Racism in Sweden
twitter.com
twitter.com
Why? The rent doubled, the buses were full, taxes increased and crime sky-rocketed as immigrants who didn't have enough to eat crowded on to Sweden's generous social benefits scheme. The swedes, with a proud tradition of construction unions, heritage planning and social consensus didn't have the ability to reach an agreement on how to feed and house so many immigrants so quickly. This led to the migrants literally building a shanty town around the Malmo benefits office, instead of being allowed to build homes for themselves, as the EU refused to support the lone member state that did the right thing.
Proportionally, this influx would be like 5 million people arriving and applying for asylum in the US in a single year. [1]
As I witnessed these kind and tolerant people transform into the racist bigots this lady encountered, I think things would have very been different if the planet had treated the 2015 refugee crisis as a common problem, and not dumped it all on Sweden.
No, there is no excuse for racism, or for the lack of action in this case. But there are forces that provoke it, and every country that didn't take in a proportionate number of refugees during this crisis shares the blame for the social mess that Sweden is in today.
[1] https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-rise-of-sweden-democr...
Sweden wasn’t “the lone member state that did the right thing” and the illegal immigrants were not “dumped on Sweden”. Sweden made a very bad choice opening up to what is very clearly a criminal cohort going out of its way to abuse welfare.
And the same goes for Germany. Even more so because their incompetent leadership invited the entire middle east to Europe.
If you really wanted to “help out” and “be humanitarian” Sweden and the rest of the EU should have established safe zones in Africa. And end what is essentially a ferry service from Africa to Europe. Migrants go on dingy inflatable boats 5 miles of the coast, issue an SOS and get transported to the EU. If this isn’t incentivising illegal migration, I don’t know what is.
You can’t expect to conduct a policy of ethnic replacement which is what Swedens policy has been for the last few decades and don’t get resentment from the native population. You reap what you sow. The only good news is, the tide is turning.
>If you really wanted to “help out” and “be humanitarian” Sweden and the rest of the EU should have established safe zones in Africa.
The solution is to stress African countries instead of the European ones that helped create the Syrian refugees in the first place?
You can't start complaining when everybody warned you.
With whose money shall they build themselves homes? My money? I can't afford building a home for my family _despite_ being employed full time. So that solution you're implying would result in even more hatred. Rightfully so.
Mankind has been building homes for itself for 1.8 million years.[1] It's the norms of what constitutes a home (electricity, indoor plumbing, double glazing, certification) that have shifted, and I do not believe the migrants stood any chance of building homes compliant with modern swedish codes.
To answer your question, I believe you could build a home better than any caveman on your days off. But I think you're saying you don't have the money or time to build a modern, compliant home with the features I mention above, or to purchase the land for it.
There is plenty of rural land on the outskirts of Malmo. Sweden allowing a ghetto of poorly-developed, noncompliant houses would have been better than the tent-city I saw.
When I lived there, I was living in a noncompliant shipping-container construction that the government had erected hastily for overseas students with special permission, and it was more than enough. I believe the migrants had sufficient skill to build shipping-container homes, but there wasn't the political will to allow this bypass of swedish building compliance and due process.
[1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/who-built-the-first-hou...
Why in horror?
This is a natural reaction when your world collapses because of people vastly different than you.
The ones who are eager to integrate are not a problem. The ones who want to bring their culture and put it in opposition to the one of their host country are a problem.
I am French and a militant atheist.
My two best friends are:
1. a devout catholic and we discuss how our views are bad and how the other is wrong in his head. And then go for a beer.
I support the fact that we are culturally Judeo-Christians and therefore part of my traces go to the small village church. This is life, and I protest that but know that nobody is going to cut my head for that.
2 a 2nd gen Muslim who meets with his family for their celebrations but otherwise does not care too much except that he is pissed off because when there is an issue it is always presumed that the culprit is Muslim. To what I say that if they did not have the arguably bad habit to cut heads when someone shows their god in underwear it would be better, we argue for a moment and go with nr 1 for a beer and juice for nr 2.
I know them and their friends for years and we are uber cool with each other.
If everyone was more tolerant and less aggressive about their beliefs we would not have extreme right parties
Not surprised she's been "in a process of unlearning the imperialist + capitalist + racist education I received growing up in the US. Nurturing myself with literature from my people".
She's just quite confused on when and what her racist education actually was and doing a bad job unlearning it.
https://twitter.com/katherinemzhou/status/111795613065384345...
https://twitter.com/StandardSolo/status/1583140693362737153/...
We're going to keep seeing this as previously homogenous - mostly white - countries keep dealing with immigration. The post/tweet Kat shares about 'assumed homogeneity when building a liberal society' is an attitude common throughout the nordic and baltic states
Industrialized nations that have relied on continuous GDP growth need immigration and yet socially, look to keep it at arms length. Often they embrace a phenotypical definition of belonging. These countries are just starting to make a journey like the US or the UK which represent two different trajectories and mythologies of state building and identity.
Correction: the industries, not the nations, need immigration to continue their pace of growth.
Singapore is facing this. I can remember the exact numbers but there were 8 working age people for every senior in the 70’s and by 2040 it’ll 2 to 1.
So basically either younger folks face higher taxes or the elderly do without.
How evil are we?
The government pension schemes do not provide anything back to the chumps of the next generation.
Savings are put in financial institutions and earn money based upon how much money those financial institutions are able to earn by redeploying that money to help businesses grow.
There's quite a bit of difference between investing and extracting donations
In neither case do claims on future production "help the business grow". Capital markets price claims, they never fund them, so at best you can say that correct pricing of claims helps allocate investment more efficiently, but that only requires marginal participation in capital markets in order to set prices.
So while capital markets play an important role in setting relative prices of investments, and thus of allocating money away from lower return and toward higher return investments, they play no role in absolute quantity of investment made. For that, just as loans create deposits, so investments create savings - not the other way around. If you are a farmer deciding to buy a new tractor, I guarantee you that you will never be waiting for someone to skip a meal and save in order for you to be able to finance the purchase of your tractor. Rather, an increase demand for consumption goods is required to increase investment and make the bank approve your tractor loan. That tractor investment is never funded by individuals choosing to "save". Rather, the purchase of the tractor is what causes aggregate savings to go up ex post, and whether pensions are funded with transfers or with capital markets has no bearing on whether it makes financial sense for you to take out the tractor loan and thus on aggregate savings.
The downvotes to your original comment is very typical of the HN crowd.
Western Asians (Middle Eastern people), South Asians and East Asians all face different problems in different European and American states.
To be Asian and also the face of a very public company or be voted into government is a sign of the publics tolerance of Asians being integrated in their society.
But I don't deny that the recent seat gains by SD in the general election points towards the country getting increasingly xenophobic, possibly racist.
In completely unrelated news, Arabic is now the second most spoken language in Sweden <https://digitaledition.chicagotribune.com/tribune/article_po...>.
2) This absolutely does not match my experience:
I needed an employer to declare that they couldn't find a Swede to employ before I was allowed into the country. 2 years in I needed to renew my residence+work permit (submitting evidence that my income hadn't deceased, etc.). Another 2 years in I needed to renew again - achieving a permanent residence+work visa. Only after that could I apply for citizenship, which is still underway.
3) my experience obviously relates to how the law has worked thus far. The government has only just changed from the leftish incumbent party to a right-wing coalition, so it probably doesn't make sense to judge the current state of the country by laws which will now no doubt be changed.
2) If you are not a citizen of another EU country (or a country with some special agreement) you will likely have to enter on a holiday/work/student VISA which should prove that you can support yourself whilst in Sweden. After five years you can apply to become a citizen and there's no test in place to judge you Swedish-ish-ness. (Nobody will quiz you about which year our old king skied on one ski from Mora to Salen.. for now)
I think the point of the previous comment was that it's too easy to get a citizenship for "immigrants" (refugees), not for economic immigrants that choose to move to Sweden for Fun And Profits/Shits And Giggles.
We're all equal under the law, it's just that diffent laws apply to each of us.
3) The law is unlikely to change before 2025 (link below) when you might be tested on which year the Swedish challenger to the headed for refuge (yeah.. ironic) in Norway.
P.S.
Congrats for sticking with it even if my government forced you to do paperwork TWICE in five years :P
https://www.regeringen.se/rattsliga-dokument/statens-offentl... (Swedish, sorry) https://www.migrationsverket.se/English/Private-individuals/... (checked as of writing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasaloppet
>We're all equal under the law, it's just that diffent laws apply to each of us.
Indeed.
I invite everyone curious to visit the above-mentioned page; as I stated, note the total absence of any language or employment requirement for obtaining Swedish citizenship.
Done (albeit in a reply to myself, as it is too late to edit my comment); I apologize for that.
>2) This absolutely does not match my experience:
I invite everyone to peruse the link that berglof kindly provided the current version of, at <https://www.migrationsverket.se/English/Private-individuals/...>. Note the total absence of any language or employment requirement for obtaining Swedish citizenship.
The woman also posted a video about some random person, spewing rasist slurs in English towards the woman, somehow know that she only speaks English, in full mask/hoodie so that she cannot be identified.