6 ms·

Sweden’s violent reality is undoing a peaceful self-image

43 points by kushti 9y ago

Zolomon 9y ago
This does not reflect at all with my own experience living in both south of Sweden and in Stockholm. Feels like misinformation in order to spread FUD about Sweden.
- refurb 9y ago
  Sixteen grenade (grenade!) attacks in 2017. Three more this year. In a country of just under 10M. There is even its own Wikipedia page on it! [1] I wouldn't say that's FUD. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grenade_attacks_in_Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grenade_attacks_in_Swe...
  - alkonaut 9y ago
    the guns criminals use are from the war in jugoslavia. At some point someone smuggled a crate of grenades to Sweden. The rest is history. You might argue that had “normal” guns been easier to aquire, gangsters wouldn’t have to use weapons of war, at least not that stupid weapons (because hand grenades have very very little practical use to a criminal other than sending a message). I don’t buy the idea that weapons should be easier to aquire - so I’d wish for stricter border control for weapons smuggling (there is effectively none within the EU).
- jeffreyrogers 9y ago
  This Economist article raises similar points https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21738389-young-men-kalashnikovs-have-upset-swedish-sense-security-why-are-young-men-sweden https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21738389-young-men-kal...
- danielvf 9y ago
  I hear people talk about how they would never move to the US because of how violent it is. And yet the reality of living in the US middle class is that violence almost never affects you or the areas you frequent. Most shootings in the US are between criminals, and happen in high crime areas that are geographically small in comparison to the entire country. I'm guessing this is similar in Sweden. It sounds like specific areas have increasing violence, and that this looks even worse, given the country's historical low rates of violence.
  - ropeadopepope 9y ago
    > I'm guessing this is similar in Sweden. It sounds like specific areas have increasing violence, and that this looks even worse, given the country's historical low rates of violence. No, Swedish violence has been accelerating past what even Americans would consider acceptable. Unless there's been a spat of grenade attacks in the US that the media hasn't been covering. http://www.informationliberation.com/files/grenade-attacks-sweden-575x444.jpg http://www.informationliberation.com/files/grenade-attacks-s... PS: That number is even higher for 2017 and 2018.
- apropostrophe 9y ago
  It's an interesting genre, and one that the author's sadly been in for a while now. This is just the latest international example. On last week's Kvartal podcast (Veckopanelen) she tried to coax an outspoken police officer panelist into warning of increased violence from failed asylum seekers. He disagreed, and harrumphed and resorted to talking about two famously brutal cases instead. We'll likely be seeing more instances of this article.
- Melchizedek 9y ago
  I am Swedish. Everything in this story is true. What "experience"? Sweden is segregated -- I'm pretty sure you didn't spend a lot of time in the no-go zones at night. So you think Paulina Neuding, a well known Swedish journalist, writing for a respected publication, simply likes to spread FUD for no apparent reason? That's your theory?
  - bobthechef 9y ago
    Is the Swedish media being silent about these things, and hence why the other Swedes here are denying these things?
    - canoebuilder 9y ago
      Basically everyone in Sweden more or less knows what is going on. But there is immense social pressure not to verbalise it, and instead proclaim to live in the kind of fantasy world of the sort promoted by the destructive multikulti propaganda that has inundated the west in the past few decades. It is frightening and sad to see people act in this way. You can find some documentaries on youtube about it. Edit: But yes, much of the media is silent about these things or completely misrepresents them. also see here, https://www.google.com/search?q=sweden+cover+up https://www.google.com/search?q=sweden+cover+up and here for accounts of Swedish absurdities from an American living in Sweden, https://swedenreport.wordpress.com/ https://swedenreport.wordpress.com/
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
    - ropeadopepope 9y ago
      The police won't report on the violence for fear of being called racist, which is a crime that comes with jail time. Ditto for journalists. That is why the 1st amendment is so important. When it becomes illegal to tell the truth, nobody knows what the hell is going on.
jeffreyrogers 9y ago
I'm hesitant to comment on this because I expect to have my viewpoints be misrepresented as racist, but it seems difficult to integrate immigrants into society who fundamentally oppose core principles of progressive, western democracies.
- systems 9y ago
  we need to start dropping the term western when describing certain democratic model or ideals i am not denying, or trying to take away credit, that some western countries adopted those ideals first but not all the west agrees that those ideals are, which makes is hard to exactly identify what one is referring to when the term western is used also, it gives ownership of those ideals to specifics countries and geographic locations, which adds a needless aspect of nationalism to some ideals that should not be linked to nationalism
  - canoebuilder 9y ago
    We need to stop calling Chinese food, Chinese, it's just food, man... Stop all the 'Appropriation' & 'Racism' & 'Nationalism' ™ I want the world to be more like the propaganda i was force fed throughout all my 'education,' it's draggin' me down man. Also, no more capitalization or punctuation. Damn the consequences! i mean damn the consequences
    - DoreenMichele 9y ago
      Spacesareaformofpunctuationaretheynot
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- stcredzero 9y ago
  it seems difficult to integrate immigrants into society who fundamentally oppose core principles of progressive, western democracies. It's difficult, but spanning as great a gulf in societal integration has been done. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHr9GRgRw_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHr9GRgRw_M
aphextron 9y ago
The Nordic states have been some of the biggest winners in the world from globalization over the past 30 years. They've been safely protected by NATO, and free to sell their oil to anyone in the world. Now the world comes knocking and you want to cry foul? Either accept the rough and tumble, multicultural, imperfect world that we live in with open arms as we have in the US, or wall yourself off and don't expect any of the benefits.
- nabc45 9y ago
  I don’t understand why participating in global trade and accepting thousands of immigrants who oppose the principles of your society have to go hand to hand.
- amag 9y ago
  > free to sell their oil Sweden doesn't have any oil to sell. We're also not crying foul about the increase in shootings as if the rest of the world is to blame. There is definitely a problem here in regards to the shootings, but it's also election year and some parties have a bigger interest than others in portraying Sweden as a lawless country.
ique 9y ago
Hahaha really HN? As a Swede this is so ridiculous, I don't think the author has any idea what they're talking about and have done no fact-checking at all. They even contradict themselves. > drop in homicides has been, however, far smaller in Sweden than in neighboring countries So there's been a drop in homicides > Shootings in the country have become so common But shootings have _become_ so common? So they're just missing more or what? What a ridiculous article, I guess HN is the new Fox news.
- specializeded 9y ago
  HN is a link aggregator and this link will probably be flagged off the front page in less than ten minutes, I’d direct ire at Politico in this case. edit less than 1 minute apparently!
  - dogma1138 9y ago
    Politico, Economist, The Spectstor all have simmilar articles with the same statistics either they are all “fake news” or something is going on.
    - alkonaut 9y ago
      They are being baited by someone trying to push a narrative. Sweden has been used as an example in Hungary, by Trump etc.
      - dogma1138 9y ago
        Well on a personal note I have had a few closed calls in Malmo and I know 17 people who left mostly to Denmark, Israel and the US. I don’t know about the rest of Sweden but Malmo isn’t a place I want to be caught in, East London isn’t a walk in the park either.
    - amag 9y ago
      > something is going on It's election year..
psychometry 9y ago
Is Sweden's supposed failure to integrate migrants into society really a failure in a historical context? I would guess that it would take at least a generation to see the fruits of initiatives to encourage integration. Migrants are fleeing a dysfunctional and oppressive ISIS regime, but even these oppressed people harbor views that many Westerners consider regressive and authoritarian. How do you even approach this problem?
- alkonaut 9y ago
  I think one just accepts that people’s views change slowly or not at all. So you accept that change is slow, some times only generational.
- IanDrake 9y ago
  Is it a problem worth solving? A native Swede bigot thinks “I hate all non-straight people.” and a normal Swede thinks “I really wish we could get rid of bigots like that dude. Too bad we can’t deport jerks.” An immigrant thinks the same thing as the bigot and the same normal Swede thinks “We need to help these people, how do we take in more of them?” Seems foolish to me. Being oppressed in their homeland doesn’t make them intrinsically “good” people.
- canoebuilder 9y ago
  I would guess that it would take at least a generation to see the fruits of initiatives to encourage integration. We are decades into this horrible experiment gone awry in much of western Europe. The second and third generations are integrating to a lesser extent than their parents in part due to rising numbers of their compatriots and their inherently anti-integration ideology. Much of the Islamic violence is carried out by second and third generations. There are about 3 million Turks in Germany stemming from a Gastarbeiter (guest worker) program starting in the 50s and 60s, being "guest workers," the idea was they would return to Turkey, most never did and today still live in their own neighborhoods and enclaves largely separate from the rest of Germany. Regarding this history and other problems, Angela Merkel herself said what everyone can see, https://www.google.com/search?q=merkel+multiculturalism+failed https://www.google.com/search?q=merkel+multiculturalism+fail...
Micoloth 9y ago
TRUMP WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG ..or was he? No seriously tho, at this point I legit can't understand anymore if this is fake news or not. Crime rate is not supposed to be subjective is it? Good job us!
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Well, the homicide rate in Sweden is considerably lower than the rate in the US. So I guess you have to start by deciding what Trump meant to begin with. Did he mean that Sweden was crazy for doing something that made their rate of homicide decrease more slowly than similar neighboring countries, or was he just fear mongering by shouting about something that had been in the media?
- canoebuilder 9y ago
  Crime rate is not supposed to be subjective is it? Welcome to clown world. https://www.google.com/search?q=sweden+cover+up https://www.google.com/search?q=sweden+cover+up https://www.google.com/search?q=sweden+white+pixelation https://www.google.com/search?q=sweden+white+pixelation
mpweiher 9y ago
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/polisen-43-personer-skots-till-dods-2017 https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/polisen-43-personer-skots... 43 people were shot in Sweden in 2017, in a country of almost 10 million. That's 0.43 / 100K. The US gun homicide rate in 2016 was 4.62 / 100K. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r... Chicago had 650 homicides in 2017, down from 762 in 2016, with a population of 2.7 million. http://www.blacknews.com/news/chicago-sees-drop-in-violence-after-all-time-high-last-year-but-is-still-a-very-deadly-city/amp/ http://www.blacknews.com/news/chicago-sees-drop-in-violence-... Just to put things into perspective.
- dogma1138 9y ago
  That’s 43 (41) dead, there have been 135 injured and 41 dead with 306 shooting incidents according to https://www.thelocal.se/20171222/in-figures-2017s-shootings-in-sweden https://www.thelocal.se/20171222/in-figures-2017s-shootings-... While this isn’t “impressive” by US standards it is an oddity by Western European ones.
- refurb 9y ago
  Every western country looks better than the US when it comes to gun violence. Not sure your stats get you that far. It's obvious there is a increasing crime problem in Sweden.
- supreme_sublime 9y ago
  Don't you think looking at only gun homicide is a bit restrictive? Their violent crime rate is definitely going up[0], which is strange because afaik most violent crime around the world is going down. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Sweden#/media/File:Sweden-crime-1976-2016-robbery-sex-murder.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Sweden#/media/File:Sw...
- Yetanfou 9y ago
  Not only that, the violence is largely concentrated in a number of areas where the homicide rate is markedly higher. Both the number of these areas as well as their size are increasing, as does the intensity of the violence. Possibly the biggest problem in Sweden is that it is still taboo to discuss the facts around this increased crime rate, even though those facts are well known and have been confirmed many times. As long as this taboo persists it will be impossible for Sweden to do anything about these problems as any action which goes counter the narrative of those who prefer to look away will be branded: racist, xenophobe, islamophobe, 'against our ethical foundation'[1], hostile to strangers ('främlingsfientligt'). Good examples of this can be seen in the recent spat at KTH (a technical university) where a student was about to be sacked because he'd made a document summarising the results of different studies on the subject of the relationship between rising crime and the number of immigrants from the Middle-East and Africa. The document itself did nothing more than summarise the results of these studies but this was deemed unacceptable because it was said to violate the institute's 'värdegrund'[1]. KTH directly violated the Swedish constitution which guarantees freedom of expression [2] but it was only when the subject was taken up in several alternative media that KTH backed down. Regular Swedish media did not publish anything on this subject until much later. A similar case just surfaced where a school rector actually reported some students to the security police (SÄPO) and regular police for publishing a similar document, again just a summary of conclusions of official reports [3]. It is highly unlikely that the police will do anything, let alone the security police but the mere fact that publishing statistics can be ground for removal from an institution or reporting to the authorities shows how deep the taboo goes in certain areas. [1] The Swedish concept of 'värdegrund' and 'allas lika värde', a form of non-religious dogma which trumps law and common sense in that violating it directly raises a black flag. It can be summed up as 'moral relativism'. [2] http://academicrightswatch.se/?p=3226 http://academicrightswatch.se/?p=3226 [3] http://www.friatider.se/gymnasieungdomar-skrev-faktablad-om-invandring-anm-ls-till-s-po-av-rektorn http://www.friatider.se/gymnasieungdomar-skrev-faktablad-om-...
alkonaut 9y ago
The title is a bit misleading: Shootings are up but violent crime is down. Basically, an influx of guns it would seem. We used to have barely any in circulation, but obviously they will be smuggled to where they collect the highest price (most illegal weapons are Balkan war arms as I understand it).
angel_j 9y ago
Good for them! They are handling their problems without going crazy reactionary, and declaring war on immigrants, the poor, drugs, etc. That would be in line with their "Swedish Model". The article reads like a "tattle tale", as if they are trying to hide explosions! A grenade in an US police station would shake the wasp's nest all the way to the national guard. It's precisely that "Western Democracies" crony ideology that demands the media and government react with pitch forks and blame.
- refurb 9y ago
  Considering the grenade attacks have been going on for years, I'd say they aren't handling the problems at all.
Simulacra 9y ago
This seems awfully skewed. Not sure it belongs here
uoaei 9y ago
I was born in the US, moved to Sweden last year. I live in an area of the country that seems to have been designated as a place to put migrants, and it shows. People have different cultural expectations, and act accordingly. It's no surprise that meshing the two viewpoints is difficult. But the biggest disservice, IMO, is segregating them into their own communities. Here there is no incentive to integrate, and life continues as before--in some ways opposed to the ideals that Sweden tries to set forth. You are what you surround yourself with. Sweden is far from multicultural, and prefers (well, kind of railroaded itself into) playing the "live and let live" card a little too ideologically without considering the long-term impacts. The one that is the most apparent to me is the way housing is handled, and how it affects not only migrants but any immigrant coming here for any purpose.

43 points by kushti 9y ago

This does not reflect at all with my own experience living in both south of Sweden and in Stockholm. Feels like misinformation in order to spread FUD about Sweden.

refurb 9y ago
Sixteen grenade (grenade!) attacks in 2017. Three more this year. In a country of just under 10M. There is even its own Wikipedia page on it! [1] I wouldn't say that's FUD. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grenade_attacks_in_Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grenade_attacks_in_Swe...
- alkonaut 9y ago
  the guns criminals use are from the war in jugoslavia. At some point someone smuggled a crate of grenades to Sweden. The rest is history. You might argue that had “normal” guns been easier to aquire, gangsters wouldn’t have to use weapons of war, at least not that stupid weapons (because hand grenades have very very little practical use to a criminal other than sending a message). I don’t buy the idea that weapons should be easier to aquire - so I’d wish for stricter border control for weapons smuggling (there is effectively none within the EU).
jeffreyrogers 9y ago
This Economist article raises similar points https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21738389-young-men-kalashnikovs-have-upset-swedish-sense-security-why-are-young-men-sweden https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21738389-young-men-kal...
danielvf 9y ago
I hear people talk about how they would never move to the US because of how violent it is. And yet the reality of living in the US middle class is that violence almost never affects you or the areas you frequent. Most shootings in the US are between criminals, and happen in high crime areas that are geographically small in comparison to the entire country. I'm guessing this is similar in Sweden. It sounds like specific areas have increasing violence, and that this looks even worse, given the country's historical low rates of violence.
- ropeadopepope 9y ago
  > I'm guessing this is similar in Sweden. It sounds like specific areas have increasing violence, and that this looks even worse, given the country's historical low rates of violence. No, Swedish violence has been accelerating past what even Americans would consider acceptable. Unless there's been a spat of grenade attacks in the US that the media hasn't been covering. http://www.informationliberation.com/files/grenade-attacks-sweden-575x444.jpg http://www.informationliberation.com/files/grenade-attacks-s... PS: That number is even higher for 2017 and 2018.
apropostrophe 9y ago
It's an interesting genre, and one that the author's sadly been in for a while now. This is just the latest international example. On last week's Kvartal podcast (Veckopanelen) she tried to coax an outspoken police officer panelist into warning of increased violence from failed asylum seekers. He disagreed, and harrumphed and resorted to talking about two famously brutal cases instead. We'll likely be seeing more instances of this article.
Melchizedek 9y ago
I am Swedish. Everything in this story is true. What "experience"? Sweden is segregated -- I'm pretty sure you didn't spend a lot of time in the no-go zones at night. So you think Paulina Neuding, a well known Swedish journalist, writing for a respected publication, simply likes to spread FUD for no apparent reason? That's your theory?
- bobthechef 9y ago
  Is the Swedish media being silent about these things, and hence why the other Swedes here are denying these things?
  - canoebuilder 9y ago
    Basically everyone in Sweden more or less knows what is going on. But there is immense social pressure not to verbalise it, and instead proclaim to live in the kind of fantasy world of the sort promoted by the destructive multikulti propaganda that has inundated the west in the past few decades. It is frightening and sad to see people act in this way. You can find some documentaries on youtube about it. Edit: But yes, much of the media is silent about these things or completely misrepresents them. also see here, https://www.google.com/search?q=sweden+cover+up https://www.google.com/search?q=sweden+cover+up and here for accounts of Swedish absurdities from an American living in Sweden, https://swedenreport.wordpress.com/ https://swedenreport.wordpress.com/
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - ropeadopepope 9y ago
    The police won't report on the violence for fear of being called racist, which is a crime that comes with jail time. Ditto for journalists. That is why the 1st amendment is so important. When it becomes illegal to tell the truth, nobody knows what the hell is going on.

jeffreyrogers 9y ago

I'm hesitant to comment on this because I expect to have my viewpoints be misrepresented as racist, but it seems difficult to integrate immigrants into society who fundamentally oppose core principles of progressive, western democracies.

systems 9y ago
we need to start dropping the term western when describing certain democratic model or ideals i am not denying, or trying to take away credit, that some western countries adopted those ideals first but not all the west agrees that those ideals are, which makes is hard to exactly identify what one is referring to when the term western is used also, it gives ownership of those ideals to specifics countries and geographic locations, which adds a needless aspect of nationalism to some ideals that should not be linked to nationalism
- canoebuilder 9y ago
  We need to stop calling Chinese food, Chinese, it's just food, man... Stop all the 'Appropriation' & 'Racism' & 'Nationalism' ™ I want the world to be more like the propaganda i was force fed throughout all my 'education,' it's draggin' me down man. Also, no more capitalization or punctuation. Damn the consequences! i mean damn the consequences
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    Spacesareaformofpunctuationaretheynot
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
stcredzero 9y ago
it seems difficult to integrate immigrants into society who fundamentally oppose core principles of progressive, western democracies. It's difficult, but spanning as great a gulf in societal integration has been done. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHr9GRgRw_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHr9GRgRw_M

aphextron 9y ago

The Nordic states have been some of the biggest winners in the world from globalization over the past 30 years. They've been safely protected by NATO, and free to sell their oil to anyone in the world. Now the world comes knocking and you want to cry foul? Either accept the rough and tumble, multicultural, imperfect world that we live in with open arms as we have in the US, or wall yourself off and don't expect any of the benefits.

nabc45 9y ago
I don’t understand why participating in global trade and accepting thousands of immigrants who oppose the principles of your society have to go hand to hand.
amag 9y ago
> free to sell their oil Sweden doesn't have any oil to sell. We're also not crying foul about the increase in shootings as if the rest of the world is to blame. There is definitely a problem here in regards to the shootings, but it's also election year and some parties have a bigger interest than others in portraying Sweden as a lawless country.

ique 9y ago

Hahaha really HN? As a Swede this is so ridiculous, I don't think the author has any idea what they're talking about and have done no fact-checking at all. They even contradict themselves. > drop in homicides has been, however, far smaller in Sweden than in neighboring countries So there's been a drop in homicides > Shootings in the country have become so common But shootings have _become_ so common? So they're just missing more or what? What a ridiculous article, I guess HN is the new Fox news.

specializeded 9y ago
HN is a link aggregator and this link will probably be flagged off the front page in less than ten minutes, I’d direct ire at Politico in this case. edit less than 1 minute apparently!
- dogma1138 9y ago
  Politico, Economist, The Spectstor all have simmilar articles with the same statistics either they are all “fake news” or something is going on.
  - alkonaut 9y ago
    They are being baited by someone trying to push a narrative. Sweden has been used as an example in Hungary, by Trump etc.
    - dogma1138 9y ago
      Well on a personal note I have had a few closed calls in Malmo and I know 17 people who left mostly to Denmark, Israel and the US. I don’t know about the rest of Sweden but Malmo isn’t a place I want to be caught in, East London isn’t a walk in the park either.
  - amag 9y ago
    > something is going on It's election year..

psychometry 9y ago

Is Sweden's supposed failure to integrate migrants into society really a failure in a historical context? I would guess that it would take at least a generation to see the fruits of initiatives to encourage integration. Migrants are fleeing a dysfunctional and oppressive ISIS regime, but even these oppressed people harbor views that many Westerners consider regressive and authoritarian. How do you even approach this problem?

alkonaut 9y ago
I think one just accepts that people’s views change slowly or not at all. So you accept that change is slow, some times only generational.
IanDrake 9y ago
Is it a problem worth solving? A native Swede bigot thinks “I hate all non-straight people.” and a normal Swede thinks “I really wish we could get rid of bigots like that dude. Too bad we can’t deport jerks.” An immigrant thinks the same thing as the bigot and the same normal Swede thinks “We need to help these people, how do we take in more of them?” Seems foolish to me. Being oppressed in their homeland doesn’t make them intrinsically “good” people.
canoebuilder 9y ago
I would guess that it would take at least a generation to see the fruits of initiatives to encourage integration. We are decades into this horrible experiment gone awry in much of western Europe. The second and third generations are integrating to a lesser extent than their parents in part due to rising numbers of their compatriots and their inherently anti-integration ideology. Much of the Islamic violence is carried out by second and third generations. There are about 3 million Turks in Germany stemming from a Gastarbeiter (guest worker) program starting in the 50s and 60s, being "guest workers," the idea was they would return to Turkey, most never did and today still live in their own neighborhoods and enclaves largely separate from the rest of Germany. Regarding this history and other problems, Angela Merkel herself said what everyone can see, https://www.google.com/search?q=merkel+multiculturalism+failed https://www.google.com/search?q=merkel+multiculturalism+fail...

Micoloth 9y ago

TRUMP WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG ..or was he? No seriously tho, at this point I legit can't understand anymore if this is fake news or not. Crime rate is not supposed to be subjective is it? Good job us!

maxerickson 9y ago
Well, the homicide rate in Sweden is considerably lower than the rate in the US. So I guess you have to start by deciding what Trump meant to begin with. Did he mean that Sweden was crazy for doing something that made their rate of homicide decrease more slowly than similar neighboring countries, or was he just fear mongering by shouting about something that had been in the media?
canoebuilder 9y ago
Crime rate is not supposed to be subjective is it? Welcome to clown world. https://www.google.com/search?q=sweden+cover+up https://www.google.com/search?q=sweden+cover+up https://www.google.com/search?q=sweden+white+pixelation https://www.google.com/search?q=sweden+white+pixelation

mpweiher 9y ago

https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/polisen-43-personer-skots-till-dods-2017 https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/polisen-43-personer-skots... 43 people were shot in Sweden in 2017, in a country of almost 10 million. That's 0.43 / 100K. The US gun homicide rate in 2016 was 4.62 / 100K. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r... Chicago had 650 homicides in 2017, down from 762 in 2016, with a population of 2.7 million. http://www.blacknews.com/news/chicago-sees-drop-in-violence-after-all-time-high-last-year-but-is-still-a-very-deadly-city/amp/ http://www.blacknews.com/news/chicago-sees-drop-in-violence-... Just to put things into perspective.

dogma1138 9y ago
That’s 43 (41) dead, there have been 135 injured and 41 dead with 306 shooting incidents according to https://www.thelocal.se/20171222/in-figures-2017s-shootings-in-sweden https://www.thelocal.se/20171222/in-figures-2017s-shootings-... While this isn’t “impressive” by US standards it is an oddity by Western European ones.
refurb 9y ago
Every western country looks better than the US when it comes to gun violence. Not sure your stats get you that far. It's obvious there is a increasing crime problem in Sweden.
supreme_sublime 9y ago
Don't you think looking at only gun homicide is a bit restrictive? Their violent crime rate is definitely going up[0], which is strange because afaik most violent crime around the world is going down. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Sweden#/media/File:Sweden-crime-1976-2016-robbery-sex-murder.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Sweden#/media/File:Sw...
Yetanfou 9y ago
Not only that, the violence is largely concentrated in a number of areas where the homicide rate is markedly higher. Both the number of these areas as well as their size are increasing, as does the intensity of the violence. Possibly the biggest problem in Sweden is that it is still taboo to discuss the facts around this increased crime rate, even though those facts are well known and have been confirmed many times. As long as this taboo persists it will be impossible for Sweden to do anything about these problems as any action which goes counter the narrative of those who prefer to look away will be branded: racist, xenophobe, islamophobe, 'against our ethical foundation'[1], hostile to strangers ('främlingsfientligt'). Good examples of this can be seen in the recent spat at KTH (a technical university) where a student was about to be sacked because he'd made a document summarising the results of different studies on the subject of the relationship between rising crime and the number of immigrants from the Middle-East and Africa. The document itself did nothing more than summarise the results of these studies but this was deemed unacceptable because it was said to violate the institute's 'värdegrund'[1]. KTH directly violated the Swedish constitution which guarantees freedom of expression [2] but it was only when the subject was taken up in several alternative media that KTH backed down. Regular Swedish media did not publish anything on this subject until much later. A similar case just surfaced where a school rector actually reported some students to the security police (SÄPO) and regular police for publishing a similar document, again just a summary of conclusions of official reports [3]. It is highly unlikely that the police will do anything, let alone the security police but the mere fact that publishing statistics can be ground for removal from an institution or reporting to the authorities shows how deep the taboo goes in certain areas. [1] The Swedish concept of 'värdegrund' and 'allas lika värde', a form of non-religious dogma which trumps law and common sense in that violating it directly raises a black flag. It can be summed up as 'moral relativism'. [2] http://academicrightswatch.se/?p=3226 http://academicrightswatch.se/?p=3226 [3] http://www.friatider.se/gymnasieungdomar-skrev-faktablad-om-invandring-anm-ls-till-s-po-av-rektorn http://www.friatider.se/gymnasieungdomar-skrev-faktablad-om-...

alkonaut 9y ago

The title is a bit misleading: Shootings are up but violent crime is down. Basically, an influx of guns it would seem. We used to have barely any in circulation, but obviously they will be smuggled to where they collect the highest price (most illegal weapons are Balkan war arms as I understand it).

angel_j 9y ago

Good for them! They are handling their problems without going crazy reactionary, and declaring war on immigrants, the poor, drugs, etc. That would be in line with their "Swedish Model". The article reads like a "tattle tale", as if they are trying to hide explosions! A grenade in an US police station would shake the wasp's nest all the way to the national guard. It's precisely that "Western Democracies" crony ideology that demands the media and government react with pitch forks and blame.

refurb 9y ago
Considering the grenade attacks have been going on for years, I'd say they aren't handling the problems at all.

Simulacra 9y ago

This seems awfully skewed. Not sure it belongs here

uoaei 9y ago

I was born in the US, moved to Sweden last year. I live in an area of the country that seems to have been designated as a place to put migrants, and it shows. People have different cultural expectations, and act accordingly. It's no surprise that meshing the two viewpoints is difficult. But the biggest disservice, IMO, is segregating them into their own communities. Here there is no incentive to integrate, and life continues as before--in some ways opposed to the ideals that Sweden tries to set forth. You are what you surround yourself with. Sweden is far from multicultural, and prefers (well, kind of railroaded itself into) playing the "live and let live" card a little too ideologically without considering the long-term impacts. The one that is the most apparent to me is the way housing is handled, and how it affects not only migrants but any immigrant coming here for any purpose.