Tony Göte Sigfrid Wiklander (born 1938) is a Swedish politician of the

Sweden Democrats The Sweden Democrats ( sv , Sverigedemokraterna ; SD ) is a nationalist and right-wing populist political party in Sweden. As of 2022, it is the largest member of Sweden's right-wing governing bloc to which it provides confidence and supply ...

party and a retired member of parliament who sat in the Riksdag from 2010 to 2018. Wiklander was previously the leader and chairman of the Progress Party.

Biography

Wiklander established himself as a local politician in

Åstorp Åstorp (old da, Aastrup) is a bimunicipal locality and the seat of Åstorp Municipality in Scania County, Sweden with 9,488 inhabitants in 2010. It is also partly located in Ängelholm Municipality. Overview Åstorp is a railway junction locate ...

and was a member of the Left Party and the

Social Democrats Social democracy is a political, social, and economic philosophy within socialism that supports political and economic democracy. As a policy regime, it is described by academics as advocating economic and social interventions to promote s ...

. In 1989, he was elected as chairman of the

Helsingborg Helsingborg (, , , ) is a city A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edit ...

based Progress Party. He was expelled as chairman of the party due to comments in the media that were seen as too extreme and his connections with the early

and the

New Swedish Movement The New Swedish Movement ( sv, Nysvenska Rörelsen) was a far-right political movement in Sweden that emphasized strong Swedish nationalism, corporatism and anti-communism as well as a cult of personality around Per Engdahl. Engdahl founded the ...

. Wiklander then chose to establish a new party with the old Progress Party name in October the same year in Åstorp with economic support from millionaire

Carl Lundström Carl Ulf Sture Lundström (born 13 April 1960 in Filipstad, Sweden) is a Swedish businessman. Carl Lundström is the son of Ulf Lundström and the grandson of Karl Edvard Lundström, founder of the world's largest crisp bread producer Wasabr ...

while the Helsingborg wing continued as a separate party. Wiklander's Åstorp faction started a cooperation with

New Democracy New Democracy, or the New Democratic Revolution, is a concept based on Mao Zedong's Bloc of Four Social Classes theory in post-revolutionary China which argued originally that democracy in China would take a path that was decisively distinct ...

. As New Democracy emerged with similar policies, Lundström changed his support to New Democracy. The original

chapter of the Progress Party then reshaped itself into ''Svensk Samling'' which merged into the Sweden Democrats in 1998. Later, most of the ''Svensk Samling'' defectors to the Sweden Democrats joined the National Democrats which was formed after an extreme wing of the Sweden Democrats were ousted and split from the party. Wiklander waited until after the split of the Sweden Democrats in 2001 and thereafter merged his faction of the party with the Sweden Democrats, the more moderate faction. After joining the Sweden Democrats, Wiklander was elected to the Riksdag for the party in 2010. He retired from parliament at the

2018 Swedish general election General elections were held in Sweden on 9 September 2018 to elect the 349 members of the Riksdag. Regional and municipal elections were also held on the same day. The incumbent minority government, consisting of the Social Democrats and the ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wiklander, Tony 1938 births Living people Members of the Riksdag from the Sweden Democrats Members of the Riksdag from the Left Party (Sweden) Members of the Riksdag from the Social Democrats 20th-century Swedish politicians 21st-century Swedish politicians