government refusing to comply with the union's open-door migrant policy and specified quotas throughout the migrant crisis that started in 2015. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has repeatedly reiterated the government's stance against immigration and Islamization, stressing that Hungary will never become an "immigrant country."
By contrast, Sweden has taken in over 200,000 asylum seekers since the start of the migrant crisis. According to Statistics Sweden, over 25 percent of the Swedish population is of foreign background as of 2018.
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