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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
In America itself, many educated/urban/upper-middle-class people feel fear, contempt, and anger toward Christians and rural people (especially southerners.)
I wrote about this phenomenon and some of the likely causes here: The Phobia(s) That May Destroy America.
The same factors are largely operative for many non-Americans in the same category.
Here is the Times on Sweeden. I believe they also cover how the Government was caught lying about there crime stats and deliberately cooked the books to make it look like they had less violent crime than they do.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/03/world/europe/sweden-crime-immigration-hand-grenades.html
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
As to the trope of ‘all Americans are immigrants’, I was born here, that’s what the word Native means. Get over it. Some, not all, but some of my near ancestors immigrated to these shores, so what? This is an example of someone not having a good argument using misdirection to remove the focus from the weakness of their position. Don’t buy it.
Also, I, like many Americans, are very much in favor of Immigrants who wish to become American citizens and who fully embrace the American system and ideals. They could teach a great many natives a few things about being American.
I’m sure the left doesn’t like the way Islam treats women and homosexuals, but they excuse it because of the way Islam enforces it’s theology, and that’s by brute, ruthless, cruel force. Even a single indiscretion is met with brutal punishment. They admire exactly for the reason yout state – you criticize the left at your own peril.
The left has adopted this tactic to enforce Political Correctness, the Islam of the left. People lose jobs over one error (Brendan Eich, John Schnatter). Others are harassed in public (Sarah Sanders, Pam Bondi, even the Mitchster). However, the near assassination of Steve Scalise is where the radical left is ultimately headed unless we stop all of this nonsense now.
Thank you. I am so tired of this idiot meme that all Americans are immigrants. I was born in Chicago. I never immigrated from anywhere. Well, except maybe when I fled California which has become pretty much a foreign country. Like if Mexico and Venezuela had a mentally impaired child.
The word immigrant does not mean that you have someone in your ancestry who once came from somewhere else. If it did, then everyone everywhere would be an immigrant, and that includes Sweden.
I don’t know if anybody has mentioned this in the comments yet, but if it’s indeed an “irrefutable fact” that Sweden is violent, you didn’t include any links in your post to back up your assertion of this allegedly well document Swedish crime spike.
Actually, like Islam, we were invaders and conquered the place, then invited more settlers, those people were immigrants. I think the indigenous folks realized early on that we weren’t immigrants anxious to join their tribes. The distinction is rather important. Most of the indigenous Americans from Mexico and Central America whom we wrongly call hispanics who walk here and enter illegally are not immigrants either.
The Good Doctor: “In retrospect, I probably pole-vaulted over that line into “jerk” territory.”
Well maybe, but maybe not. Nice line though.
You were addressing your concern that a place you once lived had regrettably turned violent according to people who you knew then . It was a honest question of concern.
We were all told by our mothers not to talk about politics and religion in polite company. But that was from a different time when the world wasn’t so ablaze with conflict that was not to named kinda like Voldemort.
Your question was an honest inquiry about what had happened; it did not have to be taken as inflammatory. It deserved a honest answer. The Swedish lady’s enraged reaction was typical of the intolerant Left that abhors the truth because the truth exposes the hypocrisy and the ridiculousness of their political positions. For her to answer honestly would undermine much of what she believes in and of course she could not go there. That was why she was enraged. Your were asking her to engage in an honest discussion that would undermine her beliefs.
We will live in a world where telling or even asking a truthful question is a revolutionary act of disobedience to the ruling order. The establishment has concocted an elaborate tangled social edifice to prevent people from telling the truth in any shape or form. To be truthful is now to be impolite and rude in polite, established society.
We either submit or be impolite. Thank you good doctor for being impolite.
We already do.
Very true.
Might as well go down swinging, I suppose…
My grandparents came to the U.S. in the 1920s, mostly to flee the Socialism that was on the rise in Europe. My grandfather learned both English & a trade at night. My father, who was born in the US only a handful of years after they arrived, never learned German as my grandparents would only speak English – even to each other at home.
My grandfather started a business that managed to survive the Depression, and he was able to pursue a hobby that had fascinated him as a young boy – airplanes. Given his mechanical skills, he bought older airplanes & overhauled them completely.
When World War 2 broke out, my grandfather was too old to join the US Army, but as a pilot was still valuable to the war effort. He flew his own plane as part of the Civil Air Patrol along the NJ coast, and he also spent many weekends leading “ferry” flights of bombers from the Martin plant in Baltimore up to NovaScotia(iirc), returning to Baltimore in a C47, and then flying his own plane back to Philly. His extensive flying experience qualified him as an officer…. despite having a German accent.
The B24s & B26s he ferried were bound for England, where they would drop their bombs on the land where my Grandparents were born – but even though their siblings still lived there, they did not consider it their homeland anymore.
My guess is he assumed we all read the news . . .
Yes we can’t yield the territory to those willing to be nasty just because nastiness is the prevailing acceptable response to unpleasant truths. We have to anticipate everything and be prepared with the right questions. Great story and joke tellers actually write them down and practice. It doesn’t seem fair but what’s the choice? Of course, I can’t remember any of them long enough to write them down and don’t think of the right response to progressives until after the fact. Hey that’s a thought, how about a book like rules for radicals for our side. Quips for all progressive shibboleths. It’d be a best seller. There are a lot of skilled writers and quick wits right here, go for it.
Or even immigrants wishing to establish our *own* tribes but intending to live in a roughly compatible manner. Hunters, trappers, etc could have co-existed with the Indian tribes, though not without they same kinds of conflicts that the tribes had with each other.
George MacDonald Fraser:
You see, before ’49, if you were a Crow or an Arapaho or a Cheyenne, you might sit on a ridge and watch the schooners crawl across the empty prairie, one at a time, perhaps only a solitary train in a week. You might trade with it, or take a slap at it for devilment, to run off a few horses, but mostly you’d leave it alone, since it was doing no harm, apart from reducing the grazing along the North Platte or the Arkansas, and thinning the game a little. But the Indian just had to turn his back and ride a few miles to be in clear country which the caravans never touched, the bison herds ran free, and game abounded. There was still plenty for everyone.
It was different after ’49. A hundred thousand folk need a power of meat and wood and fodder; they must forage wide on either side of the trail, in what to them is virgin country, and wreak havoc among the buffalo and smaller game; they must strip the grazing to its roots–and it ain’t in human nature for them to think, in all that vastness, what it may mean for those few figures sitting on the ridge over yonder…but if you are those figures, Crow or Arapaho or Cheyenne, watching the torrent that was once a trickle, seeing it despoil the Plains on which you depend for life, and guess that it’s going to get bigger by the year, and that what was once a novelty is now a menace–what d’you do? Precisely what the squire in his Leicestershire acres, or his New England meadow, would do if crowds of noisy, selfish foreigners began to trek through ruining the place. Remonstrate–and when that don’t work, because the intruders can’t see what damage they’re doing, and don’t care anyway–what d’you do then? I’ll tell you; Leicestershire squire, New England farmer, Cheyenne Dog-Soldier or Kiowa Hose-Cap, you see that there’s only one thing for it: you put your paint on.
See my post Two Views of Immigration
Sweden’s had a conformist society for a long time. “The New Totalitarians” discussed this in 1971.
There is a difference between immigration and invasion…
American immigration was a bloody affair in the beginning too. And the natives of this continent live in small divided off places called reservations.
I think this huge migration, is not immigration, but invasion… The difference is in the intent of the new comers… Italians and Irish, didn’t come to change the culture, but to assimilate to it…
And these invaders come to change (or eliminate) our culture to their liking. It starts out so innocently (Press 1 for English), then gets worse (demands for driver’s license photos in hijabs), and finally, violent (attacks at ICE offices).
Yes, your behavior could be viewed as being a jerk, but we’re past the time when you could literally smack sense into some people, so shocking some sense into them might be the best option we have. She might have stormed away but just maybe a small seed of truth was planted, who knows?
BTW @Kozac I love the graphs, irrefutable evidence though some will not see truth when it stares them in the face. Asking for links is the tactic of one who is losing an argument.
Or not:
It’s on Kindle Unlimited.
Five charts. Zero links.
No. Non. Nein.
From the /sarc on/ fascist website wikipedia article /sarc off/:
So, you will ask, why does everyone say it means peace?
Well, “peace” sounds a whole lot better than “submit,” esp. to American ears.
The idea is that the faithful will have “peace” when they “submit” to the will of Allah.
Additionally, people making this comment rarely stop to consider that they are flat out wrong and just repeating a trope. It would come as a great surprise to my parents, both of whom were born in Boston MA. before bestowing the same fate on me, to learn that I’m an immigrant.
And the infidel will have the peace of submission to dhimmi status, or the peace of the grave.
It’s a classic troll.
Fred has no argument.
So true. It makes you have to provide a link for almost every word in your sentence. Besides, the next thing they say is something like “The source you linked to isn’t reliable.”
It’s sort of like the trial lawyer who objects to everything the prosecution says (my trial lawyer friend told me this) . . .
Swedens growing crime problem
Violent crime is soaring in Sweden
Swedens violent reality
Hand grenades and gang violence rattle Sweden
NYT gets around to recording on Swedens immigrant crime problem
Heres a special link for @Fred Cole
Let me Google that for you….
Wow that’s cool! Neato!
First, don’t call people trolls. That’s a form of trolling.
Second, I think you have things backwards. It’s on people making the claim to present the evidence supporting their claim.
Third, this thread and this whole subject could use some basic skepticism. It’s taken for granted that there’s been a spike in crime and somehow it’s due to refugees.
But is that the case? I’ve seen lots of garbage evidence thrown around to support that particular narrative, but very little real evidence to support it. Instead we get scare stories from right-wing European sources, which are then uncritically parroted in conservative media. (For example all that horse [expletive] about “no-go zones,” which is taken as true by so many people.)