Jihad Destroys the Swedish Model

By Fjordman

I decided to write this essay following the riots in Malmö this weekend. Malmö is Sweden's third largest city and by far the worst city in Scandinavia when it comes to Muslim aggression. I read recently that an Arab girl interviewed in Malmö said that she liked it so much there, it felt almost like an Arab city. Native Swedes have been moving away from the city for years, turned into refugees in their own country by Jihad, not too different from the non-Muslims in some regions of the Philippines, southern Thailand or Kashmir in India, or for that matter Christian Serbs in Kosovo.

Sweden was presented during the Cold War as a middle way between capitalism and Communism. When this model of a society collapses -- and it will collapse, under the combined forces of Islamic Jihad, the European Union, Multiculturalism and ideological overstretch -- it is thus not just the Swedish state that will collapse but the symbol of Sweden, the showcase of an entire ideological world view. I wrote two years ago that if the trend isn't stopped, the Swedish nation will simply cease to exist in any meaningful way during the first half of this century. The country that gave us Bergman, ABBA and Volvo could become known as the Bosnia of northern Europe, and the "Swedish model" will be one of warning against ideological madness, not one of admiration. I still fear I was right in that assessment.

Jonathan Friedman, an American living outside Malmö, mentions that the so-called Integration Act of 1997 proclaimed that "Sweden is a Multicultural society." Notes to the Act also stated that "Since a large group of people have their origins in another country, the Swedish population lacks a common history. The relationship to Sweden and the support given to the fundamental values of society thus carry greater significance for integration than a common historical origin."

Native Swedes have thus been reduced to just another ethnic group in Sweden, with no more claim to the country than the Kurds or the Somalis who arrived there last Thursday. The political authorities of the country have erased their own people's history and culture.

Jens Orback, Minister for Democracy, Metropolitan Affairs, Integration and Gender Equality from the Social Democratic Party said during a debate in Swedish radio in 2004 that "We must be open and tolerant towards Islam and Muslims because when we become a minority, they will be so towards us."

This is a government that knows perfectly well that their people will become a minority in their own country, yet is doing nothing to stop this. On the contrary. Pierre Schori, Minister for immigration, during a parliamentary debate in 1997 said that: "Racism and xenophobia should be banned and chased [away]," and that one should not accept "excuses, such as that there were flaws in the immigration and refugee policies."

In other words: It should be viewed as a crime for the native population not to assist in wiping themselves out.

Orback's attitude is what follows once you declare that culture is irrelevant. Our culture, even though we try to forget it, is steeped in a Judeo-Christian morality based on the Golden Rule of reciprocity: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." (Luke 6:31)

Muslims, on the other hand, are steeped in an Islamic tradition based on Muslim supremacy. Muslims view lack of force as a sign of weakness, and they despise weakness, which is precisely why Adolf Hitler stated his admiration for Islam, and thought it would be a better match for Nazism than Christianity, with its childish notions of compassion.

A Swedish man was nearly killed for the crime of wearing clothes with his own national flag while Sweden was participating in the 2006 football World Cup. Some "Multicultural youths" found this to be an intolerable provocation, and the 24-year-old man was run down by a car in Malmö, where Muhammad is becoming the most common name for newborn boys.

Feriz and Pajtim, members of Gangsta Albanian Thug Unit in Malmö, explain how they mug people downtown. They target a lone victim. "We surround him and beat and kick him until he no longer fights back," Feriz said. "You are always many more people than your victims. Cowardly?" "I have heard that from many, but I disagree. The whole point is that they're not supposed to have a chance." They didn't express any sympathy for their victims. "If they get injured, they just have themselves to blame for being weak," said Pajtim and shrugged.

The wave of robberies the city of Malmö has witnessed is part of a "war against the Swedes." This is the explanation given by young robbers from immigrant background in interviews with Petra Åkesson. "When we are in the city and robbing we are waging a war, waging a war against the Swedes." This argument was repeated several times. "Power for me means that the Swedes shall look at me, lie down on the ground and kiss my feet." The boys explain, laughingly, that "there is a thrilling sensation in your body when you're robbing, you feel satisfied and happy, it feels as if you've succeeded, it simply feels good." "We rob every single day, as often as we want to, whenever we want to. The Swedes don't do anything, they just give us the stuff. They're so wimpy."

"Exit Folkhemssverige - En samhällsmodells sönderfall" (Exit the People's Home of Sweden - The Downfall of a Model of Society) is a book from 2005 about immigration and the Swedish welfare state model dubbed "the people's home," written by Jonathan Friedman, Ingrid Björkman, Jan Elfverson and Åke Wedin. According to them, the Swedish Multicultural elites see themselves first of all as citizens of the world. In order to emphasize and accentuate diversity, everything Swedish is deliberately disparaged. Opposition to this policy is considered a form of racism:

"The dominant ideology in Sweden, which has been made dominant by powerful methods of silencing and repression, is a totalitarian ideology, where the elites oppose the national aspect of the nation state. The problem is that the ethnic group that are described as Swedes implicitly are considered to be nationalists, and thereby are viewed as racists."

The authors fear that the handling of the immigration policies has seriously eroded democracy because the citizens lose their loyalty towards a state they no longer consider their own. "Instead of increasing the active participation of citizens, the government has placed clear restrictions on freedom of thought, freedom of speech and freedom of congregation."

Mona Sahlin has held various posts in Social Democratic cabinets, among others as Minister for Democracy, Integration and Gender Equality. Sahlin has said that many Swedes are envious of immigrants because they, unlike the Swedes, have a culture, a history, something which ties them together. Notice how Swedish authorities first formally state that Swedes don't have a history or a culture, and then proceed to lament the fact that Swedes don't have a history or a culture. A neat trick.

Sahlin has also stated that: "If two equally qualified persons apply for a job at a workplace with few immigrants, the one called Muhammad should get the job. It should be considered an asset to have an ethnic background different from the Swedish one." In 2004, she was quoted as saying that "A concerted effort that aims at educating Swedes that immigrants are a blessing to their country must be pursued," stressing that her compatriots must accept that the new society is Multicultural. "Like it or not, this is the new Sweden."

Mona Sahlin was elected leader of the Social Democratic Party, as thus a future contender for the post of Swedish Prime Minister, in 2007.

Why does the government dispense with the social contract and attack its own people like this? Well, for starters, because it can. Sweden is currently arguably the most politically repressive and totalitarian country in the Western world. It also has the highest tax rates. That could be a a coincidence, but I'm not sure that it is. The state has become so large and powerful that is has become an autonomous organism with a will of its own. The people are there to serve the state, not vice versa. And because state power penetrates every single corner of society, including the media, there are no places left to mount a defense if the state decides to attack you.

It has been said jokingly that while other countries are states with armies, Pakistan is an army with a state. Likewise, it could be argued that Sweden started out being a nation with a bureaucracy and ended up being a bureaucracy with a nation. In fact, the bureaucracy formally abolished the very nation it was supposed to serve. Its representatives are no longer leaders of a people, but caretakers preoccupied only with advancing their own careers through oiling and upholding, if possible expanding, the bureaucratic machinery.

Swedes pay the highest tax rates of any (supposedly) free nation, and for this they get flawed social security, non-existent physical security and a state apparatus dedicated to their destruction.

Anna Ekelund in the newspaper Aftonbladet writes that: "We are a people who allow ourselves to be insulted by the government on a daily basis. We are not expected to be capable of thinking for ourselves, of deciding what we will read, or managing our own money. Swedes are as co-dependent as an alcoholic's wife. Yet we do not hurry to the ballot box to remove the prevailing systems. Not because we don't want to but because too many of us have painted ourselves into their corners."

Moreover, Swedes are keenly aware of the fact that their country is viewed by many outsiders as a "model society." Sweden is a deeply ideological state dedicated to imposing a certain world view on its citizens, and because the state is ideological, dissenters are quite literally treated as enemies of the state.

In the book The New Totalitarians, the British historian Roland Huntford in the early 1970s pointed out that it was easier to establish the Fascist model of the corporate state in Sweden than in Mussolini's Italy for cultural reasons, since Sweden had a centralized bureaucracy whereas Italians are skeptical of state authority. Put simply: Swedes have tended to trust their bureaucrats, which no Italian in his right mind would ever do.

According to him, "The Swedes have a horror of controversy as something unpleasant, inefficient and vaguely immoral. They require for peace of mind, not confrontation, but consensus. Consensus guides everything: private conversation, intellectual life and the running of the State."

The then Minister of Education, Mr. Ingvar Carlsson, defined the purpose of schooling: "It is to produce a well adjusted, good member of society. It teaches people to respect the consensus, and not to sabotage it." He also on one occasion said that "School is the spearhead of Socialism." Mr. Carlsson was Swedish Prime Minister as late as 1996.

Mr. Carlsson's mentor in the Social Democratic Party and predecessor as Swedish Prime Minister (1969 to 1986), Mr. Olof Palme, openly flaunted his disregard, if not contempt for, Western civilization: "The Renaissance so-called? Western culture? What does it mean to us?" Under the watchful eye of the Labor movement, Swedish education has for decades mounted deliberate attacks on Western culture, making it look suspect.

According to Mr. Huntford, "When the Swedes change ideas, they do it to the full, leaving no room for criticism or reservation. The country lacks intellectual defences; anything new will conquer without resistance being offered." The consensus "assumes that technological advancement is the sole path to happiness, and the Gross National Product the only measure of national success. It also assumes that the good of the collective at all times must take precedence over the good of the individual. It prescribes that the fundamentals of Swedish society must never be questioned or discussed."

This is how Mrs Maj Bossom-Nordboe, then departmental chief of at the Directorate of Schools, expressed it: "It's useless to build up individuality, because unless people learned to adapt themselves to society, they would be unhappy. Liberty is not emphasized. Instead, we talk about the freedom to give up freedom. The accent is on the social function of children, and I will not deny that we emphasize the collective."

Roland Huntford ended his book with a warning that this system of soft-totalitarianism could be exported to other countries. He has been proven right since:

"The Swedes have demonstrated how present techniques can be applied in ideal conditions. Sweden is a control experiment on an isolated and sterilized subject. Pioneers in the new totalitarianism, the Swedes are a warning of what probably lies in store for the rest of us, unless we take care to resist control and centralization, and unless we remember that politics are not to be delegated, but are the concern of the individual. The new totalitarians, dealing in persuasion and manipulation, must be more efficient than the old, who depended upon force."

Following the September 2006 elections, Fredrik Reinfeldt became Prime Minister of Sweden, presiding over a center-right coalition government. This is, in my view, positive. Sweden has been described by some as a "one-party state," since the Social Democrats have been in power for 65 of the last 74 years. However, the differences between the left-wing and the right-wing in Sweden are not always that big.

The last time these parties were in power, under the leadership of PM Carl Bildt from 1991 to 94, they presided over massive immigration, and have not been vocal in their opposition to the Multicultural policies since. The new Foreign Minister Bildt as a UN Commissioner to the Balkans called for recognizing Islam as a part of European culture.

PM Reinfeldt has stated that the original Swedish culture was merely barbarism: "It can sometimes be good to humbly remind of the fact that a great deal of what constitutes Sweden has been created in [a process of] evolution, exactly because we have been open to accept other people and experiences."

Reinfeldt said this following a visit to an area called Ronna in Södertälje, near Stockholm. One year earlier a police station in Södertälje was hit by shots from an automatic weapon following a major confrontation between immigrant youths and police. The trouble in Ronna started after a Swedish girl had been called a "whore" and reacted to this. Ethnologist Maria Bäckman, in her study "Whiteness and gender," has followed a group of Swedish girls in the immigrant suburb of Rinkeby outside Stockholm. Bäckman relates that several of the blond Swedish girls stated that they had dyed their hair to avoid sexual harassment.

I have called Sweden a soft-totalitarian country, but I am sometimes not so sure about the "soft" part. Opinion polls have revealed that two out of three Swedes doubt whether Islam can be combined with Swedish society, and a very significant proportion of the population have for years wanted more limitations on immigration. Yet not one party represented in Parliament is genuinely critical of the Multicultural society.

Is it just a coincidence that the one country on the European continent that has avoided war for the longest period of time, Sweden, is also arguably the one Western nation where Political Correctness has reached the worst heights? Maybe the prolonged period of peace has created an environment where layers of ideological nonsense have been allowed to pile up for generations without stop. I don't know what Sweden will look like a generation from now, but I'm pretty sure it won't be viewed as a model society. And if the absence of war is one of the causes of its current weakness, I fear that is a problem that will soon be cured.