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| Sweden in flames: the 2013 Stockholm riots |
I think it's fair to say that most Americans still think of Sweden as a sort of welfare state quasi-utopia. Not necessarily perfect of course. Sexy magazines; statism; blondes; not much religion; cold; long life expectancies; generally uneventful lives; chic wooden furniture; did I mention the blondes?
Of course, that almost defines utopia for some people.
But you know what? Whether or not you like that little fantasy, it's over. Or it's about to be over, very soon.
Sweden is ground zero in the Islamization of Europe.
Swedish cities have some of the largest Muslim populations in Europe. Given current immigration policies and demographic trends, they will have Muslim majorities or power-wielding pluralities within a generation. Already, large areas of these cities are no-go zones. Violent crime has exploded. Large scale riots are common. The small number of Jews that are left are in the middle of a slow-motion pogrom.
From being one of the safest countries in the world a few years ago, Sweden is now second only to Lesotho in terms of per capita reported rapes. And the vast majority of those rapes are committed by Muslims.
However, for reasons that defy understanding, if you have a mind to criticize this or even talk openly about it, the full force of the kind and gentle Swedish state and society will come down against you. You will be pilloried as a "racist" and a "hater". You will perhaps lose your job. You might even go to jail.
A Swedish academic recently went to jail in effect for publicly asserting the last sentence of the paragraph two paragraphs above.
So how will it end?
I cannot believe Swedes want to live under Sharia Law. But the momentum seems to be headed in that direction. It's not a question of how that momentum should be stopped (peacefully, of course) but how it can be stopped. Increasingly, it seems like the can might be civil war.
The largest Danish daily Jyllands-Posten just speculated on this in an August 18 editorial. Entitled "Good and Evil" the piece was penned by "Anonymous". Breitbart commented that it showed just "how quickly the narrative has moved in Europe" (the translation is from Google with a few Mahound touch ups):
Sweden is ground zero in the Islamization of Europe.
Swedish cities have some of the largest Muslim populations in Europe. Given current immigration policies and demographic trends, they will have Muslim majorities or power-wielding pluralities within a generation. Already, large areas of these cities are no-go zones. Violent crime has exploded. Large scale riots are common. The small number of Jews that are left are in the middle of a slow-motion pogrom.
From being one of the safest countries in the world a few years ago, Sweden is now second only to Lesotho in terms of per capita reported rapes. And the vast majority of those rapes are committed by Muslims.
However, for reasons that defy understanding, if you have a mind to criticize this or even talk openly about it, the full force of the kind and gentle Swedish state and society will come down against you. You will be pilloried as a "racist" and a "hater". You will perhaps lose your job. You might even go to jail.
A Swedish academic recently went to jail in effect for publicly asserting the last sentence of the paragraph two paragraphs above.
So how will it end?
I cannot believe Swedes want to live under Sharia Law. But the momentum seems to be headed in that direction. It's not a question of how that momentum should be stopped (peacefully, of course) but how it can be stopped. Increasingly, it seems like the can might be civil war.
The largest Danish daily Jyllands-Posten just speculated on this in an August 18 editorial. Entitled "Good and Evil" the piece was penned by "Anonymous". Breitbart commented that it showed just "how quickly the narrative has moved in Europe" (the translation is from Google with a few Mahound touch ups):
When Annie Lööf, the leader of the liberal Swedish Centre Party, was asked on Swedish television a few years ago how many immigrants Sweden could take in, she replied 30 million. They should simply be able to work, speak Swedish and pay taxes. Then they could be a dynamic part of the Swedish welfare state along with the approximately 9.5 million current residents of Sweden.
The TV clip can be found on YouTube side by side with countless other funny, curious and entertaining ones. But Annie Lööf thought and said it in all seriousness.
Although the current Social Democratic Swedish government led by Stefan Löfven has not in the same way explicitly mentioned numbers, it seems keen on importing as many immigrants as possible, despite the fact that resistance to this policy is growing even among traditional Social Democratic voters.
Proponents of Sweden's immigration policy primarily refer to abstract humanitarian arguments, closing their eyes to concrete consequences such as the one billion spent on social services, a run-up in violence and crime rates, cultural segregation, a school and education system in free fall, religious radicalization around the major cities and a looming, popular discontent as more and more Swedes feel that immigration is transforming their social reality. Many simply can not recognize the Sweden, which is changing at record speed, and nobody seems to have control. Not the elites, who for more than 30 years, closed their eyes to the transformation, and as result, have difficulty admitting they were wrong and that their theories might be in need of revision.
All of these components are a recipe for large-scale Bergmanesque drama, not least because the skeptics, critics and opponents have been excluded, belittled and demonized for decades. Demonization has been resounding even through the old folks homes. On the same day that a 36-year-old asylum seeker from Eritrea killed two random Swedes at IKEA in Vasteras with a knife from the store's kitchen section, it was in all seriousness discussed on Sveriges Radio P1, that beige medical patches are "discriminatory" and "racist" against "new Swedes" with darker skin. Since the killer's ethnicity was known to social media, the Swedish police uncharacteristically identified his country of origin - the suspect was from Eritrea - to prevent "evil forces" from speculating about the accident. Except that it was not an accident but a murder of a mother and her adult son. The IKEA store put up a sign at the entrance that read:
"Closed due to technical failure."
It can be difficult to sort out the good guys from the bad guys in today's Sweden. Decades of social democracy and cultural liberalism have built a sort moralist empire, but this is in the process of collapsing, and new voices are challenging the status quo, even in parts of the establishment press. This is new: the center no longer holds and the country is increasingly divided and split in blocks. The Swedes' future security depends largely on whether they can solve these problems politically. If not, the solutions are anti-political, i.e. violent and bloody. When large segments of society oppose the ruling dogmas while also feeling disenfranchised and powerless, that society will be in danger of descending into violence. It happened in Syria, but it can also happen in Sweden, whether it has 9, 15 or 30 million residents.
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