Summary: Immigration is changing the West. For a look at our future, see Sweden. Its leaders have acted earlier and more decisively to reshape its society to a form better suiting their needs. Now its people have woken up and begun to react. Too late, of course. It is a revolt of the lab rats. When will our turn come?
“Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.
— Donald Trump, 19 February 2017. Sweden’s leaders mocked and laughed. They’re not laughing now.
The Times gives a balanced looked at the political earthquake shaking Sweden.
“A nationalist anti-immigration party with its roots in the white supremacy movement has surged into the lead in the Swedish election campaign in a backlash against the country’s liberal asylum and migration policies. The Sweden Democrats have become a focus for anger about gang crime in city centre immigrant communities and the influx of asylum seekers in 2015-16. …
“The party is now on the verge of causing an upset in Swedish politics after its support was put at 25.6% in the latest opinion poll, ahead of 21.2% for the Social Democrats – the centre-left party which has received the biggest vote at every election for a century. …the mainstream conservative Moderate party has said it could work with it on issues such as immigration. That means Mr Akesson, 39 {their leader}, is set to become the kingmaker after the September 9 election and could be instrumental in ousting the current Social Democrat-Green administration in favour of a centre-right coalition.
“‘The Sweden Democrats’ voters are very unhappy with Swedish immigration policy and do not trust politicians. Otherwise they are normal Swedes with a job and families,’ said Anders Sannerstedt from Lund University. …Its anti-immigration message found a wider audience after Sweden took in 163,000 asylum seekers in 2015, more than any other European country per capita. Sweden’s foreign-born population has risen from 11 to 18% in under two decades. {aprox 600 thousand immigrants in 5 years to its population of 10 million.}
“Mr Akesson blames liberal immigration policies for the rise in gang violence in Stockholm, Malmo and Gothenburg. In 2011 only 17 people were killed by firearms in Sweden but in 2017 there were more than 300 shootings, leaving 41 dead and over 100 injured. ‘We are prepared to bring down any government we think is not leading Sweden in the right direction,’ Mr Akesson said. His policies include funding migrants to return to their homeland and severely restricting new arrivals. He is also determined to push for ‘Swexit’, saying that the EU is a ‘large web of corruption where no one has control over anything’.”
Ten percent of Sweden’s public ranked law and order as the most important issue in the vote on Sept. 9, the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet reported on Saturday (NYT). What produced this change in public sentiment? News like this: “More Than 100 Cars Burned in Mass Arson Attack in Sweden” in the NYT.
“The Swedish authorities on Wednesday were investigating the burning of more than 100 vehicles on the nation’s west coast, in what they said was a coordinated arson attack by groups of young men. …the phenomenon has stymied the police and criminologists. ‘On average, there are four incidents a day in Sweden …’ said Manne Gerell, a criminologist affiliated with Malmo University. In the summer of 2016, Malmo, Sweden’s third-largest city, experienced more than 70 car fires within a few weeks. The police took to using drones to search for the culprits. …
“In Kronogarden …about 40 youths threw stones at police officers and rescue workers and blocked the entrance to the area with burning car tires. …In a region that frequently tops quality-of-life indexes, such social unrest has left police officers scratching their heads as they struggle to find the root cause of the fires.”
Organizing is occurring among the new underclass, to the surprise of Sweden’s leaders. As if they were people!
“It seems very organized, almost like a military operation.”
— Stefan Lofven, Sweden’s prime minister. {Reuters.}
“The attacks in Goteborg were widely recorded …instead of a crowd of angry youths, they appeared to be more systematic. ‘It looks kind of calm and organized ….”
— Manne Gerell, a criminologist and senior lecturer at Malmo University (bio).
The search for “root causes” – a reliable signal that the authorities have no clue. The news stories carefully make no mention of the rioter’s ethnicity. That would be thoughtcrime! This latest bout of violence produced the usual ritualistic vapid response from Sweden’s leaders.
“‘Society is going to react very harshly against this,’ Sweden’s prime minister, Stefan Lofven, told Radio Sweden, adding: ‘We have raised the punishment for vandalism. We will also propose this fall to address the attacks on the police that often occur in the wake of this kind of activity.'” {NYT.}
Sweden’s leaders abandon its people. Now, consequences.
A story in the NYT about modern Sweden: “Hand Grenades and Gang Violence Rattle Sweden’s Middle Class.” It describes horrific changes in Sweden, and how its leaders have swung into action!
“Last year, Peter Springare, 61, a veteran police officer in Orebro, published a furious Facebook post saying violent crimes he was investigating were committed by immigrants from ‘Iraq, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Somalia, Syria again, Somalia, unknown country, unknown country, Sweden.’ It was shared more than 20,000 times; Mr. Springare has since been investigated twice by state prosecutors, once for inciting racial hatred, though neither resulted in charges.”
Spiked has a excellent brief on the situation: “The rise of the Sweden Democrats” by Hugo Brundin — “There’s more to this populist upsurge than bigotry.”
“The SD has a racist past. It grew out of racist organisations, and was co-founded by a veteran Waffen-SS volunteer in 1988. It has tried to clean up its image in recent years, and adopted a zero-tolerance policy against racism in 2012. But it remains embroiled in racist scandals. Several representatives have been spotted wearing Nazi armbands, ‘as a joke’. Others have stated that ‘Islam does not belong in Sweden’.
“Why have so many Swedes become so alienated, and so distrustful of mainstream politicians, that they have been driven into the arms of the Sweden Democrats? …The migration issue is key here. Even discussing the costs of migration, raising questions about cultural differences, or about problems with integration, has long been considered suspect in polite society. And Swedes have become disillusioned with a political and media class that has been dishonest about these issues. …immigrants arrived in a country that was already struggling with integration, where many immigrant-dominated areas were blighted by high degrees of unemployment, crime and cultural segregation. Though Sweden’s problems are sometimes sensationalised, there are very real issues. There has been a surge in violent crime, including grenade attacks. Anti-Semitic attacks in the city of Malmo have trebled in recent years.
“We’ve repeatedly been told that the influx of refugees would be a win for the economy, that among the Syrian refugees were plenty of doctors and engineers. We’ve been told that the Afghan migrants would save the welfare state, as an influx of low-skilled labour would help take care of our elderly. But the reality has been quite different. All the rhetoric was just an insult to voters’ intelligence. …
“The rise of the Sweden Democrats is not primarily about a return of nativism. Much like the Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump, it is the story of a people increasingly fed up with elitism and political correctness. It isn’t the racism of the public that has brought the SD to where it is today, but the delusion, dishonesty and hypocrisy of the elite.”
Sweden’s liberals still refuse to debate the issues. For example, immigrants to Europe have created a wave of anti-semitic violence. The wise and good remains mostly silent about that. Peter Wolodarski chooses to attack Swedish conservatives for anti-Semitism: “Sweden’s far right may loom large, but I’m confident it won’t govern.” He is editor-in-chief of Dagens Nyheter, a Swedish daily newspaper. This was published in The Guardian.
This worked for a long time. Long enough for Europe’s elites to permanently change the culture of Europe. But the price they pay might be high if they lose confidence of its natives and wreck its social cohesion.
How can this have happened?
The West’s fantastic success since WWII produced complacency, allowing social engineers to begin vast tinkering with our societies. Guided only by ideology, without experimentation or small-scale testing. The result has been what any rational person should expect, much like letting monkeys into the control room of a nuclear power plant.
There is a darker perspective. Bill Bonner writes about finance at The Daily Reckoning and is a founder of The Agora (see this article about it). He is a doomster and perma-bear, but has an interesting perspective on our situation. See these terrifying words from his column “Corrections” in March 2001…
“Men do stupid things regularly and mad things occasionally. And sometimes, the impulse to self-destruction is so overwhelming it overtakes an entire nation. …The best a person can hope for when he goes mad is that he runs into a brick wall quickly …before he has a chance to build up speed. That is why success, in war and investing, is often a greater menace than failure. …
“People seem to make such obvious and moronic errors that it seems as if they were driven to it by some instinct of self-destruction – like lemmings periodically exterminating themselves in a march off the cliffs. What’s more, this diabolical instinct seems to report for duty at the very moment when the future seems the brightest – that is, when it is most needed! Just when men are most proud, most confident, most expansive in their ambitions and hopes …that is when they make the most lunkheaded judgments.”
For More Information
For a mild (very PC) look at this moment in Sweden, see this at Bloomberg. Also see “They won’t admit it in Stockholm, but Donald Trump is right about immigration in Sweden” by Fraser Nelson in The Telegraph.
Ideas! For shopping ideas, see my recommended books and films at Amazon.
If you found this post of use, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. Also see these posts about immigrants (including similar reports from other nations in Europe), and especially these…
- Essential reading about hidden history: The history of immigration and America, lost amidst the more useful myths.
- Important: The lies about immigration keeping the borders open.
- Terrifying: Torching Utopia: Sweden tries mass immigration.
- Horrific news from Sweden about sexual assaults by immigrants.
- Trump points to Sweden’s problems with migrants. Then they riot, again.
To better understand immigration
As so often the case, we can see these political dynamics more clear in other societies. We can learn much from the immigration crisis in Europe. It is our future.
Reflections on the Revolution In Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West
The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam
I don’t understand how you can keep fetishizing and pedestalizing the EU at this point.
A lobby of unelected “representatives” unilaterally setting international policy over the protests and concerns of sovereign countries and their citizens.
The rampant, virulent elitism and obsession with corporacracy and cosmopolitanism we see destroying developed civilization now is not a corrupting agent inserted into the council, it is a byproduct of it.
Wake the hell up Larry: Progressivists were just as cynical, hypocritical, and subconsciously racist 100 years ago as they are now. The “dream” whose boots you’re still slavishly licking was from the beginning a poorly disguised ponzi scheme meant to create a second United States in the Old World, one every bit as dystopian as the original American model eventually became.
Growling,
“I don’t understand how you can keep fetishizing and pedestalizing the EU at this point.”
I wish people would give a quote in their replies. As with yours, we can’t say to what you are replying. There are two obvious problems with it.
(1) There is nothing in this post remotely “fetishizing and pedestalizing the EU.” The only mention I see of the EU in the post is by the leader of the Sweden Democrats.
(2) There are 16 posts about the EU on the FM website. What previous posts justify you saying that I am “fetishizing and pedestalizing the EU”? Here are two typical posts:
Oh, okay, you want a quote? How about that line “Unnecessary death of a dream.“ you maudlinly whinge under a pic of its flag being burned in a protest.
Then there’s those Star Trek reminiscing pieces you vomited out over the last week or so.
Admittedly those rose-tints were for the UN, but given how that little outlet has since become another money laundering and smuggling apparatus of the Eurocrats, I stand unashamed of the minor mix-up. They both are supernational Europe-based “regulatory councils” that have trampled on national rights from their outset. They both were founded by warmongering Progressives who only prefer Free Trade based ONe World Order because they realized modern war was literally blowing up in their faces. And they both have been whitewashed by you of their double-faced histories so you can wax lyrical about the nonexistent RL applicability of Gene Roddenberry’s hand-me-down fantasies of a “post-conflict” “space federation” (which funny enough is heavily hierarchal, imperialistic, and constantly engages in war for resources and backroom dealings over members diverging from the party narrative, even back in the idealistic days, so your fanwanking comes of as doubly myopic, self-aggrandizing, and divorced from reality.)
Growling,
(1) “Unnecessary death of a dream.“”
They lose scores of millions of people in two wars, and you’re unsympathetic to their attempt to unify and prevent a third round. Well, OK then.
(2) “you maudlinly whinge under a pic of its flag being burned in a protest.”
So you imagine what I’m thinking — without a shred of evidence — and draw conclusions. Thank you for commenting, Professor Xavier! Congrats on those psychic powers!
(3) “Then there’s those Star Trek reminiscing pieces you vomited out over the last week or so.”
So you equate the Star Trek Federation with the EU? That’s the “making stuff up and giving rebuttals to it” tactic favored by Leftists. I’m not impressed when its used by others, either.
(4) “Admittedly those rose-tints were for the UN”
By “quotes”, I didn’t mean “give a quote and make stuff up about it.”
(5) As for the rest, you’re quite delusional to believe I approve of any of that. Good-bye.
You realise your a nut job, right? Go post somewhere where flame wars are appreciated.
Gerard,
Thanks for that. My son says I’m too nice to trolls, going several rounds of attempted discussion before banning them.
I find running the comment section to be the most difficult part of a website. Other website proprietors agree. Encourage thoughtful comments, esp those posting useful info. Discourage it from becoming a self-referential echo chamber, mindless boos and cheers as if this were a football game. Fight off the trolls. No easy solutions.
““The Swedish authorities on Wednesday were investigating the burning of more than 100 vehicles on the nation’s west coast, in what they said was a coordinated arson attack by groups of young men. …the phenomenon has stymied the police and criminologists. ‘On average, there are four incidents a day in Sweden …’ said Manne Gerell, a criminologist affiliated with Malmo University. In the summer of 2016, Malmo, Sweden’s third-largest city, experienced more than 70 car fires within a few weeks. The police took to using drones to search for the culprits. …”
This reminds me of what Professor Van Creveld said “Killing insurgents drives the Darwinian ratchet & making them more effective.” regarding social darwinism and “The West’s fantastic success since WWII produced complacency, allowing social engineers to begin vast tinkering with our societies. Guided only by ideology, without experimentation or small-scale testing. The result has been what any rational person should expect, much like letting monkeys into the control room of a nuclear power plant.”
Der Maiden,
I’m glad you liked that article posted by Martin van Creveld at his website! I wrote it (see the byline).
Larry,
I know! I did not want to be lavish in throwing out praise on what might be seen as a gratuitous plug. I also linked it to Professor MvC yesterday on something related. Come to think about it, some questions.
1) How was the Swedish education system 5 years and 1 years before they allowed massed immigration? How was it when they allowed it and then afterwards? I’m wondering about it if the education system has been beefed down with the masses being allowed in.
2) “The West’s fantastic success since WWII…” Why WWII and not the Enlightenment regarding “allowing social engineers to begin vast tinkering with our societies.”? You had people like Rousseau, Marx, Shelly, Locke, and other people from different times writing a lot of stuff with people picking it up and taking it into practice.
This isn’t nitpicking, only curious why you picked WWII. My premise for the social engineering regarding the West’s fantastical success goes back to the Reformation and even before but that is something entirely different.
Der Maiden,
Lavish praise is always appropriate. The FM website probes controversial subjects on the edge of the known, challenging our comfortable beliefs. Naturally, most of the comments range from critical to hostile.
(1) Good question about Sweden’s education system.
(2) “Why WWII and not the Enlightenment”
I doubt that many in the West are aware of the West’s long-term progress, or how that compares with the averages seen in our and other’s history. I doubt that most know what the Enlightenment refers to. But they are aware, more or less, of the successes since WWII (i.e., living memory). Hence, confidence.
Our leaders today belong to institutions and political movements that are responsible for our successes since WWII. They, rightly, feel part of that success — and so are confident about their ability to take bold steps.
(3) “My premise for the social engineering regarding the West’s fantastical success goes back to the Reformation and even before …”
That’s logical! However, note the differences between then and now. Governments and churches took only what we would consider baby steps. Their power — political, social, financial — was relatively small. So they acted slowly and incrementally (no matter what they would have liked to do). Since institutions were mostly local (national institutions were weak), there was lots of trial and error — experimentation.
All quite unlike out time.
Larry,
Do not forget the nests of spies lurking around in California.
“How Silicon Valley Became a Den of Spies” by Zach Dorfman at Politico — “The West Coast is a growing target of foreign espionage. And it’s not ready to fight back.”
The US might have to nuke California. It would be the only way to be sure the infestation is gone.
Der Maiden,
What a great article! Thanks for posting it, so I can have my morning absurdity before breakfast.
I’ve been reading these articles since the 1960s, describing how Russia is
contaminating all our bodily fluidsstealing our tech secrets. All those spies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere have helped make Russia the tech power that it is! Fear them!Larry.
I always assumed that the West Coast was crammed with illegal alients, hippies, counter-culture deadbeats, militant leftists, beatniks, communes, spies, and what have you BEFORE that article. I thought it was informative for other cities in different parts of the US fortifying their counter-intelligence offices though.
Never heard about the contaminated fluid though, that must be a generational thing.
Harp pointed out politicians with access to classified information are generally trained on what not to say and when not to say it. But he also noted when you have a driver behind the wheel day in and day out for 20 years, there are more opportunities to slip up. https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2018/08/01/details-chinese-spy-dianne-feinstein-san-francisco/
This was my daily absurd laughable moment because the next line was “Feinstein’s office would not comment on the story, saying they do not address personnel matters or investigations, but they added that none of their California offices staffers had ever had security clearance.”
I guess we need to have a Pravda West competition. The New York Times has, IMO, already won the Pravda East award.
There is an extensive discussion of the elections in English here: http://vote-2012.proboards.com/thread/11105/swedish-parliamentary-election-2018?page=7
The polls are interesting in that it is apparently OK in Sweden for the polls to be massaged by the pollsters who are partisan. The Swedish Democrats apparently have a large silent component who won’t confess to supporting them until in the voting booth.
For those confused by the party acronyms the codes are:
SD – Sweden Democrats
S or SAP – Social Democrats
M – Moderates
V – Left Party
C – Centre
L – Liberals
MP – Greens
KD – Christian Democras
FI – Feminist Initiative
The Left are accusing the latest riots of being a false flag operation by the Right to blame the immigrants… Murky indeed…
Antiochian,
Thank you for posting this info! What we get in the US media about these events in Europe is largely pap. It’s not “news that’s fit to print.”
It’s a mess and ironic in that not so long ago, pretty much every Swedish politician was trumpeting the ‘success’ of immigration into Sweden, and the Swedes were being used as examples elsewhere in Europe to show that if we could only control our bigots, racists and xenophobes we too could accept many more migrants and everything would be peachy.
It’s amazing how quickly they’ve found their trousers round their ankles.
My prediction will be that the problem will worsen while the ‘elite’ engage in several rounds of introspection, trying to work out what’s wrong with Sweden and Swedes that has made immigrants behave in this fashion, they’ll continue to promote a society where every culture is given equal weight.
They will continue to condemn anyone who complains about immigration rates as racist, bigoted or xenophobic and complain about ‘populism’ as if it’s an infectious disease and not a response to their policies. They won’t slow the rate of immigration, in part because they won’t be able to, as there are now thousands of family members of immigrants who will become eligible to come to Sweden as current immigrants gain citizenship and apply for parents, bothers and sisters to join them.
I also predict that no politician will ever hold their hand up and accept their part in the mess…
Steve,
That’s a good summary of some amazing history. The West’s leaders threw open the borders to immigrants with few skills, little education, from very foreign cultures. That is esp mad, since the West’s economic growth rate has slowed, the demand for unskilled labor low, and our culture grown quite complex — making assimilation more difficult than in the past. And Europe’s track record of assimilation isn’t good.
They did this without a mandate from the public. There were no elections in which the decision to open the borders was debated. The pro-immigration news was mostly propaganda, with a large component of lies.
I can’t see how this will end. The turn to the hard Right, the only ones willing to close the borders, seems almost inevitable. The consequences could be bigger than we can imagine.
“I also predict that no politician will ever hold their hand up and accept their part in the mess…”
I agree. But the vengeance of the voters might be fierce. The current major political parties in western Europe might not survive in their current form.
Its the kind of immigration you encourage, in Sweden it seems they went for 3th world/failed state muslim immigration.
When I was there (rural southern Uppsala) they seemed to have problems assimilating even polish workers, there was a lot of snobbery and sneering. I’m not surprised there struggling with Somalis!. Unless you have actually been there its hard to understand the levels of group think and social conformity, and how the Swedes unconsciously exclude outsiders. For immigrants its extremely difficult to break into what is already a very tight labour market, if you don’t have further education and fluent Swedish, forget about it.
In Ireland we went for European immigration. Ireland is a predominately Catholic with the rest Episcopalian/Presbyterian. Happily most of the immigration was also from catholic or christian countries, Romanian, Polish, French, Italian, Spanish, Brazilian, British, German, Nigerian, Chinese, Indian.
Poland and Britain have by far the largest numbers About 12% of the population is foreign born. I think the key is if you are going to have high levels of immigration, for the most part they need to be culturally and religiously similar.
We have been recently congratulating ourselves on how well things have gone, but nobody has really pointed out the obvious, most of the immigration has been from within Europe.
Gerard,
“It’s the kind of immigration you encourage …”
That’s an essential point, deliberately obscured by advocates for open borders. They point to Nobel Prize winning immigrants as a justification for illiterate migrants from failed states. As I wrote in The lies about immigration keeping the borders open.
Gerard, Who are you refering to with “Its the kind of immigration you encourage, in Sweden”? This is a menaingless sentence – nobody have encouraged immigration – Immigration happend, partly as a result of the American foreign policy in the begining of the 00’s. Different countries have dealt with the challenges of immmigration in different ways. None seem to has found the right means. I personally find it positive that people want to help others. One just have to remember that you can only help if you are in a position to do so. If you want to help, however you find yourself in a position not having suffcient resources, you will take the position of the helpless helper – a position, which can be dangerous for these who want to be a helpers as well as for the people who is being “helped”. The countries, which has limited the immigration, seem to be these, which can still help people in need.
I find many interresting point of views on this website. Sometimes I get the feeling that people, who like to participate in discussions, forget that there is a huge majority of people with “follower potential”, who are not prepared to deal with the complexity of the world. They seek, like flies seek light, the direction of easy explanations. These easy explanations are often offered by extrimists, who are not bothered with looking for solutions on complex questions; they only look for people who can be accused/blamed for everyting, which is going wrong.
They create a situation with “them and us” – This is the begining of fascism. The current challenge for the western democraties is to keep as many of the “followers” on the democratic path to prevent worse. And only ploliticians with the courage to raise thieir voice against these who are prepared to use any means – like lies, fake news and other current used methods, can help keep the democracy alive. A short line of success are not creating history – a person who once has lied, is a liear. He is not a honest person and does not deserve respect. People, who are prepared to elect such persons should not ask them self how HItler happend.
Finn,
Lots of interesting meat in that comment! Thanks for posting it.
(1) “nobody have encouraged immigration – Immigration happend”
Nothing “just happens.” The borders of western nations were deliberately opened, by policy of western leaders. To see why, read the remarks of Sweden’s leaders in this post and this post.
(2) “None seem to has found the right means.”
What is your criteria for “right means”? Many countries have drastically limited immigration, and are doing just fine.
(3) “people, who like to participate in discussions, forget that there is a huge majority of people with “follower potential”, who are not prepared to deal with the complexity of the world. They seek, like flies seek light, the direction of easy explanations.”
That nails it. This is what allows leaders to rule, ignoring the values and needs of their people.
(4) “These easy explanations are often offered by extrimists, who are not bothered with looking for solutions on complex questions”
That confuses means and ends. Extremists use simple solutions as a means of gaining support. It works.
(5) “they only look for people who can be accused/blamed for everyting”
Ditto. It’s an effective tactic, used since the dawn of history. And probably before.
(6) “They create a situation with “them and us” – This is the begining of fascism.”
And the beginning of communism. And of theocracies, and of a zillion other system. Don’t attribute these successful tools just to the people you don’t like. That’s doing the exact phenomenon you are describing.
(7) “against these who are prepared to use any means – like lies, fake news and other current used methods, can help keep the democracy alive.”
That will be difficult, as this is being done by both Left and Right. My fear is that we’re living in Yeat’s poem: “the center cannot hold.“
Larry: “I can’t see how this will end. The turn to the hard Right, the only ones willing to close the borders, seems almost inevitable. The consequences could be bigger than we can imagine.”
Then, perhaps we should start by not having a failure of imagination, and instead imagine a successful synthesis of some known possibilities.
I can’t see a return to a viable Wiemar Republic to Nazi Germany sequence, but perhaps a high tech version of Heinlein’s world of starship trooper. If we assume that Swedes are insular as stated, the operational necessities for government would become very much like when the USA made war on indigenous peoples. To me the question is can any western nation follow the program of eradication like the USA as outlined by Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart? The USA has lost this potential at this time.
I agree when we look at many problems, synthesis will typically be a sustainable response, rather than revolution. IMO, a high tech starship trooper culture would be a viable synthesis resulting from a hard right turn that could be successful at countering what has happened. The assumption is that Sweden will survive mainly intact culturally and physically. What would other possible syntheses look like?
John,
“Then, perhaps we should start by not having a failure of imagination, and instead imagine a successful synthesis of some known possibilities.”
Well said! An easy winner for Best of Thread. You give some great ideas. That’s a line of thought deserving more attention!
I might note that Sweden has a very high minimum wage at over 20 euros per hour (if not mistaken). The effect of this is that it is not viable to employ warm bodies because they are cheap (as in busboys in US restaurants or the overstaffing in London coffee shops). Employers will generally only employ what they need and get their money’s worth… (needless to say makes workers more productive) but has the effect that employers cannot be bothered with “problem candidates” such as those with elementary Swedish or lacking basic skills.
This means Sweden is open to the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost” but they must go straight onto welfare unless they come with a bunch of extraordinary skills. If the immigrant can’t even speak English then they have nothing to fall back on.
Then of course the devil makes work for idle hands and you have what has evolved in Sweden and some other parts of Europe (e.g. the panhandlers on the streets of Munich and the seething hordes of Paris St Denis).
Antiochian,
Thanks for that info! I wondered why the employment rate of migrants was so low.
Let’s assume Antiochian’s comment as true and use this as fact in our Starship Trooper Sweden (STS). In that world we have citizens (Swedes) and the general population that couldn’t vote (immigrants). Instead of physical extermination,cultural extermination by “capability”.
The scare quotes are used for the assumption that in accepting myth making rather than true knowledge, a population can believe untrue things as true and true things as false, and still have a viable society and culture. That possibility is possible because Swedes already assimilated, will still be believed as having more capability by the Swedes. We will also use the purging of right wing/conservatives by the big data social firms this week, as an example of what the Swedes will do with the left wing/progressives, and rebels.
I would assume force for protection of capital investments can be also used as a legal purge of effective immigrant rebels. In this case, convicted felons would be housed in a version of a working gulag. The gulag will produce food and goods equal to or almost equal to expense by the government to offset costs, provide a control arena, and provide philosophical cover.
The philosophical cover will be that tried and true “we are teaching the good ones viable skills.” Of course the viable skills will have little to do with high tech, except for those who betray, and those who will do just about anything to get out of the gulag. Such as one who becomes a better STS than the Swedes themselves. Humans saw lots of this activity during WWII.
With the improvements we see in the digital world, and the control we will already seen exerted by the big data social firms, can a government have the power, digital, and other to set up something like this? I say if not now, soon. In this scenario, the government will use the current corruption of the digital data social firms as a reason to step in and “correct” this by making the power theirs and put it to use to support the STS agenda, more likely, even the founding of the STS agenda.
Once again, is this possible, and can this synthesis be made to work? In the pre-digital world, I don’t think such a scheme would work because of information loss and information hysteresis would make the control problem too unwieldy and expensive. But tomorrow, one that can be in the future, this would be possible. The information loss is not the problem, too much information will be; the decision action loop will be almost instantaneous, and the observation and re-evaluation of effect will be effectively real time wrt humans. Add in self correcting AI, and the result will be close to predictive compared to human capability and social REACTION. It is the reaction of rebels that will need more digital control in our scenario.
Our SDS will determine what the correct actions are, and how to award and punish. The information advantage will be used to control the rebels and give positive cultural feedback to those who accept their STS roles.
This is always the part that amazes me the most: “Guided only by ideology, without experimentation or small-scale testing. The result has been what any rational person should expect, much like letting monkeys into the control room of a nuclear power plant.”
Both the Left & Right play these games and keep looking for differing results. Jeff Sessions is driving a very different game in the US, trying to persuade immigrants and would-be immigrants to leave or not try to enter in the first place. The strange thing is that he seems to fail to understand that the native US population are not mostly interested in the grunt-labor jobs taken by most immigrants and that we are already at full employment WITH an extra 10-15 million immigrants. Persuading or forcing a few million immigrants to leave would be an economic disaster for the US right now. Especially with our falling birth rate.
The Swedish left-wingers were facing similar circumstances (low unemployment and a very low birthrate) and decided to let a very large poorly educated, non-Swedish-speaking who had been traumatized in a war zone into their country with very few controls and insufficient assistance. What else should they have expected?
Skimming off the most talented 100,000 each year would have been a much safer idea but would have earned them the elitist tag even faster.
Great leadership is to clearly see what needs to be done and do it before circumstances become so dire that force is necessary. Defining great leadership is, of course, vastly easier than displaying it. Especially when you are under pressure from people with less vision.
Pluto,
I agree. But there is a difference between the programs of Left and Right.
The Left dreams of big and bold goals, things never before done.
The Right has narrow goals, well rooted in history. Most of Western Europe has high wages, strong unions, and powerful labor protections rooted in law and culture. To crush this they used the same tool as US elites did in similar circumstances in the late 19th century (the US had a labor shortage, and consequently higher wages than Europe): massive immigration. Ditto with cutting taxes for the rich (replaced with borrowing). These are simple and sure-fire tactics. Of course, the side effects are probably massive and unknowable. Their greed blinds them to that.
given the low birth rate in sweden and most western european nations, large scale immigration was presumably prompted by the need to continue financing the welfare state. someone has to work to support the aging population.
this has backfired dramatically and for a reason that is eminently predictable. as professor sinn, university of munich, has written:
europeans, in their zeal to protect their social safety net, put in place no barriers to prevent new immigrants from receiving immediate and full access to all social benefits. they are paying the price both socially and economically.
hope the move has gone well.
Jay,
“was presumably prompted by the need to continue financing the welfare state”
We can only guess at such things. But whatever their reason for opening the borders, you nailed the big problem (thanks for the quote!).
But even that reason is false, as California has found. Poor migrants (first and subsequent generations) put stress on the welfare, public education, and criminal justice systems. Worse, the increased population forces construction of new infrastructure. Migrants’ tax revenue is insufficient to pay for all this. California gets richer and richer, and broker and broker. And less pleasant to live in, as the State has not funded its infrastructure sufficiently for both maintenance and increased population.
Larry: “….the State has not funded its infrastructure sufficiently for both maintenance and increased population.”
I think both sides have this problem. Can’t remember which economist stated (paraphrasing) that economic misjudgments would continue until politicians realize that the laws of economics are as inviolable as the law of gravity. I see the infrastructure and economic problems with not just politicians, but businesses as well.
Larry, have you read of anyone publishing that there has been a long-term inefficiency from what is known in the industry as packaging? For those unfamiliar, packaging is why your milk container is getting thinner and thinner until you have to treat like a carton of eggs to avoid leaks and the top coming off in the car. It also includes substitution. This has been done in structures as well. IIRC it was seen in a walkway accident over a road that killed a number of people. There was a substitution for a cheaper stay rod that had one of about five strength criteria that was at the margin. The walkway was being used for dancing. The strength component was susceptible in the motion of harmonic from the dancing. The walkway was to be used for walking which was a different harmonic.
The book “To Engineer is Human: The Role of Failure in Successful Design” is good for ground level. I am looking for a 10,000 foot view. I theorize, it would include the changes brought about by the Great Socialist War (GSW = WWII) and its continuing effects on politics, corruption, and how these effects have even extended into our building and structure efforts since the GSW. It may actually start with ancient times and how stable constructions reached their maximum around the time of GSW.
John,
“think both sides have this problem.”
True, that’s an important point. NYC’s subways are 1930s technology, and its transportation grid remains pretty much at 1940s level. Ditto Boston. Years of economic stress and financial crises have sapped the region’s vitality. But the population has not soared, or even increased in many of its cities.
But California is a different story. It grew in the 1960s and 1970s in part because of its great schools and infrastructure. Unlike the northeast, it is still well maintained — but it’s now inadequate to the current population levels.
From the title of the post, I was prepared for some depressing shit along the lines of what I’ve been seeing about European’s immirgation policies. But I was pleasantly surprised to see some Swede’s coming to their senses. Here’s hoping they can right the ship.
Dark,
I agree! But I fear it is too late for western Europe to do more than limit further damage and mitigate the effects.
I just saw this article, looks like the Swiss are Doing It Right.
“Muslim couple denied Swiss citizenship over handshake refusal” by AFP — “Couple also ‘showed great difficulty in answering questions asked by people of the opposite sex’.”
Dark,
Unlike America, the Swiss take granting citizenship seriously. A three person panel examines the applicants, and these hearings are a matter of public record – and public interest.
The West manufactures refugees in the non-West and resents them showing up having fled from the manufactured in-and-by-the-West Hell on earth using made by Lockheed et al. munitions. The West is reaping what it has sown, nothing more, nothing less.
Steve,
In some cases that’s true (e.g., Libya). I very much doubt that all of those States from which refugees come would be fine without interference of the West.
letʻs not interfere and find out.
Steve,
I agree. But words won’t make it so. As we see with the massive reaction to Trump’s proposed withdrawal from Syria, the Deep State owns both parties. Change will not come easily.