Scandinavia and the World
Scandinavia and the World

Comments #9603440:


Living Hell 2 3, 7:19am

@ThorsomeTarmukas

Your first five points aren't even relevant. For instance everyone knows that Sweden used to be "war-friendly" as you write - I certainly never wrote anything else - but that has no bearing on the cultural traits of trust and judging people as individuals that I describe here.
Our society has gone from war mongering to peace seeking through our history, but these cultural traits have stayed the same.

"While that worked with low immigration rates, it does not work any more with high immigration rates."

You may believe so, but the majority of Swedes clearly don't and since you lack any proof of your claim few will be impressed by you spouting your beliefs.

"Yeah, right. Like the forced swedish language as the only state language in Sweden (including Kvenland, Lapland, Finland, Estonia"

I've never claimed we were saints - in fact I expressly said we aren't and neither have we been. As any war mongering nation we did some gruesome shit against some people while at the same time being very open to influences and immigration from other places. Yes we mistreated the Sami population in particular, but we were heavily influenced and settled by other groups.

In the 12 and 1300's there where almost as many Germans as Swedes in cities like Stockholm, Visby and Kalmar - a lever of foreign influence we're no where near today. The local law of Stockholm for instance stated that half of the members on the city's council should go to Swedes and half to Germans. Once again - completely unheard of today.

This influence continued throughout our whole history. Finnish, Baltic, Russian, Dutch, British, French and always German immigrants and influences have shaped Sweden - our language, our culture, our food, our music, our clothes and so on and so forth - everything about us.
The only thing "genuinely" Swedish (depending on how you count that) is probably the runestone left by the Vikings.

That Swedish always have been the state language in Sweden isn't the same as it's been "forced" on people which you write. With the exception of the Sami and a few other indigenous groups in Sweden - which we did treat appallingly - no one has ever been "forced" to speak Swedish.
Finnish, Estonian, German and Russian - it was all spoken freely throughout the territories controlled by Sweden when we were still a war mongerere. Swedish soldiers could speak any number of different languages and they where allowed to keep their own church services and faiths - as long as they were protestant, if we're talking after the reformation.

In cases where Sweden especially needed certain immigrants we even let that bit slide and let Catholics and Jews settle in Sweden. Those where special exceptions of course and there was no open invitation to non-protestants, but it shows that even on a topic as sensitive as religion we where actually far more pragmatic then we were fundamentalist.
If people could contribute to Swedish society and kept their faith to themselves we didn't mind bending the rules.
Compare that to the rest of Europe where religious zealots ruled for hundreds of years and it's quite a difference in attitude.

"Here you are actually describing your own position - that of speaking for all swedes and of speaking bad of 'the others'."

No, I'm describing traits that are central thoughout especially Swedish history and that separates our cultural tradition from the rest of Europe and the world. Unlike you with your racist theories I don't explain this with any magical Swedish blood or gene, but show that it's the low population density and the harsh climate that formed the basis for this separate development, where power in Swedish society has consistently been more evenly (but by no means perfectly so) shared then in other countries.
Where every individual has been important and the social acceptance for diversity has been higher as a result.
These are all well known historical facts you'd read about if you took an introductory course in history at any Swedish university.
Scandinavian cultural tradition in general and Swedish cultural tradition in particular is different to the mainstream European cultural tradition - that's just a fact.

And the Swedish far-right neo-fascists of today represent a clean break from that long tradition. This is also a large part of the reason that the Swedish Nazis in the 30's never even broke 1% of the Swedish popular vote. On the continent every country had far larger and more influential Nazi parties - in Sweden they found it almost impossible to recruit members to their racist agenda.

Our far-right neo-fascists today have been more successful by working hard to make their extreme views more presentable, but they still don't represent a majority of Swedes - what ever they try to claim,
In the last general election every single other party in Sweden repeatedly promised to never cooperate with the neo-fascists and they got just shy of 13% of the votes - which give them no influence at all, as every other party refuses to deal with them.
The overwhelming majority of Swedes - 87% - all voted for one of the 7 other parties that all repeatedly promised to never cooperate with the neo-fascists.

Swedish voters clearly don't believe the neo-fascists (and yours) claim that Sweden is being destroyed from within by immigration - if they did they would of course flock to the polls to vote for the only party that wants to "save the nation".
And when the Swedish people rejects the neo-fascist, the neo-fascist reply by accusing everyone not supporting them of wanting to see their nation destroyed. While the 7 other parties and the Swedish people aren't claiming such nonsense about the neo-fascist - we just see that they're racist demagogues that try to scaremonger their way to power and intimidate everyone that doesn't support their agenda - just like fascist always have done and always will do.

Large national attitude studies consistently show that the Swedish people is more worried about the rise of racist attitudes and the neo-fascist movement then they are about immigration. Swedes simply don't buy the neo-fascist agenda - just as they historically never have.

"Which tradition?
I don't see a continuity of swedification of samis and finns in Sweden to how you treat the new immigrants."

The Samis are Swedens indigenous population and it's a sad fact that indigenous populations are always the ones being treated the absolute worst. We have a lot to be ashamed of there - no doubt about that - but as I've already said, that doesn't change the fact that we've also been very open to influences and immigration from abroad throughout our history.

The Finns were part of Sweden for centuries and they where not mistreated in any systemic way at all. They weren't treated any differently since Finland didn't exist - they where just Swedes from the eastern part of the country.
And ever since they where conquered by Russia in 1809 and throughout their subsequent independent history Sweden and Finland have had nothing but good relations and apart from possibly the far-right party in Finland I think you'd be hard pressed to find a Finn that thinks that Sweden has ever treated them wrongly.

The only thing I think you might get this from is that Finnish speaking school children wasn't allowed to speak Finnish in Swedish schools until sometime after the war - the 60's or 70's perhaps?
While we've changed that now it's nothing like the brutal treatment we subjected the Samis to for centuries. Finns have been allowed to speak their own language in Sweden throughout history - it was just felt the Swedish schools shouldn't be multi-lingular before. But Finns speaking Finnish in their communities or keeping their own church services in their own language or practising their own culture has never been forbidden in Sweden - we've always let the Finns be as Finnish as they like in their private time. It just wasn't felt it was the job of the Swedish school system to provide education in the Finnish language when the national school system was founded in the 1800's - a time when Finland wasn't part of Sweden any more.

"The problem with that is that you would have to accept them all - the whole distribution, with both the horn and the tails.
Doing away with the horn and the tail would mean (racial) profiling and the use of hard power to enforce that profiling. Not doing it would change the distribution of the Swedes themselves - change for the worse. Because the speed of assimilation depends on the ratio of natives against the ratio of non-natives."

If you'd have understood anything I've written about Swedish culture you'd understand that's not a problem to us.
Since your a racist you see "horn and tails" - we don't. We see fellow human beings, just like us and not the devils of your imagination.
Some of them bad, most of them good - just like us.
But the only way you can sort the bad from the good is giving them the chance to prove themselves.
Which means that you let those in that have legitimate reasons and then you use the exact same standards to judge them as you would anyone born in Sweden - the Swedish law.
Those that break the law are criminals and treated as such, those that don't aren't and are afforded the same protection by Swedish law as every other law abiding citizen.

It's really not a hard concept to grasp - if you could just let go of your racist beliefs about "horn and tails".