Sweden and the Fate of the West

The Toxic Dangers of Uncontrolled Immigration

As economists Robert Lawson and Benjamin Powell point out in their new book, Socialism Sucks, Sweden is not a socialist country. The Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom Index, which measures how well a country respects private property rights, encourages free trade, keeps business taxes low, protects the value of its currency, and keeps business regulations to a minimum, rates Sweden 7.54 on a scale of zero to ten. This ranks them 27^th out of 159 countries measured.

Neither can Denmark, rated at 8.0, nor Norway, rated at 7.62 be called socialist countries. All three rank in the top fifth in economic freedom. They are, however, high-tax welfare states, and generous social welfare and welcoming large numbers of immigrants and asylum seekers is a disastrous combination, easily capable of causing economic and social ruin, including very high crime rates.

According to Statistics Sweden data released in April 2019, 13 percent of the population in Sweden experience problems of crime, violence, and vandalism in their own residential areas. This is one of the highest such percentages in Europe, while the percentages for Denmark, Norway, and Finland are still among the lowest in Europe.  Only 4 percent in Norway, 8 percent in Denmark, and 6 percent in Finland say they are experiencing crime, violence, and vandalism in their own neighborhoods.

Once considered one of the safest countries in the world, a recent 2019 crime index according to  Numbeo surveys rated Sweden the second most unsafe country in Europe. Only Ukraine had higher crime statistics.  Crime statistics are often difficult to find, and precision and definitions difficult to access, but the Numbeo crime index statistics are roughly in line with other European and United Nations statistics. Their ratings, however, are not a count of crimes per 100,000 people per year, they are a “rating” based on various collected statistics and then evaluated on a scale of 0 to 100.  To give some perspective, the Ukraine valuation was 49.04, while Sweden’s was 47.21. 

To give further perspective, the U.S valuation was insignificantly lower than Sweden’s at 46.73.

France was the third highest in Europe with 46.5. The UK was seventh with 43.64.  However, Norway’s evaluation was significantly lower with 33.51, and Denmark had only 24.72.  Croatia, Austria, Iceland, Finland, Estonia, and Slovenia, were lower than Denmark, with scores ranging from 20 to 24.

For further perspective, the Mexico valuation was 52.51. Venezuela is currently rated the most dangerous country in the world at 84.6, followed closely by South Africa, Honduras, and Pakistan with ratings from 74 to 77.  

Something is turning rotten in Sweden, and Swedes are fleeing to safer and less heavily taxed communities in the country. There is a small but growing stream that are leaving their country behind, because they feel the politicians will never recognize the relationship between massive non-Western immigration and crime, much less do anything effective to correct it.  They have lost hope that the Social Democrat Party and its leftist allies in Parliament that caused the problem will either own up to their mistakes or can be defeated in Parliamentary elections.  

Most people not tied to the leftist parties or highly dominant leftist media realize that Sweden’s insanely short-sighted immigration and asylum policies, especially since 2015, are the cause of an unprecedented crime epidemic.   

Although the Swedish media are generally relentless persecutors of those who speak out against the reality of Sweden’s immigration problems, a recent Swedish television documentary investigated the problems of the small town of Filipstad in Värmland County.  Filipstad illustrates on a small scale, the problems that are endangering the peace and prosperity of Sweden   The area around Filipstad has a population of no more than  10,000, but during the 2015  immigration crisis and since, 963 foreign people were settled there. About 750 of the adults are from Syria, Somalia, Eritrea, Afghanistan, and Iraq.  Unemployment among them has remained about 80 percent, and their low education levels and job skills hinder much foreseeable improvement. Almost certainly as a consequence, 640 ethnic Swedes have moved away.  Tax revenues are falling and local government services and budgets cannot keep up. There is not enough money for schools or healthcare.  Many of the Swedish parents are angry, but immigration and multiculturalism have become sacred cows in Sweden’s political-media establishment. Having brought ruin on Filipstad, the political-media establishment will most likely continue to apply the principles of cover up and political correctness and try to shame the honest anger they have created.  Unless the Swedish people wake up, the political-media elite will go on ruining their country, while continuing to virtue-signal their moral superiority.

Although Sweden has a largely free economy and entrepreneurial spirit, it is severely handicapped by oppressive political correctness. This is centered and most strongly enforced in the media but pervades the whole country and intimidates free speech and thought generally. Even the mention of the epidemic of crime and its relationship to Muslim migration is taboo.  Publishing any statistics on immigrant crime has been strongly suppressed. In 2017, the Minister of Justice Morgan Johansson refused to publish statistics on the ethnic origins of criminals in Sweden. The continuous unquestionable party line of the powerful left-liberal establishment is that it is all about socio-economic status and discrimination.  Johansson got few complaints from most Swedish political parties.  They did not want to be ruined by vicious and imaginative accusations by the super-PC Swedish media.   

Fortunately, this year, a private Swedish foundation, “The Good Society,” decided that avoiding the discussion of immigration and crime was not good for Sweden and published a new report, “Immigration and Crime—a thirty-year perspective.  The raw data was collected and supplied by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (BRA).

The study compared crime levels by year groupings. In 1985-1989, persons with foreign background committed an astonishing 31 percent of all crimes. By the 2013-2017 period, persons with foreign background committed an even more astonishing 58 percent of all crimes. Ethnic Swedes only committed 42 percent of crimes, despite constituting 67 percent of the population surveyed. It also seems alarming that ethnic Swedes may now only constitute 67 percent of the people living in Sweden.

Norway also released some very revealing statistics on crime and ethnicity. Afghans and Somali’s were charged with violence and abuse crimes more than five times the rate for ethnic Norwegians.  Other Norwegian statistics showed that non-Western immigrants were overrepresented in 65 of 80 crime categories.  Non-Western immigrants represented 7.1 percent of Norway’s population in 2017. Domestic violence was the most common crime among non-Western immigrants. 

Crime statistics on ethnic minorities are readily available in Denmark.  “Immigrants in Denmark in 2018” reported in Berlingske Tidene that in 2017 crime was 60 percent higher among male immigrants than the population of Denmark as a whole. It was 234 percent higher among non-Western descendents.  This and recent Swedish data show that crime rates for children and grandchildren of non-Western immigrants are higher than their non-Western immigrant parents. The descendents of non-Western immigrants are 3.5 times more violent than the Danish population as a whole.

Jon Helgheim, an immigration policy spokesman for the Norwegian Freedom Party, summed up the most important lesson of this article:

“Most immigrants are not criminals, but when the immigrant population is overrepresented in almost every crime category, then there is a problem that we must dare to talk about.”

Much of the information for this article was gleaned from the articles of Judith Bergman, who writes regularly on Sweden for the Gatestone Institute.  In her latest article, of October 4, she closed with these words:

“Unless Scandinavian political leaders begin actively to engage with the facts that these statistics describe, the problems are only going to become more intractable—to the point where they might not be solvable at all.”

Bergman’s statement actually has a much wider application. It is urgent and crucial advice for the United States and every country that would preserve peace, prosperity, and freedom for their people.