Regarding Malmö it’s true that it is the “murder capital of Sweden” but that seems to be connected to organized crime, not muslims. And this might be a bit brutal but it’s pretty much always criminals killing other criminals. I’ve lived there (and I am actually going there tomorrow) and I’ve never felt unsafe there. In fact it’s probably my favorite city in Sweden, mainly because it has such a continental culture. Best falafel in Sweden and easy to get good weed (not all criminals are bad…).
It’s interesting that Sweden has been studying the immigration policies in Canada to see what they can do better:
I think Canada probably has higher immigration numbers overall, but one thing that’s clear from that first link is that Sweden admits a disproportionate number of refugees, whereas Canada has a higher proportion of “economic migrants” – educated and job-qualified individuals. Possibly for this reason, at least in part, there is a higher degree of integration in Canada, which I think is one of the concerns in Sweden. Although the refugee numbers here are still pretty damn high.
This was actually on the agenda back when I was working the issue politically. Our analysis was pretty much that Canada was “cherry picking” people who were healthy and had high levels of education, whereas we were targeting the opposite side of the spectrum.
Not really. I find the culture in Malmö to be excellent as a whole, and the problem with violent crime being contained to in-fighting between criminals. And the “murder Capital of Sweden” still has a much lower murder rate than the US average, so statistically I’m safer there than in the US even if I don’t take into account the fact that the violence is criminal-on-criminal.
The reason I wouldn’t feel safe in the US is not only because of the high murder and violence rate though, it’s because I feel it is a very macho and aggressive culture without a social safety net. I’m not a very macho guy and I am a pacifist, I don’t feel comfortable around that sort of people. Also the idea that I would not have access to adequate health care if I get sick or get into an accident would be very worrying, I like having a safety net. Not trying to diss you here but I think you agree that the US is not a good match for effeminate and sensitive euros. You’d think I’m a fag/pussy and I’d think you’re a brute.
For people whose world-view is organized around the idea that OTHER PEOPLE are bad, a little thing like “well established statistical evidence that they’re totally fucking incorrect” won’t matter at all.
I think you’re suffering from a eurocentric bias – namely, thinking that democracy is the only means to change society. Most immigrants (in fact, probably almost all) to Sweden do not come from democratic polities, and thus are fine with changing society via non-democratic means, such as violence. I don’t particularly think that Sweden is headed for collapse, unless something highly unlikely like a race war breaks out. Rather, it is far more likely that Sweden will suffer a gradual decline from a first world country to a third world country as the proportion of immigrants increases. And this destruction does not have to be intentional – good natured immigrants, who want to see Sweden succeed but are unable to contribute to society, may be the decisive blow.
Your analysis, while interesting, fails to account for the higher than average birthrates among Middle Eastern immigrants, who tend to have very large families. This means that the Muslim population of Sweden will likely outstrip your estimate.
You seem to agree that immigrants are on average worse than Swedes in a number of life categories, such as employment, educational achievement, welfare use, etc. However, I think we differ in that you expect this situation to improve in the future, while I do not. As a genetic hereditarian, I believe that genes strongly determine life outcomes, and as such integration, education, and welfare are unlikely to change the long-term outcomes of non-Whites (excluding Asians). For what it’s worth, there really isn’t any country where blacks, arabs, or hispanics have as good life outcomes as white people. This indicates that even if genes play no role in life outcomes, the effects of pervasive racism and cultural factors still presents an insurmountable barrier to full racial equality. And for Sweden’s immigration experiment to succeed, they really need for immigrants to do about as well as ethnic Swedes. I don’t like those odds, but then again I don’t live in Sweden.
I don’t know if you’ve visited the US, but I think you’re attributing a far more uniform monoculture to the US than in reality. The differences between someone in NYC and someone in New Orleans are significant, and there are often significant differences in temperament based on income and race as well. The stereotype of Americans, which you seem to be buying into, is that we are all ultra-aggressive gun nuts who settle disputes by sneering, flexing our muscles, and the size of our firearms. That just isn’t true. Any major or minor city in the US will have a significant number of non-agressive men who are just as cosmopolitan and sensitive as you. You should come visit.
Also, firearms are a ton of fun. And a lot of gun ranges will let you rent automatic weapons.
Christianity is certainly an impediment to far right beliefs. But it’s possible to believe in racial differences while recognizing an imperative to care for all people.
Is this an apples to apples comparison?
As in does Sweden have a broader definition of rape or sexual assault than whichever unnamed countries you are comparing it to?
Look on the positive side: you can buy all the guns you want. You can walk down the street bristling with guns like the quills on the fretful porpentine. You can walk down the street like these guys, or these. And if you get shot at, the NRA says a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun, so just shoot back! How could you not feel safe?
As you pointed out once yourself, America is a very big place and different parts of it are radically different in many ways. Bill Maher got flak the other night for commenting on the issue when he himself lives in a patrolled gated community in Beverly Hills; on the other hand, in some Chicago communities young children are being gunned down by stray bullets. In fact different parts of a single city are radically different with regard to things like safety, and even further, the same can apply to even a single neighborhood. It’s complicated.
Not that any of you wish to have an honest discussion but the Swedistan meme refers most pointedly to the fact that Sweden (and other homogenous-white European nations) are allowing in large numbers of muslim immigrants and there is concern whether these immigrants are coming to “melt” into European cultural norms or simply wish to maintain their prior cultural norms in a new landscape.
In America, the quest to get here literally involves traversing an ocean. Immigrants come to America and assimilate rather quickly, while retaining a few key elements of their prior heritage. In Europe, muslim immigrants are retaining “too much” of their heritage, such that there is cultural conflict and unease. White-guilt liberals of the European variety don’t believe they should impose their cultural norms on these new visitors, but even they are slowly turning bitter that these immigrants don’t want to assimilate. “Far-right” political parties that are resistant to muslim immigration aren’t just a composite of neonazis. Many rational folks see what is happening and are rightfully concerned.
I haven’t encountered the thing the OP mentioned on the boards or anywhere else, recently. However, several years ago, I played MMOs in the European shards and almost everyone I met was Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, or Icelandic.
It was mostly the Norwegians, but some Swedes too, that were pretty openly complaining about a greater rate of crime, how that was certainly due to incoming Muslims, and (at least one person) advocated Islamic genocide to me and I had to walk him through why genocide isn’t really a very good method of saving the world.
I did graph out the crime rate and the immigration rate for Sweden once, a few years ago:
At least from 1984 on, there does seem to be a correlation. However, the fact that when immigration goes down, the crime goes down, would seem to imply that people are either quickly giving up their life of crime, getting kicked out of the country, or getting jailed. It’s very strange.
I feel really odd, for me, to be defending a religion but technically wouldn’t it be - poor - Muslims driving up the crime rate? ie, an economic and not religious factor…
In the U.S., where the political center is slightly to the right of Genghis Khan, everything evil (from the perspective of the Political Right) is called “liberal.” (Do a search on posts by the SDMB poster Starving Artist for various examples.)
No, you’d have to look it up again. I may have copied and pasted from a webpage into GeoGebra directly, for all I know. It was several years ago.
And of course the vertical values are for completely different metrics, so I had do some funky stuff to get them to sit near one another and have a similar vertical distribution, but there was no other distortion applied than that.
What less than honest discussion have you seen in this thread?
And your depiction of the Swedistan name pretty well matches the claims made in this thread. We recognize that certain elements on the Far Right are fearful that not enough melting is going on. We also recognize that the same “fear” is exhibited toward all immigrants in all times and that it appears to have no more basis in fact in Sweden than it did in New York in 1900, or, frankly, in Los Angeles in 2015.
Recent immigrants always appear to (various members of the established society) as “refusing to assimilate,” yet actual studies of actual immigration have demonstrated that immigrants do choose to assimilate. It may take ten years when the established groups want it to occur in ten days, but it has always occurred and it is still occurring.
We have had the “they won’t assimilate in Sweden” discussion on this board, previously. (Note which side provides actual data.)
The problems that are occurring, such as they are, are primarily due to the fact that a large proportion of the immigrants are refugees – meaning that they’re not screened for education and job qualifications and so tend to be lacking in those areas. What does being Muslim have to do with anything? How does it enter in to this “honest discussion” you say you want to have?
