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Comment by puglr | Hacker News Reader

Based on my observations from having Swedish friends and spending time in Sweden, a lot of the rise of the extreme right there can be directly attributed to the tensions resulting from the Syrian refugee crisis.

The last time I was in Sweden, ordinary folks were expressing ideas like "well maybe not everyone deserves free healthcare".

Like many western nations, economic opportunities and quality of social services is dipping. Standard practice for right wing parties to blame immigrants (or refugees, etc.).

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>Like many western nations, economic opportunities and quality of social services is dipping. Standard practice for right wing parties to blame immigrants (or refugees, etc.).

Increasing the importation of poor immigrants that are dependent on economic assistance and social services by definition reduces the economic opportunity and availability of social services for the already poor residents who are dependent on these services. Those who insist on rejecting this piece of objective reality because it doesn't jive with their political and/or cultural agenda create a vacuum for the "right wing" to be the only ones voicing the legitimate concerns people have about mass immigration.

> Standard practice for right wing parties to blame immigrants (or refugees, etc.).

On the flip side, standard practice for left wing parties is to deny that immigration causes any problems at all and call you racist for even trying to discuss it. However, as we are seeing in Sweden, sometimes the problems become too big to ignore.

People aren't just "trying to discuss it". Plenty of outright racism in Sweden.

I do not deny that some who oppose lax immigration policies are racist, but just because some people who have certain concerns are racist does not mean that everyone who shares those concerns is also racist, or that those concerns are invalid.

Some people have in fact been trying to have discussions about immigration policies, but for quite a while proponents of lax immigration policies have dismissed any pushback against such policies as racist/xenophobic fear mongering.

To your point, rape statistics in Sweden seemed to be the major talking point on this issue, and would generally trigger the response you describe.

The statistic is unfortunately being hijacked for that purpose. It is especially common for foreign news outlets to focus on this and it gives the impression that Sweden is not a safe place for women. The opposite is true however, Sweden is one of the safest places and on earth for women.

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