A leading liberal politician has quit in fear of her physical safety. It is a crushing setback for democracy in one of the world’s most open societies
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hortly 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 Lööf, left the party leadership for the same reason: extremist hate, neo-Nazi threats, online trolls and offline stalkers. Lööf 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 Lööf.
