Gang crisis shaking Sweden
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Although it happens that innocent people die or get injured, the acts are targeted at active gang members and, more recently, tragically, their families to a greater extent.
The problems are significant in the context of gang crime, but it's not like an ordinary person needs to be afraid of being out for a walk or being assaulted, robbed, or attacked by gangs. In Malmö, which is Sweden's third-largest city and is located near Copenhagen, gang problems have significantly decreased in recent years through Group Violence Intervention efforts.
I'm not trying to gloss over the problems, which are significant, but I understand that the authorities and communities have the will, knowledge, and resources to change the situation.
Perhaps, but we need to be careful what conclusions (and reactions) we take from that.
People from all walks of life make regular usage of recreational intoxicants, often perfectly legally. Huge, legitimate global industries are dedicated to it. If that association were the primary basis upon which to categorise as a gang, or as morally corrupt, then the Champagne region of France, and the Coca-Cola Corp (associate and maker of many an alcoholic beverage, among their giant stable of products), would be among the world's biggest "gangs". And yes, in some ways they are! but that's another matter.
So, despite the common 'drug' associations of gangs, the unique commonalities which define criminal gangs lie elsewhere, and thus a primary focus upon intoxicants, when attempting to address gang criminality - such as the longterm ineffective War-on-Drugs rhetoric - is doomed to failure, as the proof of reality shows.
Magically take away all drugs and alcohol overnight, and we'd still have a disenfranchised minority social underbelly, realising their discontent in all-new and equally potentially harmful ways.
And agreed that there is a problem - now - but resolving that will be costly and time consuming and will require a lot of goodwill from all of the parties involved. I've worked in the mailroom of a bank, which was probably close to 70% minorities and it was awesome: I've never seen so much camaraderie anywhere else that I've worked. Turkish neighbors are great people, the young and coming Dutch kids living one door down not so much (vandalizing the property and causing a lot of trouble). It all depends and they're all individuals, as long as people paint whole groups with a single brush it can't ever work.
But free up enough money for education and you just might turn this around. Interesting tidbit: racism is everywhere I've lived, but it all depends on where on the color chart you are offset towards the 'white' end if you have more money and towards the left if you are poorer. It's pretty wild to see how universal this is, I've observed it pretty much everywhere that I've lived, even in places where people of color where the majority. They did the exact same thing. Baffling.
We are all most likely killed by someone close to use regardless of how, so pay attention who you and your loved ones hang out with. We are all more likely to be killed by hands, feet, knifes, random tools than by the evil AR-15 or a similar type of rifle. The chance of even getting harms by a gun is incredibly small if you aren't a criminal and you dont point a gun at yourself, its basically a non-existing risk.
Nobody is born a criminal. Gang violence is expanding like a plague because of the collapse of society / government / whatever you want to call it in the lives of young people. A young person (usually adolescent) who is victimized by criminal gangs (and they need victims to exist) will not receive any protection or help from neither the police, the military, the schools, parents, family or anybody. Usually they're told just to take it and keep their head down. Criminals exploit boys by having them run errands or just squeeze them for money, girls are instead exploited sexually.
The civil society has nothing but bottomless contempt and even outright hatred towards teenage boys, so there is no dignified route of life for them unless they come from one of the few families that care for their future. Joining a gang becomes the easy way for them to find some dignity and respect among their peers and even in civil society. This has been going on for decades among the poorest in places such as the US, but now it happens to "middle-class" boys in Sweden and other places, because this middle class would rather see their own children be victimized or killed than make any effort to pass on their middle-class status to their kids. So it's not "mostly criminals shooting each other".
I still haven't figured out whether Swedish politicians and voters didn't realize this, or simply didn't care. What's happening has seemed inevitable to me for well over a decade.
Literally the founding story of European Australia .. the bulk of poor uneducated landed here had criminal records to boot.
Still, they were given work to pass the time and after a few decades 'free' land (well, other peoples land).
These days modern Australia population is ~ 25% born elsewhere with a fair number of refugees and poor migrants but these are matched with education, job opportunities and initial placement in communities they can establish themselves in.
That support is pretty crucial to minimising friction.
Not to mention that the Australia thing happened in a time when there was plenty more space & opportunity.
there was a gold rush and for a while Melbourne was the largest city in the British Empire. plenty of actual "try my luck in the new world" folks landed, both in the 1800s and later.
During the founding of non convict colonies (Adelaide, Perth, etc) there was the mega rich of the day - second sons shipping out with entire households to establish footholds and means of trade, and their servants (by the terms of the day these were people with a position and a wage albeit not great).
The trying their luck in a gold rush etc crowd came after the founding of the main colonies, some convict, a number not.
FWiW in my estimation "Had a criminal record" | "was a convict" is distinct from "was a criminal" - the first two are a matter of record, the third is more of a judgement call of character.
Many sent to Australia as convicts had character, ethics, a trade, and were victims of circumstance, poor economics, the wrong politics, the wrong class, etc. rather than being of some essential criminal character.
What's the next step after that?
Simple, isn't it?
Even in the no-go areas, you're pretty safe walking around as a civilian. You'd expect those areas (in Sweden) to look like war zones, where the citizens and bystanders are locked up all day, in fear of moving out. Yeah, not so much - the areas are very much "boring" suburban areas.
But, alas, then the gangs started to bomb and shoot up apartments of rivals and their families. Suddenly you're not all that safe, because what if your neighbor turns out to be the second cousin of some local gangbanger?
With that said, all this roots in piss-poor integration. The gang members aren't first generation immigrants, we're talking at least second gen - even third generation.
And like all other organization, be that crime, terrorism, or whatever - they prey on the kids that have fallen outside the system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rawa_Majid
>Majid's parents are from Iraqi Kurdistan, but he was born in Iran when they were fleeing Iraq on the way to Sweden during the Iran-Iraq war. The family settled in Uppsala in Sweden when he was one month old
What worries me about the country is not primarily gang criminality, but the general degradation of everything that was once good about Swedish society.
Probably still better than a lot of places. Immigrants who come here often praise the system, how well everything works here; but they have no idea how well it used to work.
These days all of it has been privatized, which has made it more expensive and not nearly as reliable.
Even government institutions, like the tax office have gone seriously downhill lately. You used to be able to go there and get professional help in reasonable time. These days it's a joke in comparison. There isn't even a tax office anymore, it's been lumped together with the unemployment office and God knows what and staffed with immigrants just of the bus who don't know shit about anything.
You used to be able to ask the police for help and expect to get it, politely; these days I'm more afraid of cops than criminals to be honest.
I could go on and on.
Could you expand on your thoughts regarding why you're more afraid of cops in Sweden?
Being grabbed of the street, detained and questioned just because you look similar to someone who did something wrong is not an uncommon thing.
I don't know whether to blame the hiring standards or the conditioning they put aspirants through, probably both; I've seen perfectly normal people, friends of mine; turn into fascist assholes in no time.
I moved to Sweden 2 months ago (from Seattle, where I grew up) but over the last decade I’ve lived in Seoul, Singapore, Bangkok, and Reykjavik. The government here feels most similar to the US, worse in some ways. Paperwork is like a hobby and doing it slowly is almost glorified.
I love it in many ways, but it’s baffling that I still don’t have a government ID, and am months away from getting a bank account. (Which would block me from getting a paycheck if I wasn’t high enough to at my company to get an exception and wire to my U.S./EU accounts. But for most relocated employees, they just don’t get paid for the first few months). The HR here says this is something they can’t change because it’s legal requirements from the government? But they just shrug and say that’s the Swedish way it works because it’s been working. And now I’m too embarrassed to hire the people I need to until I have good workarounds for these processes (there are many more issues).
As a Swede with history of what used to be good, and what’s working in other places, what would it take to get Sweden to correct these aspects of the way things are run?
The problem is that they require a work permission for the account, which used to be quick, but since the immigration system is now overworked, they're giving one year Visas and taking their time to give the work permission. So N26 or Revolut are only really available for European citizens (that was the reality for a few years now, dunno if it changed).
Funny enough, more traditional banks have picked up the slack and dropped the strict requirements, and you can open an account from day one of being here with them.
Been there, done that. Getting a bank account once I moved back was a major pita. I still haven't been able to renew my drivers license since I've been moving around without a fixed address. That part isn't new though, it's been like that as far back as I can remember.
But at least back in the days, the system worked, you got something back for your troubles.
Freedom of speech (and negative freedoms in general).
The free healthcare and elderly care used to be quite fast and humane. The very professional healthcare is still available for those with serious illnesses, but it's very difficult getting an appointment for more benign problems, dentist appointments, etc. The elderly care has changed so it's now almost a luxury to be accepted to the (still quite expensive) public retirement homes, that are burdened with huge waiting lists nowadays. Most elderly people have to resort to treatment at home, staffed by young or otherwise fairly low skilled carers who spend very little time with their clients. We are talking mere minutes per visit, mainly to hand out pills and serve food. Those carers often spend as much time on TikTok in their cars as they are interacting with clients. This sounds like hyperbole but is based on my own experience as a carer, as a neighbor to those receiving this care, and as someone with multiple people in my close family having worked as carers.
It is very difficult to phone the police to report a low-severity crime - ongoing or not - such as for example fraud, noise violations or reckless driving. You are not supposed to dial the emergency number if the crime in question is not in danger of hurting anyone. So how would we report vandalism for example? We wait on the phone for up to two hours only to hang up before we get the chance to even report the crime. This affects the statistics. Any criminals are long gone if we reach the police at all. This is caused by an overwhelmed law enforcement and is how children mostly get away with torching cars as a service for criminal older teenagers.
Schools have degraded immensely for some reason. This is not an immigration problem although I believe that may play a part in some parts of the country. The biggest issue is what can only be described as some sort of ADHD pandemic, where classrooms are disorderly to the point where kids are offered over-ear hearing protection to be able to focus when their classmates are making too much noise. When I went to school in the 90s, we had our fair share of fights, students that were acting out and teachers that couldn't be bothered. But it was nothing like it is today, and I don't really know who to blame. I think the teachers are doing their best, I think most parents are engaged and want the best for their kids, and I think most kids see the problem themselves. But even the best schools have these problems. My kids go to a fairly high profile school with unusually strict policies that are actually enforced, but they've still had alcohol and drugs in school, thefts, violent acts and a general environment that is making it difficult for the kids to learn. I suspect older teachers are more successful than their younger colleagues but that is merely anecdotal.
20-30 years ago our mostly social democratic parents used to complain that Sweden was slowly "turning into the USA" (meaning: a society where the rich prosper while the poor suffer), and now it's really starting to feel like that to me as well. Our society has been getting very cold lately and I'm not sure this is where I want to grow old anymore. Not that there are any alternatives, really. The free healthcare and education is still awesome when you need it and most of us can't imagine where to relocate to, because we are after all used to a fairly well functioning society. I would be quite happy if we went back to where we were 40 years ago.
Probably both things are true.
When countries take in large amounts of immigration, their generous welfare systems can become stressed.
Sweden didn't balance the concerns.
This in turn had the ironic side-effect of cementing a sort of structural racism where all these immigrants showed up and were given at best estate housing and a welfare check with very limited prospects for the same sort of quality of life as the natives.
Turns out very few people want to lead a shitty life doing menial jobs as a second class citizen. Isn't that weird?
Turns out if you give kids the career options of cleaning toilets or takeaway delivery (both for a pittance), a life of crime starts to look real appealing. Heck, it's a real testament to the humanity of these people that Sweden doesn't have more criminals than it already does.
It doesn't feel like there are role models there like Satya Nadella, Jerry Yang, Alex Padilla, or Obama.
Netherlands and the UK have only started to change in the past 5-10 years.
Aside from politics, British Asians honestly aren't that notable in the business space. Most British Asian billionaires tend to be Indian and Pakistani oligarchs to took British citizenship (eg. Hinduja). The British Asian community always felt pretty dislocated and isolated compared to those of us in the US+Canada, despite us being a newer community in North America.
In Netherlands, similar story, though there has been a recent increase in white collar Asian immigration after the US Visa regime became much more backlogged.
Can't speak for the Arab+Turkish community in France and Germany, but I had a Tunisian coworker who made a point of how he preferred being in the US over France or Belgium. And on the German side, it's the backup plan for most immigrants as well. I can't think of a notable Turkish German or Arab German role model outside of arts and politics except for the COVID Vaccine guy, and that was very recent.
For example, in the 70s-90s Lebanese would have an easy time emigrating to France (and many have) due to French fluency, yet plenty preferred moving to Australia, Canada, or the US instead as there were more opportunities to climb up.
Conversely, there is plenty of Chinese and Indian immigration to Europe, but it tends to be blue collar in origin, as opportunities and social mobility is simply harder in Europe if you're an other.
Take a look at the Arab community in the US versus Germany for example - the American half is heavily Levantine (Palestinian, Jordanian, Syrian, Lebanese) like in Germany, yet better assimilated than the equivalent communities in Germany (even before the civil war). There have been Arab Americans as Governors (Atiyeh, Sununu) and Business Leaders (Maloof, Yagan, Salhany, Halaby), yet not in Germany.
The US, Canada and Australia get upper middle class/upper class immigrants. Naturally they're more upwardly socially mobile.
Europe basically gets anyone who can fly 2 hours, get on a boat for 20 hours or drive/be driven for 20 hours.
You have Iranians and Syrians and what have you in all manner of well paying jobs. But there is really no plausible path from refugee to those types of jobs.
This describes the huge population of gastarbeiter in West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, but I am not aware of any violent movements arising from them being unhappy with their lot. (The violence one does remember from those years was from a different demographic entirely.) It describes the modern UAE, where I am unaware of any gang phenomena. So, is this really all that is to blame for Sweden's problems?
The Swedish legal system is also not very well suited to dealing with the problem, and the system for amending laws has a lot of inertia.
A big problem is laws against information sharing between government agencies dating back to the shocking revelations about the STASI during the fall of the DDR. In calmer times this is a fine principle, especially given how much data is stored on Swedish citizens, but when you want to deal with organized crime, it's absolutely disastrous.
Indeed. Funny enough, in those discussions, a lot of people bring up the Vietnamese as a group that is well-represented in Germany, but are rarely if ever associated with violence.
The interesting part is that there used to be a problem with Vietnamese gangs post-reunification [1], entirely solved by now.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_people_in_Germany#C...
There are some nationalities doing low-paying jobs in disproportionate amounts. Turkish for example, the largest immigrant group here. If I divide my current company by "high paid" and "low paid" jobs, Turkish (plus Germans with Turkish background) are over-represented in the "low paid" half (more than 60% I estimate). On the other hand, there are only a handful in the "high paid" part (no engineers, for example, only a handful engineering-adjacent). These exceptions are often people coming straight from Turkey, from wealthier backgrounds, rather than 2nd/3rd generation German-born. This has been the situation in pretty much every company I worked or observed.
With recent housing problems, they also don't have as many options of where to live, so they end up in the same neighborhoods, where they rarely have a chance to speak German, let alone to integrate with the culture. Integration courses are crowded and extremely difficult to get into. If you're working full-time it's borderline impossible to find something after 5-6 PM. Religiousness also plays a role in making integration via integration courses hard (EDIT: but Turkish are more secular, this applies more to Arabs), there are specific classes for women, which is often composed only of Muslim women (since there are so few women-only classes, Muslim women are given priority), so few chances to chat with non-Muslim women.
One interesting anecdote that I can't prove, but I see a lot of people moving to Turkey in large numbers. Some of them are 2nd or 3rd generation and have never been there. Life is not easy.
In pre-internet times, immigrants faced the prospect of limited social contact unless they integrated with their communities. Alternatives to this was the formation of a cultural community such as a "little italy", "china town", or even a ghetto. However integration on some level would still be needed.
It's logical to believe that governments got a good idea of how many people they can import from each country while still maintaining a high level of integration.
Now enter the internet - it's now easy to stay connected with our cultural peers, function solely in our mother tongues and our problems from "back home" still feel close and worth hanging onto. It's also easier to avoid integrating into the community since many regular points of interaction, such as shopping, can be done online and in isolation.
This might mean that our previous numbers for how many people we bring in from each area will need to be reevaluated, possibly leaning into more mixing and conditions that ensure better integration such as requiring higher levels of language proficiency.
Sweden appears to be the victim of its own careless immigration, that'll be a difficult pandora's box to shut - but not impossible.
We should be clear about this because even at scale immigration can work well, and be a net benefit economically.
Another problem Sweden though is that they also didn't import people with compatible cultural values. So you have a population of people who are unable to economically contribute, and often unwilling to integrate.
I just wish people listened years ago when people like myself suggested it was likely to play out like this instead of being so mean and accusing us of all having hateful motives. There's no going back now.
Agreed. Unfortunately those people who leveled accusations will face no consequences. Even if you were to bring up that they wrong, naive, selfish, you'll just get a shrug from them and a "get over it". Like the results and end-game don't matter to them now, when before they swore with their life that it mattered and anyone in opposition was a xenophobic piece of crap.
If this is meant to be a dogwhistle about immigration, it seems appropriate to observe that many of the countries TFA compares Sweden to (Greece, Denmark, Belgium, Netherlands) have similar immigration patterns without the same violent crime rates.
If you mean immigration: roughly 1 in 4 Swedish residents are either first- or second-generation immigrants[1]. This is directly comparable to Belgium[2].
It's good to know that immigrants, no matter the nationality, ethnicity, or religion, follow a normal distribution. Some of them are criminals or bigots, whereas most of them are just normal people trying to find work and raise a family.
Europe needs immigrants, it would be foolish to close borders. But we need to be tougher on crime, too. Immigrants that don't quickly adopt our laws and liberal values should be expelled because otherwise, the crime rate goes up, then far-right parties take over. And what happens next in such scenarios is that the law-abiding immigrants suffer, actually.
I do not have a problem with that idea, but bringing people from territories where marrying your 1st cousin is legal is a bad idea with bad consequences: lower IQ, expensive health conditions, bad temperament (and hence crime), etc.
Like half the US? (and the map for that looks probably exactly opposite what you're thinking right now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cousin_marriage_law_in_the_Uni... )
Usually, after 2 generations, most people adopt the local culture. You can see it in quite tangible metrics, like, for example, they stop having many children, with the fertility rate dropping to the Western average. And if first and second generation descendants become a problem, indeed, then we can talk about society being broken, and the solution is to fix it, not to stop immigration.
For me, talking about slowing down immigration is like talking about slowing down the economy. It can't be done without people eventually starving.
You haven't gone to Brussels I suppose... Especially Molenbeek or Station Zuid.
Ps. I'm from Belgium
I go to Brussels at least once a year.
Again with the obliqueness: is there something specific you want to say? Is the implication that your national police force is suppressing the "real" murder rate?
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2023/07/27/station-brussel-zuid...
- A friend of mine had an escort picking her up at the station from her work.
- My mom + a friend of her felt threatened by a non-native, when taking the train back from the airport. These are retired women and my mom's friend travels 3 x a year everywhere.
She felt the most unsafe here in Brussels and not taking the train again. ( This was after Operation "cleanup")
- Operation cleanup in Brussels South - ( https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2023/08/29/brussels-south-two-d... ) which resulted in 56 arrests and some people on a wanted list ( https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2023/08/28/56-arrested-in-polic... ). Note: this was a criminal cleanup that was mentioned on the media upfront
- 5 younger kids from Brussels raped an ex in Malta ( news update from 16/11/2023) https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2023/11/16/belgische-jongeren-v...
- News from 2 days ago ( 18/11/2023) The most popular bars ( Delirium, you've probably went ) where 2 female tourists got drugged and raped https://www.hln.be/brussel/elke-keer-ik-wakker-werd-was-mijn...
Plenty of other examples.
Including from people living there or lived there.
https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/en/2022/03/01/molenbeek-police-sta...
Or... it's a coincidence that Abdeslam was from Molenbeek? :) Sure
Sweden is simply too nice to criminals. Police, laws... everything.
Other countries have no tolerance for that.
2.) It’s still prison. You’re still locked up. Even people from poor countries want to be free.
As opposed to the current state of things where migration is already a big business both legal and otherwise? Check how much money smugglers make.
And the likes of Turkey and North Africa squeezing the EU for money to "prevent migrants crossing the Mediterranean". How's that working out?
The idea that someone who does not presumably know the language, culture, or even where all the landmarks of a city/nation are suddenly start running organized crime is deeply mistaken and does not even track with the most well-known syndicates such as the mafia (1920s in NY compared to 1880s enmasse arrival of Italians) or cartels ("homegrown").
Look deeper and you would see these syndicates grew because there were purposefully and one might argued, promoted by semi-facist types or those who would get "cancelled" today, preventing reasonable opportunities from being provided to these populations.
Even moreso, you might see that much of our economy depends on deeply underpaid labor continuously running agriculture and service sectors and now I would argue even tech, with the danger of being deported or not getting a visa hanging over their actions.
This graph, in the financial times article about immigration, indicates 5. 5 deaths per million. The growth is horrible and yet the reality is nothing like the one being lived in by the US. Most hackernews posters often post about gun violence in the US as being something necessary to address and also simultaneously something that does not impact their day to day decisions around errands like the grocery or activities like music festivals or conferences.
Just to put things in perspective, deaths by firearm are around 60 per million in the US, twelve times the Swedish figure.
Further, as every greying country attempts to use immigration to grow a declining population, some flavor of this comment will negatively impact their efforts:
“Swedes make you feel foreign even when you have the passport, even my kids who were born here,” he says. “They blame immigrants for everything. But this gang violence affects me, my family, my friends as well."
That was a lot of words.
One question - are there any patterns with who is involved in this gang violence?
* A region with instability, poverty and agrarian-tribo-rural-economy will imprint emergent traits onto the local culture.
* Long ossified culture cannot be shed quickly even in the best of conditions
* Agrarian tribal cultural practices are incompatible with hyper-liberal secular society. Integration is the only option.
* Integration is hard. Even more so when it is optional, gentle and approached with ignorant naivete.
Of course things went wrong. The Swedish drank American kool-aid. Like America, they naively tried to claim that their national identity is not an ethnic identity. They set out to prove themselves better than the US by taking in large populations of refugees and showing how they could do the America model better. That's where they got it completely wrong. The US took centuries to decouple its cultural identity from its prevailing-ethnic identity. (by successfully secularizing Protestantism.) The US also heavily vets its immigrants (unlike Sweden) and places the most oppressive integration-force-field second only to France. The air you breathe (Media), the carrot (The American dream) and the stick (the English language) all perfectly align to facilitate integration of the 2nd generation born into the US.
Swedish is an ethno-cultural identity. If you can't start with accepting that, then ofc the grand immigration plan was going to fail.
Most of America's immigration comes from the southern border and is completely unvetted. Your thoughts on integration also don't align with reality.
Edit: participating in this thread has resulted in the moderators of this site applying a rate limit to my account, so I can no longer reply.
About 25% of USA's immigration is as a result of unvetted immigrants from the south [2]. It is still a minority. The majority come here through family (pre-integrated) or for work (high bar for productivity).
Also, Mexico is not the same as war torn middle-east. Mexicans are already culturally aligned (Christianity), ethnically aligned (massive white admixture) and economically far closer to the developed world as compared to the recent warn-torn middle eastern nations. There have been large & well-established Spanish-Christian communities within the US for centuries, which makes it much harder for them to ghettoize.
My point about the integration force-field still stands.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/20/facts-on-u-s...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/hispanic/2020/08/20/facts-on-u-s...
> Much of the recent violence is due to a major split in the Foxtrot drug gang, say police. Majid, who was raised in Uppsala by Iraqi parents, is believed to have fallen out with his former right-hand man Ismail Abdo, or “Strawberry”, who also moved to Turkey.
----
"Is there a lot of crime in Sweden?"
"Ja we have a lot of crime. Ours are named Kurdish Fox and Strawberry."
"Can't the police do something about them?"
"Oh they don't live here any more."
The two root causes of our gang problem is the amount of money drug buyers want to spend, and that it's still possible to combine crime with clean business and launder money through that.
I live next door to a handful small businesses that each employ 2-3 people full time, have maybe 2-3 customers per day paying for services costing about 200-300 kronor (10 minute hair cuts, tanning salons, car reconditioning, 10 minute tire changes, nail sculpture), and they still make a yearly profit of between 0.5 to 2 million kronor according to public records. They are all staffed by people in their 20s that mostly hang around all day. I would assume these businesses are quite cash heavy even though everyone uses card payments nowadays. They are generally owned by people whose main business is property ownership, restaurants and construction, who keep a bunch of smaller businesses on the side. I don't think the state has the resources to even begin looking into this.
As a privacy nut I have always wanted to keep cash but I'm starting to second guess myself.
People don’t naturally feel as much allegiance to others who look and sound different. It takes time to overcome that.
Places like Sweden will have it even worse than the US, because migrants need to learn a fully new language to fully integrate, while most migrants to the US have at least some English skills to begin with.
Deaths from assault by firearm per million
Sweden, 2020: about 5.5 (from the bar chart)
USA, 2021: 43
(https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-... 48,830 deaths, 43% of those are homicides, population of 331.9 million)
Legal immigration is of course fine and necessary, as long as the state and socials systems can assimilate it... (Japan is a good example). But articles like this show concerning data points in western countries with uncontrolled migratory policies.
Looking at [1], murder rate in Slovakia is comparable, and Hungary only slightly lower. Sweden isn't even near the top murder rate in the EU, and a number of other countries which accepted a large number of refugees have lower murder rates than Sweden.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
Here is Finland: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/FIN/finland/murder-hom...
And here is Norway: https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/NOR/norway/murder-homi...
They do not see this rise.
Finland also has a markedly higher murder rate to start with (for whatever reason), and it absolutely shows a distinct rise in the last few years – much more so than Sweden in fact.
Norway is indeed more stable. However, Norway also accepted significant number of migration. Although it's hard to tell how much exactly because of different definitions, it seems roughly half as much as Sweden (adjusted for population), which is less but not nothing.
And in a quick check Finland has seen even less migration than Norway.
So you will need to explain why Norway sees no rise in spite of migration, and Finland sees a rise in spite of less migration.
And sure, I'm willing to accept that migration is a factor in Sweden. Although I can't tell you how exactly since I'm not familiar enough with the nuances in Sweden. But this "argumentum ad charts" you're making that migration somehow automatically leads to crime is complete bollocks.
Just minutes ago in another comment you yourself posted a link which clearly and markedly shows that Finland has seen a marked and steep rise in the last few years: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38339299
And my main point was that "gun violence" showing near zero for some countries shouldn't absolutely not be taken as "near zero crime" or "near zero homicide".
[1]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/533917/sweden-number-of-...
But reliable figures are hard to come by, partly because if scientists, even accidentally, find that, e.g., most rapes are committed by immigrants, they get prosecuted (eventually the charges were dropped, because they couldn't prove "bad intentions", negligence, or carelessness) [1,2,3,4].
The other reason is that, though Sweden used to collect data about criminal's ethnic background, they stopped I think in 2005 [5]. Though it seems they've resumed - in searching for sources for this post, I found https://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/2021/11/sweden-finally-publishe...
[0] https://www.thefp.com/p/two-bombings-in-one-night-thats-norm...
[1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/20961790.2020.1...
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45269764
[3] https://www.opindia.com/2021/11/sweden-lund-university-resea...
[4] https://lakartidningen.se/aktuellt/nyheter/2023/06/aklagare-...
[5] https://www.thelocal.se/20180508/why-sweden-doesnt-keep-stat...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
...when you sort by "Rate", Germany is at spot 161, Hungary at 164, and Sweden at 144 (and for comparison's sake and because it's kinda interesting/surprising: Russia and the US are also identical at spot 52 and 53). So even when taking knife killings into account the argument doesn't make sense, Germany is much closer (actually pretty much identical) to "poster child" Hungary than Sweden.
[0]https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/stabbing-...
One important difference between Germany and Sweden: youth unemployment is much much lower in Germany.
Similar developments as in Sweden can be seen in the Netherlands, due to the drug trade.
Background to the situation in Sweden: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/27/sweden-seeks-t...
But generally the homicide rate in Sweden is very low (~ 1/6 of the US), Germany a bit lower, still.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
Huh? What's wrong with living in Slovakia?
You're making it sound like Slovakia is Botswana, Saudi Arabia or something when it's one of the safest and developed countries in the world, unless you opinion of Slovakia comes from the famous Bratislava scene from the movie Eurotrip.
Firstly, which developed countries (that don't have "cheat codes") haven't stagnated GDP-wise post 2008? AFAIK, most of them.
>a country that hasn’t climbed out of the middle income trap yet
Secondly, GDP growth as a number on it's own, is pretty useless, as it's not a 1:1 representation of quality of life increase for the average citizen. GPD can grow just from some billionaires moving trillions form one to another or from extracting wealth from your country and its citizens, that doesn't necessarily mean the average citizen gets a piece of that pie or gets to see better quality public services. It just feeds the "line goes up" crowd who see a country as a publicly listed corporation.
Thirdly, as a country, once you reach a certain level of development by plucking the lowest hanging fruits that have been tried and tested and know to work by former industrial powers, growth becomes much harder and more capital intensive, only accessible to countries that already have crazy money to spend in R&D and innovation in the newly developing high growth markets, like the US, UK, China, Netherlands, Switzerland, Scandinavia, etc. Everyone else is stuck waiting and playing catch-up for eternity, but that doesn't mean they live poor lives.
The GDP per capita of Zimbabwe grew 3x post-2008 while Slovakia has relatively stagnated, yet I know for sure in which one I'd prefer to be born in.
>calling it one of the most developed countries is stretching the facts beyond breaking
It's one of the most developed countries in the world when you look at how bad the whole world is doing right now, not just the US, Germany, Singapore or Australia, which have their own challenges when you zoom in on them and not just glance at the "line goes up" GPD numbers.
How do you allow something legally that is illegal? If you allow it, it is not illegal. If you don't, you haven't allowed it.
That's supposedly what happened in Germany in Foreign minister Annalena Baerbocks office.
Basically the embassy reported that it has all reason to believe that the passport is faked. Still, Annalena Baerbocks ministry pressured them on providing the legal documents that would allow said person to seek refugee status in Germany.
Low-quality link in german language: https://www.cicero.de/aussenpolitik/visa-affare-im-auswartig...
[1] https://greekreporter.com/2023/10/03/greek-man-gang-war-swed...
Swedish culture still values multiculturalism. And, during my 20 years there, I was never able to convince anyone about the dangers of tolerating intolerance.
When you check demographics’ stats, you realise that these issues will be compounded in the future. It makes me sad.
https://community.apan.org/cfs-file/__key/telligent-evolutio...
See scenario #2: Ascending Powers
https://adminpubs.tradoc.army.mil/pamphlets/TP525-92.pdf
See chapter 7
There’s lots more, hopefully these will get you the keywords to start finding more docs. I’m not a mil guy but know some. Actually part of the strategy is to get civilians more informed on the nature of the changing operating environment, because a lot of areas that used to be considered non military are becoming contested arenas.
Also just to reiterate, I don’t think they’ve made the jump yet to realize that relying on congress for funding is going to get harder.
Only more targets.
Gangs are horrible entities that have to be stamped out via swift decisive action. Take it from us in the US. The whole reason we have to deal with the half of the politicos who shoot up walmarts, and the half of politicos who loot walmarts is because too many politicos protect their pet gangs and terrorists.
Don't let this happen to you.
Now in the US we have to take out our shooters and looters while their protectors maneuver to make that difficult from on high. I'm pretty sure you'll see a lot more prosecutions of politicos like you're seeing with Trump. It's basically step one if you want to take back malls, walmarts and churches from the shooters and the looters. You'll end up having to take down a lot of politicos and then bring the hammer.
That's never pleasant.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-...
Add explosives, hand grenades, kidnapping...
US does not have a big problem with organized crime!
There are regional differences! Fire arms are heavily regulated and relatively hard to get in EU. We are close to war zones, hand grenades are easier to smuggle, and are used in Sweden.
If you include murders by knife, London is worse than US!
Edit: also you wrote "assault" that could include anything from armed robbery without health injury, to self defense. Apples and oranges!
Quick google search brings up the following "All in all, there were 77 incidents of detonated hand grenades in Sweden during the six-year observation period, in which nine individuals were injured and one killed."
is this what you are talking about? Doesn't sound that dramatic.
Seems like you are just trolling. Especially with the throwaway account, hard to take what you are saying seriously.
Source (https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-...)
Gun death rate in France is 27 per million.
Death from assault by firearm in France is 2 per million.
To compare the US to Sweden we need rate of death from assault by firearm for the US.
btw, we've somehow been back-watered here on the site. I can't even find this thread in my profile, and it's only shown on the main page for this comment as a part of another thread.
Hackernews has gotten weird lately.
This thread is collapsed by default, but I can still see it.
Explosions tend to be vastly less precise than shootings and unintended victims are more of a rule than an exception.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/31/bomb-experts-c...
Czechia has the same population as Sweden. Such series of intentional explosions would be considered insane here.
Trends matter, too. Sweden used to be known as the country where people don't lock their doors. Very high trust societies are rare and their demise due to rising crime is harmful to entire humanity.
People quote articles like this in the US to pretend that the EU is suffering from some dystopian crime wave but (from the perspective of the US) the opposite is true.
Some people are just US-centric. They believe everything should be looked at through the lens of how it affects the US. It's just how they are.
I just took the train into the city, had a burger & beer, and soon I'll train back home. I have zero worries about my safety.
Anyway, the Right party pulled the balance of power from the Left and formed a centre/right coalition more than a year ago, because of all the bad people coming here and doing bad things. Weren't they going to fix this?
I know rehabilitation is different in Europe than the US, but there are likely resource constraints for attempting to do so at scale looking at trailing immigration volume.
(I'm guessing its generally asylum/refugee immigrants people are complaining about, not those from elsewhere in europe)
Refugees/immigrants/etc should be welcomed (I have sponsored refugees in the US), but violent crime must be prevented if someone runs out of chances. You need some recourse when you run out of options and people who have immigrated refuse to act in good faith. Immigration is a gift and a privilege.
I definitely want immigrants to integrate in our society (and am prepared to do this when I travel into another country). But I would not expect anyone to assimilate - which to my understanding means giving up their previous culture and take on the culture of the host country.
Same story for the border closing in Finland by the way. You are dealing with a deeply unethical state, so when you don't let them in, these people will have to die. Because the other side knows that you are more likely to give in out of ethical principle.
[0] in last part: https://www.dw.com/en/migration-germany-to-deport-rejected-a...
That's also the life of millions in Ukraine right now so your anecdote doesn't mean much
Looking at the statistics and historical trends paint another picture, of course this isn't El Salvador, but it doesn't mean it's going in the right direction
You're always right to question anecdote, but I call bullshit on the comparison to Ukraine. Crimea was taken. Borders are actively shifting. Nuclear attacks were a serious threat. I half-assedly considered actions I might take if the war spilled over here in some form.
But looking at the article's scary graph: the badness has a bit-over-doubled between 2014-2022. So if you were hanging out with 6 of your friends in 2014 and concerned that one of you was going to be gunned down in the next year, you should have around that same level of concern when hanging out with 2-3 of your friends in 2022.
Sure, but one can have a beer in a city towards the West and ride a train home just the same.
I would stay there, I travel on budget, I am used to it from Cairo, and I am not female...
At that time the sensationalist media was reporting on 'no-go zones' - parts of town that even the police were too afraid to go to.
One night I was sitting on the subway when a guy came and sat down opposite a girl, and started telling her he was gonna go check out one of these 'no-go zones'. His destination was östermalm.
From wikipedia.
"Elegant Östermalm is known for its smart bars and restaurants on Stureplan square, and its cultural venues, such as the Swedish History Museum, displaying Viking weapons. Designer boutiques dot the area near Östermalms Saluhall, a food market known for traditional specialties like gravlax and smoked shrimp. Centered on the imposing National Library of Sweden, tranquil Humlegården park hosts plays in summer."
"Tenderloin in San Francisco is known for its cultural diversity - home to micro-neighborhoods representing the Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Pakistani, Central Asian, and Yemeni communities. There is a bustling cultural scene with numerous live jazz bars, theaters where bands like The Rolling Stones and Beatles have headlined, and museums highlighting the historical numerous LGBT+ community".
That said, Östermalm didn't feel bad when I visited. I think op is confusing Östermalm and Östberga.
I remember thinking "Really? Where the Bentley dealership is?" Good luck finding graffiti there, let alone circumstances rough enough to scare the cops away.
I made an actual effort to go to Tensta when I was there (it's hard to find good Levantine food in the US) and it definetly felt dislocated. Very much like a purposely created ghetto. Like Visitation Valley and Bayview in San Francisco.
https://images.aftonbladet-cdn.se/v2/images/7804ea1d-2a5b-4b...
The standard for bad in Sweden is just pretty damn high.
I'm sure that Sweden is a nice country to live in, I've visited it, seems great, but ignoring the crime wave is short-sighted, and I don't understand what “high standard” you're talking about.
The high standard means that there is actually still a functioning society there with stability, security and trust in police and government. While we do have problems with the money generated from drug trade and other crimes.
He says "I am quite lucky that the worst individuals consider me 'one of their own' and leave me alone. This means that I can take the metro without any precautions. But blonde girls that work with me started preferring safer commute to the office a long time ago."
Subways are safe. EDIT: I am sure there are problems I am not saying it is perfect
"The standard for bad here isn't bad" because it was worse elsewhere. Where I live in the US we have this too where migrants who have come here don't see anything bad because where they are from was worse.
They don't see what those of us that have been here from birth have seen. That standards are sliding. Yes, for you the migrant coming from a poorer place, this place is richer. But for me the native this place has become poorer.
And talking about and suggesting we need to stop the backslide gets an eye-roll from the enablers.
While I do think problems are way overblown, I don't know if you realize, these issues take generations to fix. If there is one legitimate scary bit about immigration is that it has VERY long-reaching consequences. You can deport someone who just got there, you can't deport someone's grandkid, he has nowhere to return to.
But that's no longer an option in a couple of generations, because technically, they're one of "us" now.
For example. I'm Spanish. My neighbors are Moroccan. The father didn't once in his life acknowledge my mother. He wouldn't talk to her. He would ignore her if she talked. To him, my mother was barely a person because she was a woman. Now this is extreme, but legal behavior, if it ever came to pass that he crossed some lines he might have gotten deported.
His son though? Stealing, selling drugs and beating his sisters are some of the things he has done, but he is a Spanish citizen, just like any other, so there is no magic "back to your country" card to play.
My point is that it's legitimate to pick and choose who you let into a country because the consequences of doing so are far-reaching. Because even if you might be able to deal swiftly with the guy you let in, every human being takes culture with him, and culture spreads. Integration is the most important phase of immigration, along with making sure those people you let in aren't going to be pushed into a life of crime and I don't think anyone ignoring that is taking immigration seriously.
In most cases, you cannot. That is a large part of the issue.
My grandma smoked since she was a teenager and she is still alive and has no cancer. I guess all tobacco research is just fear-mongering.
> Weren't they going to fix this?
Were they? I’ve read a summary of the Moderate Party manifesto (https://archive.is/v6IYb) and, well, it looked pretty moderate. It looks like those measures will simply prevent exacerbation of the problems rather than solve them in under a year. It’s not like they did something similar to the Salvadoran gang crackdown.
Ask the Scottish how they feel about Sweden exporting its culture a while ago.
What's this referring to?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danelaw
The Danelaw originated from the invasion of *the Great Heathen Army* into England in the year 865, although the term was not used to describe a geographic area until the 11th century.Ah nice. I guess there's no problem then.
The hamburger and beer was worse for my health than the gangs.
And it looks like tomorrow will be my first walk through snow for the season, so I'd better be cautious with that.
Relatively for Sweden, there is a problem. But because you have not experienced it, you see no problem.
This sort of content goes against the guidelines, offers nothing of interest to the broader hacker community, invites the wrong sort of people to post and offers no additional insightful or new information to the discourse.
I think those submitting need to ask if they are making this place better or worse.