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
