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Why Is Sweden So Violent All of a Sudden? It’s Just Rotten Luck.
On a recent post, I discussed the possible current or impending invasion of Europe, either from Russia via military strike or from Muslim countries via immigration. There were a few commenters that thought that describing high levels of immigration as an invasion was a bit of a stretch. A fair criticism, although I’m not sure I agree with it. Regardless, it reminded me of a conversation I had with a very nice Swedish lady a couple years ago.
At a medical conference in Dallas, I heard a Swedish accent in a nearby conversation. I looked at her (and her nametag), and thought she just must be Swedish. According to her nametag, she worked for Novo Nordisk, a Danish company that produces diabetes medications. I didn’t get the chance to say hello then, but that night at dinner there was a seat open next to her and I sat down. We talked about how much we both liked Sweden, where I’d lived, where she was from, and so on. She was from a nice section of Stockholm, but I mentioned a friend of mine from Gothenburg who said that immigration had created such high rates of violent crime there that he wouldn’t let his wife or daughter go out without a male escort, or three. She seemed offended. “Strange that an American would be so critical of immigration. You are all immigrants here, aren’t you?”
We had been having a lovely conversation, but suddenly she was outright hostile. This sudden shift in our conversation took me aback, and I mumbled something like, “Yeah, well, I haven’t been to Gothenburg in 25 years, but my friend says that there really was no such thing as violent crime — um, not until large numbers of Muslim immigrants moved into certain neighborhoods. I’m not criticizing immigration, I’m just acknowledging what is happening there in terms of crime.”
She was peeved and spat, “Swedes are a generous people by nature. We just want to help those who are from dangerous parts of the world. Would you refuse to help someone escape violence simply because you don’t like their religion?”
I had recovered my footing a bit. I paused, looked thoughtful, and responded, “Rotten luck.”
She didn’t get it, and asked, “What’s rotten luck?”
I said, “Well, these poor people are from a dangerous part of the world. Very violent place. Then you bring those poor people to Sweden, a very safe part of the world. And wouldn’t you know it, just as soon as these poor people show up, Sweden becomes a violent, dangerous part of the world. Just like where they came from. What rotten luck.”
She just stared at me coldly.
“I mean, honestly, who knew? What a weird coincidence. You know, now that I think of it, maybe this is because of Islam!”
She continued to stare at me coldly. Much more coldly.
I continued, “I don’t mean that Islam is causing it; I mean that it’s because of insufficient amounts of Islam in Sweden. You know, Islam means peace. So if you have too much violence all of a sudden in Sweden, perhaps you could fix that by importing more Muslims. You’d have peace in your streets again. Who knows, maybe if you famously stubborn Swedes could learn to adopt other cultures, maybe the Muslims could teach you a thing or two about peace. I believe there’s hope for advancement of all cultures — even Swedes!”
That crossed a line. Her face turned red. She got her plate, stood up, and walked to a table on the other side of the huge conference room. I think the only thing that saved my life was her innate Swedish tendency toward peace that I had just questioned.
Now there’s a fine line between being a witty conversationalist and being a jerk. In retrospect, I probably pole-vaulted over that line into “jerk” territory. Like some other things, that line becomes blurry after a few glasses of wine.
But what a weird response. I acknowledged the irrefutable fact that Sweden has been a ridiculously safe and peaceful country for a long time. Then a bunch of immigrants from notoriously violent countries move in, and guess what: now Sweden is violent too. Perhaps it’s not the dirt in those countries that’s violent, perhaps it’s the people who live there who are violent. Perhaps culture matters. And perhaps religion plays a role in culture.
And if she disagrees with any of that, perhaps she could explain to me why I’m wrong. Then I could answer her, as best I could. And she could answer me. We could have a wonderful time discussing a fascinating topic. It’s called conversation; it’s fun!
But no — two very nice people are suddenly at each other’s throats.
The problem that we had in our conversation was probably religion. Stereotyping someone because of where they’re from is largely ok. In Ohio, we laughed at West Virginian jokes (I presume the West Virginians laughed at Ohioan jokes). In Sweden, we laughed at jokes about Norwegians. It’s all in good fun.
But stereotyping someone because of their religion is different. Especially if that religion is not Christianity or Judaism. Islam is a favored group of the modern left, for reasons that I don’t fully understand and you criticize it at your peril. Perhaps she just can’t conceive of criticizing Islam, and she hates anyone who does; I’m not sure.
Perhaps Islam is no more violent than Christianity — if she believes that, she should explain her reasoning. She made no effort to do so.
But she had an incredibly strong reaction to a fairly obvious observation about a truth that she chooses not to acknowledge. Since she couldn’t really argue that my observation was wrong, all she could do was talk about America’s history of immigration and so on, in an effort to lash out and change the subject to something on which she wasn’t obviously wrong. Her tactics were aggressive, but it made her seem weak, somehow.
In an invasion, the strength and determination of the invading force is important; so is the strength and determination of the defending force. But it doesn’t really matter what either one of those is in absolute terms — it’s the difference between the two that really matters.
I think Europe is being invaded, but I guess I’m really not sure. But I am fairly sure that Europeans really don’t care.
And that’s too bad.
Published in General
Come on, guys. Fred drives me a bit batty on occasion, but he’s one of us! Asking for links is a reasonable request. Kozak, your graphs (#40 above) are helpful, but don’t show the source.
Fred, here are some links — the Wikipedia and Bloomberg links have the most data and charts; also see the official statistics (the last link)
This comment on this thread might be relevant.
Didn’t name a troll. Called the technique a troll.
There is a demonstrable increase in crime, particularly rape in Sweden.
Most rapes are committed by foreign migrants.
Or do you think the native Swedish population suddenly changed their most basic behavior in the last 30 years.
But keep playing the game.
So Fred, go to Malmo or Rinkeby with a yarmulke and get back to me.
I’m not interested in “playing the game” because I know one confounder can’t be relied on to explain everything, but it is true that Sweden has updated how it collects rape statistics, broadening the category of crime, and encouraging more victims to report it.
How much this explains away demographic effects is up for debate, but when it comes to crime reporting, all of Sweden, including the native population, has suddenly changed its most basic behavior in the last 30 years.
Just two links — the phenomenon is fairly widely known.
On the first, that might be your opinion, many here have no clue why he is a member of a nominally conservative site.
On the second part, it’s not a reasonable request when it’s used as a well worn debate tactic to force the writer to spend time posting links, all the info is available to anyone who simply doesn’t believe the OP.
I specifically cited an article from the New York Times, talking about the rise of crime in Sweeden. If @fredcole thinks the NYTimes is a right wing conservative source, then I got nothing.
Fred is a libertarian, which is a species of the conservative genus.
C’mon everybody. It’s Fred Cole. Let’s move on, and stay on topic.
I really do appreciate all the graphs, links, articles, and so on. But the more time we spend confirming and reconfirming the existence of reality, the less time we spend discussing fun stuff like culture, philosophy, religion, and so on.
So back to the questions we had been discussing:
Is Europe being invaded?
If so, do Europeans understand this? And do they care?
What can be done? Should anything be done?
And so on.
I never do this. I let the conversation go all sorts of unexpected places. That’s what makes Ricochet fun.
But this is not a fun, unexpected place. This is Fred being Fred. Which is fine. I’m glad Fred is here. The more the merrier.
But let’s not get distracted from a fascinating discussion. Thanks.
You remind me of something Dennis Prager wrote years ago about an Iranian girl he met.
I suspect that more and more Muslims will become atheists in the next few years.
As always Rousseau is at the heart of everything bad. It used to be that people understood that evil emerged naturally out of humanity but Rousseau said that evil emerged out of society. Marxists made it into that evil emerged out of Western Society. Now when the Swedes are confronted with evil emerging out of a individuals in a non-western society, they have no to intellectually grasp what’s happening.
Providing easily available evidence is still important though. This is Ricochet after all and not a pub. We should present evidence as well as arguments. Though I do understand that we can take it too far.
Well, what else would you call millions of people, mostly military age males illegally crossing borders but an invasion? Europe is being fundamentally transformed right before our eyes. By 2050 Sweden is projected to be 30% muslim. By 2050 Germany will be 20% muslim. Anyone think Sweden will be unchanged by this? Sweden is a multiparty democracy with the largest party getting around 30% in any election. Now imagine a muslim voting block of 30%. Today in the UK a major voting block in the Labor party is muslims. This goes a long way to explain why officials turned a blind eye to the rape of tens of thousands of girls in the UK over the span of decades.
If I were someone who has grown up in Sweden, a place with very little crime, high levels of trust among its citizens and high levels of trust between the government and citizens, I might be seduced by the idea that people are basically good, so if people are suffering hardship in a North African Islamic nation, we should open our doors and let them in.
It sounds like a very gracious thing to do. Saying “no” to someone in a tough spot does not make one feel good. If I were born in Sweden, I might realize that I had won the lottery of life. Instead of being born in Congo or Cambodia, places where life is often miserable, I was born in safe and prosperous Sweden.
One could think, “I didn’t earn my Swedish citizenship. It fell into my lap.” So, I see some people being oppressed by ISIS or some other Islamic extremist group and my government says, “We are going to let some refugees come to Sweden.”
It all sounds good. It sounds like volunteering to work at a soup kitchen or adopting a child from a poor country.
But it turns out that it is much more complicated than that.
Politics doesn’t handle complexity well. Inevitably, in debates regarding immigration, one side argues that “immigrants are wonderful and a great addition to our society,” while the other side argues that “immigrants are pestilence, scum.”
A few voices say, “Yes, let’s have immigration. But let’s be smart about it. Let’s make sure that the male-female ratio doesn’t get out of whack. Let’s make sure the immigrants are not all low-skill, low-education immigrants. Let’s make sure their views about women, homosexuals and freedom aren’t incompatible with our views.”
But the mainstream media doesn’t give those reasonable voices coverage. So, here we are.
To answer one question. I do believe that Europeans do care about this issue. In fact, right now I dare say that Europeans care more about the immigration issue than just about any other issue.
Have you taken note of election returns in Europe lately?
Yet he consistently sides with the left.
Is there some process by which subscribers to Ricochet can be ex-communicated for expressing heretical views?
I just found this on Rana Ahmad’s facebook page.
As Bill Maher said in this conversation-debate: Leaving Islam is like leaving the mafia.
First we need the Heretical Views group.
I think it’s important to have progressives here. I wish we had more. Certainly it would be better if our progressives joined the debate, explaining their viewpoints, and sharing their ideas. And when someone does that, we should go out of our way to make those with dissenting views feel welcome, because we really need them here.
Some of what we have seen on this thread is not so much an intellectual debate as it is the rhetorical equivalent of a drive-by shooting. Simply trying to disrupt the conversation, without adding much of your own point of view. That can be frustrating. But progressive viewpoints should be welcomed here.
I agree that internecine debates are often more interesting than debates between two opposing sides. But the more different points of view that we have in these pages, the better off we all are. All I ask is that if you have a dissenting point of view, simply share what your point of view is, rather than attempting to belittle those who see things differently.
Not for heresy as such, no.
If someone posted regular rants about “the colonizing alien-lizard Jew, and the scheming Illuminati Jew” or something like that, or any whacked-out conspiracy-theorizing which wasn’t clearly satire, that person might feel like he’d been excommunicated for expressing heretical views. But there’s a difference between making Ricochet look like a welcome harbor for raving loons and just deviating from political orthodoxy.
Here is Veedu Vitz, an ex-Muslim Brit of Pakistani background, discussing his experience interacting with “the right wing.“
We cant even talk about the magical shape shifting jews (Clearly satire to follow).
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x31utss
Editor Note:
Comment edited to remove acronym of profane phrase. Please follow the code of conduct. Thank you. -MaxEurope is being invaded, and so are we. And btw babies born to invaders are not entitled to birthright citizenship.
And the US is not a “nation of immigrants” any more than any other modern nation is.
Who cares what these Euroglobalists think? I so admire you @Drbastiat for standing up to one of ’em.
Gosh, I hope not. That was me…
Let’s see if Fred proves a tougher nut to crack?
Nice man.
Oddly enough, the “right wingers are actually sort of nice” is a theme of mine, too. The generosity and open-mindedness of the center-right contrasts vividly and tellingly with the reflexive vituperation and scorn of the left. Keep it up, y’all.
When do you quit being an immigrant? The idea we are a nation of immigrants seems like a cliche’. I know very little about Poland or even Scotland or Ireland. Yet, those are my main heritages (no test, know from personal history). I’ve never been in any of those places. It seems when you become an American citizen, you are an American. My grandparents were ethnically Polish, came from Poland, but were politically American.
We are a nation that has been friendly to immigrants, but we are Americans. Because we are welcoming, and you can be an American with an Italian, Polish, or Scottish, etc. accent, does not mean we do not have an identity that is unique.
It used to be called the melting pot when I was in school. I think it is better than the divisive diversity, and continuing to identify people by groups.
That was funny, all the way through.
Charity begins at home.
Help Fred feel the love people!!