Swedish cities hit by four residential explosions in an hour | Hacker News Reader

Swedish cities hit by four residential explosions in an hour

theguardian.com

57 pointssarmike31118 comments

"residential explosions" sounds like it was gas leaks or some other accidents, but in fact it was "gang bombings" according to the text of the article

Nothing confirmed yet, but its usually hand grenades.

Wait, "usually"? This is a usual occurrence in Sweden?

Yes. Fascinatingly enough it's not been as bad in neghbouring countries, leading to the term "we don't want Swedish conditions over here".

It probably is because Sweden has taken on much more immigrants, to the point where the percentage of Swedish residents born outside Sweden is 3x higher than in Norway and Denmark. This has probably overloaded the capacity of the social security system, and has lead to a greater extent of neighbourhoods where almost every older adult is a poor first-generation immigrant.

No, it is not related to an overloading of the social security system in that way. Yes, the system is overloaded by having a large new contingent of non-contributing individuals partaking of the payouts but this has not led to a decrease in those payouts, far from it. A family with 5 children can get enough money from the state - in 2016 the amount was 32.800 kr according to a calculation published by Riksdagen (the Swedish parliament) which comes down to a lower middle class income - for a reasonably comfortable life without ever having to seek employment.

The problem is cultural, not economical. The Swedish state has, following a decision pushed by Olof Palme on Sweden having to become 'a multicultural state like the United States of America where Swedish culture is no longer the single dominant one' followed a policy to not only allow but encourage migrants to not integrate or assimilate into Swedish culture but to keep and strengthen their own, paid for largely by the Swedish state through subsidies for ethnically segregated cultural organisations. This has led to the establishment of ethnically segregated areas in many of the larger cities with names like 'lilla Mogadishu' (little Mogadishu), 'lilla Kabul', 'lilla Bagdad' and more. It has led to objectively unexplainable situations where a regime-supporting Eritrean cultural festival is organised in Stockholm by "refugees" from the same regime which then attracts opponents to the regime from all over Europe who come there to make war on those same regime-supporting "refugees" [1]. It has led to parts of Göteborg - the second largest city in Sweden - being under the virtual control of the Ali Khan clan [2] with members erecting road blocks to keep out authorities, somewhat comparable to the way road blocks were erected in Portland OR but far more established than those temporary eruptions of anarchy.

Sweden is now a cauldron bubbling with different factions - Afghans, Somalians, Moroccans, Iraqi, Syrians, Turks, Lebanese, Ugandans, Eritreans and more - striving for dominance in different types of organised crime. The multicultural 'experiment' has failed spectacularly and disastrously as was foreseen by many but which was not to be spoken of in fear of being labelled a 'racist' or 'nazi'. This labelling still continues and the denial still prevails but the subject has become more approachable due to the fact that the results of this failure are clearly and undeniably visible for anyone to see. What remains is to find a solution for the problems caused by the near half century of mismanagement and misdirection which keeps those aspects of Swedish culture and society which made it successful and worthy of emulation but does away with the ideologically driven mistakes. Given that the political party most (but certainly not solely) responsible for these failures - Socialdemokraterna or "the social democrats" - is and has for a long time being the largest and most dominant party combined with the fact that political parties in general and this party in particular are not known for admitting to past mistakes it remains to be seen whether and if so to what extent this will happen.

[1] https://www.tv4.se/artikel/3qmMWIhaUax7HuAl2mQxOF/kaos-vid-j... an [2] https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Khan-klanen

>This has led to the establishment of ethnically segregated areas in many of the larger cities with names like 'lilla Mogadishu' (little Mogadishu), 'lilla Kabul', 'lilla Bagdad' and more.

Context for others: Sweden has no language, income, employment, or skills requirement <https://www.migrationsverket.se/English/Private-individuals/...> for obtaining citizenship.

In completely unrelated news, Arabic is now the second most spoken language in Sweden <https://digitaledition.chicagotribune.com/tribune/article_po...>.

>Sweden is now a cauldron bubbling with different factions - Afghans, Somalians, Moroccans, Iraqi, Syrians, Turks, Lebanese, Ugandans, Eritreans and more - striving for dominance in different types of organised crime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grenade_attacks_in_Swe...

>The multicultural 'experiment' has failed spectacularly and disastrously as was foreseen by many but which was not to be spoken of in fear of being labelled a 'racist' or 'nazi'.

SWEDEN YES <https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sweden-yes>

I'm impressed we can now finally start to talk about it.

For the longest time only the parties I didn't want to vote for could talk about it.

> only the parties I didn't want to vote for could talk about it.

...and therein lies the rub. Assuming you did vote you gave your vote to just those parties which did all they could to promulgate the problem by castigating anyone who dared to speak about migration in anything but a positive way as 'racists' or 'nazis'.

The only reason we can talk about it now is that those parties - or rather that party, only Sverigedemokraterna (the "national-conservative" party, their program resembles that of the social democrats of the early 60's from before Olof Palme) has been steadfast in their position with Moderaterna (the "classically liberal" party) having been one of the instigators of the current problems through Fredrik Reinfeldt's (prime minister of Sweden from 2006 to 2014) deal with Miljöpartiet (the "green party" which has been far more active in promoting migration and related activism than they have been for their original environmental goals) to "open the borders" in 2014 to "punish the country for having voted Sverigedemokraterna into the parliament". That same prime minister claimed that "Ursvenskt är bara barbariet. Resten av utvecklingen har kommit utifrån" [1] ("purely Swedish is only barbarism, the rest of development has come from the outside") - with a prime minister who thinks such about the country he is supposed to lead it comes as no surprise that he made things worse rather than better.

I'm a migrant to Sweden myself, having moved there from the Netherlands in 2002. I was surprised by the fact that Sweden had a real-life national socialist party, something which would not be possible in the Netherlands. No, it was not Sverigedemokraterna but Nationalsocialistisk Front which later changed its name into Svenskarnas Parti before they gave the ghost a few years later. Now there is something called Nordiska Motståndsrörelse (Northern Resistance movement) which seems to fill the gap. What soon became clear is that those parties did exist but that they were the absolute fringe and never attracted more than a few hundred people, were not taken seriously by nearly everyone and were mostly dangerous for their own in-crowd due to incessant infighting. The only real function these parties had and have seems to be to function as a foil for the likes of EXPO (a self-proclaimed anti-nazi/anti-racist group which may have started out that way but for many decades is more aptly described as a left-wing propaganda organisation, their research wing proudly describes itself as "Swedens STASI") and the propaganda arms of several "progressive" parties to portray Sweden as having a large problem with "nazis" and "racists". This stood and stands in complete opposition to the facts which, at least until recently, showed Sweden as one of the most tolerant and open countries in the world. This tolerance and openness having been abused past the breaking point finally seems to permeate the masses which makes the scare tactics - "skrämselpropaganda" for another fine Swedish word to try to pronounce for all you linguaphobes out there - less effective and has started to make it possible to discuss problems related to migration and integration/assimilation without immediately (or at least "effectively", the accusations are still made but they don't tend to stick as well as they did before) being shot down as a 'racist' or 'nazi'.

[1] https://www.dn.se/nyheter/politik/reinfeldt-det-ursvenska-ar...

There is a wiki page too --> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grenade_attacks_in_Swe...

Simple, import the 3rd world, become the 3rd world, what baffles me is that it really takes 10,20, 30 years of live experience for some people to start understanding (much too late) this very simple fact.

Yes, huge problem here. I don't even care anymore when I hear about it.

It's been happening a lot lately. Last decade or so we've began to have a real gang problem.

It wasn't helped by the fact that hand grenades were classed as illegal fireworks up until like 2017, and fairly risk free to smuggle into the country.

But its gotten worse since 2017 and wasn’t a problem until ~10 years ago. Clearly hand grenade laws are not the root cause.

At that point Sweden was already flush with hand grenades and various other arms. They were closing the barn doors after the horse had bolted.

At what point? 2005 when it wasnt a problem?

Hand grenades are weapons of war with no civilian applications, and should never have been classified as anything else.

Hand grenades are clearly not the primary cause since they were legal for a long time before this became a problem. Its also not clear that they account for more recent bombings.

Whether or not you think they should be legal is completely beside that point of them being the primary cause, which you pivoted away from. Likely because its hard to support.

A forest can be dry for a month until a single lightning bolt kicks off a forest fire. Now tell me, did the drought or the bolt cause the fire?

You may remove either component, and the calamity would not have transpired.

For once I disagree with you.

You have it backwards.

Norway and Sweden has been - and is - flush with weapons and have been for decades.

When I grew up at least two of my neighbors had complete G3s and lots of ammo stashed in their house. There were tens of thousands of these stored in homes everywhere as part of terrestrial defense forces (Heimevernet).

This wasn't a drought. It was totally unproblematic. Even if sometimes people got angry and sparks flew things didn't explode.

Because guns aren't explosive.

Something else has happened that has made the situation dangerous.

Also often home-built thermos bombs are being used. Those might actually be the more common form nowadays.

Every other word is a euphemism. 1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.

> Every other word is a euphemism.

What do you want the news to say when it is not yet known who did it and what exactly exploded? Do you want them to lie? Or do you want them to push through the police cordon and do their own investigation faster and better than the police does?

the reason it uses that term is that "gang bombings" in international press paints a very different, AFIK incorrect, picture

The thing is Sweden has problems with people blowing up stuff with bombs since years, BUT it's also since years that this acts in most cases _only target property_, e.g. a police booth, but not people. I.e. no injured people is more the norm then it is a lucky confidence.

on the other hand unrelated people dying because of gang violence is kinda common in the many counties. So when youn read "gang bombings" it's much more likely to be associated with an act with the intention or willingness to kill people then an act with the intention to cause property damage

This isn't the IRA. There are no warning calls to the police to get people to evacuate. These are the same people who gun down their targets on crowded streets in broad daylight.

The fact that relatively few people have gotten killed is entirely due to luck and the relatively low yield of the explosions (usually hand-me-down hand grenades from the Balkans wars).

I never said they are not bad people.

I said that it's misleading if put in the title in international because people only read the title and put it into context with their expectation.

And in many counties the implicit reading would be "gang tires to kill people with bomb" which makes it look like Sweaden is falling apart

both of which just isn't the case

so I'm the title speaking about residental explosions and then in the body exploding properly what that means makes a lot of sense

It is a problem though. We shouldn't become desensitized to daily headlines of explosions and assassinations in broad daylight because only a few hundred people are killed each year.

That shit will never be normal.

it's not supposed to be normal

but when you report in one country with very different dynamics about another country you probably want to not put anything which needs additional context in the headlines because people way to often only read headlines

honestly preferable there shouldn't be a headline, but that just doesn't work, I mean how do you know if the topic might be of interest of there is no longer a headline telling you about the topic

Yeah maybe it's not the best term but it's quite accurate and I didn't spend more than 5 seconds thinking about it.

The point is, however, that this ("gang violence") isn't really happening in most of Europe (or other first world countries like Japan), and wasn't happening in Sweden 15 years ago.

Also, did you consider that the reason there's no casualties is that people are so afraid to go out or walk around these "gang areas" that there's just noone around? I wouldn't exactly call that a positive...

AFIK gang violence is happening in most of the EU

in many cases has been happening since a very very long time

just with very different dynamics then in the US

which in combination with people often only reading the headline makes it a bit trick for a US newspaper to choose a good title

e.g. when I read "gang violence escalates" in a German news paper I expect very different thing then when reading it in the US

but in both counties it something you might have read in the last 2-3 decades

and AFIK this bombings are not limited to some "gang areas"

You are implying that gangs bombing buildings in the city center is 'okay'-ish because people weren't targeted intentionally?

Were the buildings evacuated before?

TBH mentioning gangs would paint a very accurate picture. Because it is gangs, they are fighting for drug control, blackmail, rape and kill.

And to go one step further: It would be even better to name the cultural background of these gangs and that it's a direct consequence of a misdirected immigraction politique

please stop putting words in other people mouths

what I'm was saying is that from only reading the title in international press a lot of people would get a wrong picture

nothing in their says that what they did is okayish

just far less bad then idk. trying to kill as many people of a specific group as possible with a bomb

which is what I would think happened when I read gang bombings in US media

You are relativating great crimes. You are embracing and supporting euphemistic language. At the level of this crime it's nuances of 'killings'.

you are twisting what people write, putting words in their mouth and intentional side track the original argument which was about the formulation of the title to one which assumes it's about the content of the article

and no matter how much you insist that grate crime is all equality bad the situation a country is in when there are frequent assassination attempts by bomb and the situation Sweden is in is VERY different

so if you are not Swedich newspaper it's a good idea to add the necessary context when writing about it, which is impossible in the title, so you use a more generic title

> TBH mentioning gangs would paint a very accurate picture.

And they do mention gangs! The exact word is used twice.

We were talking about the title "Swedish cities hit by four residential explosions"

And I'm pointing out that there is more to an article than just the title.

But fair enough. Provide alternative title. Make sure it is factually correct too.

Gang bombings is accurate because thats what they are. How would people learn gang bombings in Sweden usually target property not people if you dont run stories about them?

but how do you avoid people only reading the title and getting a very different picture if not by carefully formulating it

they should have called it that _in_ the article

but due to the very unhealthy way ton of people consume articles (title only) title have to be written with a lot of care

Why stop there? Why not just title it "Four Bombings in Europe?" You wouldn't want to give an unhealthy outlook toward Sweden when bombings happen elsewhere too.

But seriously and respectfully, my point being the title is not accurate to the article. "Residential bombing" is not a real description, it could be aerial bombings, it could be gas leaks, it could be terrorism, or something else.

Context is important. I'm not interested in random bombings. If a foreign nation is attacking Sweden, I want to know everything in real time. If it's an explosion due to a gas leak I'm probably not going to click in and read it, but maybe someone who is interested in public safety or that geographic area will. If it's gang violence, maybe someone with an interest in safety and law enforcement is interested.

"Residential bombing" doesn't tell me enough to make me want to understand it more, it _does_ sound like a gas leak, but I am interested in gang violence in Sweden because it's something I know very little about.

When I have a limited amount of time to read the news, I'm only going to prioritize articles that look like I'm going to get something out of it, I'm not going to read articles with vague headlines. To me that's click bait just like any other.

> but how do you avoid people only reading the title and getting a very different picture

Thats what happened with “residential explosion.”

you could say it's always happening

headlines are "<censored cursing>"

But shouldn't we then prefer the lest sensational variant, we are so swamped with bad news all the time that at least for external (i.e. country far away, likely not going to affect the country the news is for) things if I had the choice between two attention grabbing similar misleading titles I would always prefer the one which is less painting the picture of "the whole world goes to shit". Because AFIK this kind of misunderstanding produced here is less likely to have further negative ripple effects of people which only saw the headline incorrectly quoting it.

But also I'm living in a country where there is no issue with newspapers constantly downplaying police or citizen violence.

So my preference might differ.

The article mentions "Just after 1am local time...All four blasts were at residential buildings". Which makes you wonder if it's just luck that nobody was hurt.

It's in the article

> bombs are mainly used to intimidate targets, while shootings are used to kill enemies.

That's the intention, yes. But a live grenade in an active residential area certainly can (and has) hurt and killed people.

Import of hand grenades was legal leading up to the series of explosions a few years ago. It has quieted down a lot since, until very recently.

We have a similar explosives surge in the Netherlands, all gang related. It seems like blowing each others shit up is a bit of a trend in those circles.

Could there be any particular reason why this has become more popular? Is gang violence up in general? New release of the anarchy cookbook perhaps haha?

They realized:

- More chance of getting away with it vs (attempted) assassination, since you usually don't cause bodily injury or death (so police divert less resources to the crime) and you are well away on your scooter when the explosion happens. Lately more have been getting caught however. Still the punishment then is less than with (attempted) murder.

- More kids willing to do it, because punishment is lower, and chance to get caught is lower.

- Besides the intimidating effect, it creates pressure on the victim by the neighbors and the government, because they now suspect the victim is a criminal and want it to stop. It can even lead to eviction.

All in all in pretty good way to pester your enemies without escalating to murder.

Interesting. A question: Can regular citizen protect their address in The Netherlands, or are addresses public and searchable online, as in Sweden?

That's somewhat of a pet peeve I have with the Swedish situation. Due to the country's transparency principles (which I in general consider a good thing), everyone's registered address and other personal details are easily searchable online for everybody through numerous different services. Including who you live with, and lots of other information. So basically, to use US lingo, the government is doxxing everyone by default.

There's no way to opt out of this, except if you are already subject to a documented threat (but then it's obviously already too late and you likely are forced to move), or if you belong to a small group of professions that might be considered particularly vulnerable.

In consequence, you can easily and anonymously look up where your enemies, or their relatives, live. I don't see how this is not contributing to the problem. Potentially even being one of its major drivers. However, there's basically zero public or political debate about changing this part. In fact, most people in Sweden are completely oblivious to the idea that it could be different. That as a citizen you might want to have the right to choose whether your address is available to the public or not. Even though that choice is the norm in most countries, afaik.

So I find that totally annoying. Making it harder to look up where someone lives, would likely, over time, reduce the number of attacks on buildings (which not only include bombs, but also shootings at buildings).

There are probably tens of thousands of households across Sweden who experience an elevated risk of being exposed to bombings or shootings, as gang-related individuals (or their family members) are living in their buildings. So this is a real crisis, I would say.

Broadly speaking, violence has been up in Europe post-lockdowns. Something about having a lot of people with few ties to a community, having no economic prospects and strained welfare systems. Then add the EU's self-destructive path in order to "stick it to Putin".

For Sweden in the particular, I believe they also have an idiot compassion problem in their judicial system beyond even most "progressive" justice systems. So for example, if you're under 15 you cannot go to juvenile jail in Sweden because it does not exist. End result, gangs were recruiting 15s and under. I'm not entirely sure if Sweden ever got around to changing that.

Not trying to belittle what happened but there have literally been weekly gang land hits in Sweden this whole year, so 4 explosions, or hits, in one day was a statistical inevitability.

It has gotten very, very bad. It reminds me of some large American cities in the 80s and 90s, except spread out across the country, in comparatively smaller cities.

Disclaimer, I'm a Swede born in the 80s. I've merely heard of what happened in the states through popular media, interviews with gang members and stuff like that. What we're seeing here now, resembles that very much. Isolated areas, people who live their whole short lives in a bubble of gangs, drawing down on sight.

Fueds always start over money, or hurt pride, but they can keep going for however long the involved members are active.

I remember the big biker wars of the 90s[1], with a total registered death toll of a dozen. Now that's a bad month in Sweden. However you approach this debate, it needs to happen.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Biker_War

Can someone give some details or references on these gangs?

No, that would be racist

What baffles me about this "gang-related" cases of violence is that it's presumably over drug money. And Sweden has rather low drug consumption level and is essentially cashless, so any transaction larger than shopping for groceries goes via a bank. And Swedish banks are very transparent and compliant and have very strict KYC/AML rules. I once had to explain to the bank why my friend transferred me an equivalent of $200 and every ATM deposit as well, even if it's $20. How the fuck are the drug money passed around in enough quantities to warrant "gang wars" here?

It's not always about money, it's also hurt pride and dumb principles.

That's why in Sweden you see these "gangs" that are essentially one family, one "clan" is what they often call them in media.

Just like the early italian mafia in the states I guess, one patriarch, their sons, their son's friends, their cousins, their nephews. They're all related somehow, and they enter into blood fueds over hurt pride that just snowball.

I don't think I've ever heard the claim that Sweden of all countries had low drug use. Do you have a source for that claim?

Anyway, the shadow economy always finds a way. Most probably there's just a cash-only sub-economy that you personally don't participate in.

From what I could quickly google, there is this report from The Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and Other Drugs [1] which says that at least for students the number is 50% lower than EU average (p. 28).

[1] https://www.can.se/app/uploads/2020/01/can-rapport-163-drug-...

Don’t believe the lies from the Swedish anti-drug organizations. They are fueled by religious zeal, not science.

It is probably true that Sweden has a below average cannabis usage, compared to the rest of Europe, but recent studies from the Swedish customs(?) show much higher numbers.

Smoking pot in Sweden is incredibly taboo - so those who do keep their mouths shut about. Still plenty of people do it, we had the internet early on and could see through the propaganda.

I was fairly open about smoking(and growing) while I lived in Sweden so I got to know and discuss this issue quite well. It is one of the reasons I no longer live in Sweden - on paper it is free and democratic, but if you go against the group think there will be consequences.

https://www.tv4.se/artikel/10foijSmC66PWj0LCoIS6J/oroande-si...

Here in Chicago business is a secondary cause of murders. The biggest reason is honestly just fragile egos. If one of your opps posts something on social media about you or writes a song dissing you the street ethos many have bought into requires you to kill them. Honestly the biggest cause of violence is fragile egos.

>If one of your opps posts something on social media about you or writes a song dissing you the street ethos many have bought into requires you to kill them.

Relevant:

TIL that Chicago street gangs today identify themselves by song. By listening to what drill music (a Chicago form of gansta rap) is playing, youths can tell which gang's territory they are in, or even when gangs are working together. <https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/5t7ig0/til_th...>

To put another way, I've heard it said that drill rap may be the first music genre that becomes extinct because its practitioners kill each other off.

I'm pretty sure drug users in Sweden don't buy drugs with their credit card.

They use Swish: https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/hundreds-of-suspected-cocai...

And again the same question: I have a friend who had to physically go to the restaurant to get a confirmation that he in fact had paid about $250 for dinner for six people and they then swished him back. How will you explain hundreds of transactions a month when you don't even have an official source of income?

Yes, but I mean it should presumably be very hard to even spend the money for the sellers here, let alone to launder them, which will be needed if you're selling all the time.

Guns are also illegal there... It is almost like gangs do not respect regulations...

Buying a gun is a very rare transaction happening 100% in the physical world and leaving no traces per se. Receiving/spending money here is digital in 99% of cases and is recorded forever.

I don't think they are illegal, but barrier to get a permit is relatively high.

It’s hard to know how to react because the article doesn’t give any historical rates of these residential explosions. Residential explosions could actually be down for all we know.

From the article:

> In 2022, there were 90 explosions and 101 cases of attempted bombings or preparations for bombings in Sweden, according to police data. As of 15 August this year, 109 explosions had been recorded.

it would be interesting to go back a few years to see how Sweden has changed. Has there been a huge increase in crimes in the last 10 years or so?.

Gun violence and these explosions have been going up quite a bit last few years at least. Anecdotal (Sweden here) people in my closest circle feel a lot less safe, and less comfortable in public spaces, compared to a few years ago. Not to a huge extent, but noticeable.

Wait, is that question serious or you are really prentending you don't know what "changed" in Sweden, or in another European countries, over the past 10 or 20 years :-) ?!

More than 100 so far this year in Sweden and over 100 last year.

4 in one hour happens all the time.

very many

not a new problem

but an increasing problem

through most times targeting property and no people damage

It's a rather recent problem, as noted by tfa.

if it's very new why was my swedish coworker from a few years ago going on and on about the government still but having gotten that problem under control even after years

through he was also speaking about self build pipe bombs instead of imported hand grenades

through I might be missing something

The murder rate is still 4x higher in the US. Guns are far more effective than bombs.

https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Sweden/Uni...

It's not okay just because somewhere else is worse. Gun crime is decreasing across Europe, except Sweden. Something is structurally wrong.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-peaceful-sweden-became-euro...

Guns also prevent about as many attacks as they are uzed in. Grenades are not typically used defensively.

North America is Borderlands Pandora compared to Northern Europe, so of course. :p

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