this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024

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Sweden’s spreading crime epidemic alarms its neighbors (www.politico.eu)

submitted 1 month ago by schizoidman@lemm.ee to c/world@lemmy.world

21 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/43413713

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[–] jlh@lemmy.jlh.name 33 points 1 month ago (2 children)

This is a gang war between rivaling drug gangs. Sweden has a serious gang problem and also the highest rate of drug deaths in all of Europe. Something needs to be done.

There have been some good progress recently in resolving murder cases, (which is the most effective way to reduce gang killings), but unfortunately most of the political effort in this area has been to increase jail times and blame immigrants. There are also concerns that the new legal system reforms weaken civil rights protections beyond their gang-combatting purpose. The association by politicians and voters of reducing immigration with combating gangs is inaccurate and unfortunate, as while most of the foot soldiers have immigrant parents, they are often still Swedish citizens, just from a poor, segregated neighborhood. There is not much public discourse on whether the capos and leaders are immigrant, Muslim, etc.

Sweden is very much still clinging to a imagined victory in the war on drugs. In Sweden, having drugs in the bloodstream is punishable with prison, and all Swedish parties in parliament are strictly against drug legalization. In line with solidarity culture, drug users are blamed for financially supporting gang violence.

[–] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 month ago

"In Sweden, having drugs in the bloodstream is punishable with prison"

Oh wow, I didn't know that

[–] sensiblepuffin@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

Hey, the US and Sweden are similar in at least one way!

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 31 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

You are goddam right it does, it's bleeding over, and hired hitmen as young as 14 years old have come from Sweden to Danmark to try to assassinate people. One victim was merely a completely innocent family member living a normal family life here, but was targeted just for being related to some Swedish gangster.

In Sweden they have what we call "Amerikanske tilstande" which translates to something like "conditions like America", which is an expression for just about the worst that can happen. It's pretty common to warn against that here.

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 22 points 1 month ago

Amerikanske tilstande" which translates to something like "conditions like America",

Ugh, wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.

[–] P1nkman@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

It's the same saying in Norway. Oh, and is it's over the top, it's called "Texas" 🤣

[–] Mr_Blott@feddit.uk 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Amerikanske tilstande" which translates to something like "conditions like America", which is an expression for just about the worst that can happen.

Lol how the mighty have fallen

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Absolutely, back in the days before the 80's "only in America" was often used for something Big and Impressive. Now it's used for something stupid or double standards.

American society used to be considered the pinnacle of the world, but it changed in the 80's, when they began to lower the quality of their society with extreme republican policies:
They failed to acknowledge pollution of the atmosphere is a problem and did absolutely nothing about it despite their wealth. While Europe began to work seriously on ressource and climate sustainability already in the 70's. Today USA has twice the pollution per capita compared to most European countries.
Their healthcare and life expectancy is worse than any EU country.
They have completely failed to get gun violence under control or even try for 5 decades now.
They have extreme poverty despite being among the richest countries in the world.
Their democracy is a flawed first past the post model and only barely a democracy, because it's unable to reasonably represent diverse interests of the population.
Extreme religiousness is widespread and permeates politics as seen with insane abortion restrictions that destroy lives and families.
Corruption is widespread and obvious and even out in the open. Even the supreme court is both corrupt and politicized.

Not an ideal to follow, and it's very sad to see how they have failed to progress or even maintain the quality of the society they had in the 70's.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 14 points 1 month ago (2 children)

"Swedish Gangsters".

That's a word combination I did not expect to see...

[–] Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.win 15 points 1 month ago

[–] Dasus@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

But I'm sure you're familiar with "Nordic crime drama"

[–] MediaBiasFactChecker@lemmy.world -1 points 1 month ago

Politico Europe - News Source Context (Click to view Full Report)

Information for Politico Europe:

MBFC: Left-Center - Credibility: High - Factual Reporting: High - Germany
Wikipedia about this source

Search topics on Ground.News

https://www.politico.eu/article/sweden-crime-gangs-shooting-youths-norway-denmark/

Media Bias Fact Check | bot support

[+] gcheliotis@lemmy.world -6 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Ok I’m going to ask the question that the article doesn’t address and also the question that will make all the progressive people on here uncomfortable: how does immigration play into this? Does it? Sweden is known for having a high percentage of foreign-born residents, most of them from outside the EU. It is the frequent punching bag of the extreme right for that reason and for its historically progressive policies. A far right that has been making gains there, as elsewhere. Is this an issue? Has Sweden failed to integrate foreigners who are now increasingly involved in the illegal drug trade and ensuing crime or are these unrelated?

[–] lime@feddit.nu 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

hi, i'm a progressive swedish leftist.

what happened was, the centre-right coalition that made the decision to take in immigrants had no integration plan. these people basically got sent off to places where there was already a higher percentage of immigrants, forming a sort of parallel society.

However, this was about ten years ago, after most of these current gang criminals were born.

the main issue is that due to a decision by a left-wing govt in the 90s, school and youth activity budgets are handled at a local level, meaning poorer areas get much lower quality education, and less recreation. it's a textbook high-criminality recipe.

[–] gcheliotis@lemmy.world -2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

So, if i got this right, you seem to be implying that immigrants, or at least non-native Swedes as some may have citizenship, don’t know, are implicated in this violence, right? But that the situation today is a result of several policy failures by different governments and it’s not necessarily something to be tied to more recent waves of immigration. It wasn’t clear from the article. I just wanted to understand whether this plays right into the far right playbook once more. Of course poverty is a common factor in crime, but (unfortunately) the topic currently dominating European politics is immigration, and a surge in crime is an almost certain win for the extreme right in this climate.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I just wanted to understand whether this plays right into the far right playbook once more.

The far right thing comes into play because Swedes are notoriously bad at complaining about things in public (one of the few things you can tell Germans and Swedes apart by aside from the quality of the beer), so as things began to get ugly it was taboo to talk about so it was allowed to fester, and fester badly. In come rightoids who have no qualms about breaking unspoken social norms about welcome culture and such things, actually naming the topic head-on.

Had the broadly SocDem majority be able to address the issue, even just silently, "let's increase funding for youth programmes and social mobility and not say why specifically we're doing it" things wouldn't have gotten out of hand, and the right wouldn't have had its opportunity.

[–] gcheliotis@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think you have expressed my fear quite well. Maybe it is as I feared. I don’t know much about Sweden, but I do have the feeling that the far right everywhere gets brownie points for just naming things the left will leave untouched (with a huge amount of hyperbole, racial hatred and scapegoating to be sure). I’m not in any way trying to force an “immigrants bad” argument, just fearing that a surge in crime involving migrant populations benefits the far right disproportionately, especially if the rest of the political spectrum seem unable to effectively address the issue in a more socially productive and progressive manner.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's not just immigration policies, those are just a common ignition point. Say, in Germany after reunification the east lost lots of people, looking for opportunity in the west as the west sold off and destroyed the eastern economy for scrap, people grumbled, now there's immigration into those areas from outside of Germany, and not just from the neighbourhood (Poland, Czechia, etc) either, at ultimately quite low levels but at a higher speed, as a percentage of population, than has ever been the case in the west. And people do more than grumble.

Which is to say: Yes, a part of the population has been replaced with immigrants. That much is demographic fact. It is not large, there are no signs of it ever getting actually out of hand but it's there, it's noticeable, and it's still growing. Failing to acknowledge it just plays into the hands of the right who then can spin all sorts of conspiracy theories about it. People want it addressed because it makes them uneasy, fearing to become a minority in their own ancestral home, and, sure, why not: Invest in those places so that the youth doesn't flee it any more, and that people who went away to work return. Integrating the newcomers isn't actually anywhere close to the main issue, while anti-immigration sentiment is quite high, anti-immigrant sentiment is not -- people like Abdul from the corner store earning a honest living. They're not worried about new things they are worried about the decay of the old and familiar, those are very different things.

And oh boy has there been decay under neoliberalism.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

it's not replacement, it's expansion. our population has grown by about 2%. also, since we pivoted to a "service economy", we are down on entry level jobs, which are being taken by immigrants because 1) the higher-education jobs all have stricter requirements and 2) they have more work experience and are willing to work for less than swedish teenagers.

none of this matters to the people who fear them taking over. it's pure populism.

[–] barsoap@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago

I was talking about East Germany, I'm not deep into the Swedish data just as a note though expansion and replacement don't necessarily exclude each other. From the anecdotes I heard though Sweden has basically been breeding Banlieues, which by definition aren't replacements but new developments, and then there's the country side where there might actually be replacement but nobody cares because Acke is happy that an Indonesian nurse now works in the hospital because she's cute and all the Swedish women went to the city.

The most dastardly thing I heard is the situation of Swedes with immigrant background who were in their early twenties or such when shit started to hit the fan: Previously they were perfectly well integrated, now they get lumped up with the problematic folks.

On the upside: Every country seems to go through a phase of messing it up. In Germany first we didn't care about integration of e.g. Turks at all, assuming that they'll go home one day -- then they started to open greengrocers and Döner shops, they're an enterprising bunch. Then we told them to make sure to talk German with their kids at home, with disastrous results: Kids ended up speaking neither proper German nor proper Turkish: If you don't become properly proficient in a language -- any language -- as a kid your overall language processing capabilities are going to stay stunted forever, and we did that to a whole generation while thinking we were doing good. The right advise to give is to tell parents to speak their native language at home, the kids will learn German playing on the streets, in kindergarten, at school, no issue. Now we've progressed to more advanced fuck-ups, like not screening refugees for PTSD: If we don't, ISIS will be happy to do it with less than desirable results.

Swedes simply seem to have more talent at messing it up than even us. As said: Start to complain early, before shit hits the fan. Leave it to a Swede to be shocked at a German complaining about a pothole, "but we've got procedures for that I'm sure the town knows about it they're terribly busy you really shouldn't say anything they'll get around to do it"...

And that really, really doesn't mesh with a government which doesn't go out of its way to figure out what people are worried about, thinking they could know what's up by looking at statistics.

[–] InvertedParallax@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago

So, non-white centrist American from California with family in Sweden.

A LOT is immigration, largely because it wasn't handled well and many of the troublemakers came here.

Also, they let the Russian mafia in during the 2000s which made things worse.

We have Mexicans, who are basically a model immigrant population in California, they contribute greatly to the economy and rich culture of the US.

They have poor Syrians fleeing the Civil War, but they never learned the skills to function in the west, so they fall back to old habits.