Sweden's 100 explosions this year: what's going on?
bbc.com
bbc.com
EDIT: The post is also gone from the front page. Upsetting.
A balanced evidence-based discussion from both sides paints the full picture.
1. Sweden/Nordics has had gang crime epidemics befor Motorcycle gangs using bazookas or military grade weapons. Homicide rates are still below 90s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Nordic_Biker_War
2. Even the current violent crime wave has very low casualties. As I said in other comment. The most violent city in Sweden is close to NY in number of murders.
3. This is political issue for the radical right. They want to push this Swedish cities as violent hellholes because immigrants agenda.
1. The comparison to the 90s is frequently made in the media and by politicians from the government parties, but rarely put into context. From what I understand, the early 90s were actually the worst period so far in modern Sweden (I moved to Sweden in 2006 so this was before my time). The country underwent a massive economic crisis, similar to what happened in the US in 2008. It saw, for the first time, the establishment of well-organized criminal gangs (as you mention), first large waves of war refugees (with the social and societal frictions and tensions this brought), as well as a wave of intense neonazi violence. And all this had to be handled by utterly ill-prepared, understaffed police, which until then, had basically never really been tested on that scale. On a side note: Police might be more skilled now, but is still massively understaffed (at least when it comes to those working outside the offices). This alone is quite a scandal in my opinion, considering the demographic and socioeconomic changes that the country voluntary went through during the past 30 years. You cannot take upon yourself the challenge of welcoming hundreds of thousands of people from war countries and totally different backgrounds, who often come with nothing more than a suitcase, place them all together in the suburbs in an otherwise extremely homogeneous, wealthy and famously "introvert" (for lack of better term) society (which makes it really hard for outsiders to connect and become a part of it), and then just hope that everything will be alright.
2. Regardless of the relative number of physical casualties, I'd argue that there is a lot being destroyed right now in Sweden in regards to trust (between people, into authorities) and perceived safety. This matters because one of the biggest advantages and success factors of Sweden has been people's high level of trust in each other (and into the state). If this erodes, it'll have many second order effects. Some of them will only become visible over time.
#2 The destruction of trust is trough propaganda narrative pushing moral panic, not by the actions themselves. There is clear ill will and bigotry that tries to make this problem into question of survival.
Imagine you live in the area in Linköping where this big bombing happened. You don't need to be exposed to any "propaganda narrative" to look at your neighbors and wonder if he/she is involved in something or has enemies.
That is eroding trust. Propaganda narratives might amplify this in some cases for some people. But it's important, in my eyes, to be honest with the order of things. The problems are there. That they are used by some bigots doesn't justify talking the problems smaller. This has been done for the past decade. Meanwhile, hundreds of mostly young men have been shot in gang violence.
How is that not "very interesting"? It is extremely unusual, the onset of this violence has been very sudden, and the accompanying wave of censorship and debate-suppression that has accompanied it is very much within the scope of what HN regularly discusses.
As for (3), you give yourself away. Your problem is not that it's not interesting but rather you fear the political right and their message about immigrants.
Here's a thought. If their message is merely an "agenda" that they're "pushing", and if they're wrong, the Swedish authorities could kill it dead by simply recording the origins and ethnicities of the people blowing up Sweden and showing that they're all long term Swedes. But they refuse to collect this data, for obvious reasons: it wouldn't show that.
For as long as the Swedish government and people keep engaging in a massive coverup, you will continue to see the Sweden Democrats grow stronger. Their criticisms aren't being answered or met with compromise: they're being ignored, smeared and suppressed.
They cannot for example explain why it is Sweden where grenades are sentient, but they are dormant Finland.
It’s really interesting to read and hear about the success of the cease-fire/GVI method developed in the US and led by David Kennedy. This work have started in Sweden as well, but you need a 7-10 year horizon here:
Conceptually it’s a bit like parenting actually, which only makes sense.
For it to be effective it will require cooperation between several instances - police, social services, school and others that might touch/interface with these kids.
It needs to be worked agile (not Agile), if you nerds know what I mean!
Second - city planning. These areas will have to be bulldozed down and rebuilt IMO. People need to be able to put pride and feel connected to where they live. Young men tend to really easily access “don’t give a shit”-mode. I know from experience... A part of this generation is probably lost already and we need to keep a 20 year lookout.
Or we can just whine about wanting 16yo kids be sent to 10 year in prison and spread memes on facebook.
They did that in the 60s-70s with a part of Malmö, an area called Lugnet. That area was improved because of the gentrification that followed. The people who used to live in Lugnet (mostly working class) moved out to newly built areas further out from the city center (Rosengård for example). Those areas are problematic today.
The “newly built” areas that you refer to are probably not something to be proud of, right?
I’ve only been to Rosengard twice, and it felt just as awful as the old projects outside stockholm.
This is going to cost a lot of money/resources to fix and I’d rather we spend money fixing the bugs in our society than build prisons and lock people up for decades. In the end the latter will not fix the underlying issues and instead work to segregate and compound issues further.
This why fewer and fewer people trust officialdom. Always redact, redact, redact! Whether it's CIA cables, air bags, or upticks in violence--the powers that be refuse to put the facts on the table and trust people to make the right decisions.
If a guy kills some people, and is convicted by a jury, I think the public has a right to know who he is, where he came from, why he did it, etc. without having that intermediated by armchair-sociologist bureaucrat.
In my opinion, immigration is Ok, but it must be managed and incoming people must be integrated - basically they need work. Nothing else.
If young men are living without work and without hope, this and much worse is a result.
(Edit: Am a Swede, and live nearby the Linköping bomb site that hurt 25 this June..)
Guns are efficient killing machines but I'd argue they represent a greater chance of being caught when attempting to kill or injure a lot of people at once.
And this is terrorism, per the article, it's just seen as intra gang, not general public. That's also a +1 for a bomb, which can be hidden in plain sight and doesn't have to "work" to be good as a deterrent for rival gangs.
My uneducated guess as to why the violence is that is has become decentralized. We had a fairly long period with stable power structures in the Swedish underground, there where a few biker gangs that had a few rare and violent bouts bouts but they where infrequent.
Today we have a large number of loosely organized criminals that act independently, fighting over much smaller turfs.
In some sense this might very well be because the old criminal organizations, populated mostly by right leaning criminals, have failed to integrate potential recruits from different ethnic backgrounds.
Sweden has a problem with freedom of speech, PC and political elite, that fail to acknowledge the consequences of their policies.
I'm glad the Serbs don't seem to think it's worth selling them AK-47s and RPGs, yet.
What a terrible statement. Most "situations" don't affect most people. The fact that your chances of dying from pancreatic cancer are pretty low doesn't mean you shouldn't be taking steps to reduce your sugar intake and whatnot.
The right-wing party Sverigedemokraterna is hence growing stronger while the current ruling socialist party Socialdemokraterna is losing voters inversely as a result.
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinionsunders%C3%B6kningar_in...
New York has had lowest murder rate in 50 years and it's considered safe city. According to a 2015 ranking of 50 cities by The Economist, New York was the 10th overall safest major city in the world, as well as the 28th safest in personal safety[1]. I suppose many New Yorkers can sympathize with people Malmö because they know what it's to live in constant fear when the police has lost the control.