Politically incorrect journeys (5): Sweden

 

This is a travel blog about Malmö, Scandinavia and the failure of multiracialism throughout northern Europe.

Taken from the free downloadable book Kebabville & Zone: Click HERE

Expressen ran images of commentators after Disqus accounts were hacked on Avpixlat website.

Of course, the Swedish media and establishment are not really interested in “debating” mass immigration. For them, the science is settled. They are ideologically committed to imposing it, come what may, for the greater good, and anybody who disagrees is a “hater,” a “fascist,” a “nazi” or a “racist.” You see those childish words, so redolent of student politicking, over and over in the Swedish print media. 

As a result of all this, Sweden now has the closest thing in western Europe to a fascistic, hate-based establishment, where most people do not dare to speak freely in public. Only it is wrong-thinking ethnic Swedes who are its victims, at risk of dismissal, assault, home-trashing and media humiliation for voicing opposition to state immigration policy. 

To hear the other side of the story, and find out the inconvenient facts Sweden’s mainstream media works so hard to suppress, many Swedes now turn to the online news-sites such as Dispatch International, Avpixlat, Fria Tider and Exponerat. There is nothing quite like these sites in Britain. Yet some stories they carry attract more reader comments than major British dailies (and remember Britain’s population is six times Sweden’s). I know of no other west European country where the alternative media have become so mainstream, so to speak.

On these sites, Swedes can learn about taboo subjects like racist attacks on Swedes, the abuse and waste of welfare resources, the problems faced by local governments on which refugees are dumped. One particular blog site, Merit Wager’s, serves as a platform for disgruntled employees of Sweden’s migration authorities to vent their frustrations anonymously. This has to be some kind of first, in not only Sweden, but the world. These whistleblowers even have a nickname in Swedish, miggor (migga in the singular). Here is an example of the kind of anonymous post they leave:

“Father and son had permission to stay until autumn 2007 and since then they have had everything paid (accommodation, medical care, schooling, board and clothing) by their kommun of residence. All this was discovered when the father was arrested on suspicion of breaking and entering.”

These websites now pose a significant threat to Sweden’s mainstream media and their propaganda mission. Their response has been to come up with a world first of their own. The major daily Expressen recently teamed up with far-left cybersnoops Researchgruppen and launched a campaign of public outing of their backers and their more outspoken commentators. This involved hacking Disqus accounts. As a result, private citizens have been doorstepped by reporters and fired from their jobs, for leaving anonymous comments on websites.

On December 10, 2013, Expressen filled its online front page with eleven photos under a headline that read “Online haters on Avpixlat,” each of which was accompanied by a writeup. This public humiliation known in Swedish as “being hung out.” Included among Expressen’s targets was a Mikael Rahm (SD politician, not the actor), who remarked, “It is already the eleventh hour when it comes to stopping the idiocy that comes with Islam, which is foreign culture to us .. Islam is not a religion, but a sick cult and should be classed as such.” Forthright stuff, yes, but far from extreme or even unreasonable. And, of course, millions privately agree with him. Nevertheless, for these remarks, Rahm had to step down. According to Avpixlat, such hounding has led to one case of suicide. Meanwhile, fire attacks by the extreme left against private citizens get a free pass. 

The two main tabloids, Aftonbladet and Expressen, are also thought to have compiled blacklists or “opinion registers” (åsiktsregister) of readers of these websites, something usually done by national security agencies in other countries. Fria Tider reported that “Expressen has ‘opinion-registered’ 6,200 Swedes who read Fria Tider, Avpixlat and Exponerat.” The website has raised funds to bring a libel suit against editor Thomas Mattsson. How any of this stuff can have been legal in a developed democracy in the first place beats me, but then again there are many things about Sweden that flummox me these days, including its “progressive” view of the concept of privacy. Anyway, good luck with the litigation, Fria Tider.

And still, it will not go away. On the contrary, the hydra-headed topic has become a national obsession. It divides families. It has brought to the surface in Sweden a seething anger that is corroding the placid, content society of thirty years ago. Commenting on his mailbag after a piece that discussed Doris Lessing, columnist Johan Hakelius, wrote:

“Why pretend? Without exception, ... [readers] are interested in one thing: immigration. The discussion can begin wherever it likes, but it always ends with immigration. It may be about whatever, but it ends with immigration ... Immigration, immigration, immigration, immigration, immigration. .. Sweden, which considers itself to be open,” he concluded, “in actual fact is culturally closed.

Taken from the free downloadable book Kebabville & Zone: Click HERE

Politically incorrect journeys (6): Sweden

This is a travel blog about Malmö, Scandinavia and the failure of multiracialism throughout northern Europe.

Taken from the free downloadable book Kebabville & Zone: Click HERE

I didn’t venture out of Malmö much, but one day I had a look at the old university town of Lund, just down the line. Lund teems with visitors all year, but I thought Malmö was equally beautiful, and, for various reasons, including not being conspicuously full of students, more interesting. The main sight in Lund is the twin-towered Romanesque cathedral, once the mother church of all Scandinavia, later of all Denmark, and after 1658 of southern Sweden. One of the few major buildings in Skåne to have a stone fabric, its flamboyantly Italianate appearance looked rather out-of-place in its austere Nordic setting.

Sweden too underwent the Reformation, and this creation of Catholicism is now Lutheran, under the Svenska kyrkan (Church of Sweden). Now Svenska kyrkan is an organization that knows which side its bread is buttered on. While the Church of England quietly sits on its multibillion pound landbank and investment empire and hopes nobody notices how rich it is, Svenska kyrkan is a brand with a logo, and you see both displayed prominently on its real estate, on big, colourful placards, along with its flag. If you didn’t know better, you would think Svenska kyrkan was a property developer. But when it comes to getting bums on pews, it is doing no better than the CofE. That very week, it was reported that 40,000 people had left Svenska kyrkan in the previous two months. This was partly connected with a church-related tax that Swedes have to pay, but it was part of a longer-term decline in faith. “Good heavens, no, I am not religious,” a warden in one of Malmö’s churches had assured me the previous year. “I think most people just come here for the company.” Support for gay marriage had cost them another swathe of worshippers, the papers said.

One religion, though, is doing okay in Sweden. In Malmö, I visited a mosque. Malmö has a quite well-known main mosque with a madrassa on the edge of town, a surprisingly shoddy-looking, domed white compound with a crude minaret that from a distance looked uncomfortably like a fairground space rocket. But I wanted something local. The Iranians at my breakfast local told me there was one twenty minutes’ walk away. “Not easy to find, mind.”

They weren’t kidding. Planning regulations are strict in Malmö, and mosques may not stick out architecturally in downtown areas. I eventually located it tucked away on the third floor of a large office block. It had no frontage whatsoever. The building was, of all things, a converted brewery. You opened a metal door to an old workshop where presumably fermentation tanks or filtration gear had been, and there it was, a great carpeted space decorated with wall plaques of Koranic scripture, suffused with that lulling tranquility you always find in mosques. A single bored-looking worshipper stared at a mobile phone in the corner, by a kind of misaligned booth half sticking of the wall—it was the bit that faced Mecca.

I learnt from him, a Bosnian, and a mosque warden, a Turk, that the mosque was a community-financed endeavour and that there were others dotted around town, equally low-profile.
“The building doesn’t matter anyway,” the Bosnian said. “Any will do, even if its original purpose flies in the face of religion.”

They estimated that only about a quarter of the Muslims in Malmö are actually practicing, but congregations were growing slowly and they had had a few Swedish converts—though less than a dozen, they reckoned.

I wondered, what on earth could induce a Scandinavian, born into one of these practical, permissive and equality-obsessed societies, to embrace Islam? A few weeks after this visit, the daily Aftenposten of Norway carried a long and insightful interview with one Norwegian who did. I’ve lost the original article, so I will call her Maria and scrape up as much as I can from notes and memory.

Maria originally became a Muslim, she said, to give “spiritual meaning” to her life, and later married an Iraqi imam. Originally, she wore the niqab, with eye-slits only, because “converts have to do more than other Muslims to prove that they are good Muslims.” Converts did not have the same perspective as Muslims born into Muslim families, where Islamic cultural traditions are part of their upbringing and identity. They lacked this background of moderated religiosity and often got their training from the Internet, where often the most rigid interpretations are emphasized. “They have a first phase where they become euphoric and more intense in their belief,” Maria said. “This can last several months or even years.” Asked about the growth in niqab use in Norway, she said: “At the moment an orthodox, conservative wind is blowing. There is a lot of pressure on Muslims and with the media chorus about Islamic extremism … young girls want to prove that they are not afraid. I respect those that do it. It’s a question of belief. Islam is about offering up yourself.”

But Maria eventually divorced the imam and gave up the niqab: “Now I think that the niqab, which covers the face, is backward and unnatural in Norway. It creates differences between us and others, and religious piety can lead to women restricting themselves as women, restricting their participation in society. The niqab reduces women to the minimum.”

***

Though I am not religious, I have always liked mosques. I like walking around unshod in their sanctified spaces, among the pillars and arches contrived to evoke the Arab origins, and watching the quiet praying and bowing. Ritual devotions are now completely alien to mainstream western society. In a mosque, I feel a mix of curiosity and respect. I cannot help viewing liturgical and political Islam as completely different things, even though, of course, they are not.

When you attend a service in European mosque, a couple of things soon dawn on you. For the average Muslim abroad, they are reminders of home as much as places of worship. And they are the cornerstones of Muslim communities in every sense, not just religious. As was the case here, their construction is often financed partly by community contribution, which gives everybody a stake in them and a material reason to attend. They act as a rallying-point and shield for their communities, and as a source of moral guidance and general information—a mixture of church, castle and parish council. They help keep birth, marriage and death rituals, and daily life generally, on the Islamic straight and narrow. They are, in short, the perfect tool for building and consolidating self-sustaining, completely unintegrated parallel communities for Muslims in any environment.

In Sweden, Muslims also have predictable voting habits. It is estimated that 75% of them vote for the Social Democrats, the architects of multiracial Sweden but now in long-term decline—and in urgent need of a new electoral base.

I went back out of the metal door and wandered back down the old factory stairway. The rest of the brewery hulk seemed to be given over to offices of the immigrant support organizations that proliferate in Malmö. They had names like Alhambra Union of Kurdish Students, the African-Swedish Forum for Justice, the Iranian-Swedish Society, the Iranian-Swedish Solidarity Society (I smelt a splinter group), and the Bosnian-Swedish Friendship Association. Mostly they did not seem to amount to much more than a guy with a computer, file set and half-finished box of halal Chicken McNuggets. Maybe it was the lunch-hour effect, but a lot of the offices seemed empty that day.

Asian and African Muslims in Malmö often wore religious garb at work. Another place I had breakfast at was run by a family of Afghans. The teenage daughter served the customers in hijab (fully robed but with the face fully visible). The first morning I ate there, I listened to her talking with her dad in the kitchen in whichever Afghan language they used, and asked her how long she had been in Sweden.
“I was born here,” she replied, curtly, in native Swedish.
As I bit my tongue, a Swede came in and ordered his breakfast—in English. Even though she took his order in Swedish, and did not actually seem to know English, he bashed away in English: “Yes, with toast please.” Eventually, I interrupted, and joked, in Swedish,
“Actually, I’m the English speaker here.”
“Ah!” he replied. “You guys lost, you know!”
“What?”
“Two nil, at home to Chile last night. Haha!”

We laughed and the girl returned to the kitchen. Trivial indeed, but revealing. I had seen this happen before. Despite four decades of indoctrination, and absorption of hundreds of thousands of refugees, the idea that only ethnic Swedes can or should speak Swedish is still widespread. For some Swedes, brown-skinned immigrants provide the dash of exoticism they otherwise seek in overseas holidays. They are welcomed, but they are not seen as true fellow citizens.

Taken from the free downloadable book Kebabville & Zone: Click HERE

Politically incorrect journeys (7): Sweden

This is a travel blog about Malmö, Scandinavia and the failure of multiracialism throughout northern Europe.

Taken from the free downloadable book Kebabville & Zone: Click HERE

One quarter of the city’s population is Muslim, though that is just an estimate—I could not find official figures. Troubled Rosengård, scene of major riots in 2012, is probably the centre of the community. It is certainly the area where the least integration has occurred.

Rosengård was quite a long bus ride out from the centre. There’s not much to say about it. You find a complex of barrack-like tenement blocks straddling a dual carriageway, with a threadbare shopping center in the middle. “That dump? What on earth would anyone want to live there for?” a Swede said to me. It seemed regimented, lifeless and forbidding, but nothing like as dispiriting as the average deprived North London housing estate. Buildings were in good condition, and there was little graffiti or sign of other vandalism.

This neighbourhood, housing over 20,000 people, is virtually empty of ethnic Swedes now. It did indeed feel like a ghetto, and its economic profile is predictably dismal: fewer than a third of working-age people in employment, and one-fifth of households are on försörjningsstöd (livelihood support, Sweden’s welfare provision for those with no income). However, the picture is economically dismal in many immigrant communities in Sweden: Overall, people born overseas get nearly half of Sweden’s myriad social security payouts.

An Iraqi resident I talked to blamed the Rosengård riots on a combination of youth unemployment and alienating environment. Looking at its apartment complexes and bleak concrete expanses grouped around the dual carriageway, I found hard to imagine a more unrealistic pairing of civilizations than the Middle East and Sweden: the one a place of sandy heat, bazaar-based street life, barter and banter, poverty and corruption, and intensively conservative morals, and the other a land of concrete expanses and closed doors, tedious months of snow and darkness, taciturnity, strictly rule-based conduct and liberal values. But the worst thing about Rosengård, it seemed to me, was that you couldn’t just set up your own little street stall, and sell fruit, tobacco, falafel, whatever, on a corner—eke out an independent living, and chat and drink tea with friends on the pavement. There was no street life.

I had now been in Malmö long enough to have noticed that there was bad feeling in the air now and then. I had seen heated exchanges involving Swedes and foreigners in the street and in a bank, and now, sitting on the bus back into town from Rosengård, I witnessed a confrontation that almost turned violent. About twenty minutes into the ride, a Middle Eastern guy got up in his seat and yelled “Detta ar Sverige! (This is Sweden!)” at the back of the guy sat diagonally in front of him, who was also a Middle Easterner. The latter’s companion, a Swedish girl, stood up and shouted Sluta! (Stop!). The first guy remained standing, body tense and face contorted, and then the bus reached the next stop and the pair got off. As the doors closed, I watched the guy outside yank off his rucksack and hurl it against a wall in fury. He had not said a word throughout this, but there was murder in his face. The journey resumed in silence. It was the first time I had ever heard anybody shout in public transport in Sweden.

My landlady commented later that it might have been a family conflict over arranged marriage or something. “The ones you find on the buses are the poorest and the angriest. If they have money, they have their own wheels.”

***

At a local tailor’s I got a rip in my trousers fixed. You see a quite a lot of old-fashioned tailor’s shops in Malmö, as it is such an easy business for an immigrant to start. This guy was a Bosnian, working with an old lady, presumably his mother, who sat hunched over a sewing machine. As she worked on my trousers, I asked him,

“Do you like living in Sweden?”

After a pause, he said, “You know, in Bosnia we escaped from a war...” His mother did not react in any way, just kept on sewing. He found it more lively in Denmark, he said, easier to talk to people there. He had health problems that required him to go to Denmark for treatment.

“In conversation with Swedes, it’s quite difficult to get beyond the weather. Always the weather …. You cannot even greet people in this country. If it is woman she will turn around and look at you in a funny way as if you said something odd. I’ve often thought about going back to Bosnia, and I still think about it.”

Taken from the free downloadable book Kebabville & Zone: Click HERE