Monday, August 31, 2020

Culture War in Sweden

Now that the pandemic panic has abated in Sweden, that nation is returning to a debate over another important issue-- what to do about the crime wave unleashed by Muslim migrants. 

Zero Hedge has the story:

And now that the COVID-19 numbers are down, the country is starting to focus on the rising rates of violent crime, spurred in part by a series of particularly brutal crimes that have taken place in recent weeks. Whether its reports about criminals setting up their own roadblocks in Gothenburg, a 12-year-old girl shot and killed in gang crossfire, or a beating that verged on torture, right-wing politicians, led by a right-wing party called the Sweden Democrats that was mostly shunned until a few months ago, have seized on this latest crime wave as Sweden's "second pandemic."


"There is a big frustration and anger at the developments,” Mattias Karlsson, parliamentary leader of the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, the country’s third-largest political party, told the Financial Times. “Our laws are too soft, the police don’t have the means to investigate this very serious crime."


But then, right wing radicals also stoked violence last Friday, by burning a Koran. 


On Friday night, a large riot broke out in an immigrant suburb of Sweden's third city Malmo after far-right sympathisers burnt a Koran. Ulf Kristersson, head of the main centre-right opposition party, the Moderates, used his summer speech on August 24 to accuse the government of failing to act after more than 200 shootings and 24 deaths this year. “The deadly violence is Sweden’s second pandemic,” he added.


It is becoming a liability for Sweden’s Social Democrats:


Interestingly enough, the issue of crime is becoming a bigger political liability for Sweden's ruling Social Democrats than their handling of the coronavirus. And it's a natural fit for the 'anti-migrant' right because most of the criminal suspects are immigrants.


The governing Social Democrats had until recently enjoyed a boost in the polls from their handling of the coronavirus pandemic where they have largely followed the recommendations of state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell while ploughing billions of krona into the economy.


Migrant crime is a great political issue for the conservative political parties:


But a nascent conservative bloc - involving Mr Kristersson’s Moderates and the Christian Democrats from the mainstream centre-right, plus the previously shunned Sweden Democrats - is increasingly attacking the government on law and order and migration as many of the suspected criminals are immigrants.


One academic expert quoted in the FT story said that while the liberal government's "libertarian" approach to tackling the pandemic had "discombobulated" Swedish conservatives, the crime issue is giving conservatives a rare opportunity to completely turn the tables on their competition.


The conservative line is pretty straight forward: attempts at integration and open migration were misguided idealism, and these failed policies have led to "segregation and violence".


Sweden is now engaged in a culture war. It is not debating economic issues but is trying to figure out what to do about migrant crime, drug trafficking, no-go zones and rape culture that Muslim migrants have brought to that country:


Toward the end of the story, the conservative politician who appeared to be the FT's main source made an interesting point. In Sweden - as in much of Europe today - the big political disagreements are no longer about economics. They're about culture.


Mr Karlsson said that “many people are feeling insecure in their everyday life” and argued that Sweden’s immigration and integration policies had failed, leading to “segregation and violence”.


He added: “It’s not really economics or taxes that are the main sources of conflict in Swedish politics — values, identity, crime that is where the debate is.”


6 comments:

urbane legend said...

Hmmmm, Sweden, France, the United States. Over and over we find Muslim enclaves have no use for Western standards of civilization.

That said, it should be plain from looking at these reports, and others from any communities, not just Muslim, allowed to have their own structure outside commonly held social standards in the rest of a society, that a certain minimum level of conservative structure is necessary for a society to function. That is, there must be a standard of law and a standard of freedom commonly held. Where any group refuses to accept these standards and replaces them with harsher standards and far more punitive or violent judgement, especially against outsiders, terror ensues, basically a war between the two cultures. The harsher culture has no qualms about using its methods. The more conservative culture must decide to take a stand or be subjugated.

When? The Western world needs to decide. Not only Islam, Marxism also.

Giordano Bruno said...

Islam is a death cult. It is not a religion. Doubt me? Move you and your family to an Muslim city that is almost entirely Muslim and forgo your US privileges and passport. Live among the Muslims as a Buddhist or a Hindu. Now practice your religion openly. That's what is coming for every place they gain a majority in the West.

I don't have any real interest in Islam one way or another, I suppose it is a better organizing principle than what preceded it in much of the Arab world, I'm just asking that they stay over there, and we will stay over here. Inviting them here in any substantial numbers is pure idiocy. We should instead be rescuing the Christians, Yazidis, Zoroastrians, and Jews who are trying to escape Muslim countries.

Ignatius Acton Chesterton OCD said...

Reading mainstream news reports, it is interesting that all the demonstrators are labeled "right-wing" or "far-right groups." This is the description across all of these issues. This weekend, the reporting was particularly focused on the demonstrations against the COVID-19 lockdowns. The reports from England and Germany all emphasize this "right-wing" label. The American papers emphasize this in their reporting from Seattle, Portland, NYC, Kenosha. It's an alternate universe they live in. They see "right-wing hate" everywhere, while ignoring Left-wing coordinated, violent direct action. Or pretending it doesn't exist.

This is why I think the entirety of mainstream journalism is unserious. As soon as I click on a link that comes up NYT, WaPo, AP, etc., I just close it. Not worth it. It's dishonest. It's ideological advocacy.

Giordano Bruno said...

They moved from right to far right and from nationalist to white nationalist and now white supremacist with seamless efficiency. No accident, it is what they planned to do. I knew where they were headed the minute I started seeing "nationist" being mentioned. They need to associate nationalist with white supremacist and it only took a couple of intermediary words. The words are chosen, quite precisely, and then a process of induction begins.

White Christian supremacist is the endgame. How to manufacture witches out of thin air.

I've called this inductive hypnosis, and that's exactly what it is. It is classic NLP, and the people orchestrating it use carefully chosen words and phrases to create a trace state followed by repetitive suggestions. Ever hear the phrase of the day being repeated in every leftist TV show and newspaper at the same time, same day, same phrase, among dozens and dozens of different sources? Rush and Tucker are on to it.

It's kind of funny once you really begin to notice. I have a brother-in-law who is over the moon with TDS. I find him fascinating, like a curious insect programmed to do a certain task. I get my wife to put him on speaker phone so I can listen to him foam. He plays video games all day.

What I want to know is how much effort is required to initiate the induction process, and how much just occur easily once the hive mind is established? I wonder if the source is collecting data on this.

Janszoon said...

Ignatius, I was at the demonstration here in London on Saturday, and there was absolutely nothing, nada, zip, that was ‘far right’ about it. It was simply a huge number of people, of many different ethnicities, political persuasions and walks of life, gathered together because they were united in opposition to governmental ineptitude and the creeping erosion of civil liberties. The media smear was as tedious as it was utterly predictable, As you, Giordano, point out, NLP by any other name.

Anonymous said...

Great story and great comments, all.

No reason to give this the courtesy of calling is a "religion." It is actually (as we all know) a supremacist, totalitarian political ideology.

Yet all the corporate media, just as pointed out, calls THEM a religion and labels those who point out the fact that islam and our Constitution cannot coexist as " far right-wing," as if only one side were political -- when really, it's the other way around.

No, we wouldn't object to immigrants who assimilate and follow our culture. So they are at the point (and have been for quite awhile) where we are pretending it is "immigration" that we disagree on, when it's really hijra -- a specific kind of immigration for a specific purpose, and it's unvetted.

I'm sure we all noticed it with Portland, too. They were "fighting racial injustice," while we (though also labelled "Trump supporters") were
"far-right" (all the easier to merge the two.)

All the tactics used by the biden supporters are straight from islam -- certain groups get justice, others do not, deaths are treated differently, their group has words we are "not allowed to say" -- we may as well be living under sharia with blasphemy laws, and I'm sure they'll get there.

I think they want us balkanized, no power, just struggling and poor areas, some governed by "socialism," some by sharia patrols, some by communism, some by crony capitalists, some supposedly anarchist -- turn the whole world into say, Lebanon or Libya.

Interesting how they condemn patriotism as "far-right" but use it constantly as a talking point with their "destroying our democracy" (sic.) and such .... two standards, just as in islam...Pelosi is never "crude" or an "embarrassment," even when she tears up a speech behind the president's back in front of a global audience. Can't get much more "inappropriate" and "unfit" than that.

All it would take for the violence and division in Western countries to stop tomorrow is for the leftists to research what and who they are really rioting for and then just stop. They don't have to go on telling us what to do and throwing tantrums. They could stop immediately. Instead, they are so hung-up on feeling superior that it's like an addiction, and they cannot stop and just leave people alone.