If the Mozilla fiasco made you think that supporting marriage in America was risky, try opposing immigration in Sweden. You may remember the story involving The Journal News in New York, which in 2012 published the names and addresses of two counties’ handgun-permit holders. Now a Swedish newspaper has done the same with some of its anti-immigration citizens. But whereas The Journal News received harsh criticism for its actions, in Sweden it’s the victims being persecuted. Reports journalist Pamela Geller:
One of Sweden’s biggest newspapers, Expressen, used criminal hackers to break into Disqus and get the email addresses and identities of commenters online, and to reveal the persons behind the nicknames or anonymous user IDs. The newspaper sent a reporter and a cameraman to one person’s home and asked them about things they had written on different websites. Expressen published the names and photos of some people, which led to at least one person losing his job.
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It’s not surprising that Swedish immigration is controversial. Once a homogenous land with one of the world’s lowest crime rates, waves of Muslim immigration are now transforming Sweden into, according to one United Nations report, what will soon be a Third World country. Frontpage Mag’s Daniel Greenfield reports on this sea change, writing:
Sweden’s population grew from 9 million to 9.5 million in the years 2004-2012, mainly due to immigration from “countries like Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia”. 16 percent of all newborns have mothers born in non-Western countries. Employment rate among immigrants: 54 percent.
Sweden now has the second highest number of rapes in the world, after South Africa, which at 53.2 per 100,000 is six times higher than the United States. Statistics now suggest that 1 out of every 4 Swedish women will be raped.
Seventy-seven percent of these rapes are committed by “foreigners”; the vast majority of these are Muslim, while most of their victims are native Swedes. And these figures, say critics, are likely low-ball estimates by authorities that would prefer to whitewash the problem altogether.
And Muslims plus Swedes do make for the ultimate in culture clash, combining a notoriously patriarchal culture that emphasizes female modesty with its antithesis: a hedonistic and über-feminist, libertine, secular society. While Muslim women wear hijabs and sometimes even full-length burkas, Sweden is more defined by promiscuity; while Sharia law reigns supreme in much of Dar al-Islam, feminists in Sweden have proposed measures such as the “Man Tax” (a special levy on men to compensate for the costs of “male violence”) and have lobbied to have urinals removed from schools under the theory that the typical way in which men attend to a nature call is symbolic of male dominance. Critics would assert that this libertinism and leftist radicalism, so alien to traditional Muslims, only intensifies their contempt for Swedish culture and is used to justify violence against “decadent Western women.”
Then there is the more visible violence. As in France and elsewhere, Muslims in Sweden burned buildings and hundreds of cars last year in rioting centered in the Stockholm suburb of Husby. And many of the nation’s Jews now fear being assaulted by Muslims and are emigrating.
Exacerbating Muslim hostility toward host cultures, some critics say, are religious injunctions to subdue infidels. And they often cite as evidence what Tripolitan ambassador Sidi Haji Abdrahaman told Thomas Jefferson in 1785 after being asked why his Barbary state was raiding American ships. As Jefferson recorded, “It was written in their Koran that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every Mussulman [Muslim] who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to Paradise.”
In contrast to this extreme religious and cultural chauvinism lies slavish Swedish devotion to multiculturalism. Immigration in Sweden has become sacrosanct and support for it a dogma — and opposing it brings persecution. As CBN News reported earlier this month in a piece entitled “Soviet Sweden? Model Nation Sliding to Third World”:
Sweden’s leftist establishment and media believe a cornerstone of their perfect society is multiculturalism — large-scale immigration from some of the poorest, most backward nations on Earth — and Swedes who disagree with that plan risk being labeled racist, fascist, even Nazi. “Immigration is the starting point and the finishing point. It’s the most important point to prove you’re friendly toward foreigners, you’re friendly toward immigration,” Danish journalist Mikael Jalving, author of the book Absolut Sweden, said.
And if it can be “proven” that you don’t support immigration, “you’re out of the game,” says Jalving.
What does this mean? Journalist Ingrid Carlqvist explains that you become a pariah, stating, “If they point at you and say you are a racist, then you will have no job, no career, you might lose your family. You will have no future.”
And Carlqvist speaks from experience. Having founded online immigration-dissenter newspaper Dispatch International with colleague Lars Hedegaard, she has left Sweden for fear of persecution. Even more chilling is why the journalists’ plan for a traditional, hard-copy newspaper failed. As Carlqvist explained, “Because what if the mailman saw that you had this newspaper? What if your neighbor saw it? They might think you are a racist, or that you hate Muslims.” As CBN put it, “Sweden has become a nation where some viewpoints are too risky to even read.”
Or talk about. Reminiscent of Nazi Germany, Jalving tells us that Swedish parents now counsel their children not to render political opinion for fear that it will destroy their futures. Other journalists told CBN of a “Stalinist atmosphere” in Sweden, a climate that has inspired ex-Swedish radio journalist Amun Abdullahi to return to her native Somalia after 23 years in Sweden. She says that the nation is more dangerous than Mogadishu because “You cannot tell the truth here” — “people are silenced.”
And what of assimilation? It’s a dirty word in Sweden. Writes CBN, “Swedes are supposed to learn from immigrants, not the other way around. There is a demonstrated hatred of Swedish culture among the nation’s elite.” Explains Jalving, “Assimilation is completely out of the question.… Everybody, in all mainstream political parties and media … would laugh — laugh — about the word assimilation; [it] is a Nazi word in Sweden.”
But, critics might say, “Nazi” seems like projection in this case.
And whether or not these “elites” will learn that you should be careful what you wish for, it seems they won’t have to worry about that hated Swedish culture for long. As Carlqvist summed up, “We had a perfectly good country, a rich country, a nice country, and in a few years time that country will be gone.”
