Of course the quality of life on average will be decreasing when you absurd people who lack education or money, and who have a hard time integrating into society. For the first time in forever we are now below 100% in literacy for example. It would be very strange indeed if the influx of poor and uneducated people magically raised the quality of living. We allow refugees in because of humanitarian reasons, not because of economical ones. And yes, I actually agree that it is a bit of a problem and we probably should look to stem the tide some since we’re failing with the integration bit.
I actually think our way of reporting it is much better. If someone gets raped 10 times it makes more sense to report that as 10 crimes rather than as one.
Our laws against hate speech are definitely more strict than the US from what I understand. Personally I am a huge fan of free speech and think that we as a nation sometimes go to far in suppressing hate speech, but on the other hand I think the US is too lenient. Somewhere in between would fit my taste better.
I don’t call SD nazis because they are not. I call nazis nazis because they are. SD does however still have a problem with lingering nazis and every year there are at least a few cases of their politicians getting caught donating to nazi organizations or spouting nazi friendly propaganda. I can’t really blame the party for that though and the party itself seems to do a good job of expelling them when they are discovered. But claiming that they haven’t included nazis for twenty years is simply false. 20 years ago the majority of SD politicians had a connection to the nazi movements so obviously a lot of progress has been made, but it is still a problem for them.
This meme does not stem from SD. They are racists who exaggerates a lot but they’re not as a collective group insane. Politically they are doing all they can to distance themselves from their nazi heritage and come across as ”normal”, with some success.
They are also not Sweden’s biggest party. There was one criticized poll where they got 20% and which made the news because this was so spectacular. In the biggest and most reliable poll we have they got 14.4%, which is more than at the election but nowhere near enough to make them the largest party (S at 30% and M at 26.4%).
So what you’re saying is that you actually WANT my country to be destroyed and over-run by jihadists…? So you’re actually HAPPY if swedish people get raped or murdered by muslims…? Wow. What can I say to that…
So if I understand this correctly you ADMIT that you want Swedish people to be raped and killed, and you ADMIT that you will selectively pick sources that you are aware cannot be trusted just because they support your own political agenda? You’re actually admitting to being a liar that want innocent people to die and suffer… Holy fucking shit. How did you not get banned yet?
That’s Switzerland. I know, I know, they’re both covered in snow and chock-full of humourless people. Still, they all look alike to you ?! That’s racist !
Thanks for the description. I’d like to point out that Sweden is not ”liberal” in general though, it’s been mainly social democratic. In Sweden the liberals are considered to be part of the right wing.
Errr… what? I used to work with zoning and building permissions so I think I would have heard of that happening.
I meant ‘common’ with respect to the people who say ‘Swedistan’. I agree that the average person outside of Sweden probably has no opinion of it beyond IKEA furniture and snow.
No, all else equal I’d rather see the Swedish Democrats take power, expel the refugees, and return Sweden to a traditional White ethnostate. But I can recognize that that’s never go to happen. Sweden has collectively chosen to welcome Islam and mass immigration. That’s their choice, and there’s no point trying to rob them of agency because we think we know better. The only real option is to wait and see where Sweden’s experiment takes them.
I absolutely do not want to see Sweden destroyed by radical Islam, but that’s their battle to fight, not mine. I don’t think I’m cherrypicking sources, but the Swedish government’s decision to not collect crime statistics by race or religion makes finding unbiased sources difficult. I certainly don’t consider myself a liar, and I find that a very rude suggestion. I don’t want to see innocent people die or suffer, but because Swede’s exceptional kindness, that is exactly what will happen.
[QUOTE=Stoneburg]
Thanks for the description. I’d like to point out that Sweden is not ”liberal” in general though, it’s been mainly social democratic. In Sweden the liberals are considered to be part of the right wing.
[/QUOTE]
That’s a cross-Atlantic thing. Over there “liberal” means left-wing social progressive. Down here “liberal” means right-wing ultracapitalist. I forget the whys and the wherefores of this linguistic split ; it’s just something to be aware of.
No. It presumes that if Stoneburg has recently begun encountering this nonsense to a great degree, he is doing so because so much of the internet is American based.
Europe has its own anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bigots, and every nation in Europe has been able to field at lest one political party, (or would-be political party), that has the same stupid chants. However, as someone from the U.S. I am better suited to identify cultural memes from the U.S. If the notion is also prevalent in Europe that mirrors the American image of Sweden as the home of loosey-goosey, liberal, sex fiends, then that provides a possible answer. If the web sites that Stoneburg has encountered have been primarily American based, that provides a possible answer.
I am aware that there are several Swedish web sites promoting the idea that mad mooslims are about to take over that nation. Those sites get repeated a lot in the U.S. (and show up as links in threads, on the SDMB, that try to pretend that Sweden has already fallen to Kanuni Sultan Süleyman). If a Swede is suddenly surprised by the way that such nonsense has suddenly appeared, the American connection is a probable link, particularly when the OP noted
I thought you were hep to white nationalist CTs. To them, Jews and white people are in competition for world domination, with whites being the only ones smart enough to see the Jews’ machinations (e.g. Germany). So Jews use the other races to bring whitey down with race mixing* and liberal ideology. As a bonus, the other races are easier to fool with propaganda and consumerism, so it’s easier to control them and make money off them.
One of my favorite Eurabia CTs, which isn’t nearly as popular as the standard “the Jews did it” version, is that white Euro elites are bringing Muslims into Europe to drive the Jews out by proxy, since the old fashioned way doesn’t poll well anymore. Wheels within wheels, man.
I’m not sure where or when the race mixing element started. I think the oldest source I saw to push this was The Turner Diaries, which was definitely influential but I don’t think it was the first. I don’t think it was part of Nazi or older school anti-semitic ideology, which was more about economic parasitism and liberal cultural decay. But I could be wrong.
In that case you should maybe not say things like this (my bolding):
This makes it come across that not only do you think Sweden will fall, but you want it to because it will confirm your fears. That seems strange to me. Say I think that smoking marijuana will kill you, and a friend of mine decides to smoke some. Even though I would think it’s going to kill him I would prefer to be proven wrong. You seem to be saying that you don’t want to be proven wrong, even though you believe that disaster will befall other people.
Well how about we look at the reality and facts and see if this muslim takeover makes any sense or is a real threat.
Currently about 5% of Sweden’s population say they believe in Islam. I think it is safe to assume that most of these people are not radical or interested in some sort of take-over, most are just regular people who want to live regular lives. They’re also very diverse, ranging from Iraqi lawyers to unemployed Somalis (yes that is stereotype) and are not united by a common language or even a common religion since Islam itself houses many different sects. But for the sake of argument we can treat these 5% as a single unit with a common agenda.
Over the last few years we’ve accepted 40-90.000 people per year, but let’s increase this to an even 100.000 to help the case of those who are afraid of mass immigration.
If we now fast forward ten years with this higher-than-actual rate of immigration AND assume that they are all muslims (which they are not) we would end up with an extra million muslims in Sweden. Assuming Sweden’s native population doesn’t grow in the mean time, the muslim population as a percentage of the total would be 14%.
Most of this group will not have voter rights in national elections and are quite honestly the victims of a lot of structural racism. They are less likely to be employed and less likely to be elected to anything. Exactly HOW are they going to take us over? How is 14% of the population in a democracy, where about half doesn’t even have voter rights going to ”take over” or ruin our society?
You can make a case that they are a burden on the welfare state and that is generally speaking true. A majority of refugees are not employed and thus have to use the social security system to survive. This causes financial problems for the cities that they reside in (since social security is a municipal obligation) which means there will be less funding for schools and elderly care (which make up about 80-85% of most cities budget). That’s a problem. It will likely lead to a decrease in quality in education and elderly care, but once again, that is not the same as the collapse of our society.
So in your mind, exactly how will this group of people go about destroying our society? Please be concrete.
Yes so far the people promoting this meme have been Americans and all of the links have either been to overt nazi/racist Swedish sites or what I would characterize as very right-wing (but not nazi) American sites. The meme may have caught on in Europe too but so far I’ve only been exposed to Americans singing this song.
And yeah, it’s not just that they think Sweden will become a caliphate, they are claiming it has already happened. Our women being systematically raped, our streets running red with blood and Swedish ”liberals” eagerly cheering on the muslim ”invaders” for some reason. It’s such an incredibly weird and far fetched meme that I’m simply astounded that anyone would believe it. And it also seems weird that American conservatives would not feel uncomfortable getting into bed with neo-nazis, but unabashedly linking to their sites as if they were reliable news sources. From what I have seen of American politics the right wing still thinks that actual nazism is bad.
The OP is a caricature of a caricature. Anti-immigrant activists exaggerate the negatives associated with immigration and those exaggerations are then strawmanned. The facts are that Sweden is taking alot of immigrants in and not assimilating them well. Sweden has 2% of the population of the EU and granted 20% of the asylum approvals in the EU. They spend 3 billion dollars a year processing and settling asylum seekers. Sweden has historically been a homogeneous country with little immigration. In 1900 less than 1% of the country was foreign born. Now 16% of the country’s population are immigrants. Not surprisingly they are having a hard time integrating the immigrants into their economy and society. Immigrants earn 40 percent of what native Swedes do, are 30% less likely to work, are 51% of the long term unemployed and 57% of welfare recipients.
Such a large influx of immigrants can not help but change the social fabric of a place. For instance there was a riot in Sweden a couple years ago. The homicide rate in Malmo, the city where many immigrants have settled, is three times what the rest of Sweden has. The scores on international tests have been declining for Swedish students.
Sweden is not turning into Swedistan, but it has imported alot of people who are doing poorly economically and that is changing the country.
Here liberals and conservatives make up the right wing, and social-democrats and socialists make up the left wing. A ”liberal” in Sweden is someone who prefers privatization and de-regulation, with emphasis on personal freedom and responsibility. There’s the social-liberal who tends to just want more individual choice and less regulation, and then the neo-liberals who are more ideological and want to privatize big parts of what is today the responsibility of the public sector.
To be fair I think the big conservative party and right wing leader in this country would be considered something like main stream Democrat in the US. Bernie Sanders would be considered a centrist.
From our perspective the US doesn’t have a left/right political spectrum but rather an extreme-right/right.
Basically European Liberal is American Libertarian ; and American Liberal is European Socialist or Social-Democrat (but the rightmost fringe of those).
