Sweden’s backlash against mass immigration provokes a shift to the right through a new prime minister and n-laws to tackle ghetto crime
Sweden, the gilded European home of Abba, Volvo, improbably tanned blonde people, all that is progressive … but also, it seems, gun crime, rasghetton and cultural conflicts.
As early as 2015, Swedes were proud of their generous acceptance of 163,000 refugees fleeing war zones. “My Europe receives refugees”, longtime Prime Minister Stefan Löfven sa Right then. “My Europe does not build walls.” Germany took in a million – but Sweden took in an even larger amount in proportion to its population. The rest of Europe closed its doors.
On Tuesday evening, the Swedish Parliament would vote on whether Lofven should be replaced by the new Social Democratic leader Magdalena Andersson. Only now does Sweden feel a little less generous. Public sentiment against mass immigration has hardened. And the future prime minister has felt the need to respond.
When Andersson delivered his virgin Speech Earlier this month as head of the Social Democrats, she began by celebrating the triumph of the Swedish welfare state over the “grinning bankers on Wall Street” neoliberalism.
Her next statement, however, was less predictable, as she aimed at what an increasing number of Swedes see as her failed version of multiculturalism. Addressing the country’s two million refugees and migrants, she said: “If you are young, you need to get a high school diploma and move on to get a job or higher education.”
Those who receive financial assistance from the state “must learn Swedish and work a certain number of hours a week”. And she added: “Here in Sweden, both men and women work and contribute to welfare”, while Swedish gender equality applies “regardless of what fathers, mothers, spouses or brothers think and feel”.
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The endless quarrel over multiculturalism is, like most irritated arguments, mostly a matter of semantics; people quarreling for crossed purposes. It is possible to agree with some people’s idea of multiculturalism and at the same time oppose some of its ridiculous manifestations.
In the midst of the furrows of cricket racism, Labor comrade Lord Parekh, former chairman, stood Commission on the Future of Multietnic Britain, described multiculturalism as the idea that “no culture is perfect; every culture is flawed, it must learn from others and therefore we want to encourage dialogue between different cultures … It is the process of mutual learning.” Nothing wrong with that.
But more forms of multiculturalism are under fire from critics who say they undermine social cohesion. In Sweden, parties from the traditional center-left are now responding to the public’s perception – whether right or wrong – that misplaced concerns about cultural sensitivity have meant that minority criminal elements in immigrant societies have been able to bypass the state.
The views of a Swedish acquaintance of mine – a healthcare professional, who describes himself as liberal, but politically apathetic – are not atypical. – I see myself as a social democrat. But I think Sweden is too soft, she says.
“The authorities are trying to apply a wonderful Swedish law and order policy to criminals who have come from war zones and horrible places like Eritrea and Somalia. And of course it does not work.”
In May this year, the Swedish Crime Prevention Council reported on how the country has over the past 20 years gone from having one of the lowest rates of gun violence in Europe to one of the highest. The researchers state that “the increase in gun murders in Sweden cannot be seen as part of an international trend”.
Gangs – whose members tend to be second-generation immigrants, many from Somalia, Eritrea, Morocco and elsewhere in North and East Africa – specialize in drug trafficking and the use of explosives.
Swedish police do not register or release the ethnicity of suspected or convicted criminals, but intelligence chief Linda H Staaf told the BBC in 2019 that a pattern had arisen.
“They have grown up in Sweden and they come from socio-economically weak groups, socio-economically weak areas, and many are perhaps second or third generation immigrants,” she said.
Research by criminologist Amir Rostami found that most of those involved in organized crime were either first- or second-generation immigrants. Dr. Rostami identified 15,000 people involved in organized crime.
Left-wing commentators downplay a racial link to organized crime. Right-wing commentators discuss it with increasing self-confidence. But none of the groups pays attention to the fact that Sweden’s ethnic minorities, who live in ghettos and no-go areas, are most likely victims of organized bullying and extortion.
A Swedish commentator who is willing to make the connection between immigration and crime is Tino Sanandaji, a Kurdish economist born in Tehran who came to Sweden as a nine-year-old. Crucially, however, the placement of migrants in the ghetto is to blame for the social problems associated with mass immigration to Sweden.
– Sweden’s experiment with large-scale immigration from the third world to a welfare state has been unique in its scope but has in many ways failed, he says. “Sweden’s social problems are becoming increasingly concentrated in that part of the population with an immigrant background.”
At the same time, Swedes now cite crime as their biggest concern in opinion polls.
The current Social Democratic and Green government has introduced stricter penalties and proposed a range of new legislation to combat organized crime. But the source of the problem is not about to disappear.