Someone tried that.
Did you see how the peanut gallery went straight PC-moron?
It’s up to the liberals to pull their svartballs out their ass and engage with themselves honestly about these concerns. They do no favors by denying uneasy realities.
I agree completely, though the political landscape is very different in Sweden it’s not up to the “liberals” but rather up to the conservatives, liberals, social-democrats, socialists, progressives and environmentalists to do it. Well… you could also argue that it is up to the reactionaries, xenophobes and nationalists as well.
Unfortunately when SD came on the scene the rest of the parties pretty unanimously decided to use a strategy of shaming and repression. The argument was pretty much that “We shouldn’t give these racists any attention” and people were scrambling to be most fervent in their refusal to engage in a conversation, in order to come off as most pure and anti-racist. At the time when this was happening I was actually arguing for engaging in debate, reasoning that we should counter their arguments with facts and arguments of our own, since that is… you know… how democracy is supposed to work. Unfortunately not many of us did that so the reactionaries were mostly unopposed, and could also play the martyr card and promote their image of uncomfortable-truth-sayers.
One of the problems with integration in Sweden that not many outside the country understand is that we don’t really have a strong narrative explaining what Sweden or swedish culture actually is. The US and many other nations have a pretty clear story about what their country is supposed to be, what their values are, what a “real American” is and what is expected of you. In Sweden there is no such over-arching theme or narrative for people to fit their personal story into. The culture is so anti-nationalistic that the word “un-swedish” is actually a positive term, denoting someone who has flair and a high level of confidence, able to do the unexpected and breaking the norms.
Both sides are at fault here. The reactionaries for spreading lies and half-truths in order to whip up fear and resentment, and the rest of the spectrum for refusing to take the debate or acknowledge that there are certain truths and issues hiding in the hate rhetoric that needs to be looked at. Until this situation is changed, the country will keep polarizing, which will benefit the reactionaries with regards to opinion polls but in the end is damaging for everyone who lives here.