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Sweden offers limp response to Belgium shootings

Former PM Magdalena Andersson told Swedes to be "very, very careful". Credit: Getty

October 18, 2023 - 11:57am

The reaction to the killing of two Swedish football fans in Belgium has, in my home country, been rather curious. 

Following the terrorist attack, Magdalena Andersson, leader of the Social Democrats and our former prime minister, urged Swedes to moderate their tone and to avoid expressing strong emotions. Ulf Kristersson, Prime Minister and leader of the Moderate Party, said that “one has to be very, very careful right now. Words that admittedly are legal can have consequences. All that is lawful is not appropriate.” 

Leading social democratic and liberal pundits are now blaming the terror on Swedish freedom of expression. If only we could ban everything that is taboo in Islam, they wouldn’t want to kill us. We have to better ourselves so that they don’t want to kill us as much, apparently.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs now urges Swedes not to show any Swedish symbols when they are abroad. Jews in Sweden are advised to hide all signs of their Jewish identity. Why is it that the victims of Islamic terrorism have to hide? It’s unsustainable.

Three Swedes were shot because they are Swedes, but if you read what many intellectuals and politicians are saying, they were more outraged that a Member of Parliament from the Sweden Democrats posted an insensitive tweet immediately after the terror attack (the post was later deleted). One tweet is worse than Islamic terrorism, judging by the reactions of our noble intelligentsia.

In taking this stance, they illustrate why Sweden ended up in its current state: for both Left- and Right-wing governments, it has been more important to distance themselves from the Sweden Democrats (the immigration restrictionist party) than to deal with the consequences of mass migration

Last year, two million people in Sweden were foreign-born, up from one million in 2000. In all, 35% had at least one foreign-born parent, up from 21% in 2002. In the younger parts of the population the proportion is closer to half. Over 100,000 migrants continue to arrive in Sweden each year, despite rhetoric to the contrary. Restricting migration when there was still time was seen as impossible, because that was what that awful party was proposing. That was what all Swedish politics revolved around, and little seems to have changed.

Sweden’s elites strain at a gnat but easily swallow camels. They condemn a tweet, but fall silent when Swedes are designated targets for Islamists. We are presently in the midst of a “crisis of violence” in which there have been 134 bomb attacks this year alone. In addition, gun violence has taken off: 62 people died in shootings in Sweden last year, a per capita gun-murder rate roughly 30 times higher than London’s. Moreover, a report from the European commission estimates that criminal clans have a turnover of 10% of Sweden’s GDP, or close to half of the country’s annual budget. Evidently, the Swedish system has failed.

What now? There seems to be a move, certainly from the Left-wing opposition but even from the government, towards restricting more and more of what can be labelled offensive to Islamist sensibilities. One wonders if we’ll ever be able to appease enough. And when — or even if — people will get tired of accommodating extremists.


Ivar Arpi is a journalist at Rak höger, formerly of Svenska Dagbladet.

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Mike Downing
Mike Downing
1 year ago

No Jews running round beheading people who offend them in Sweden of course, nor here in the UK but we’re all expected to waffle about ‘restraint’ and hope for the best. Meanwhile the crybullies flex their muscles and dictate their terms for everybody else to live by.

When Jews were demonstrating about the BBC refusing to refer to the terrorists as ‘terrorists’ (they’re terrorists Jim, but not such as we know them) the crowd was 99% Jewish. Nobody is prepared to stand up for them as they get attacked, but the rentamob turns out for the beheaders and those who spit on naked (dead?) bodies in the name of their compassionate God.

There’s always plenty of willing idiots on that particular clown bus.

So was Michel Houllebeque right ? Are we just going to submit to the new proposed global Caliphate? Is that the future for us all ?

God help us.

Caradog Wiliams
Caradog Wiliams
1 year ago
Reply to  Mike Downing

I see it like this: ‘the white nations have ruled the world for hundreds of years; now is the time for the underclass to become the lords.’
This idea is so much part of our culture that we will never step back. We have to be taken over fully for a resistance to develop – perhaps two generations down the road. Unfortunately, we will have been so emasculated that the energy might not be there.

D Glover
D Glover
1 year ago

Sweden has reached the stage where nearly half their youth have a foreign-born parent. Soon the ethnic Swedes will be a minority.
There won’t be enough voters for the Sweden Democrats to stage a comeback. How does your resistance develop then?

Caradog Wiliams
Caradog Wiliams
1 year ago
Reply to  D Glover

As I said, they will be emasculated. There will be no resistance. I have to say that I don’t care because I won’t be around. My grandchildren will suffer but I can’t do anything about it. Certainly, moaning on UnHerd won’t do anything – definitely armchair politicians only.

Steve Murray
Steve Murray
1 year ago
Reply to  Mike Downing

Or in this instance, a case of Stockholm Syndrome.
It’s not just in Sweden though. Egregious examples such as the Islamic grooming gangs (almost all of Pakistani origin) continue to operate on the streets of the UK, perhaps less brazenly than before. The police and local authorities know this but continue in their state of culturally-based denial.

Paul Devlin
Paul Devlin
1 year ago
Reply to  Mike Downing

And yet Jewish organisations always demand continued mass migration to the UK, Sweden and elsewhere (except Israel obviously). You don’t have to go around beheading people to destroy a country

Jonathan Andrews
Jonathan Andrews
1 year ago
Reply to  Paul Devlin

Sorry, I’m a bit slow. Can you spell this out for me? It’s not obvious to me that Jewish people have much influence on UK policy on immigration.

D Glover
D Glover
1 year ago

.

Last edited 1 year ago by D Glover
Graeme Crosby
Graeme Crosby
1 year ago
Reply to  Paul Devlin

I’ve obviously missed this fact. Could you point me in the direction in which I could search to confirm this please?

Richard M
Richard M
1 year ago

Three Swedes were shot because they are Swedes, but if you read what many intellectuals and politicians are saying, they were more outraged that a Member of Parliament from the Sweden Democrats posted an insensitive tweet immediately after the terror attack (the post was later deleted). One tweet is worse than Islamic terrorism, judging by the reactions of our noble intelligentsia.

As so often these days, it is useful to remember the words of George Orwell:
“There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe in them.”

Stephen Walsh
Stephen Walsh
1 year ago
Reply to  Richard M

In those days only a tiny proportion of the population were “intellectuals”. But as the number of university graduates has risen, so too has the level of popular idiocy.

Jonathan Andrews
Jonathan Andrews
1 year ago
Reply to  Richard M

A good education helps you understand how much you don’t know.

What I don’t know about mathematics is far more that most of you lot. 🙂

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
1 year ago

Indeed. The more you know, the more you realise how little you know …

Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
1 year ago

Sweden has stumbled into one of the most disastrous state policies of the last 20 years, anywhere in the world. I hear they´ve just imported 20% of their total population from warzones.

Howard S.
Howard S.
1 year ago

In Germany and Sweden, where state control of the press is stronger than in the United States and Great Britain, it is illegal for a news report to mention the religion or nationality of someone arrested or accused of a crime, or to publish that person’s name if the name would identify them as a member of a particular nationality or religion. I don’t know about Great Britain, but here in the USA most of our mainstream news media, controlled by the corporate Far Left crowd, will not even publish a photo released by the police of an accused if that person is not White, Asian or Hispanic, if you know what I mean.

D Glover
D Glover
1 year ago
Reply to  Howard S.

I’ve commented on another thread on this site about the recent murder in Hartlepool, NE England.
A 70 year old Englishman was fatally stabbed by a Moroccan refugee. The media response has been very quiet. The similar killings in France and Belgium have received more coverage in the GB press and TV.

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
1 year ago
Reply to  D Glover

The Tory MP for Hartlepool raised this murder at PMQs. The opposition benches tutted. We’re really not supposed to talk about these things.

Dougie Undersub
Dougie Undersub
1 year ago
Reply to  Howard S.

I bet that rule doesn’t apply if the suspect’s name identifies him as Swedish.

Right-Wing Hippie
Right-Wing Hippie
1 year ago

What mainstream politicians, in Sweden and elsewhere, don’t seem to understand is that by denying a legitimate space in the public sphere for the airing of these issues, and by failing to address these issues in a meaningful and responsible manner, they cede these issues to the radical fringe. I would say that the inevitable backlash as the radicals take power would be unprecedented in its ferocity, but it’s absolutely precedented, because precisely the same dynamic played out in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. Then as now, feckless elites failed to fulfill their obligations to their constituents, and when new regimes took over who did act on those concerns, they brought with them all the nastiness and brutality that characterized them when they were still on the fringe.

Graeme Crosby
Graeme Crosby
1 year ago

Beautifully articulated.

I have tried to point this out to friends and even local politicians of all stripes but in so doing it seems merely that you are labelled either a “xenophobe” or even “racist” in certain “polite” circles.

Julian Farrows
Julian Farrows
1 year ago

It’s cowardice not compassion motivating the Swedish government.

Graeme Crosby
Graeme Crosby
1 year ago
Reply to  Julian Farrows

I would add to that “stupidity” too, particularly at the outset of their generous immigration policies.

Sadly, the populace reaps as the left wing government sowed.

Last edited 1 year ago by Graeme Crosby
N Satori
N Satori
1 year ago

The ultimate disastrous consequence of Sweden’s ruling elite being allowed to portray the country as a “Humanitarian Superpower”. Virtue signalling on a grand scale and a lot to live up to.
Violent actions by the third world underdogs (ie. The Wretched of the Earth) must now be excused and tolerated because the ruling elite of this Humanitarian Superpower cannot bear to see themselves showing aggression or (heaven forbid!) moral superiority. They have lost the ability to fight or even to assert themselves. If the West cannot establish a new intellectual and political class the levers of power will fall to third world immigrants and third world corruption.

Jonathan Andrews
Jonathan Andrews
1 year ago
Reply to  N Satori

Politicians and various “leaders” have no interest in doing boring stuff. You know, running a budget, making sure the toilets work, that the army has good boots. They want to save the world.

What saves the world is, amongst other things, bureaucrats being diligent and honest, schoolteachers explaining to children how to solve quadratic equations, doctors helping people to live healthy lives.

Dull, dull, dull.

Robert Hochbaum
Robert Hochbaum
1 year ago

“One wonders if we’ll ever be able to appease enough.”
No. You won’t.

Jason mann
Jason mann
1 year ago

The victims are the aggressors
The aggressors are the victims
You will believe I can fly.
You will become one of the WE or you will be labeled and destroyed.
Long live The State
Down with the individual

Same old same old

Kirk Susong
Kirk Susong
1 year ago

Sadly, the old saying is true… people tend to get the government they deserve.

Billy Bob
Billy Bob
1 year ago

No western country will stop immigration because it’s a Ponzi scheme. They rely on importing working age people from abroad in order to keep GDP rising (even if it’s falling per capita) and those extra workers pay the pensions of the current retirees. However importing more people means today to meet those needs means they’ll have to import even more in the future to pull off the same trick. Eventually the whole thing is going to collapse, we’re already seeing high rents and house prices, as well as overstretched public services and failing infrastructure, and it’s only going to get worse

Emre S
Emre S
1 year ago

Here’s a prediction. Some time in the future, Sweden will start to look a lot more like the American continent, a Brazil on snow, perhaps more like USA if they’re lucky. That’s the only way out save the country that I see. That’s except if they get some form of genocidal fascism which admittedly is a possibility given the continent’s history. Perhaps the mode operation of modern Europe is a cycle with lots of liberalism/leftism, beacon of humanity, followed by genocidal fascism.

D Glover
D Glover
1 year ago
Reply to  Emre S

Mention of future genocide prompts two questions;
Who?
Whom?

Emre S
Emre S
1 year ago
Reply to  D Glover

I’d assume the ones who did it last time would do it again. Against whatever the new minority of the day. The Muslim Question – is that catchy enough?

D Glover
D Glover
1 year ago
Reply to  Emre S

Sweden never did genocidal fascism. They were neutral throughout WW2, so I don’t understand your comment.

Jerry Carroll
Jerry Carroll
1 year ago

It’s too late to alter Sweden’s fatal trajectory toward being an Islamic country with Sharia law. The females running the government at the time followed Merkel’s soft-hearted but soft-headed policy of throwing open the door to the fertile Muslim population, with the inevitable servility we see today. But you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

Martin Layfield
Martin Layfield
1 year ago

‘Je ne suis pas Charlie, je suis Charlie Martel!’

Last edited 1 year ago by Martin Layfield
Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
1 year ago

When did Sweden stop selling iron ore to the Nazi regime in WW2? How much of the wealth of Sweden comes from selling iron ore to Nazis?

D Glover
D Glover
1 year ago
Reply to  Charles Hedges

Sweden sold ball bearings to both sides. RAF pilots dressed in BOAC uniforms, and Luftwaffe pilots dressed in Lufthansa uniforms. Then they flew unarmed planes to Sweden to collect high value bearings.
Both sides knew what the other lot were doing.

Charles Hedges
Charles Hedges
1 year ago
Reply to  D Glover

Could the Nazi Regime have survived without Swedish iron ore and steel goods ?