Living Hell

Nice one Humon - I like the actually topical news with the post office and pinapple on pizza.

But insted of enjoying that we'll have to brace for the tidal wave of pure shit crash over this comment section as every right-winger full of "alternative facts" will now feel the urgent need to tell us how we're actually all ON FIRE RIGHT NOW!

*facepalm*

@Nisse_Hult
Preach! Med tanke på dina två dislikes så gillar de inte heller att folk pekar ut dom på det *suck*
Alla får det att låta som om 100 tjejer blir våldtagna varje timme, i varje kvarter, i varje stad just nu. Tog en långpromenad runt midnatt igår, lillelördag och det var inget konstigt.

@Crez

Nej precis. Men de har målat in sig i ett hörn där de hela tiden övertrumfar varandra med allt galnare påståenden tills det som du säger blir så absurt överdrivet att alla som inte lever i deras lilla bubbla inser att det inte kan stämma.
Jag bodde i 15 år i en av de betongförorter utanför Stockholm som de försöker utmåla som "no go zoner" där vita svenskar inte vågar vistas eller blir konstant trakasserade och det är ju rent skitsnack - hände inte mig ett skit där på 15 år. Den kriminalitet eller våld som var var ju mellan olika småkriminella som gjorde upp sinsemellan. Allvarligt som all brottslighet naturligtvis men knappast det totala kaos och den klappjakt på vita svenskar av ondskefulla invandrare som rasisterna försöker framställa det som.

Och nej - de gillar inte alls när man ifrågasätter dem. För de kan aldrig belägga vad de påstår med fakta utan tycker alltid att man blint skall lita på vad de säger. Och alla som inte gör det är Sverige-hatande femi-nazist-kommunister - eller nåt annat de lärt sig att kalla alla som ifrågasätter dem. Som om personangrepp skulle vara värt ett skit som belägg för deras påståenden.

@Nisse_Hult Just know that the survivors of Bowling Green, Kansas, stand with you in your time of crisis.

@Nisse_Hult it's probably the grenade attacks and bombings that happen. Though if I remember those have been happening for a while

@Recon250

Yes, criminal groups are fighting amongst themselves - it happens in every country on earth.
Your point beeing?

@Nisse_Hult I'm standing with you. Brace yourselves, the neo-nazis are coming to correct the record (hehe).

@Zyvron

Do you want to start nazi-boy?
Give it you best shot - "correct the record" for us if you think you have the sources to back it up why don't you.

@Nisse_Hult I'm literally agreeing with you here.....

@Zyvron

Ok, sorry if I read you wrong.

Your avatar when you wrote your first comment above was a dog with a Hitler mustasch doing the Nazi-salute and you finishing your sentance with "(hehe)" gave me the impression you where actually rooting for the neo-Nazi's coming to "correct the record".
I see you've changed avatar now - maybe you realised that picture gave people the wrong impression of you?

@Nisse_Hult Yeah, it gave the wrong impression. I set my avatar years ago and never really commented here. I didn't notice at first, but then you called me out on it. Figured I might as well change it now to avoid future confusion.

@Nisse_Hult
Those frequent and uptrending grenade happenings in Sweden are not Molotov coctails.
But as I understand, some party happenings use Molotov cocktails as well.
Party on.

@ThorsomeTarmukas

No, those are criminals fighting each other.
You have criminals in Estonia just like every other nation on earth as well so whats your point?

@Nisse_Hult
The point is that by now, grenades are part of the immigrant culture in Sweden. And thus also part of Sweden's culture. Just as wife-stealing used to be, now making a comeback.

@ThorsomeTarmukas

No, the point is granades and shoting and violance is part of the criminal culture in Sweden - just like it is in every other nation on earth.

Criminals use violance against other criminals in conflicts amongst themselves or with law enforcement - that's always been the case and will always be the case.

A hundrad years ago they used fists or knives - today they use guns and granades if they can get them - but it's the same fights over the spoils of their crimes now as then.

In Sweden, in Estonia, in the US and EVERY OTHER NATION ON EARTH.

Got it now?

@Nisse_Hult
It is not part of the culture of Iceland. At least not yet. Perhaps it has something to do with the amount of immigrants from war zones?

The first domination that the immigrants achieve is the domination over the criminal world. It has always been so.

@ThorsomeTarmukas

Ha, ha - you desperately searched for a country you thought proved you point and came up with... Iceland?!

Iceland has a population of just over 330,000 inhabitants. If you subtract the children and the elderly you're left with only about 200,000 people that are even likely to commit crimes at all.

Not really a country fit for serious comparison with any other when it comes to crime.

Because crime of course is less likely the fewer people there are. A criminal can't hide in a crowd if everybody knows everybody else and that's almost the case on Iceland. Certainly the Icelandic police knows every single criminal that's ever been caught on the island by name and sight, probably from memory alone.

So - really cherry-picked choice of nation there.

But none the less, it appears there are enough people for some crime to still exist in Iceland - just very, very little compared to everywhere else.

Now why there is so little crime on Iceland (besides the fact's I've mentioned) is explained in this BBC-article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25201471

Which also contains the intriguing fact that "Right now, police are cracking down on organised crime".
I'm surprised to hear Iceland has any organised crime at all and how many can there possibly be in these "organisations"? Are we talking five criminals sharing a table at the pub or what is this?

Any way - I'm certain that if there is organised crime in Iceland criminals also end up in conflict with each other - they always do.

Now I can't find a source on this since there's not a lot of stuff on Iceland's organised crime online, but maybe an Icelandic reader can shed some light on this?

Do criminals in Iceland get into conflicts with each other or are they - like ThorsomeTarmukas believe - all the best of friends?

Because according to him apparently only immigrant criminals fight amongst themselves.

@Nisse_Hult
If you don't like Iceland, then take Finland or Estonia.
WW war fronts have repeatedly moved over Estonia, there are still plenty of old grenades to be found but the statistics of grenade incidents is not on the level of Sweden, even if the statistics are adjusted to population size.
Or Finland, where most men have had first-hand experience with grenades - still not as many grenade happenings in Finland as in Sweden.

@ThorsomeTarmukas

You're grasping at straws and it's not ever clear what your trying to prove now?
How does this in any way connect to your racist beliefs about Muslims?

Are you saying criminals must be Muslims and only Muslim criminals can use grenades?
Or that only Muslims criminals would want to use grenades?

As I've noted before criminals always fight amongst one another - that's nothing remarkable. They are violent people who use violence to reach their goals and they will use what ever weapons they can get their hands on to do that.
So how those this in any way connect to Islam?

It's not even clear how many of these criminals are Muslim and any who are is most likely not especially religious anyway - few if any criminals are especially religious.
Just like the majority of criminals in Sweden or Estonia who are clearly Christian since that's the major religion in both countries they're not really representative of either that religion or that country - since they are criminals.

And you seem to be confused about the very weapon we're talking about as well, when you cite "old grenades" from "WW war fronts".
Do you really believe criminals in 2017 would carry around old rusted artillery shells they dug up from the ground and throw them at each another? Those weapons are useless now - they might either not explode at all or explode when they handle them themselves and blow them up.

No, "grenades" being used by criminals today are modern hand grenades that probably come from the Balkans or Russia. I'm no expert but it's sure as hell not some old shells from any world wars they've dug up.

And no one needs any experience to handle a hand grenade - it's so simple a child could do it - just pull the pin and throw.

I guess you can't read Swedish, but in this article:

http://www.fokus.se/2012/02/darfor-fortsatter-valdet-i-malmo/

a Swedish journalist that's written a book about the violence in Malmö says this about it:

"In the 1990's criminal motorcycle gangs established themselves here during the recession and high uneployment. The inflow of weapons increased and more criminals were carrying weapons. In the 2000's we then saw the escalation of violence between criminals. Instead of fighting with their fists they started shooting at each other."

A senior police officer adds that:

"Already as far back as in the 1890's Malmö was the most crime ridden city in Sweden. It was a poor harbour town going through a fast industrialisation and a lot of different types of crimes occurred here then. This is a legacy that lives on still to this day".

As I've already said - I'm no expert in crime, but I remember when the criminal motorcycle gangs came to Sweden in the 90's. They spread here from Denmark and got their first foothold in Malmö, which of course is only two hours from Copenhagen - a city of 2 million inhabitants.

They brought with them much more use of violence as that's how they operate. They want people to fear them, so they can collect money from people by just scaring them with their reputation.

Different gangs also went to war over who would control what part of the criminal world in Sweden and they, amongst other weapons, used grenades - which we hadn't seen in Sweden before - against each other.

But this was years before we had the large Muslim immigration we've had since and these criminals where mostly Swedish born.

I don't know exactly how the make up of the criminal community looks today, but it's still really unclear how you hope to blame Muslims for criminals using violence against other criminals?
Even if a criminal happen to be Muslim he's not using violence against another criminal because he's Muslim, but because he's a criminal. Because that's what criminals do.

@Nisse_Hult
You're grasping at straws and it's not ever clear what your trying to prove now?

The first step is to admit that the rise in grenade incidents is tied to the unsustainable immigration into Sweden. The second step would be to clarify the statistics on which groups of people are more connected to the grenade incidents. The same approach can be used towards other types of crimes.

[Just like the majority of criminals in Sweden or Estonia who are clearly Christian since that's the major religion in both countries they're not really representative of either that religion or that country - since they are criminals.]

Well, actually, in Estonia most of the crime is done by orthodox christians.
And the second most frequent religion among criminals is likely to be atheists. Or vice versa.
Lutheran criminals are at 3rd place at best.
So guess what, the orthodox christianity DOES represent the background of the criminals - that non-native to Estonia.

[Do you really believe criminals in 2017 would carry around old rusted artillery shells they dug up from the ground and throw them at each another?]

No, I mentioned that to show that besides the black market of contemporary grenades, one could actually mine grenades in the countryside with metal detectors. Sweden also didn't have any soviet occupation, thus no grenade leftovers from any soviet troops. Despite all of that, Sweden beats Estonia in grenade incidents per capita, and most of the grenade incidents of Estonia are with the world war era items.

[Different gangs also went to war over who would control what part of the criminal world in Sweden and they, amongst other weapons, used grenades - which we hadn't seen in Sweden before - against each other.

But this was years before we had the large Muslim immigration we've had since and these criminals where mostly Swedish born.]

Sweden started to get a lot of muslims since the early 1990s. And Swedish born does not say much about 2nd or 3rd generation immigrant background.

Crimes is the first occupation where immigrants usually assert their dominance over the natives. Similar pattern has happened almost everywhere. It has something to do with strategy propagation, as with the iterative prioner's dilemma games, but you probably do not know what I am talking about. They do not just dominate, their strategy dominates and that dominating strategy will become more frequent. Unless another better strategy can check it.

[Even if a criminal happen to be Muslim he's not using violence against another criminal because he's Muslim, but because he's a criminal.]

Muslims have a bit different strategies. One can learn that from Russia: the chechen and aseri and tatar gangs. It is certainly possible co check it, by being even more brutal.

@ThorsomeTarmukas

"The first step is to admit that the rise in grenade incidents is tied to the unsustainable immigration into Sweden."

Yes, and there on the very first step you failed completely because there is NO such evidence!

I refuse to waste more time talking to an idiot until you prove the beliefs you keep posting.
You can belive anything you like - but that doesn't make it true.
Is that really such a hard consept to grasp?

It's like talking to a child for Christ sake...

@Nisse_Hult
[Yes, and there on the very first step you failed completely because there is NO such evidence!]

Your soviet socialist style deception tactics do not work on people with soviet experience.
The statistics on grenade incidents are available.
If there is no comprehensive grenade (or other crime) statistics on subpopulations, then one would have to read between the lines - something that people with soviet experience are quite good at. So you are not fooling me.

@ThorsomeTarmukas

No of course not - you're obviously super smart.

(I know that's only one line, but I bet your so smart you can read between it too)

@Nisse_Hult
I can :-)
One does not need to be super smart for that. It is part individual smartness and part swarm intelligence.

@ThorsomeTarmukas I was under the impression that the attacks were the doing of lower class swedish...

@Nisse_Hult I seen your comments saying immigration is no issue, so I will only ask this, why is it that holding a gay pride parade was such a big deal when they tried to do it in an immigrant-populated area of Stockholm?

Why are Jews running away from Malmö?

It's easy to say immigration has brought no problems, as a gay man though when I was in Sweden I avoided a lot of areas.

What disgusted me was hearing an immigrant in Stockholm complain of how "gays bring deseases" it's racist if we say it about immigrants, but they can say that about gays...

Written by: an immigrant who once lived in Sweden! <.<

@NordKalaaleqSorcerer

Ok, let's get this straight:

The "they" who "tried" to hold the gay pride parade in an immigrant populated area of Stockholm is a group of members of Sverigedemokraterna (SD) - our far-right neo-fascist party.
Up until a few years ago their official line was firmly against HBQT-rights and the party has a long history of anti-gay hate rhetoric.

They claim they have changed now and just LOVE the gay community, but low level party officials are time and time again caught making homophobic remarks.
The HBQT-community of Sweden don't trust SD one bit on these issues and SD is not invited to the official Gay Pride parade in Stockholm as it's felt they're only now trying to present themselves as gay-friendly to attack Muslim immigrants - after having spent years attacking the HBQT-community.

Also - one of the reasons people are being afforded asylum in Sweden is based on them being discriminated against because of their sexuality in their home countries so quite a few people in the HBQT-community in Sweden are actually also immigrants and some of them Muslim. Which is another reason the HBQT-community in Sweden don't like SD one bit. SD may now officially say they don't dislike their members because they're gay - they just dislike their members who are immigrant because they're immigrants.
Understandably the HBQT-community doesn't think that makes SD any better.

Like the HBQT-community as a whole, the large Gay Pride parade in Stockholm has never been bothered by any Muslims immigrants but they have on many occasions throughout the years been so by far-right activist trying to attack them or incite violence.

Disappointed by this lack of interest amongst Muslim immigrants to play the role SD want to cast them in, and to portray themselves as the champions of gay right, some SD members decided to organise a separate "Gay Pride" parade, and hold it in an actual immigrant suburb in the hopes of creating conflict.

You say "tried" but in fact that parade has been going on for some years now. A few sad SD members do their best to act as "gay" as they can (what they think is gay anyway), waiving dildos in the air and such in the hopes of being provocative enough to attract any attention but the locals just ignore them.

The only "big deal" about it has been that there where almost more reporters then people joining the protest the first year and last year they invited far-right icon Milo Yiannopoulos to the event.
In the end he never showed up - citing security concerns - but the event has never lead to any conflict at all, so that's clearly bullshit.
More likely he didn't think it was worth his time to travel to Sweden for a "parade" with just a few dozen people.

Since then of course Milo Yiannopoulos has been exposed as a proponent for phedophilia, so I guess he won't be welcomed back this year. If they keep having them - they're clearly not getting the violent reaction they hoped for.

So that's the truth about that.

Can't really give you any sources on this in English since the event is such a small deal, but here's a statement in Swedish from the official HBQT-movement and Gay Pride parade on why they don't in any way want to be associated with SD:s alternative one, citing many of the things I've mentioned above:

http://www.stockholmpride.org/uttalande-fran-rfsl-och-stockholm-pride-angaende-initiativet-pride-jarva/

The thing you claim to have heard from an immigrant is of course wrong and no one in condoning that. The claim by you that "they can say that about gay's" is however completely untrue - Swedish law applies to anyone in Sweden of course.
Immigrants are not in any way allowed to engage in homophobic hate speech any more then people born in Sweden are - if they do they break the law like everyone else they will be prosecuted for it.
Too bad there wasn't a policeman around to hear the person saying what he did to you - that's all.

What areas you as a gay man chose to avoid or not in Sweden I can't really say much about. Your fear of being subjected to abuse isn't really relevant as studies show a lot of peoples fears are not really motivated by actual threats.

Old people are for instance the most likely to feel fear in their neighbourhoods - but their not at all likely to actually be subjected to crimes in their neighbourhoods.

The organisations that represent the HBQT-community in Sweden are more concerned by SD and other far-right groups then they are by immigrants, since that's actually where they see the largest threats to their members come from.

Of course there are individual immigrants that are homophobes just like there are Swedes who are - but the HBQT-community don't at all feel threatened by immigrants as a group, no matter who much SD is screaming they really, really should.

Lastly - about Jews running away from Malmö.

They're actually not.

Some may have moved out and there is a lot of far-right claims about how all Jews in Malmö lives in constant fear, but the fact of the matter is that it's of course not that bad - then all Jews would actually move.

Now again, this is not something that is in any way tolerated by any party in Sweden or Swedish law. Anti-semitic hate speech is just as illegal as homophobic hate speech and anyone regardless of background engaging in it will be prosecuted in accordance with the law if the authorities catch them.

Again, SD is trying to play the role of champion for the Jewish community, but again they're having some obvious problems with that.

Because SD was started by neo-Nazis in the 80's and they spent as much time hating Jews as they did hating gay's for the first decade and more of it's existence.

Like with gays the party now claim to LOVE the Jewish community, but like with homophobia low level party official keep getting caught spreading anti-semitic sentiment.
In the case of antiseminitsm it's actually worse, since the ones spreading those sentiments aren't just low level party officials but several of their members of parliament.

For instance one said you can't be a Jew and Swede at the same time - you have to chose your allegiance - and another was caught on video laughing his ass off drunkedly reciting a"joke" some previous neo-Nazi work mates of his made in a slaughterhouse where they kicked the dead carcasses of sheep and called them "Jews" while doing the Nazi-salute. None of these persons have been kicked out by the party for these comments.

So yet again, the Jewish community in Sweden wants nothing to do with SD and don't trust them one bit.

So in conclusion:

Are there immigrants that harbour homophobic and/or anti-semitic sentiments? - No doubt - just like there are Swedish born people who do. A lot of those seem to end up in the SD party, funny enough.
Are they allowed to spread those? - No, of course not, it's just as illegal if they engage in hate speech as if a person born in Sweden does it.
Is the SD-party a champion for the HBQT- and Jewish communities? - Not according to those communities that don't want anything to do with SD, who historically has spread hate against them both just as they're now spreading hate against Muslim immigrants.

@Nisse_Hult your ignorance amazes me, there was a counter gay parade for your information in that area and one of the marchers was attacked by muslim youth.

My boyfriend's parents are muslim, I want him to one day be able to come out to them.

I don't support SD btw, I aupport Moderaterna and Liberalerna, NOT KD THOUGH-I believe in strict seperation of church and atate so can't support a religious-affiliated party.

Oh and as for migrants escaping homophobia, a gay Swedish man was killed by a Moreocan refugee and a gay refugee had to flee his shelter in Sweden after other refugees attacked him.

Many anti-gay attacks done BY REFUGEES against gay redugees have been recorded across Europe, the attacking tefugees keep their benefits and stay while their victims are punished with isolation, relocation and sometimes loss of support.

They come from cultures where people like me are spat on and yet you are stupid enough to believe they arrive here and change by magic

@NordKalaaleqSorcerer

1). Provide sources for your claim about a "counter gay parade" "in that area" where "one of the marchers was attacked by Muslim youth"s

If this ever happened it should be easy to prove with a link to a reputable news source.

2). The HBQT-community in Sweden don't share your fears about Muslims at all. You may feel any way you like, but I think they know the situation in Sweden better then you and have the safety of their own community at heart.
Or are you saying the Swedish HBQT-community don't know what's best for them but you do?

@Nisse_Hult no they don't. They have become idle ultra caputalist sell-outs who decided to ignore the struggle.

LGBT white non-migrants din't often luve in those areas where homophobia is atring, so the average gay Swede doesn't give a f*ck about gays livung in rinkeby, angered and risengård.

Btw check the news, a group of gay activists held their own "anti-fascist parade" in the area at the same time as SD's, one of the marchers was attacked by a muslim.

But ey, let's also forfet the other examples I gave you of bad "redugees"

@NordKalaaleqSorcerer

1). I notice you can't provide a source for your claim so we can obviously disregard any mention of that claim then.
Since it's always the responsibility of the one making a claim to PROVE that claim.

2). A conspiracy theory about how Swedens HBQT-community "dosen't give a f*ck about" it's own members - again without any proof what so ever - is not a credible argument.

The HBQT-community, just as the Jewish community, have faced years of persecution and they know full well they need to respond to any threaths to their community becuase a threath to one of their members is a threath to all of them.

What you're claiming is simply not credible - they would have noting to gain and everything to loose by not reacting to every threat their communities face.

And once again - you still can't PROVE any of this anyway - it's just stuff you belive and your beliefs prove nothing.

@Nisse_Hult study in the UK showed only 15% of British muslims think homosexuality should be legal, only 35% of French muslims find homosexuality acceptable, most muslims in the USA held also the same views, only 32% of young Canadian muslims thought they could accept a gay muslim.

Yet somehow you want me to believe Swedish muslims are somehow different.

As for the proof you demand I am still looking through my Facebook as I had posted that link long ago, it's just not that easy to look something so old.

As for the LGBT community in Sweden not giving a crap, it's 100% true!
I grew up in poverty and social housing, these human rights movements never cared about the low income classes, they don't reach out to us, they ignore us.

Excessive political correctness and them not giving a flying f*ck about people who are not born into privilege leads them double ignore young gay muslims who grow up in those places.

It's easy for you to dismiss these things since you're not gay and don't have to live in those areas.
But I care for all my gay brothers and sisters and don't turn a blind eye just so idiots like you can feel happy about themselves.

Oh and btw, if Jews are not scared of Malmö tell me why they are leaving, the Jewish population in Malmö has shrunk 5% every year, a Holocaust survivor said in an interview that she does not feel safe in Malmö, people stoped inviting her to schools after muslims students would yell that she's a lier and they'd walk out of class.

But I guess me and my connections to gay muslims or a holocaust survivor are wrong, Sweden is perfectly fine and nothing changed for the worst due to islam at all

@NordKalaaleqSorcerer

"study in the UK showed only 15% of British muslims think homosexuality should be legal, only 35% of French muslims find homosexuality acceptable, most muslims in the USA held also the same views, only 32% of young Canadian muslims thought they could accept a gay muslim.

Yet somehow you want me to believe Swedish muslims are somehow different."

Even though I haven't seen any study done on this in Sweden, if you did one it might well show a lot of Muslims harbour prejudices against people in the HBQT-community.
So what? A lot of people born in Sweden has these sentiments too unfortunetly.
But people are allowed to think what ever they want - that's not illegal.

The only things that's illegal is if they act on these opinions in an illegal way.
Engaging in hate speech, discriminating or in any way attack others. If they do that they break the law and have to face the consequences. As long as they don't they get to keep their prejudiced beliefs for themselves - just as you do, with your prejudiced beliefs against Muslims.

"I grew up in poverty and social housing, these human rights movements never cared about the low income classes, they don't reach out to us, they ignore us."

Your experience growing up in another country isn't really proof of how you believe the Swedish HBQT-community doesn't give a shit about all it's members - now is it?

"It's easy for you to dismiss these things since you're not gay and don't have to live in those areas."

You know nothing about me - I might be gayer then Judy Garland for all you know, so don't pretend you do.
And you have no idea of where I live either, so don't pretend you do.

In fact, the truth is - since you brought it up - that I actually lived in one of those so called "no-go zones" for 15 years up until 2 years ago and absolutely nothing the far-right claim about those places is even remotely true.
Swedes are not being harassed there for being Swedes, there is no sharia law being enforced and what ever else you've heard - it's just all complete bullshit.

There was a flamboyant older Swedish man living in that area by the way. I don't know if he was gay or maybe trans or a crossdresser, but he used to dress up in rather feminine clothing and he walked around openly in that, so he was obviously not too bothered about the area.
I never saw or heard anyone making a fuss over that but I know people looked - as they do when they see something that's unusual.

I also know another man living in that area that I know is gay and he's never mentioned being fearful there. And he's lived there for longer then I did.

Regarding Jews leaving Malmö I've already answered that before.
Then you wrote they where "running away" and that's not true at all.
Now you write they're "leaving" and that is true that some are - but not for the reason you think.
Your figure of 5% needs to be backed up with a source as well - just so you know.

Meanwhile, here's an article where the leader of the Jewish community in Malmö says the things the far-right are claiming about Jews in Malmö is grossly exaggerated:

http://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/skane/judiska-forsamlingen-grova-overdrifter

According to him Jews move in and out of his community in Malmö regularly just like everywhere else and for reasons like everyone else - to go to school, because they found job elsewhere and so on.
The threat of antisemitism is always part of those considerations for every Jew, since antisemitic sentiments is something you find everywhere as a Jew.
But the far-rights claim that Jews have to flee Malmö as refugees from antisemitism is a gross exaggeration, according to him.

"But I guess me and my connections to gay muslims or a holocaust survivor are wrong, Sweden is perfectly fine and nothing changed for the worst due to islam at all"

Yes, your "connections to gay Muslims" (what ever that even means?) doesn't mean shit - that's correct.
And an individual Jewish holocaust survivor being interviewed and expressing her personal feelings don't say more about the situation of the Jewish community in Malmö then it's leaders written statement - no.

Because what ever you may personally believe both the HBQT- and the Jewish community in Sweden refuses to play along with your rampant Islamophobia
None of those communities wants to targets Muslims as a group, because they don't feel Muslims as a group are a threat to them.
Individual Muslims may be and if so they of course want the police to handle those incidents like any others, but they don't feel that all Muslims or the Muslim community at large is a threat to them, no.

You've already claimed the HBQT-community doesn't give a shit about it's own members - will you now tell me the Jewish community's leader also doesn't give a shit about it's members?

Is everyone in the world who doesn't fear Muslims as much as you lying? Are you the only one who gets to speak for every member of the HBQT- and Jewish community now?

No, I've never said Sweden was perfect - we have problem just as any other society. But the problems we do have doesn't come especially from the Muslims amongst us. If individual Muslims do illegal things we handle that in accordance with Swedish law, just like for everyone else. But claiming that all or most or whatever argument you want to make about Muslims are somehow jointly responsible for problems in our society is simply nonsense.
People are individuals and a democratic society treats them as such - it doesn't lump them together and pretend they're all the same just because they happen to share some arbitrarily chosen characteristic.

@Nisse_Hult oh so it's ok to be homophobuc and not have that challenged? Thoughts are ok hu? Too bad thise thoughrs lead oarents to reject and attack their children.

If honophobia is ok to you tell me why criticism of islan is not.

Having to see aomeone make homophobia acctotabke is one of the most disgusting things I've had to see in a ling time

@NordKalaaleqSorcerer

I'm not sure if you wrote this while drunk or what happened, but I can hardly make out what you've written?

The first bit I do think I can make out and yes, it's OK to think anything - there are no "thought crimes" in Sweden - and nowhere else in the world as far as I know.
That concept is from the book "1984" by George Orwell that describes a dystopian society where the state controls it's citizens completely and has criminalized even certain thought.

That is not something any sane person would like to see in a society.

Thoughts don't actually "lead" to anything - every one of us have thought things that we didn't actually do.
So thought's or opinions are fine - it's only if people actually express these opinions in a way that impact negatively on others it can be a crime.

And as I've also said before - engaging in homophobic hate speech is just as illegal as it is to engage in Islamophobic hate speech. Both these things are covered by the exact same law in Sweden.

So you can think what you want and you can express your opinion to a point - but if you cross the line from expressing your opinion to what is considered hate speech, then you brake the law.

For instance you get to say you don't like Muslims and a Muslim gets to say he doesn't like gays. But neither of you gets to say the other should be harmed for being Muslim or gay - that would be hate speech.

But this sentence I can't make out:

"Having to see aomeone make homophobia acctotabke is one of the most disgusting things I've had to see in a ling time "

I simply don't understand what you've written there so you'll have to try again.

@Nisse_Hult *having to see someone make homophobia acceptable. Had typos.

I see you are just one more elitist scumbag who lives in privilege, no wonder you don't care abiut gays attacjed by refugees or gay people growing in unwelcimung muslim families, you just sin't give a sh*t about anyone but yourself

@NordKalaaleqSorcerer

I'm not making homophobia acceptable - I'm merely pointing out that it's not criminal to think things in Sweden.

Since homophobia and Islamophobia is covered by the exact same law, if it was criminal to think homophobic thoughts you would be a criminal too for thinking Islamophobic thoughts.
And even though I find homophobia just as repugnant as your Islamophobia I don't think a free society should criminalise thoughts.
If people want to cling to prejudices they can - just as long as they keep those thoughts to themselves and don't bother decent people.

And no, I'm simply listening to what the HBQT- and Jewish communities themselves are saying. They don't have a problem with the entire Muslim community in Sweden unlike you so I'm not gonna take your word over theirs, no.

@Nisse_Hult for your info I don't have an issue with the WHOLE muslim community but I do have an issue with how homophobia is NOT challenged in this community.

It's not a crime to think or say certain things, but those things should never go unchallenged!

@NordKalaaleqSorcerer

But they aren't going unchallenged in Sweden - I've already explained that to you.

The same law that forbids hate speech against homosexuals forbids it against Jews or immigrant and a lot of other things.

And when homophobia does not rise to the level of actual hate speech, but is merely a prejudice it's challenged by the overwhelming majority of all Swedes - wherever it comes from.

But what you're pretending is that dangerous homophobia is more prevalent in the Muslim community at large and that that makes the Muslim community at large a danger to the HBQT community. But as I've stated the HBQT community don't believe that's the case themselves.

Your entitled to your opinion, but pretending that homophobic hate speech from Muslims is somehow accepted in Sweden like you first claimed is simply wrong.
And claiming that homophobic sentiments aren't challenged in the Swedish society, when it's coming from Muslims, is also wrong.

The far-right are trying to say these things to portray themselves as the defenders of the HBQT community (after having persecuted them for years themselves) - but no one but the far-right is buying any of that in Sweden. Because we know it's not true! OK?

@Nisse_Hult oh please, your attempt at saying it is challenged is such bullsh*t!

If it is challenged why was a muslim youth group in Malmö allowed to invite a preacher that calls for the death penalty for gay people? A message also found in some mosque websites in Sweden!

Oh and let's not forget when a certain mosque was found full of antisemitic tapes calling jews filth and apes, somehow it was decided this was not hate speech and no convictions are needed!

@NordKalaaleqSorcerer

Because of this sites confusing structure I have no way of knowing which comment you actually replied to and what I said in it.
Your should link to the specific comment by writing ~ before the number of the specific comment or I'll never be able to find it. As in for example ~9621530

Generally speaking though you have made unsubstantiated claims before so I would advice anyone against believing anything you just claimed here before you can corroborate your claims with credible sources.
And please note that far-right hate sites aren't credible source when it comes to these issues.

@Nisse_Hult sorry to let you down, I don't use far-right loser websites, I just use experience and common statistics

@Nisse_Hult https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTVtYvVwUXg

Yeah.. Tell me how gays are safe in muslim Sweden neighbourhoods <.<

@Nisse_Hult

I'm right wing, and I don't like Trump at all.
Of course, it's just as amusing reading the "alternative facts" of left-wingers, such as "immigration has succeeded flawlessly in Sweden" and "there are no terrorists in Europe: the events in London, Madrid, Paris, Nice, Berlin, Würzburg, Brussels, and Copenhagen were just individual incidents".

@DarkMage7280

Actually, no one has ever said those things - before you did it here, now.

At least not anyone you'd call a "left-winger".

That kind of black-and-white thinking only exist on the right wing where "alternative facts" comes from.

The left wing uses actual facts - that's why the right had to invent the "alternative".

@Nisse_Hult what do they call alternative facts that are correct

facts

Yeah, because immigration in Sweden is so unproblematic. It's not like we [all major Norwegian political parties] use Sweden as an example of how to not do immigration in the parliament. Because it's not like Sweden has no-go zone or what?

@Rudde

Just because all Norwegian parties have adapted to your far-right Fremskrittspartiets anti-Muslim scaremongering rhetoric doesn't make that rhetoric any more correct.
No, Sweden doesn't have "no-go zones". I lived in one of those claimed "no-go zones" for 15 years up until 2 years ago and no one ever bothered me there. It's complete nonsense.

@Nisse_Hult No, all Norwegian political parties. Not Fremskrittspartiet. And how is Fremskirtsspartiet far-right and anti-Muslim? They have literally never taken a stand on mulims at all.

Liberal Australians reporters don't seem to be very welcomed to Sweden.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCsEqKjP9p0

@Rudde

Can you read? Because I clearly wrote that "all Norwegian parties have adapted to your far-right Fremskrittspartiets anti-Muslim scaremongering rhetoric".

Breivik was an enthusiastic member of Fremskrittspartiet until he thought they became too soft on Muslims. Then he started supporting our Swedish Sverigedemokraterna instead and murdered 77 people - most of them kids - who he somehow held responsible for the "islamification" of Norway and Europe.

Maybe you too think Fremskrittspartiet is too soft on Muslims since you don't believe they are anti-Muslim but you only have to google "Fremskrittspartiet Muslimer" and the hits keep coming. Here are just a few examples:

http://www.aftenposten.no/norge/Frp-topp-Jeg-hater-muslimer-147125b.html
http://www.utrop.no/Nyheter/Innenriks/27584
http://www.friatider.se/fremskrittspartiet-radikal-islamism-ar-en-cancersvulst-som-maste-skaras-bort

That last link is to a Swedish far-right hate site who approvingly quotes Frp:s spokesperson on immigration issues.

Regarding that link you posted - they brought at camera crew to an immigrant suburb clearly intent on doing a smear-piece about immigrants. Some young men got pissed and reacted like idiots while all other immigrants around these few young men either ignored the incident or tried to stop the young men.
There is absolutely NOTHING in that video to prove the claim that there are no-go zones in Sweden. As I said - I've lived in one of those for 15 years and never even once seen, heard or been subjected to anything like that.
Turns out if you don't shove a camera in peoples faces, clearly there to do a smear-piece about how all they are all shit, people are less offended by you and leave you alone.

@Nisse_Hult What I ment to say was No, all Norwegian political parties do not hold far-right ideologies. Fremskrittspartiet is the furthest right you will find at our parlament and they have major counter prats that is also not extreme. Fremskrittspartiet do not hold any strong radical political points and align well with society today. We do however have one representative from a far-left party on our parlament. And it's split pretty much 50/50 general left and general right.

First of I'm not anti-muslim, I could not give less of a fuck. I've never said it here or expressed anything remotely pointing in that direction, but yet you assume to know what I think. I base myself of facts and actions something you apparently can't.

I was an exchange student back in 2010 where I lived for a year with a muslim family. So tell me again how much anti-muslim I am?

Yes some people who hate muslims associate with Fremskrittspartiet. The leader of BLM said to literally kill all white people. 40% of muslims literally. The leader of far-left communist party said he wanted to see capitalists who didn't hand over their land to the government hung by light poles. Also while we're at it 90%+ of muslims worldwide see homosexuality as morally wrong.

And regarding the clip, they were in a walking market and conducted reporting, they didn't film them directly or even in the background until they attacked them. If you are provoked by someone being a public place with a camera there is a problem whether you like it or not.

Oh look at this Norwegian news clip, seems like a fine an balanced country.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RocMz241uFU
(For others who want to watch it's with subs if you click the CC icon on YouTube)

@Nisse_Hult The speed at which you buzzworded is impressive.

Please, the violence is real, and the correlation is real, no need to apply partidarism to that. Anedoctal evidences aren't useful.

@Synapse

No one is claiming that there aren't incidents of violence in Sweden like everywhere else in the world.
But there clearly aren't any "no-go zones" as the far-right keep claiming - that's just completely made up bullshit.

What correlation? Between violence and immigration?
No, that's actually made up as well.
The correlation is between poverty and violence and immigrants tends to be poorer and live clustered in poorer areas where there are more crime and violence being committed.
But white Swedes living in those same areas are just a likely to commit violence or crime as their immigrant neighbours.
It's not a question about ethnicity but of social class.
Any criminologist will tell you this. You know - people who are actually experts in studying crime and dealing with facts as opposed to the far-righters who's only goal is to spread racism against immigrants,

Anecdotal evidence is one incident of something - not 15 consecutive years of experience of living in an area claimed to be one of these "no-go zones" and not experiencing any problems at all.
And I'm not alone - there are many tens of thousands of people just like me that live or have up until recently lived in these so called "no-go zones" that don't recognize the way the areas are being described by people who almost never have lived in those same areas themselves.

Are you even from Sweden?
Have you any experience what so ever of Sweden?
Have you even visited once? Or is you beliefs just based on what far-right propagandist say about Sweden online?

@Nisse_Hult
[It's not a question about ethnicity but of social class.]
You can't separate the two in the statistical sense, in terms of distributions. Those are like the sock and the boot. Even finns and fennoswedes in Finland have it combined. If the relationship were to break down, it would mean that separate ethnicities would not exist any more and a new combined ethnicity has emerged.

@ThorsomeTarmukas What is this I see described, if not old outdated race biology? The ideology that pretended to be science. What the nazis used to legitimize their agenda.
Dusting off the old brown coats, are we?

@Bloodblender
The old eigenvectors.
It is called science.

@ThorsomeTarmukas Race biology never was science, it just pretended to be such, by measuring skulls and giving voice to prejudice. I should know, I had history studies concerning the influence of this delusion in the building next to where it was invented.

"Actually, it is cultural marxism, until communism arrives (if ever)"
Cultural marxism? How on earth did you confuse thiese two subjects?

@Bloodblender
[Race biology never was science, it just pretended to be such...]
You are confusing discrete math with other types of math, like fuzzy math.

That race is not discrete does not mean that it does not exist. Races do exist.
But each race is a mix of older races, which are a mix of older races. Nevertheless, there are properties of races that do persist (and I do not consider skull measurements here).
If you can't graps that then you really haven't grasped how biology works at the scale of populations and individuals.

[I had history studies concerning the influence of this delusion in the building next to where it was invented.]
Svante Pääbo can explain it to you how races can be modeled from genetical components (such as WHG + ANE + EEF, etc.)

But my prior comment also touched cultural properties, besides biological properties.
Regardless of the type of properties, a distinct pubpopulation can be characterised by a distinct subset of properties. If there is no such distinct subset of properties, then that subpopulation is not a distinct subpopulation.

Political correctness is in the business of denying some such distinctiveness. Which leads us to cultural marxism.

@ThorsomeTarmukas
What you do not seem to grasp is that 'race' and 'biology' does not make 'race biology'. Race biology came to be when a few people in Uppsala during the 1800:s decided to "prove" that other human "races" were less intelligent. They measured the skulls of the sami people in the north and called this proof.
In fact, there is only one human race alive today. We are simply too geneticaly similar to be distingushed as diffrent races. Once there were others, such as the neanderthals, but today only Homo Sapiens remains.

"Regardless of the type of properties, a distinct pubpopulation can be characterised by a distinct subset of properties. If there is no such distinct subset of properties, then that subpopulation is not a distinct subpopulation."
Classic essentialist theory. The belief that culture and/or genology attriputes certain types to the individual. Modern scientists have replaced this theory with instrumental theory, as it works better.

@Bloodblender
[In fact, there is only one human race alive today. We are simply too geneticaly similar to be distingushed as diffrent races.]
In fact, that is debatable.

[Once there were others, such as the neanderthals, but today only Homo Sapiens remains.]
The share of neanderthal genes among different human subpopulations differ significantly, thus the differences have not vanished anywhere.

[Classic essentialist theory. The belief that culture and/or genology attriputes certain types to the individual. Modern scientists have replaced this theory with instrumental theory, as it works better. ]

Works better how?
If there is a difference between subpopulations, then such differences (and thus subpopulations) can be modeled. I never stated any specific types of models, I left that wide open.

@ThorsomeTarmukas
1. No, the fact that there is only one human race is not debatable. The science is clear.

2. The neanderthal genes is such an insignificant amount (4% at highest) that it dosent matter. You are splitting hairs here.

3. I could spend the whole day trying to explain the history and various aspects of the issue. Instead, I will refer to this: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3813161?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

@Bloodblender
I really can't find the historical posts (that is PITA) and I don't remember what exactly was written, so it is very difficult for me to give a meaningful response.
But thanks anyway.

Just one note, if different species can produce offspring who can produce offspring (as did early humans and neanderthals), then they are not fully different species yet. Coywolves are hybrids of coyotes and wolves, thus coyotes and wolves have not differentiated into different species yet. They are subspecies or races. For great apes and hominids, such a final differentiation took about 3-4 million years.

@Bloodblender
[What is this I see described, if not old outdated race biology?]

Actually, it is cultural marxism, until communism arrives (if ever) ;-)

@Bloodblender

Yes, ThorsomeTarmuks is a classical racist that think's everythings in the blood - or maybe he's modern enough to think it's in the genes.
I don't know and I don't care - he's still a racist.

@Rudde Norweigans using Sweden as a political strawman have nothing to do with reality and a simple fact check proves that.

@Rogers I don't base my impression of Sweden on political sayings, I'm just pointing out it's not a controversial stand to acknowledge the problems Sweden has and to ignore they exist is straight up dishonest.

It's not like Sweden is some kind of far away land for me. My step-father worked at a firm in Stockholm my entire childhood, we lived 40 min from the border and was in Sweden twice a month. Had multipler vacations there and still live 2 hours from the border.

And are you saying video evidence is trumped by your word? Because it is you you are avoiding doing a simple fact check in this care my friend.

@Rogers It's not a strawman when it's an actual concrete example.

@Rudde http://www.government.se/articles/2017/02/facts-about-migration-and-crime-in-sweden/

@PlayerTwo Weird how the Swedish government refuse to publish crime statistics based on background ethnicity anymore, if everything is fine, it's so extremely easy to prove, yet they don't even tho all other bordering countries publish this dataset. So weird.

@Rudde
~9609113

Classic conspiracy theory.
You can't prove your beliefs so you claim there is a huge conspiracy to cover up the evidence you don't have.

In fact the real reason Swedish police and press don't report on criminals ethnicity is that it's not RELEVANT.
Just like a criminals sexual, political or religious preferences their ethnicity usually isn't relevant to the crime at all and is therefore not reported on.
In the few cases it actually is relevant they do report it - but mostly it isn't so they don't.

But to racists the ethnicity of criminals is of course THE ONLY THING that's EVER really relevant.
Because to them a crime committed by a white skinned person is completely unimportant as it doesn't help their propaganda. The single individual that committed that crime was just a reprehensible individual and his actions says nothing about the larger community of white skinned people, of course.

But if the criminal is dark skinned that's absolute PROOF that every single dark skinned person is a potential violent criminal and we must all ask the tough questions about what this says about ALL dark skinned people.
Clearly seeing one dark skinned person committing a crime and not being willing to accept that this incident PROVES how dangerous and criminal all other dark skinned people are is just refusing to accept fact - in the mind of the far-right.

This propaganda from the far-right is why Swedish police and press don't bring up criminals ethnicity unless it's actually important - and it usually isn't.
They don't want to fan the flames of hate preachers trying to paint all dark skinned people as latent criminals.

@Nisse_Hult It is relevant, aren't we just discussing it? Of course it's relevant. Then why to they keep track of male/female perpetrators? How is that any more relevant? That's really sexist of you, you know.

It is very relevant, and didn't some police district in Sweden ask people not to describe perpetrators by their ethnicity? How isn't the ethnicity relevant to catch a perpetrator?

No, the fact that a crime is committed by a dark skinned person doesn't mean everyone is a potential criminal. Just like a man committing a crime doesn't mean every man is a potential criminal, or a female doesn't mean every human. It simply means a dark skinned person committed a crime.

However, you can map out where dark skinned, whites and others live, in what environments, what schools they attend and so on. And if you report ethnicity you know easier where to focus your energy, you can detect where things have gone wrong, try to adjust or correct them. If group A commit 1 crime for every 100 000 group member, and group B commit 1000 crimes for every 100 000 group members. Where is to most beneficial for society as a whole to focus your energy to lower the crime rate?

@Rudde

The fact that I'm disputing your nonsense doesn't make your nonsense relevant.
That's like claiming that any conspiracy theory is relevant whenever someone disputes the theory, which is obviously nonsense.
"Ha, ha - you said the moon landings DID happen - that proves my theory they didn't is now much more relevant!"

Biological gender is a difference that's actually statistically relevant since there are prove scientifically differences between males and females. Now you might believe there are scientifically proven differences between different ethnicities as well - but that's actually just racism and not based in actual science.

"How isn't the ethnicity relevant to catch a perpetrator? "

It can sometimes be relevant in CATCHING the perpetrator of a crime, yes - and as I said, if so it is reported.
But in the vast majority of cases this is not the case as police only need to state a suspects ethnicity in the few cases where they actively seek the publics help in catching someone - and in the vast majority of all criminal cases the police of course DON'T want to involve the public, but handles the matter themselves.

Instead racists demands are that statistics over committed crimes should include the ethnicity of convicted criminals. This has absolutely nothing to do with catching anyone as putting out statistics of convicted criminals have nothing to do with them being caught many months before the statistics are put out. Instead the only reason they are demanding that is that they want to cherry-pick crimes committed by immigrant to smear the entire collective of immigrants.

"And if you report ethnicity you know easier where to focus your energy, you can detect where things have gone wrong, try to adjust or correct them."
"Where is to most beneficial for society as a whole to focus your energy to lower the crime rate?"

Ok then, by that rational the vast majority of all policing effort should go towards policing:

A) Men, as males overwhelmingly commit all crimes in every society in the world
B) Ethnic Swedes, as they commit the overwhelming majority of all crimes in Sweden of course

We know these two facts to be true already - even without any statistics on the ethnicity of criminals - so if you actually meant what you claimed there is no need for any such statistics.

But since your ACTUAL intent here is not actually to decrease crime, but to attack immigrants, you won't accept these basic facts of course.

Criminologist - who are the experts actually working on these issues - have long said that crime DOES NOT follow ethnic lines - it follows class lines. Poorer people commit more petty crimes and more violent types of crime while richer people commit less violent crime but the majority of what's called "white collar crime" like insider trading or tax evasion.
None of this is new or controversial - we've know this for decades.
It's just that nowadays we have virulently racist right-wing groups that spread this propaganda about immigrants committing crime linking it to their ethnicity, and unfortunately young men like you believe this shit.

But it's not true - we already know that through scientific research. That you haven't studied criminology or read enough to understand that doesn't change that fact. And me telling you your prejudices are wrong doesn't make them any more relevant, just because I talk about them.

Now you can either believe what I say, read up on this matter and see for yourself that what I'm telling you is the truth - or you can refuse to do either and just stick to the prejudice you have that you have no proof for what so ever.

@Nisse_Hult There are biological difference between the ethnicitys. There are difference in [average] intelligence between the different ethnicitys. According to you forensic anthropologists shouldn't be scientifically possible, yet it is.

Police does mainly focus on males. They do suspect men more often without knowing anything about the perpetrator.

They do focus most of their energy on Swedish men... Because there are WAY, WAY more of them.

Yet, if you're a place where there are 50% Swedish men, and 50% non-western immigrants, the probability in Sweden that a perpetrator is from the 50% non-western immigrant pool, is WAY, WAY higher then them being from the 50% Swedish pool, that's why they should be profiled, because it helps solve crime, it is efficient, faster, and save tax-payers money. How do you know understand this extremely simple statistics exercise?

@Rudde


"There are difference in [average] intelligence between the different ethnicities."

Complete nonsense of course. But you made the claim so it's your responsibility to prove it - not mine to disprove it.

"According to you forensic anthropologists shouldn't be scientifically possible, yet it is."

Forensic anthropology is the study of bone and tissue of deceased persons - it has nothing to do with a person or groups of persons propensity to commit crimes at all of course. We where talking about your claim that ethnicity correlates to a persons propensity to commit crime and there is absolutely no scientific evidence to prove that.
That's old racist theories your spouting there - modern science doesn't support any connection between ethnicity and propensity for crime or violence or anything else once claimed by racist theory.
So again - if you want to back your claim up, you've got to prove it with reputable sources.

"Yet, if you're a place where there are 50% Swedish men, and 50% non-western immigrants, the probability in Sweden that a perpetrator is from the 50% non-western immigrant pool, is WAY, WAY higher then them being from the 50% Swedish pool, that's why they should be profiled, because it helps solve crime, it is efficient, faster, and save tax-payers money. How do you know understand this extremely simple statistics exercise?"

Also complete nonsense as I told you.
Crime differ among social classes as I said - poor people are obviously not committing insider trading at the same rates as rich people, because poor people are seldom trading on the stock market, for instance.
On the other hand we do know that poor people commit more of and other types of crime, so it differs between social class.

And you probably actually realize this as well, if you just stopped to think for a moment.
If the groups of Swedes in your example are poor with a low education level and the immigrants are rich and highly educated - do you think the likelihood of the immigrants committing a random crime would still be "WAY, WAY higher"? No, I don't actually think you would - now would you?
Because I think you actually do realize there is a difference in criminality within our own societies as well (both Sweden and Norway) and that there actually is social differences between which groups in society commit more of and which types of crime.

So blankedly stating like you do that only based on ethnicity the likelihood of two groups of men committing a certain crime is "WAY, WAY higher" in the "non-western immigrant pool" is complete and utter nonsense. It's simply not true AT ALL!
But as before - since you made the claim it's your responsibility to prove it with reputable sources.

Someone please help me, I'm one of the few here that like pineapple on pizza and haven't been captured yet. Send help!

@Supsy Where do we send the pineapple-laden pizza?

@tofei The fires of Mount Doom

@Supsy

Tell me - do you meet with the others who share your sick taste and enjoy your forbidden fruit pizzas together in a depraved cult or do you eat them secretly late at night, alone in the dark, for fear of being found out?

And is this the biggest news on Iceland - that the whole world suddenly noticed you becuase your president don't like pinapple pizza?

At least everyone who read that story thought it was kind of cute - unlike my country beeing spoken about by the clueless Trumpster which was just confusing and sad.

I bet a lot of Americans wished they could switch president with you guys... ;-)

@Nisse_Hult I think he's on to us, people. Prepare the black hood and ropes, and open the trunk of the car!

As for Trump, he only eats pineapple on pizza if you sprinkle it with gold flakes.

@uktana

You're one of the cultist too?!

Yes I hear he's fond of everything golden - flakes, drapes, showers...

@Nisse_Hult Cult? What cult? We're just here to spread the good news of pineapple pizza to the unenlightened masses. We just have to keep our work secret, because, well, you see what kind of persecution we face.

Yes, I hear Trump carries around a shaker full of gold flakes, and he puts it on his KFC and Big Macs. As for the showers - well, there's a steady stream of reports about that sort of thing, due to leaks that he seems determined to plug up. But there are still all these wee, wee little reports that journalists are still flushing out, and that's all I know. I try to keep up with the news, but I'm not exactly a wiz at it.

@uktana Nothing blocks your flow of puns.

@Rogers Yes, once I put my mind to it, they just gush out.

@uktana After a while the puns just dribble out, right pun pals? Just call me Rapunzel.

@uktana True. Don't forget the chloroform!

@Nisse_Hult to be fair, as a swede i want their president aswell. seems to be a good choice.

@Supsy Finally! I FOUND YOU!!!

@Supsy HAHAHAHA YOU'RE FOUND NOW!! Sneaky of you to hide i the comments !!

@Supsy
Mér finnst pítsa ekki góð yfir höfuð ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Calling sverigedemokraterna "neo fascist" is laughable and tells a lot about the person making the claim.

I'm sick of idiots who immediately call people they disagree with "fascist", "rassist", "nazi" and listen to no argument. They're the new 'holier than thou' bible thumpers, and their utter denial of reality is on par with young earth creationists.

@blacksupremacist

The Sweden Democrats was founded by neo-Nazis in the 80's and spent their first decade marching around in uniforms.
They had old men who actually volunteered for the SS during WWII come to their meetings and wax lyrically about the "good old days" to the new generation.

Here's a member holding a speech at a meeting in 1996, to give everybody an idea of how it looked:
http://www.etc.se/sites/all/files/atoms/images/2014/02/sverigedemomkraten-tina-hallgren-bengtsson-valmote-1996.jpg

At the same meeting they also burned books about the Holocaust and by survivors from it.

The party eventually tried to clean up it's act and banned members from wearing uniforms, but members kept wearing them for years after.
So the old guard had to step in to try to talk some sense to the younger generation.

In 1998 SS-veteran Ingemar Somberg who fought for Nazi-Germany on the eastern front during WWII in SS Divisions Wiking and Nordland wrote this piece of advice in one of their publications:

"It's not like in the 30's (...) Remember that the Nazi-symbolics from then is no longer palatable and also punishable by law (...) My hopes for 1999 is that we can all gather under a coherent leadership and behind a more then one-legged party platform. Let us come up with a thousand-foot platform where xenophobia and white power isn't the only important thing, but widen the argument to other areas as well. To you young folks I would firmly plead: put away the uniform and the beer cans and stop bawling about the slaughter of Jews. If you have to march - do it in step. You're not proving the superiority of the white race by walking like a flock of sheep."

Those old Nazis have all past on by now and the Sweden Democrats instead tries to present itself as the most Israel-friendly party in Sweden today.
But the Swedish Jewish community don't want anything to do with them and regularly boycott any event that SD will attend.
Because what ever SD claims about themselves today - the antisemitism just keeps seeping out of the party.

Here's one of their members listed as a candidate for local political office in the last election. After the picture leaked she was forced to resign her place on the party's list - but she was allowed to remain a member of the party:
http://expo.se/www/images/140905_sd_hakkors_02_464.jpg

Numerous other party members elected to local office have been forced to resign by the party leadership for spouting antisemitic, racist or other hateful rhetoric.
But it's not only on the lower levels of the party it keeps happening - several of their members of parliament have also expressed antisemitic views.

One claimed that Jews can't also be Swedes but have to chose their allegiance.
Another was caught on videos laughing his ass of drunkedly telling a "funny" story about how some neo-Nazi work mates of his at a slaughterhouse he used to work in kicked the dead carcasses of sheep while calling them Jews and making the Nazi-salute.
Another introduced a bill in parliament with the aim of reducing the influence of Jews in the media.

Of those three individuals only the last one was forced out of the party - the other two the party offered excuses for and protected.
There is literally too many instances of antisemitic and racist things being said and done by the party's elected representatives on the local and national level for me to be able to list them all here so I've only chosen a few "highlight".

Just one last thing:
The party's very platform is also still today deeply racist.

In it, humans are said to carry an "inherited essence" that are unique between "certain groups of people".
The German Nazis claimed it was in the blood - SD today claim it's in this "essence".
But it's of course just the exact same biological racism.

So yeah - the Sweden Democrats are certainly a neo-fascist party deeply steeped in antisemitic and racist beliefs.
There is absolutely no doubt about that.

@Nisse_Hult Even if SD are considered neo-fascist or not, the problem with immigration still stands. Isn't it a huge problem that common people go to the neo-fascist party because the rest of the political eastablishment gives them the deaf ear?

@svinborst

Yes that's a problem and that also something every other party in Sweden has been discussing for some time.
The problem is that what you call "the problem with immigration" is a faulty description of the very issue to begin with.

SD has always claimed and will always claim there's a massive problem with immigration - but no other party in Sweden has shared that view of the issue. Instead they have seen immigration as benefiting Sweden and they have offered a lot of argument as to why they feel that way.

Against that SD have offered a lot of claims they can't prove and that statistics and researchers working with these issues don't support.

A lot of this comes from the fact that SD always SCREAMS in these issues. They don't actually just say there are problems with something - they say the NATION IS BEING DESTROYED and things like that. Their rhetoric is just completely exaggerated.

They do this to gain votes by scaring people. Saying something is a problem isn't going to get as much attention as IT'S A DISASTER!
That's also why tabloid headlines look the way they do.
THE SNACKS THAT GIVE YOU CANCER!! sells a lot more newspapers then "New study shows this might not be so good for you"

So every other party has pushed back and said that SD's description of the question doesn't describe the reality, but is exaggerated and extreme.

Which SD answers by saying there is a huge conspiracy by every other party in Sweden, the entire scientific community and all of the media to discredit their totally fair description of the reality that SWEDEN IS DYING and everyone in that massive conspiracy want it too, because they all hate their own country.

You see the problem here?

The disconnect between what SD says and what they can actually prove is so large it doesn't seem to matter what the other parties do - people who chose to believe SD buys into that conspiracy theory and won't accept any information that doesn't fit in that narrative.

It will be interesting to see what happens in next years election (if Trump hasn't killed us all in WWIII by then, that is).
Because SD have built it's entire world view on this massive conspiracy including every other party - and now every other party in fact, since the year before last, support a much stricter stance on refugees then they did before.

Now if SD's claimed conspiracy had been real and every other party was part of it had wanted to destroy Sweden by immigration they of course wouldn't have restricted the inflow of refugees - but they did.

Maybe that and other facts will make some previous SD voters realise that SD description isn't actually the truth but just propaganda.

@Nisse_Hult The problem I see with the immigration going on is that our welfare state might collapse because it can't keep stable with such a rapid population increase.

From my point of view, I don't see the clear benefits of the immigration going on. What would happen is that wages would drop because more people would work for less money. I suppose the housing crisis is gonna get magically fixed with more migrants coming in too.

@svinborst

We've recently had a right-wing government that reduced the states income from taxes by 140 billions. On top of that we spend about 20 billion in benefits so people can renovate their kitchens or get their homes cleaned.
In comparison I can tell you that 20 billion is what the entire Swedish police force cost to run per year.

Yes - that's right:
Tax-payer money spent on benefits so people can renovate or have someone come and clean their personal homes costs us much as the entire Swedish police force each year.

That's the 20 billion.
The 140 billion could pay for 7 more entire police forces.

That's the priorities of the right-wing government we had that - in my opinion - unfortunately the new government has taken over, refusing to raise taxes for fear of losing votes.

There is a serious shortage of money in a lot of government programs - but Sweden has never been richer as a nation.

What's lacking is the will to pay for the things we actually need - or the political courage to admit that we have to completely give up parts of our well fare system.

Blaming immigrants is - according to most economers - simply not going to solve this as they are in fact a benefit and not a drain on the system in many ways.
If you've ever been to a hospital or old peoples home or seen person assistants with disabled people out on the town and so it's often if not mostly immigrants doing those kind of basic care works today.

They are physically demanding and the pay is low and most Swedes don't actually want to take them.
If we didn't have immigrants willing to take the low paying jobs we'd have to raise taxes to pay Swedes enough to take those jobs.
And if we wanted to improve the quality of care by adding more staff we'd have to raise them even more.

I'd personally be OK with that, but I know many people won't and that's one of the reasons immigrants are actually a benefit to Sweden.

It's hard to see the actual benefits from an individual view, because we as citizens don't know every detail of how our society works. That's mostly our own responsibility as nothing about this is actually secret - we could all research and learn about this if we wanted too.

But, I also think that our political parties are doing the Swedish people a disservice of simplifying things to much. These questions are complicated and a nation isn't run as your personal budget. A nation has too look at it's projected income and expenses for decades. Something that will cost money now can actually be a great investment in the long run, for instance.

But to believe SD's rhetoric you have to believe that all other parties and the experts and the media is all part of this giant conspiracy to hide the fact that immigration is actually a disastrous deal for Sweden. Now does that sound plausible?
Is it likely that all these thousands of people who actually know much better then you or I how our country works, would all support as policy they know is bad for the country?
Or that they are all such complete idiots that they can't counts on the costs and benefits of immigration and see that it is bad?
No, SD's claim that they are the only ones who are right and we should all just trust them doesn't add up if you ask me.

Well you don't have to worry about the wages dropping at least. In general terms wages have nothing with the state budget to do but are set by the unions and the market. The market needs workers and Swedish union rules make sure wages aren't undercut by people working for lower pay.

The housing crisis is bad and immigration will add to that problem of course since everybody have to have somewhere to live of course.
But that said we'd still have a housing shortage without immigrants because the main problem is that we as a nation hasn't built enough in decades.
Historically we've had a housing crisis in this country all through our modern history - with the exception of one time, and that was right after the Million-program was finished in the 70's.

Before that and after that in the 80's and growing ever since we've had a lack of housing - and consecutive governments have done to little to address this.
Again I personally believe that the right-wing political parties ideological demands for privatization of publicly owned rented housing and conversion to individually owned apartments are a bit part of the problem.

Even the apartments we do produce today are so expensive that most people can't afford them because the private companies of course have no interest in keeping prices down - they of course want as much profit as they can!
Which is why the private market will NEVER solve the housing crisis as they want their to be a housing crisis, because that of course drives the prices up - increasing their own profit.

No, if we want to actually solve the housing crisis we have to do the only thing we know have worked the only time we actually solved the problem before - which is to build the houses ourselves, with our tax money.

@Nisse_Hult First of all, I'm not against immigration, I'm against that the immigration is handled so badly. Maybe I didn't clarify that enough.

I'm also not an SD supporter and I absolutely don't fault you for thinking that I am. If there was a more left leaning party with a stricter policy around immigration, I would probably consider voting for them. Maybe.

"Blaming immigrants is - according to most economers - simply not going to solve this as they are in fact a benefit and not a drain on the system in many ways.
If you've ever been to a hospital or old peoples home or seen person assistants with disabled people out on the town and so it's often if not mostly immigrants doing those kind of basic care works today. "

Your mistake is that you imply that I blame the immigrants themselves. I don't. I blame the system responsible for the massive immigration going on. AFAIK, we take in as much as France and Germany, despite our population being around 9.5 million contra France's 66 million and Germany's 80 million.

"Well you don't have to worry about the wages dropping at least. In general terms wages have nothing with the state budget to do but are set by the unions and the market. The market needs workers and Swedish union rules make sure wages aren't undercut by people working for lower pay."

You seem to have misunderstood me. Imagine You want a job for a certain pay, another person has the same qualifications (in this case none, just to simplify it.) but he can go for lower pay. You will not get the job. Companies want to make as much money as they can, and more companies will try and do this. If this goes on, the average salaries will indeed go down. The Union doesn't have any rules or probably even a say against this.

"Before that and after that in the 80's and growing ever since we've had a lack of housing - and consecutive governments have done to little to address this.
Again I personally believe that the right-wing political parties ideological demands for privatization of publicly owned rented housing and conversion to individually owned apartments are a bit part of the problem.

Even the apartments we do produce today are so expensive that most people can't afford them because the private companies of course have no interest in keeping prices down - they of course want as much profit as they can!
Which is why the private market will NEVER solve the housing crisis as they want their to be a housing crisis, because that of course drives the prices up - increasing their own profit."

I know, and you're absolutely right. You're also right about the fact that we haven't built many apartment blocs for a long time.

That being said, when our immigration policies were as bad as ever, it was when we had a right-wing government. They may have had all of this in mind.

Sorry about big post.

@svinborst

"First of all, I'm not against immigration, I'm against that the immigration is handled so badly. Maybe I didn't clarify that enough."

I never said you where - I'm talking about the arguments SD are making compared to the reality.
There is a big difference between the SD's actual ideology which is neo-fascist and racist and who's end goal is an ethnically pure state, and most of it's voters that are not actually that racist.

"I'm also not an SD supporter and I absolutely don't fault you for thinking that I am. If there was a more left leaning party with a stricter policy around immigration, I would probably consider voting for them. Maybe."

Well you seem to imply that you do vote for SD and then you are an SD supporter. You might not be a member of the party and you might not agree with a lot of the things they say - but if you vote for them you're still a supporter, actually.
And that's a problem since we're talking about a neo-fascist, deeply racist party here.

Now if SD had not been those things, they wouldn't be so universally shunned as they are.
Compare to Denmark and Norway - as SD like to do - their far-right parties are populist and anti-immigrant, but they didn't start out as neo-Nazi and they didn't march around in uniform like SD did. As far as I know none of their member of parliament has either introduced a bill to limit the influence of Jews on the media, or been caught making "jokes" about calling the carcasses of sheep Jews.

There is ample evidence that there is a massive amount of anti-Semitism and racism in the SD party - hardly a week goes by without a new party member elected to local or national office isn't caught in some scandal. It's not a normal party whatever they try to claim and if you vote for them your basically just throwing your vote away as no other party will touch then with a ten foot pole.

In the meantime every other party in Sweden does actually, since the huge wave of immigrant that came in 2015, now support much stricter immigrations policies. Sweden has since 2015/2016 (whenever the new rules where put in place) adapted it's policies to the European standard - and as a consequence the number of refugees seeking asylum in Sweden has dropped dramatically.

So the immigration policies anyone voting for SD in 2014 wanted, they can now get just as well by voting for any other party.

So if a reduction in immigration was all you wanted, you've already gotten that - without SD ever being part of the decision.

I don't know if your comparison with France and Germany is based on the new numbers or old?

"You seem to have misunderstood me. Imagine You want a job for a certain pay, another person has the same qualifications (in this case none, just to simplify it.) but he can go for lower pay. You will not get the job. Companies want to make as much money as they can, and more companies will try and do this. If this goes on, the average salaries will indeed go down. The Union doesn't have any rules or probably even a say against this."

No, you've misunderstood how the Swedish labor market works. Employees can't undercut one another by offering to work for lower pay - union rules forbids that.
There are collective treaties that specify what wage workers should receive based on age, years of experience and so on and even if a worker would agree to work for less that deal is actually not legal. A company paying workers less then the treaties specify's is open to steep fines and no reputable company in Sweden would ever dare to do something like that - the unions would roast them alive if they did.

The only argument one could make is that if there are too many out of work workers available, the unions hand in negotiations with the employers are eventually weakened.
If there is a huge amount of out of work individuals who could take jobs the employers are offering, that puts pressure on the unions to not make as high demands for wage increases.
So the wage increase may, in the long run, be slightly lower in certain jobs. But that's a long way away from the wage actually being lowered - no union would ever agree to that.

And I've never actually seen any proof that unions have accepted lower wage increases because of immigration - that's just theoretical cast I'm describing, mind you.

"I know, and you're absolutely right. You're also right about the fact that we haven't built many apartment blocs for a long time.
That being said, when our immigration policies were as bad as ever, it was when we had a right-wing government. They may have had all of this in mind."

Hm? Are you implying that the right-wing government took in large amounts of refugees because they wanted there to be a shortage of housing? Or what do you mean by "They may have had all of this in mind"? This sounds a bit conspiratorial?

Don't worry about the big post - you had things you wanted to say and you needed space to do it - no problems. :-)

@Nisse_Hult #9605275

"So the wage increase may, in the long run, be slightly lower in certain jobs. But that's a long way away from the wage actually being lowered - no union would ever agree to that."

Actually, that's what happened in Finland. Our lovely cabinet threatened the unions with legislation if they couldn't reach an agreement with the business representatives (theoretically they threatened both parties, but the legislation would have basically been everything the organisation representing the businesses wanted). So the unions had to do some concessions to avoid an even worse outcome (lägre semesterpeng, något längre arbetstid för samma lön, kostnaderna för vissa sociala förmåner flyttades från arbetsgivaren till arbetstagaren, ...), nor could they continue to close the paygap between "female jobs" and "male jobs" these latest negotiations as they had done during several previous ones.
That was a few years ago, now some contracts come up for negotiation again, will be interesting to see what happens next.

Of course, this all had noting to do with immigration, but rather with a fear that the Finnish economy isn't growing fast enough, and that our wages aren't competitive (which considering we mostly compete with Sweden and Germany isn't even completely true - though because of differing regulation it's difficult to compare all costs per employee - but it's not like we could ever compete with e.g. Asian wages).

So Finland doesn't need any help from immigrants to destroy our welfare state, the cabinet (the last and especially the current) is managing it all on their own.
(latest example the health care reform which all experts say isn't going to bring any of the benefits it was meant to do; it's the worst possible system where the market is supposed to provide the services but the state pays, which means there is nothing keeping the costs from escalating; the whole thing is a prime example of horse-trading if there ever was one)

@Sofs

Sorry to hear that. It seems the majority of the Finnish public is screwing itself by electing right-wing politicians into office - seeing how the government threatened the unions with legislation as you described.

The vast majority in any country is not rich and will never benefit from the policies of the political right - that's just the simple fact if you look at the actual policies pushed by right-wing parties anywhere.
Of course they will try to package these policies in language that make them more appealing to ordinary voters, but the actual consequences of them will always be rising inequality.

I've spent a lot of time here the last couple of days trying to present the truth of the situation in Sweden as compared to the dystopian version the far-right is spreading.
One thing that becomes apparent rather quickly is that many foreign commenters here have very little understanding of how culturally different Scandinavia in general and Sweden in particular is to the rest of Europe and the world.
So I thought I might give a little introduction to Sweden's cultural difference, that's a product of it's history.

Sweden has always been sparsely populated compared to the rest of Europe and most of the rest of the world. Cold and heavily wooded it's been a hard land to settle. Crops don't yield as much as further south, the soil in most of the country isn't that rich and the season for growing is much shorter.
So every single person has always been worth almost their weight in gold as every single pair of hands have been needed to feed the population - and in good years produce a small surplus.

Before there even was a state known as Sweden the country was settled by small groups of people that made their living near the coastline, in small inlets of the Baltic. The woods where deep and difficult to travel trough, but by boat the Vikings (named so after the Swedish word for "inlet" - the places they were inhabiting) could connect between their separate groups and the outside world.

To be able to defend themselves against foreign threats, and to pool their resources to join in long trips to foreign shores, these small groups had to be able to trust each other with their lives to be able to survive.
As such the word of a person became almost a sacred bond - betray your word and you where worth nothing to the community.

Also, for these separate groups to be able to cooperate they had to accept each others differences. There had to be common rules of course but no one single group could push their own way of seeing things on any other, because then cooperation would brake down and everybody would loose out. All groups had to be justly rewarded for their efforts and they had to be afforded equal status and respect.

The Vikings elected their king and the title wasn't inherited. Only a man respected by all as fair and able could hope to gain the position and only for a certain amount of time. The king also had very limited powers.

Women in the Viking society had a much stronger position then in the rest of Europe. With the men away for months or years across the seas, they had to run the every day society and they chose themselves who they wanted to marry - or if indeed they wanted to marry at all.

The Vikings didn't really have slaves even if there was indentured servitude. But the need for every single member of their society to work together towards the common goal of survival in the harsh land they inhabited meant that mistreating anyone was simply not a winning strategy. A mistreated servant could just dare a flight trough the woods to the next settlement where he was likely to be greeted with open arms as long as he could contribute to that groups survival.

Conflict between these group was settled in councils where the larger community of groups came together to all discuss the matter. As every single person was valuable to the larger community the death penalty was not used.
Killing a person had been self defeating.
Instead fines where meted out as it would have been even more selfdefeating to keep people prisoners, ensuring that other would work even harder to feed the one that wasn't working.

If one person of a group insulted, assaulted or even killed a member of another group the group he came from was responsible for repaying the victims group. The worse the offence the higher the fine. Insulting a member of another group threatened the cohesion of the entire society as it lowered it's ability to trust each other and was viewed as a very serious crime that resulted in very steep fines meted out in produce - the most valuable thing in the sparse land.
The decisions of the council was enforced by unanimity. All the other groups was part of the decision and if the responsible group didn't accept the ruling they where shunned by the others - effectively a collective death penalty of that whole group as they would never have been able to survive alone.

So, already before the was a nation of Sweden the people inhabiting this land had learned to:

Trust each other
Accept each others differences
Cooperate for the greater good of all of society
The value of every single member of society

but also that

Those that breaks this trust and goes against the common good for his own personal gain is dead to the community and that will soon mean actual, physical death in reality.

In the 1500's Sweden was eventually formed as the national state we know today. Not with the same borders, but the basic structure.

By this time the Vikings where no more and people had moved further inland and settled more of the country, but the same practical reality was basically the same and the same spirit lived on.

The death penalty was used now - but sparingly compared to the rest of Europe.
Every single person was still valuable to society.

Most of the population of course lived of the land and compared to the rest of Europe many more of them owned their own land and paid their taxes directly to the state. They didn't have a local nobleman that ruled them but where free men and unlike the rest of Europe these free men also had their own representation in the parliament - such as it was.
There wasn't a permanent parliament in those days but conventions where called where representatives of the different groups in society was called to discuss the matter of the state and free owning farmers had their own such group - unlike the rest of Europe.
There free owning farmers where almost unheard of - peasants instead farming the lands owned by either their local nobleman, the chuch or the crown.
To the south and west of Sweden this system was known as feudalism, to the east in Russian the peasant where serfs - little more then slaves.

The first king of this "modern" state of Sweden was Gustav Vasa and he quickly tried to assert his power as king across the land.
Instead he was faced with a number of large peasant rebellions that threatened his very hold on power and he had to back down.

After that no subsequent king of Sweden ever tried to strong arm the free owning peasant class, but instead saw them as an ally against the power blocks of the nobility and the church. The king could always trust that as long as he didn't demand too much from the peasant class they would pay their dues to him and get on with their lives without grumbling.
When noblemen tried to claim the right to freely forage for themselves and their troops of of farmers they passed by the kings sided with the peasantry and so on. A balance of power was upheld that meant that the king - although he no longer was chosen by his people - still couldn't rule without at least the acceptance of the people.

Much time has passed since then but those basic principals have guided Sweden throughout the centuries.

Those in power have learned that if they press the common man to much he will fight back and their own position will soon be threatened.
And this doesn't just apply to kings but noblemen, the church and later on all kinds of bosses as well.

When there is a constant shortage of workers even the common worker that owns nothing but his labour holds more power.
If your boss don't treat you fairly you can find another one who's glad to take you on as long as you're willing to do the job.

The ability to trust in a persons word and treat people fairly has been central to the whole history of Sweden.
As has the acceptance of individual differences and the fact that even the most powerful doesn't get to set their own rules.
A person is judged on what he says and then on what he does.
A person not living up to his words or seen as not acting in good faith is shunned by the community.
Not killed, attack or chased out of town, no. Every door just closes for him as people realise this person is not to be trusted and therefore has no value.
There is no need for conflict as conflict doesn't change anything. We just stop interacting with the person at all - he's dead to us.

Now, knowing this, foreigners in general and Americans in particular may understand better why Swedish people are less positive about Trump then any other nation in the world - even if most nations has a negative view of him.

Millennia of Swedish history has though us that a man like Trump is poison and should be shunned like the plague.
We don't make a big fuss about it though - we just see what kind of man he is and draw our conclusions from that.

In difference to him you have the questions of refugees, where a majority of Swedes have this view:

Our cultural instinct is to view newcomers as an unknown quantity. We don't assume they're bad, but we don't assume they're good either.
We wait and see and let them speak for and then act for themselves.
The ones that speak and act in good faith and with respect to others we respect in kind. Those that don't we conclude are not worth our trust.
That is, the cultural Swedish response to foreigners is always based on the individual - not the group.
We know that you can't reliably judge people based on which group they belong to, but you must let them prove themselves individually.
And for them to do that you must give them the chance to do that.
If they fail they fail and if they pass they pass, but until they do either of those things most Swedes will not make a judgement on another human being.

I'm not trying to say Swedes are saints or anything here - we of course have prejudices too, like all people.
But our cultural tradition is to actively try to look beyond those prejudices and give the individual as fair a chance as possible.
If we hadn't learned to do so trough the millennias of Sweden's history we wouldn't have been able to grow to the nation we are today.
It's been vital for Sweden to not let prejudices get the better of us and close ourselves of to foreign influences and immigration, so we've learned it's in our own best interest to not judge people without giving them a fair chance.

Which brings us to the most un-Swedish thing in Sweden - the far-right neo-fascist.

Who while they constantly claim to talk for every other Swede in fact couldn't be more un-Swedish if they tried.
Because they of course do nothing but judge people based on their own prejudices - their whole world view is based on it.
And they attack every single Swede who doesn't share their view and try to claim that they are in fact somehow the un-Swedish ones, who want to see their country destroyed by immigration and such nonsense.

When in fact most Swedes simply think and act in a millennia old Swedish cultural tradition and find the far-right neo-fascists a much bigger problem as a group then they find immigrants.

Becuase sure - of course there are immigrant who are bad and no one likes that. But ALL immigrants are clearly not. Unlike the far-right neo-fascist, who ALL do nothing but smear their own country and anyone who don't agree with their views.

So that's a short introduction to Swedish culture and the historical reasons as to why we differ from most of the rest of the world.
Maybe that will help non-Swedes understand us better.

@Nisse_Hult
I have a feeling that your talk did not assure the Swedish neighbours: danes, norwegians, finns, estonians.

You see, all the Swedish neighbours have had similar conditions and similar societal makeup.
First of all, there was slavery.
Secondly, Swedes used to be war-friendly.
Thirdly, every king tried to install hereditary power.
Fourth, according to scandinavian sagas, there was trust, but that trust by the natives was violated and used to advantage by the newcomers.
Fifth, lands occupied by Sweden were treated differently (Denmark one way, Finland another way, Kvenland and Lapland another way, Livonia and Estonia another way).

[That is, the cultural Swedish response to foreigners is always based on the individual - not the group.]
While that worked with low immigration rates, it does not work any more with high immigration rates.

[It's been vital for Sweden to not let prejudices get the better of us and close ourselves of to foreign influences and immigration, so we've learned it's in our own best interest to not judge people without giving them a fair chance.]
Yeah, right. Like the forced swedish language as the only state language in Sweden (including Kvenland, Lapland, Finland, Estonia).
And the few exceptions were made to the Baltic german overlords.

[Which brings us to the most un-Swedish thing in Sweden - the far-right neo-fascist.]
Label and be labeled.
Tag and be tagged.

[Who while they constantly claim to talk for every other Swede in fact couldn't be more un-Swedish if they tried.]
Here you are actually describing your own position - that of speaking for all swedes and of speaking bad of 'the others'.

[When in fact most Swedes simply think and act in a millennia old Swedish cultural tradition and find the far-right neo-fascists a much bigger problem as a group then they find immigrants.]
Which tradition?
I don't see a continuity of swedification of samis and finns in Sweden to how you treat the new immigrants.

[Becuase sure - of course there are immigrant who are bad and no one likes that. But ALL immigrants are clearly not.]
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.

@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".

@Nisse_Hult
[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.]

You are doing that (blaming others of your own wrongdoing) again.
The only difference from the rest of Europe was the relatively fewer privileges of the Swedish nobility in Sweden - which had to be compensated by the king by giving more privileges for the Swedish nobility in the Swedish colonies.

But the difference from the past and present is still there: finnish immigrants of late medieval period and renaissance were given land but not monetary support and they had to pay taxes and be drafted to the army of Sweden. The present immigrants have it very differently. Maybe you should copy more of the old Sweden, instead of accusing your neighbours of racism.

[Where every individual has been important and the social acceptance for diversity has been higher as a result.]
Well, no.
Sweden's diversity has always been smaller than that of Russia. But that is not because of one was better and the other worse or vice versa.

[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.]

There was no need, because the parties in power in Sweden practiced eugenics. Which is something that cannot be said of many continental countries of Europe.

[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".]

You are a proven liar by the fact that the SD voting statistics differ from the polling numbers on the immigration issue.
One cannot possibly evaluate any party based on just one issue. And the voters don't.

[... I think you'd be hard pressed to find a Finn that thinks that Sweden has ever treated them wrongly.]
Most things are relative.
The Swedish rule is considered by many estonians as the best foreign rule, but that shouldn't prevent one from criticizing it.

[Since your a racist you see "horn and tails" - we don't.]
Here you reveal your lack of understanding.
Any distribution has a horn and two tails. Sometimes one tail might be truncated. So it has nothing to do with your subjective labeling of me.

[But the only way you can sort the bad from the good is giving them the chance to prove themselves.]
The litmus test is whether any subset of them would change the distribution of Swedes. Therefore you can't have a purely individual approach.

[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.]
The Swedish law is tailored to a population characterised by the distribution of Swedes. If the distribution is different, then the old laws do not necessarily work as well any more.

@ThorsomeTarmukas

"You are doing that (blaming others of your own wrongdoing) again.
The only difference from the rest of Europe was the relatively fewer privileges of the Swedish nobility in Sweden - which had to be compensated by the king by giving more privileges for the Swedish nobility in the Swedish colonies."

No, I'm only stating the fact that you're a racist - you've proved that yourself with what you've written here.
No, the free Swedish peasants had as I said representation in the Swedish parliament - they where they only ones in Europe to do so as far as I know (Denmark maybe had it too?).
There are also several other differences but that is a very major one.

"But the difference from the past and present is still there: finnish immigrants of late medieval period and renaissance were given land but not monetary support and they had to pay taxes and be drafted to the army of Sweden. The present immigrants have it very differently. Maybe you should copy more of the old Sweden, instead of accusing your neighbours of racism."

So you think that your stated fact that Sweden gave Finnish immigrants the most valuable thing there is - that is free land - is proof that we didn't treat them as well as we treat immigrants today? I would say the land owning peasants were very happy to pay taxes as that meant they didn't have a nobleman over them but where on an equal footing with the nobleman in the eyes of the state - both paying their taxes to the crown. That's the very basis for their equal representation in parliament.
Also I think many immigrants to Sweden today would be very happy if they where given land instead of money. Since land is much more valuable.
And I've accused no neighbour of racism. I've accused you of racism - and as I've said you've proven that yourself by what you've written in several different comments here.

"[Where every individual has been important and the social acceptance for diversity has been higher as a result.]
Well, no.
Sweden's diversity has always been smaller than that of Russia. But that is not because of one was better and the other worse or vice versa."

What I wrote was "the social acceptance for diversity".
You answer by stating that diversity was greater in Russia. I'm not sure that's actually true, but anyway it's certainly not true that the SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE for diversity was greater in Russia - the nation that gave the world the name for pogroms:

Definition of pogrom per the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

Pogrom : an organized massacre of helpless people; specifically : such a massacre of Jews

Origin and Etymology:
Yiddish, from Russ, literally, devastation

"There was no need, because the parties in power in Sweden practiced eugenics. Which is something that cannot be said of many continental countries of Europe."

Complete and utter nonsense. Eugenics was considered a reputable science in the beginning of the 20th century and it was practised in countries over the world.

As per Wikipedias article on Eugenics:

"Three International Eugenics Conferences presented a global venue for eugenists with meetings in 1912 in London, and in 1921 and 1932 in New York City. Eugenic policies were first implemented in the early 1900s in the United States. It also took root in France, Germany, and Great Britain. Later, in the 1920s and 30s, the eugenic policy of sterilizing certain mental patients was implemented in other countries including Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Japan and Sweden."

"[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".]

You are a proven liar by the fact that the SD voting statistics differ from the polling numbers on the immigration issue.
One cannot possibly evaluate any party based on just one issue. And the voters don't."

No, I'm not - it's just that you don't understand the implications of what you yourself just wrote.
Because while Swedish people answering a survey may say they would like to see the number of immigrants decrease our general elections aren't on that single question and the Sweden Democrats are much more then that single question.
SD likes to pretend they're just "critical" of immigration, but they are in fact (as I've just written another comment describing here) a neo-fascist party with a clear antisemitic and racist history that continues to this day.

So the Swedish voters are clearly not evaluating SD on just what they claim they are today, but also on their entire history and all the anti–Semitism and racism that keeps seeping out of the party.
They see that SD is a neo-fascist party and even if they might say they would wish to see immigration decrease, they clearly don't want to support a neo-fascist party to see that happen.

Also - as I said - if they did believe yours and SD's ridiculous scare mongering about how immigration is "destroying" Sweden they would of course vote for SD - since nothing is of course more important then the survival of the nation. As without the nation none of the other policies we vote for in the election could ever be implemented.
But the overwhelming majority of Swedish voters clearly don't feel that immigration is a threat to the survival of the nation.

"[... I think you'd be hard pressed to find a Finn that thinks that Sweden has ever treated them wrongly.]
Most things are relative.
The Swedish rule is considered by many estonians as the best foreign rule, but that shouldn't prevent one from criticizing it."

You're free to criticize all you want - I'd just wish you kept to historical fact.
And by the way - the fact that the Swedish rule is so considered not just by Estonians but most of the people we ruled over during our war mongering days actually undercuts your argumentation and supports mine.
Because Swedish rule was of course generally positively received precisely because it was all those things I've repeated stated. More socially acceptant of diversity, more equal (but by no means perfectly so of course), more fair to the peasant class and so on.
And again - I'm not claiming that's because Swedes are naturally better or more just or anything - I'm saying that's because we as a people was taught the value of these things because of the sparseness of the land we chose to settle and the low population density that gave us.
I don't believe Swedish rulers started out as more respectful towards their subjects then any other - they just realised it didn't work in their own favour to press the population to hard, but that a more inclusive way was a much smarter strategy.

"Here you reveal your lack of understanding.
Any distribution has a horn and two tails. Sometimes one tail might be truncated. So it has nothing to do with your subjective labeling of me."

Hey - you're the one talking about "horn and tail".

"The litmus test is whether any subset of them would change the distribution of Swedes. Therefore you can't have a purely individual approach."

You can't treat people as individuals? OK - I have nothing to add there. I'll just let that comment of yours stand for itself.

"The Swedish law is tailored to a population characterised by the distribution of Swedes. If the distribution is different, then the old laws do not necessarily work as well any more."

The law is constantly changing - that's not a problem in any way. That's how a nation is govern - with laws. We change a bunch of laws ever six months. Sooner then that if there is some special urgency.

@Nisse_Hult
[No, I'm only stating the fact that you're a racist - you've proved that yourself with what you've written here.]

No. You are labeling me as such. There is a difference.

[Also I think many immigrants to Sweden today would be very happy if they where given land instead of money. Since land is much more valuable.]

The land was not given for free.
You would have had to pay annual taxes from it. The same today.
I repeat, the difference from past and present is that at present Sweden gives financial support to the immigrants, while in the past the immigrants had to give financial and military support to the Swedish state. Are you able to discern the difference.

[And I've accused no neighbour of racism. I've accused you of racism...]
That is the same thing, because my views roughly represent the majority view of Estonians.

[What I wrote was "the social acceptance for diversity". ]
Even that is debatable.
For example when compared to the Poland-Lithuania union.

[Eugenics was considered a reputable science in the beginning of the 20th century and it was practised in countries over the world.]
But not in most European countries.
In most germanic / anglo-saxon countries, yes.

[Because while Swedish people answering a survey may say they would like to see the number of immigrants decrease our general elections aren't on that single question and the Sweden Democrats are much more then that single question.]
That is exactly what I was referring to.
You can't claim that immigration issue would impact voting preferences in a straightforward way. But that is exactly what you did.

[Also - as I said - if they did believe yours and SD's ridiculous scare mongering about how immigration is "destroying" Sweden they would of course vote for SD - since nothing is of course more important then the survival of the nation. As without the nation none of the other policies we vote for in the election could ever be implemented.
But the overwhelming majority of Swedish voters clearly don't feel that immigration is a threat to the survival of the nation.]

You are doing it again.
You can't claim overwhelming majority.
You might be able to claim at least majority of Swedish voters (of which 10-15% are already immigrants from elsewhere but the Nordic countries). If it becomes likely that the immigration issue won't be able to determine the election outcome, then voters automaticaly start to consider other issues as well. So the voting preferences do not behave straightforwardly as you think. And the media can move the perceived likelihood of immigration issue determining election outcome - meaning that basically you can't even be sure of a majority - perhaps 40-45%, of which up to 1/3 might be immigrants from not Nordic countries, which leaves just 30-40% for ethnic swedes or immigrants with long residence history (like finns).
The point is that you seem to be waiting for (a) a civil war or (b) the election win of SD, to finally conclude that perhaps indeed immigration is a state-threatening issue. And I am not even sure that the current election system and voters behaviour could result in (b), which means that the only definitive proof of immigration problem would be option (a), a civil war. At least in case of Sweden.

[And by the way - the fact that the Swedish rule is so considered not just by Estonians but most of the people we ruled over during our war mongering days actually undercuts your argumentation and supports mine.]

Not really.
Lithuanians had it better in Lithuania under the Lithuanian-Polish union.
Let me say it another way for you to understand - the life in the colonies was different from life in the "motherland".
Sweden proper was the "motherland". Estonia was the colonies.

[Hey - you're the one talking about "horn and tail".]
It depends whether we are dealing with unicorns or devils. Both have horn(s) and tails.
They should be able to blend in to the Swedish population. If they do not blend in, then we should make some cuts.

[You can't treat people as individuals? OK - I have nothing to add there. I'll just let that comment of yours stand for itself.]

"you can't have a purely individual approach."
Notice the 'purely'.
And yes, that is the compromise that shall not be compromised any further.

[The law is constantly changing - that's not a problem in any way. That's how a nation is govern - with laws. We change a bunch of laws ever six months. Sooner then that if there is some special urgency. ]

Great.
Perhaps Sweden can finally adjust to the global situation of the 21st century.
Borderless Sweden is an oxymoron.
Borderless Europe is an oxymoron.

@ThorsomeTarmukas

"No. You are labeling me as such. There is a difference."

No, I'm not labeling you - I'm concluding that you are, based on what you yourself written here.
I'm not sure Hitler ever personally specifically claimed he was a racist - but we still recognize that he was. That doesn't mean we're "labeling" Hitler - is just a fair conclusion of the man's opinions as he expressed them to recognize that he was in fact a racist.

"The land was not given for free.
You would have had to pay annual taxes from it. The same today.
I repeat, the difference from past and present is that at present Sweden gives financial support to the immigrants, while in the past the immigrants had to give financial and military support to the Swedish state. Are you able to discern the difference."

This is a ridiculous argument.
If you give people free land when they in the rest of Europe have to works for peanuts on the land of others and still pay for the privilege or don't even have their own freedom at all, you're obviously treating them very, very well compared to everywhere else at the time.

Just as Sweden does to it's immigrant compared to the rest of Europe today - we treat them well.
Which you are complaining about because you would like to see immigrants be treated poorly.
Well that's your opinion and you get to keep it, but the record clearly shows Sweden has never had that opinion historically - and for good reason.

We've always benefited from immigration so we've treated immigrants well.
Your problem is accepting we've chosen another path then you believe is the right one but that's your problem - not ours.
And as I've said many times before - no one really gives a shit about what you think about it anyway.

"That is the same thing, because my views roughly represent the majority view of Estonians."

Remember I treat peoples as individuals - I don't lump them all together and judge them based on what one person says or does or what I believe about that group as you do.
You might believe most Estonians agree with your racist views - I bet they don't and I'm certainly not going to judge all Estonians on your words.
I wouldn't want to be judged on our Swedish far-right neo-fascists who constantly claim they speak for me and all other Swedes.

"Even that is debatable.
For example when compared to the Poland-Lithuania union."

The Polish-Lithuanian Union existed for 200 years and is long gone by now.
And there is no sign it left behind any greater "social acceptance for diversity" at all.
Look at Poland today - how socially acceptant it the current Polish government that's trying to ban abortions, refuse to take in immigrants and attack the independent judiciary?
Even if Poland really don't want to admit it very many Poles was also openly antisemitic before the war and had no problems with the Nazi's killing of their Jewish population. The Lithuanians even helped in the killings. That's clearly not countries or an area with a historically good track record of acceptance for diversity.

"But not in most European countries.
In most germanic / anglo-saxon countries, yes."

Ha,ha! You just keep moving the goal post when I prove you wrong.
First Sweden was unique in Europe, then when I prove it wasn't you suddenly exclude a large part of Europe and pretend they don't count.
And all this in an ridiculous attempt to find an excuse for the fact that the Nazis never even got 1% of the popular vote in Sweden in the 30's and 40's.

You're using every excuse - however ridiculus - you can dream up to try to deny the fact that Sweden obviously is culturally different from the rest or Europe.

But the very reason that we're having this discussion proves Sweden is - because we've taken in more refugees per capita then any other country. So obviously we are different!

But no, you can't accept that fact so you have to invent ever more ridiculous excuses to try to prove there is nothing different with Sweden at all. But there is - you know it and you're complaining about it in every single comment!

I'm not gonna quote your long comment on the Swedish electorate because it just takes up a lot of room and offers nothing.
You're trying to prove that Swedes actually do think just like you and the far-right want them to think - even though they didn't at all support those policies in the last election.
This is so pathetic - the far-right does it all the time and no we have a president in the US that does it to.
"Everybody really agrees with me - it's just the fake media that's lying!"
Yeah - right...

And I say overwhelming because it is overwhelming.
87% of the Swedish voters in the last election all voted for parties that repeatedly before the election promised to never cooperate with our far-right neo-fascists.
If Swedish voters had believed theirs (and yours) scare mongering about Sweden being destroyed by immigration they would obviously have voted for the only party that said Sweden was threatened by immigration.
But only just shy of 13% of Swedes did.
So yes - the overwhelming majority of 87% to 13% don't believe SD's or your bullshit.

Once again - you can believe what ever you want but an overwhelming majority of Swedes still don't give a shit about what you believe and they're not impressed by your warnings of a coming civil war.

"Not really.
Lithuanians had it better in Lithuania under the Lithuanian-Polish union.
Let me say it another way for you to understand - the life in the colonies was different from life in the "motherland".
Sweden proper was the "motherland". Estonia was the colonies."

I don't trust you as a source on anything, but I still only claimed "most of the people we ruled over during our war mongering days" considered Sweden a more benign ruler then others they experienced, so you still haven't disproven my point.
Also you're again moving the goal post as claiming that life was possibly even better in Sweden doesn't disprove the point that the peoples ruled by Sweden was treated better under Swedish rule then when they were ruled by other nations - or indeed by their own leaders sometimes.
You've already conceded yourself that Swedish rule is considered the best foreign rule in Estonia - why are you still trying to make that case that Sweden was not different to other nations at the time?

It's clear Swedish society had a more equal and inclusive approach then other nations around it already hundreds of years ago - that's not historically disputable in any way.
I'm not saying that Sweden was superior - I'm just saying Sweden did things differently and saw things differently then the rest of Europe.
Not that we where perfect democrats in any way of course, but just that we treated most of our people better in many regards then the rest of Europe at the time.

"It depends whether we are dealing with unicorns or devils. Both have horn(s) and tails.
They should be able to blend in to the Swedish population. If they do not blend in, then we should make some cuts."

I'm never going to accept people talking about other human beings in that way, however harmless you might pretend it is. And we all know you weren't talking about any unicorns when you conjured up the imaginary of "horn and tail" to describe immigrants.

Well you've never been to Sweden so you don't know shit. Immigrants are blending in just fine in Sweden. It's a generational issue - the kids who grow up here have it a lot easier of course - but over time there are no big differences.
As I said before but you refused to believe because it doesn't fit your prejudice, the refugees from the Balkans that came in the 90's aren't even visible anymore.

The kids speak as good Swedish as other Swedes, they have the same level of education and even slightly lower numbers of unemployment and so on. Our neo-fascists that claimed they would destroy Sweden 20 years ago don't even talk about them today. They've just become Swedish, except for their Balkans names and cultural expression like food. We got some nice food from them - just as we have from other immigrants groups. That's always a nice bonus for us. :-)

"Great.
Perhaps Sweden can finally adjust to the global situation of the 21st century.
Borderless Sweden is an oxymoron.
Borderless Europe is an oxymoron. "

I don't really know what you meant by all that but as an Estonian I'd think you really liked the borderless Europe when it lets YOU travel to other countries - no?

And finally, once again - the majority of Swedes, me included, doesn't give a shit about what you think Sweden should or shouldn't do or what "situation" you think we all have to "adjust" to.
Sweden's been doing pretty f****** great over the last thousand years or so so I don't really think we need the advise of people who try to tell us we must abandon all our principles that got us this far and do exactly as they say instead - or else we're doomed - DOOMED I SAY!

@Nisse_Hult
I believe I have made my case already in this case, the rest is up to the readers.

@Nisse_Hult "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."

What the actual duck? You forced your religion on to us, slaughtered our elders to wipe our heritage and identity away, used our land, forced us to fight your wars, made us to communicate with you in your non-relevant language, keeping every single position that mattered to yourselves. We were better off under the Russian rule in any meters measured, all until the communism started it's rise in Russia.

Past is past, but don't you ever dare to color our history with your baby blue and pink Swedish lies.

@HerraKarhu

OK, so you're one of the supporters of the far-right, hyper-Nationalist party in Finland then. I guess you'll deny that now but the fact remains that what you're claiming here is not only mostly historically incorrect, but also not what Finland as a nation or most Finns feels about Sweden.

I actually asked a Finnish work mate of mine about this.
He's 62 now, his father fought in the war, he comes from the east of Finland which he visits regularly as his mother is still alive.
The only Swedish word he knew before he came to Sweden in the early 80's was "Hej" (that's "Hallo" to the non-Swedish speakers reading this).
He says he's never been met with any prejudice in Sweden at all and that he's never seen or heard any animosity in Finland towards Sweden his entire life.
Except when Finland meets Sweden in hockey of course, or if there's another sports competition. Then there is a friendly neighbor rivalry where you like your own nation to win - but that's all.

Your description of the historical relationship between Sweden and Finland is not a correct representation. If it where Finns in general would of course hold a much more negative picture of Sweden then they actually do - but they don't.
With, as I said, the possible exception of your far-right party, hyper-Nationalist party that resent the fact that Swedish is being taught in Finnish schools and so on.

@Nisse_Hult Ahahahaha. Far right, sure. Saw that one coming miles away. Nice how you are judging and labeling people not knowing anything about them.

You are trying to tell here that Sweden always was this cool and tolerant kingdom, which was not the case. Ever heard that the winners write the history? We as a nation suck Sweden's cock for what ever reason, maybe it is a Stockholm syndrome or something, that's why there is rarely anything negative taught or said about Sweden in Finland. Except yeah, ice hockey and the fact we made so many gay jokes about Sweden it is not funny anymore.

Granted, could've been worse, but you are still trying to claim that black is pink. Compare it to the same hatred we feel for USSR and therefor Russia. Russia treated us better during the 1800-1900 but it kinda is buried under the fact that they attacked us in 1939.

Yes, I visit Sweden almost every year too and never had any problems there either. That was not my point and that is not the thing I am here arguing about. I am arguing your naive world view and "Sweden did nothing wrong"-attitude. But I do see it is futile. Take care man.

@HerraKarhu

"Far right, sure. Saw that one coming miles away."

Well I did expressly write in my comment to ThorsomeTarmukas, as you yourself quoted:

"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"

So of course you saw that coming. It still doesn't change the fact that Finns expressing your opinion here is a clear minority that usually belong to the far-right hyper-Nationalists.

"You are trying to tell here that Sweden always was this cool and tolerant kingdom, which was not the case."

No, I'm saying Sweden was always more tolerant then the nations surrounding it and in the rest of Europe. That doesn't mean we never did anything wrong or that we had the exact same position on every single issue 500 years ago as we do today - of course not. Sweden has evolved just like ever other nation. But we have consistently been more tolerant then our neighbors - both 500 years ago and today.

Regarding the comparison with Russian you ignore the complete historical situation.
The truth is that the area that would later become Finland was even harder to settle and less populated then the area that would later become Sweden a thousand years ago.

There were simply not enough people living in what would later become Finland for them to be able to form a workable state, so that area was destined to either be incorporated into Sweden to the west or Novgorod (which would later become Russia) to the east.
Sweden and Novgorod fought over the area and Sweden won out.

Now in Russia the ordinary people where not free, but serfs - which is just another word for slaves. They where considered part of the land they farmed and like any other property bought and sold by the owners of that land. If Finland had become part of Russian that is how the majority of Finns would have spent hundreds of years - as serfs owned by Russian noblemen.

In Sweden there was no serfdom and not even the feudal system of the south and west of Europe. In Sweden many peasants owned their own land and was afforded representation in parliament - unlike everywhere else. So obviously Sweden was more tolerant and more equal then the rest or Europe. Not perfectly so of course - the peasants still had it much worse then the nobility. But it was never as bad in Sweden as in other countries. And the area that would later become Finland was obviously lucky to come under Swedish rule instead of Russian.

From Wikipedias entry on Serfdom:
"In Finland, Norway and Sweden, feudalism was not established, and serfdom did not exist; however, serfdom-like institutions did exist in both Denmark and its vassal Iceland"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serfdom

Sweden was a regional power in the Baltic for many hundreds of years, but beginning with tsar Peter the Great Russia started getting it's act together and much smaller Sweden couldn't keep up.
The last time we had a chance at beating the Russians was under Charles the XII in the early 1700's but after he was defeated at Poltava in 1709 we clearly lost all ability to match them.

Despite this fact the Swedish nobility and Swedish kings refused to accept reality and continued living in the fantasy that Sweden was much stronger and more influential then it actually was. So between Poltava in 1709 and 1809 Sweden and Russia fought three wars - the first two of which where started by a clearly over confident Sweden.

Both of these ended in complete failure and no borders where changed. Russia wasn't really interested in claiming any Swedish territories because by this time they where expanding south and east and just wanted Sweden to leave it alone. They easily beat Sweden's pathetic little armies and where happy to accept a return to status quo.

Then, in 1809 Russia actually attacked Sweden - but that war wasn't by Russia's own choosing either.

Because by then Russia had, after having been defeated by them at Austerlitz and then Friedland, been forced to enter into an alliance with Napoleonic France and Napoleon demanded that Russia attacked Sweden - who was part of the coalition against France.

So Russia was forced to attack Sweden and this time actually prepared for war. Sweden was hopelessly outmatched and the Russian armies easily swept over Finland and into Sweden. Sweden was soon forced to sue for peace. Now this time Russia actually did claim territory - Finland - but they did so only to once and for all put a stop to Swedish war mongering.

They didn't particularly want Finland - they just wanted Sweden to stop attacking them, and took Finland as a buffer state for this purpose.

Now at that time - 1809 - the peasants in Russia where still serfs, as they had been for hundreds of years (serfdom wasn't abolished until 1861) - but the Finns where not forced into serfdom.
Why? Because the Russians realized it would have led to massive rebellions in Finland if they had tried to treat the Finns as bad as their own people.

So that period that you describe as better for Finland then under Swedish rule was actually an anomaly for Russia. The Finns where treated better then any other Russian subjects because the Russians wanted to pacify the Finnish population and keep the country as a quiet buffer state.

The Russians didn't suddenly become more tolerant rulers by acquiring Finland - they just realized that the Finns, used to a much more tolerant rule under Sweden, would never accept the Russian way.

Later on in the 1800's, with the Russians less worried about Swedish aggression and Finnish rebellion, they started to press Finland into becoming more of a normal Russian territory. By then serfdom was abolished in Russia too so they didn't press for that, but they wanted to strip Finland of the special treatment it had been getting since 1809.

The historical evidence is clear - Finland under Russian rule remained peaceful and relatively content as long as the Russians didn't actually change anything from the way Finland had been run under Sweden for hundreds of years. But when the Russians did try to enforce their way and turn Finland into an ordinary Russian province by the late 1800's, the Finnish people protested vehemently.
Life under Russian rule was clearly not better for the Finns.

Now of course the view of Russia from a Finnish perspective is mostly colored by the subsequent wars, but even before them Finland had good reason to resent Russia's treatment of them and view Swedish rule as preferable of the two.

"I am arguing your naive world view and "Sweden did nothing wrong"-attitude."

Again - I'm not arguing Sweden never did anything wrong. I'm only arguing Sweden did less wrong and treated it's people better then any comparable nation at the same time in history. And I'm not saying Sweden did this because it's better or more enlightened then anyone else - I'm saying they did it because it was understood in Swedish society that you get better results from a small population by treating everyone more fairly and not strong arm them into submission.
And this isn't just an opinion - it's based on historical fact.

@Nisse_Hult @HerraKarhu #9604885

Actually, in this case I think you, Nisse, might be wearing a bit of rose-coloured glasses about current Finnish views on the Swedish times. Not that I agree it's as bad as HerraKarhu claims, mainly because his last post contain some historical errors, but so does yours.

Firstly, Nisse, while it is true that Finland was an integrated part of the Swedish empire unlike those areas that were conquered later, the Eastern parts were far away and did gain a lot less favours than the main area, e.g. the merchants guild didn't let Finnish cities trade directly with foreign powers, instead all the products had to go through Stockholm, which led to a lot of wealth being drained from Finland. So while Finland had a lot of freedom, from early on there was also a sense of "little brother" - in theory integrated, in practise not as much.

Secondly, the eastern boarder of Finland (then Sweden) towards Russia has varied through time, first only the southwestern part (about half) of modern Finland was part of Sweden, then during the 17th century most of the rest and a little bit more was conquered from Russia in various wars, then in the 18th century Sweden started loosing bits of Finland to Russia - at times all of Finland was also occupied by Russia despite being Swedish territory (1713-1721, 1742-1743). The last occupation in 1808 led to the rest of Finland (the largest part) moving from Swedish rule to Russian rule.
What area of land that actually made up Finland was only determined properly once Russia created the Grand Duchy of Finland based on parts they had conquered 1721, 1743 and 1809.

Thirdly, HerraKarhu, the reason Finland had it so well during the Russian period 1809-(1881/)1917 is because Russia let almost all Swedish laws stand, unlike it did with other parts conquered from Sweden (example Livland, which today is mostly Estonia).
In a way the rise of Finnish nationalism was at part bolstered by Russia to lessen the remaining Swedish influences in their new protectorate.

Proper Russification (venäläistäminen, förryskning) however started first (1881/)1899-1905 (https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensimm%C3%A4inen_sortokausi) which ended with the 1905 Russian Revolution/general strike (due to the fact the Russia lost the war with Japan). During that time the Finns fought back to keep their laws and privileges. For a few years things remained status quo, then from 1908 Russia again started diminishing Finnish freedoms, intending to integrate Finland into the rest of Russia. Again - despite Finnish resistance - it ended due to internal Russian politics: the February Revolution. At this point Finnish socialists wanted to secede, but the conservatives held back. After the October Revolution (i.e. the Bolshevik Revolution) the conservatives got with the program and Finland declared independence (and devolved into civil war).

So in short, no, the "good" years didn't last till communism, and if Nikolai II had gotten his way there would be no Finland left.

Now, unlike what HerraKarhu inferred, the antagonistic attitude towards Russia/Soviet didn't come with WW2. Actually Finnish politics between WW1 and WW2 were quite antagonistic towards the Soviet Union - possibly because the "whites", the more conservative side, won the civil war, possibly going even further back as Finland often had been the battle field between Sweden and Russia and endured Russian occupation/military rule (https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoviha).
At this point Finland held no fear regarding upsetting the Soviet, and even though relations thawed somewhat this held true through the 30's (probably also part of the underlying factors for the second war, the Continuation War, against Soviet in 1941-1944, or at least some decisions made during it).
As such, Finland rejected all Soviet demands 1938-1939 (mainly to station troops on Finnish soil or ceding territory), unlike the Baltic states who were in a much more difficult geographic situation in between Germany and the Soviet Union.
While this led to the Winter War in 1939, with the facts of history at hand it is very possible the Soviet would have attacked Finland anyway at some point, and who knows how that would have played out if there had been Soviet troops already on Finnish soil.

So while "ryssäviha" (literal translation Russian hatred, but the term is somewhat broader than just that) was inflamed due to the wars, the roots are much further back in time.

@Nisse_Hult If being right wing is the most un-Swedish thing there is, then why is the second most popular party in Sweden a right wing party?
Along with that, why are the police having to escort reporters out of immigrant neighborhoods to protect them from getting attacked? Why were there riots a week or so ago when the police went into on of FIFTY-FIVE "No-go zones" to arrest a drug dealer? Why is Sweden the rape capital of europe? Why is there a police code created to hide "All information about immigrant crime? Why is the police banned from describing criminals in case they sound racist? Do tell.
Sources: https://www.rt.com/news/378142-sweden-riot-rinkeby-fire/
https://www.rt.com/news/379093-journalist-sweden-rinkeby-police/
http://www.infowars.com/second-swedish-police-officer-blows-the-whistle-on-migrant-crime-cover-up/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/swedish-police-are-not-allowed-to-give-descriptions-of-alleged-criminals-so-as-not-to-sound-racist-a6810311.html

@coolcol117

"If being right wing is the most un-Swedish thing there is, then why is the second most popular party in Sweden a right wing party? "

It's actually not the second largest - it's the third largest. The far-right always claim opinion polls as proof of support but actual votes in the general election is the only thing that counts of course.
And I said far-right neo-fascist, because that's what they are. We have right-wing parties in our parliament and they, like everyone else want nothing to do with the fascists.
And as I said in my comment above - the far-right neo-fascists have been very successful in presenting themselves as much more moderate then they actually are. Only the future can tell how far that act will go.

The majority of your sources are a joke - RT is Putins state owned propaganda network and Infowars is an infamous conspiracy site with a clearly mentally challenged individual leading it. I wouldn't click those link if you paid me - I don't support fake news.

The article from the Independant describes what Swedish police are forced to do to protect Swedish citizens from hate crimes from the far-right.
Since the far-right neo-fascists are only interested in stories that reinforce their racist agenda they use every single mention of every single crime committed by anyone they perceive as foreign as propaganda.
Any crimes committed by white Swedes are of course completely uninteresting - unless they can connect them to an political opponent.
Since the police authorities don't want to be used as justification for hate crimes they have to think about what they publish as the far-right hate sites will of course never report fairly on crime.
If there is an actual need to publish these kind of details they still do - but usually there is no such need.
It only end up being used for incitement to hate crimes against totally innocent immigrants by the far-right who constantly tries to smear ever single immigrant as suspect and a probable criminal.

But they aren't of course. Just like people born in Sweden, the majority of immigrants don't commit any crime. Their far more likely to be victims of crime then anything else and especially with far-right hate rhetoric on the rise.

I won't even bother with the "rape capitol" and "no-go zones" nonsense - that's been debunked so many times and I've even debunked it here in this comment section myself. Do try to keep up.

@Nisse_Hult Your refusal to broaden your horizons and even LOOK at the sources shows more about your willful ignorance than anything else I or anyone can say or do. Goodbye blind follower, till we meet again.

@coolcol117

There is no broadening of horizons in reading propaganda sites restate old conspiracy theories and lies that's been debunked for years. The only thing reading that shit has ever done for anyone is rot their brain and dull their critical senses - which is precisely the intention of the people who keep reposting this shit.
They know it's been debunked countless times but they follow the principles laid out by Hitler and Goebbles in Nazi propaganda - if you keep telling the same lies over and over and over, eventually a number of people will start to believe them no matter how utterly false they are.

@Nisse_Hult you don't like my sources? fine, I'll dig up some more for you:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-35549169
http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/756513/Sweden-welfare-state-destroyed-political-correctness-migrant-policy
https://thefederalist.com/2017/03/01/yes-violent-crime-spiked-sweden-since-open-immigration/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_migrant_crisis
Enjoy. I can get more too.

@coolcol117

I'm sure you can - especially if you just post any link mentioning immigration to Sweden as you did now.
They'll still not prove things that's been debunked years ago though.

In this case the first BBC-article supports none of your earlier claims at all.
But then BBC is a reputable news source and not your usual diet of conspiracy theories and lies.
My guess is you added this link just because it was about immigration to Sweden, so you just assumed it would support your claims without even reading it.

The second "source" is a joke. The paper interviews a completely random pensioner - ONLY based on the fact that he's Swedish. "Hey everybody - we found this random Swedish old guy who says things we like to hear so let's all listen to him tell us the "truth" about Sweden!".
The paper in question also supports the British Ukip-party - which of course is outspokenly anti-immigrant.
The article also repeats the repeatedly debunked claim about "no-go zones".

The third article isn't much better. It's written by an anonymous person who claims to be a professor at an American university, but of course there is no proof of that.
Basically this is just a blog post on a right-wing website by an unknown person.

The author claims a number of things about violant crime in Sweden and describes the situation in terms no Swedish criminologists - that actually are the experts on crime in Sweden - would agree with.
He also goes into the question of rape and that's where it gets interesting.

Because the person who's written this wants to sound like a serious academic he doesn't repeat the "rape capitol of the world" claim which he knows has be debunked.
Instead he only cites the paper by Carlqvist and Hedegaard - the two Scandinavian racists behind the repeatedly debunked "rape capitol of the world" claim - as "proof" for his claims!
He also misidentifies Hedegaard (who's Danish) as Swedish. Not a mistake a serious academic would do.

And lastly you just threw in a link to Wikipedia - because why the hell not I guess?

It doesn't prove any of your claims - but then none of the other links you posted did either.

OK, now I've done this two times and that's it for me. I have (slightly more) serious racists I want to answer so I can't waste more time on you.

@Nisse_Hult before you go, there were a few things that I want to say. first off, the BBC article did in fact talk about the migrant crisis(I do read these you know.) It says that Sweden was struggling to deal with these migrants, the government was accused of covering up rape cases, and popularity for the government was tanking. the RT news articles had VIDEO PROOF of the chaos in Rinkeby along with videos from a reporter who is, to my knowledge, unaffiliated with RT, being escorted out of rinkeby by the police. along with that, you completely lied about the article by the independent, which reported that the police is no longer allowed to describe criminals so they don't sound racist, and never once mentioned any skinhead groups. along with that, you never actually said any of the information in my first set of links was false, which makes me wonder if you were lying by omission. How am I a racist for thinking that the massive waves of migrants from countries where they beat Christians, beat women not wearing hijabs(for the most part), and throw gays off of buildings might not exactly gel with Sweden's "Super progressive hate-free society" aesthetic. and on a last note, I have refrained from name calling throughout this whole argument, whilst you have been very quick to call me a racist and an idiot and a "Far-right neo-fascist,"(despite the fact that fascism's tenets line up much more closely with the socialist left,) and I find that very close-minded of you. You have no idea who I am, what I look like, where I live, or anything about me, yet because I think that there has been a lot of unrest and crime in sweden since they started taking in large amounts of immigrants who think nothing like swedes.
As a final farewell, I leave you with one, final, article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/sweden/11992479/How-Sweden-the-most-open-country-in-the-world-was-overwhelmed-by-migrants.html
Goodbye sir, I hope you live your life well and without catastrophe.

@coolcol117 Alex Jones is a total nutcase, man. Idk about RT, but for the sake of your own sanity, ditch infowars. Its only purpose is to sell you "survival" shit that you don't need.

@txag70 I like them, they're funny. so I believe everything I read? no. do I watch PJW and read some articles to get a better view? yes.

@Nisse_Hult

"Now, knowing this, foreigners in general and Americans in particular may understand better why Swedish people are less positive about Trump then any other nation in the world - even if most nations has a negative view of him."

That's pretty-damn negative. I was planning on making a sly and not-really clever reference to Beowulf and the historic antipathy between Sweden and Denmark, but I don't want to do that any more.

"We know that you can't reliably judge people based on which group they belong to, but you must let them prove themselves individually.
And for them to do that you must give them the chance to do that.
"If they fail they fail and if they pass they pass, but until they do either of those things most Swedes will not make a judgement on another human being."

You know, in my experience, Americans who say that don't really mean it. Although we do pay at least some lip service to it.

O.K., keep it up. I don't know if you care about my approval or not, but you've got it.

@FrankHarr

"That's pretty-damn negative."

Yes, the Swedish public opinion is almost universally negative to Trump. The only ones who like him are our far-right neo-fascist - and that's of course only because they approve of his racist attacks against Mexicans and Muslims.
And not even all of their voters actually support Trump either.
Trumps support in Sweden was before the election somewhere between 6 and 9% - and the Sweden Democrats, our neo-fascists, got just shy of 13% of the vote in our last general election.
Sweden Democratic voters also still described Trump as "untrustworthy" in polls - they just don't care that he is, since they believe lies are OK to further their greater goal and that his lies won't impact them personally negatively.
Since then Trumps figures have most likely only gotten worse of course, the more people hear of him - but I'm not aware of any opinion polls done in Sweden on Trump since.

"You know, in my experience, Americans who say that don't really mean it. Although we do pay at least some lip service to it."

I know - it's always very tempting to believe you're less prejudiced then you actually are - of course.
But I would just point out that Sweden actually has a pretty good track record on this.
Not only, as I mentioned above, did the actual Nazis in the 30's find it almost impossible to attract voters in Sweden - never even breaking 1% of the popular vote. But also since then Sweden has taken in larger numbers of refugees per capita for centuries now then any other nation in Europe and of course the US. And there have been very little popular opposition to this. The majority of Swedes simply hasn't shown very much racist sentiment before - and they still don't today. As I also noted above, polling instead shows that they're consistently more worried about the rise in racism and the neo-fascists then they are about immigration to Sweden.

The Sweden Democrats, our percent day neo-fascists, are the first racist party to ever attract much support and that rise is very much fuelled by the invention of the Internet that lets these people spread their propaganda very effectively.
There are a large number of Swedish language far-right hate sites that propagate SD's propaganda and their activists are very active online. They have for years now swamped any comment sections of practically every Swedish website - regardless of subject - with constant whining about how Sweden is being "destroyed" by immigration.
And since a few years back those groups are of course also supported by the Russian propaganda sites that works to spread misinformation and disent in the entire western world.

Also it's of course a sad fact that people forget their own history. If you look across the entire world, the far-right is gaining strength again as the younger generations today don't actually understands the danger they pose to everyone.
They've hung up the uniforms and they package their fascism in a more appealing way to a modern audience, but underneath that polished facade it's the same old ideology as in the 30's. But many people today can't or chose not to see behind that polished facade.

@Nisse_Hult

For some it goes back a little farther: https://weeklysift.com/2014/08/11/not-a-tea-party-a-confederate-party/

Fake news is a disturbing development in propaganda. I mean, it's always been there, but it's been harder to spread about not being the sort of thing most advertisers wanted to be associated with. Now, of course, it's doing quite nicely.

These may not be good times.

@Nisse_Hult thank you for braveing the shit storm that will come your way to deliver this fascinating bit of culture and history that I never knew about. Thank you.

@Baconcheesewheel

Thank you for you nice words - it's always nice with encouragement. :-)

Also feel free to ask if there is anything else you want to know or if there was something I wrote that seemed unclear in any way.
It's impossible to completely describe a nations whole cultural history in such a short space so this is only very broad strokes of course.

@Nisse_Hult you taught me more in one text post thingy than I have learned in some entire years in the American public school system.

@Baconcheesewheel

Thank you again - that's very nice of you to say! :-)

But I do have to caution against believing everything you read online. You should corroborate what I say with other sources as well, just to make sure I'm not just making things up.
Not that I am - but as a general rule we should all exercise critical judgment. :-)

@Nisse_Hult The beginning with the history and culture is great, in-depth, but not too time-consuming. Definitely learned a lot tonight.

I agree that the majority of Swedes are rather neutral to the immigrants. Most don't seem to care much about them: if they are good, then great, if not, then just ignore them. However, the fact is evident that Sverigedemokraterna are a rather major party in Swedish politics (2nd or 3rd largest, can't recall the stats), but based on the last two parliamentary elections, their share of support from Swedes is gradually growing. I spent the first half of 2016 in Sweden, Lund to be precise, and being in dead center of Skåne definitely gave me the chance to see the locals' opinions. While traditionally being anti-immigrant may be un-Swedish, there is clearly a growing trend in this behavior among the Swedes themselves. Of course, you can use the excuse that Skåne is not truly Swedish, unfortunately that way you are shutting off 15% of the Swedish population.

From what I observed over the course of 2016, the Swedish majority party-coalition has taken steps to curb the flow of migrants into the country, despite what far-right news sites (if you can call it news). So there is some success on the right side of the political spectrum with regard to immigration. I don't think I have excellent sources for this (I am not a master in reading Swedish news), but from them I learned that the government is trying to cut down on the migrant flow without shutting down immigration entirely; do you think that is a true Swedish move or not? Would like to hear your opinion on the border patrols on the Öresund Bridge too, it was a hassle for me whenever I traveled between Copenhagen and Lund.

The reassuring fact is that the nationalistic movements in Sweden aren't nearly as bad as they are in other countries. Born in Russia and raised in the US, I can assure you that Swedish nationalists are not as bad as the ones in the Cold War superpowers. That still doesn't mean that it can't exist in Sweden: the current facts state that nationalism and anti-immigrant sentiment is growing, whether you call it Swedish or not. However, I've seen worse and it seems Sweden still has a ways to go before it even gets any close to that.

ALSO, nobody is talking about the feud between Sweden and Denmark with the postal services. What's that all about?

@StuckovertheAtlantic The issue with Swedish and Danish Post is that PostNord's Danish Branch showed a deficit of 1.5 billion kr for 2016.

This is primarily due to private companies taking over large parts of the delivery of packages and letters in Denmark.
They use independent truckers in foreign vehicles to deliver the letters and parcels.
The requirement of a maximum of nine hours of driving do not apply.

@StuckovertheAtlantic

Thanks for your nice words - those are always appreciated. :-)

Yes, the Sweden Democrats or SD is the third largest party in our parliament today. They first came in to parliament in the second to last election and then gained further seats in the last, so their have been growing - yes.

But it's also the fact that every other party in Sweden before the last elections all repeatedly promised to never cooperate with SD so they wouldn't gain influence over Swedish politics, and those other seven parties got a combined 87% of the votes, while SD can in just shy of 13%.
Since nobody is cooperating with SD that means they have no real power in parliament.

Well, the south of Sweden or Skåne as it's called where you where is rather different in this regard to the rest of Sweden.
Just an in the US the Swedish south has always been more racist then the rest of the country.
You have to view Skåne as a more civilized Alabama or Mississippi - our own redneck territory.
I'm not saying their not Swedish - I'm just saying that like the American south they have traditionally have their own way of looking at issues of race down there.

Since SD's support has been growing they now have voters all over the country but the percentage they receive keeps getting lower the further north you get. So your experience from Lund is likely not representative of the whole of Sweden.

Well, the steps to curb immigration that ALL Swedish parties support since 2015/16 is not actually "some success on the right side of the political spectrum" as you put it.
SD would really like to portray it as such - claiming that every other party "had to accept" their stance on immigration, but that's not actually what happened. To be able to explain that we have to go back about 20 years:

Sweden last had a massive influx of immigrants in the 90's - with the civil war on the Balkans in full swing.
We had taken in refugees from all over the world before that - from military dictatorships in South America and from the Islamic revolution in Iran for instance, but never before had we taken in so many refugees as then. 84,000 in the year 1994 was the peek number.

SD was still openly neo-Nazi back then, marching around in uniforms, burning books about the Holocaust and was of course vehemently opposed to these Balkan refugees with their "violent genes" coming to Sweden.
And they where not alone - a lot of white power immigrant hate-groups sprung up at that time.

But the war in the Balkans eventually ended and the flow of refugees with it.
However the rhetoric of SD didn't change even as the numbers of asylum seekers decrease. They were still screaming about how Sweden was being "swamped" by immigrants and how native born Swedes would soon be a minority in Sweden and things like that.

Now none of that was true of course - the number of people seeking asylum was far lower then in the 90's - but that reality made no difference to SD. Because they of course needed this scare mongering to attract voters.
And begun as they had a neo-Nazi party they as a party and their representatives repeatedly kept spouting anti-Semitic and racist sentiment - even if they by now claimed they where just "concerned" about the level of immigration.

So SD kept claiming the situation was a disaster and that Sweden was in mortal danger - and ever other party didn't see a problem, because the facts didn't support SD's claim.

Met with this opposition from all other parties, the media and the academic world who all said that SD's rhetoric didn't match reality SD declared that every one disagreeing with them was part of a giant conspiracy.
The goal of which was to destroy Sweden by immigration. All the other parties in Sweden, all government agencies, the entire media and the academic world in fact knew that SD was right - they just all suppressed this truth to the Swedish people because they hated their own country and wanted to see it destroyed.

Now this was of course ridiculous to most Swedes - and still is. The other parties from left to right can't agree on anything else - but they all want to destroy the nation? But that was SD's claim - everybody know we're actually right, but they are traitors and want to see Sweden destroyed by immigration.

Well then came the massive wave of refugees in 2015 that smashed anything we had ever seen before. Remember that peek of 84,000 in 1994? Well in 2015 we took in almost the double of that - 163,000 refugees.
And then - for the first time - civil authorities and municipalities charged with taking care of the refugees reported that they couldn't cope with the pressure. There where simply too many people coming to find shelter for them in accordance with Swedish regulations. We can't put people in tents in a climate like ours after all.

So then, every party in Sweden said "Ok, then we have to put a break to this" - and they did.

SD of course tried the old "We told you so!" - but the reality was of course the opposite.
SD had been crying wolf for years - claiming Sweden couldn't possibly take in as many refugees as we did and that all the other parties where deliberately trying to destroy Sweden.
But when the numbers for the first time grew so large that it ACTUALLY became too many for our resources to handle and the authorities in charge of handling the issue raised the alarm to our politicians, all political parties were fine with stopping the influx.

Which shows that while SD had overstated the issue for years, the rest of our parties reacted in a rational manner - both before when they didn't see a problem and later, when there actually was a serious problem. Now if they had been out to destroy Sweden by immigration, they would of course never had stopped the influx.
But they did - because they, unlike SD, operate on actual facts and not scare mongering.

I think this move is entirely in keeping with Swedish tradition. We did our best - better then any other nation in Europe per capita - but when we actually where swamped by the huge numbers coming all at once we had to put the brakes on.
We pride ourselves on our social welfare state and we don't want to see refugees living in tents. We had to take some time to sort things out - it's just a practical fact.
I see no signs of a change in popular opinion on the core issue. Swedes still don't want a complete stop to immigration - they just want us to be able to take good care of the people who come here.

The passport checks on the Öresund Bridge was a necessity to flow the influx. It might be a hassle for those living in the area who travel there often, but it was unfortunately necessary. I don't live down there so I haven't seen it in praxis and maybe it could be handled in a better way, but some sorts of checks had to be enforced to halt the influx - that's the bottom line.

Yes, Sweden is by no means the worst regarding Nationalism and anti-immigration sentiment and I and a large majority of Swedes are very happy for that. Swedish surveys regularly show that Swedes are in fact more concerned with the rise of neo-fascism ad racism in Sweden then they are with immigration.

Regarding the shared postal services the right-wing government we had 2006-2014 did some really, really, really bad deals with government owned companies. The worst of which was when Swedish energy company Vattenfall bought some German energy company and lost several tens of billions. That's the worst deal in Swedish economical history ever according to economical journalists who's written about it.
This is probably no where near as bad and most of the problems seems to be on the Danish side.

Basically they joined the two state-owned postal offices into one in the hopes that it would save money. Unfortunately it seems the Danish side for some reason embarked on an aggressive digitization campaign, where they actively tried to get Danes to switch from sending physical letters to having them delivered electronically.

Apparently they never realized this rather seriously cut into their own business model as they of course get their revenue from delivering physical letters. So now they are loosing money fast and there is discussion in Sweden if the joint company should be broken up again so the Swedish taxpayers don't end up being forced to save the Danish part of the company.

But in Denmark they seem to want to keep the company together and are instead talking about putting up billions of their taxpayers money to save their part of the company.
As it seems the crisis is on the Danish and not the Swedish side I don't think most Swedes care that much. We had to suffer through that Vattenfall deal with the last government lying their asses of, trying to avoid blame for their bad deal, so we're in no mood to hear any more about bad deals. As long as we don't have to see more billions wasted of our money we're happy to just ignore it and get on with our lives.

Look at what's going on in Sweden.
It's the Europe's capital of:
-Rape (mostly not by swedes)
-Cars set on fire (mostly not by swedes)
-Tolerance

PS: Tolerance isn't necessarily a bad thing, but people, please, don't be blinded by the fear of some unintelligent, arrogant jerk calling you a racist, xenophobe etc buzzwords. Think your own thoughts.

@Finn123
Um yeah, Sweden here! I'm not gonna go and say that "there aren't that many rapes happening" because I'm just too lazy to look up the facts, but if there is one thing I can say with certainty it is that the only reports anybody care about are the ones coming in about "non swedes". I've been sexually harassed (in a more serious manner that is) about 3 times in my short life on earth, and they were all by very white typically Swedish guys. Does anybody care if a Swede does anything???? Why would they??? Brejvik wasn't a terrorist, he was mentally ill!
Also the country that won't let refugees in doesn't get any say.

@Crez Some Muslim refugee raped a thirteen year old girl and got only 2 months for it. And now there are people fighting to get him off scot-free because they thought two months was "too harsh." And of course his name is Mohammed. In fact, the most common name among people convicted for rape in Sweden is Mohammed. We don't let refugees in because there are three types of Muslims: the ones who will cut your head off, the ones who will hold you down, and the ones who will watch you suffer. Have fun in your "progressive" rape capital lol.

@v0ider [citation needed]

@v0ider That's really stupid. I'm sorry you have such ridiculous stereotypes of Muslims.

@niauropsaka

Well you have to remember the kid is 14 years old - his brain isn't even done growing yet so there's still a chance he'll turn out decent.

@Nisse_Hult I bet he's anti gay rights and anti women's rights, too.

@Baconcheesewheel

They usually are - even if they claim they're not.
People who harbour deep prejudices or outright hate towards one group of people are seldom satisfied with that. Usually they find the time to hate other groups just as much.

@Nisse_Hult we also have a word in America that sums up anti-gay, anti-women's rights, and anti anything that they aren't. It's called being republican.

@Nisse_Hult @Baconsheesewheel
So me disagreeing with you about Muslims means I'm a homophobic misogynist who has something wrong with his brain?
Liberal logic.

@v0ider

No, read what I wrote insted.

My comment was a reply to niauropsaka saying you have "ridiculous stereotypes of Muslims" - and you do.
Then Baconcheeseweel chimed in with his guess that I seconded - it's not at all uncommon for people who harbour prejudices against one group of people to have them against other groups as well.

But no one is claiming that to be the case - we're simply saying it likely.

You can prove us all wrong by showing that you don't - nothing would make me happier.

Regarding "wrong with his brain" I never said there where and there's actually probably isn't - it's just that it's not fully grown yet.

The human brain isn't fully developed until in your 20's so that's not your fault - it's just a fact of biology.

https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Families/FFF-Guide/The-Teen-Brain-Behavior-Problem-Solving-and-Decision-Making-095.aspx

@niauropsaka Aren't you that idiot who supported women's march even though it was started by a pro-sharia law woman and funded by George Soros? And was really just a big anti Trump rally that shunned and shamed pro-Trump women? Yeah I'm the stupid one.

@v0ider Wow, you are in a fantasy world.

@niauropsaka How ironic. I know you're the type of woman who walks around outside with your rainbow hair and pussy hat, calling every man who stands next to you a rapist.

@v0ider LOL. You "know," huh?

@v0ider:

Good grief, a white American man in Montana got no prison time for raping his 12-year-old daughter (Oct 2016).
A du Pont family heir in Delaware got no prison time for raping his 3-year-old daughter (March 2014)
A white Iowa teen got no prison time for raping a 2-year-old girl (April 2013)

Just water under the bridge, right?

Add to these young college men suffering from "affluenza" like Brock Turner, Austin Wilkerson, and John R.K. Howard who receive disgustingly light sentencing, are acquitted of rape, or never prosecuted because the victim was so traumatized that she or he (Howard kicked a coat hanger into the rectum of a mentally disabled black boy) makes mistakes in her recollection on the stand under intense grilling by defense attorneys. It's less safe to be a woman (or a mentally disabled black boy) in all respects in America than it is in Sweden.

v0ider, you are just a sad troll. Why do you even hang out on this site if you're so critical of Sweden? SATW won't confirm "pit of hell" assumptions you have about Scandinavia. Do you even live in Sweden? You are grievously ill-informed, particularly about Islam and the Muslim population, and you think your conviction compensates for your lack of knowledge. It doesn't. Most of us see through it.

@duster You mistake my argument. I'm talking about how the majority of rapists in Sweden are Muslims. Listing random American rapes does nothing to change that. Saying "other people do it too" makes you look like an idiot because it's a fact that Swedish Muslim refugees do it the most.

@v0ider

"I'm talking about how the majority of rapists in Sweden are Muslims."

Yeah, that's not actually true in any way though and if you stopped to think just a minute about it you should be able to realize that.

Becuase Sweden has a very wide definition of rape, so we have very high numbers reported of it. But immigrants - counting both first and second generations - account for only about 10% of the population. Just counting Muslims your probably down to about 5 or 6% and if you subtract all the women, children and elderly men from that you're probably down to about 2 or 3% of the population.
Now if they would account for the majority of all rapes in Sweden, they would literally have time for nothing else then constant raping. Barely sleeping or eating - just rape. rape, rape all day long.

So no - that's not only virtually impossible - it's also not supported by Swedish crime statistics on the people who are actually caught and convicted for rape in Sweden.
The clear majority of those are of course NOT Muslim.

No, @v0ider. I was going to reply that you should listen to native Swedes and long-time residents of Sweden rather than your preconceived notions, but Nisse_Hult came to the rescue.

Taking a look at the Swedish Crime Survey, there is nothing to support your allegation that "Swedish Muslim refugees do it the most."

You missed my point in sharing the reports of child rape in the U.S. -- it's not a Muslim thing, it's not a Swedish thing, it's a pervert thing.

More significantly, you've lost your own point... which wasn't accurate in the first place, regardless of how many times you repeat it and write it on the moon.

@Crez I have literally never heard anyone refer to Breivik as anything other than a terrorist, so I don't know what you're on about there. Also, if you're going to say "I'm just too lazy to look up the facts", you can't follow that up with "but if there's one thing I can say with certainty".

@Crez
Finland does let refugees in, actually. There are some policies in place to limit the numbers but the same is true of Sweden.

@Crez
The fact is though that these "refugees" are raping and harassing women and even children... But I always wonder when I see text like yours: Why do you need even these muslims harassing and rapes too? Isn't enough with the indigenous ones?

@Crez I'm sorry if this doesn't play into your political views (no I'm not), but Breivik WAS a terrorist and the media portrayed him as such, hell in Norway the media even make a point out of not using his name and instead call him "utøy terroristen". If you are going to use a tragedy to prove a point, at least have the respect to be truth full about it.

@ClazzyDonkey @VRipper

I don't think she actually ment she dosen't think he's a terrorist - I think she means the far-right tries to claim he isn't a terrorist, since in their view only Muslims can be terrorists.
She didn't write that very clearly and I can be mistaken, but considering the rest of her post is about the far-right making excuses for the things white Swedes do, I think that was her intention anyway.

@Finn123 we have more REPORTED rapes, if other countries started reporting them as well i am certain we wouldn't stick out so much

@minlex
Your percentage of reported rapes vs unreported rapes isnt any higher than in other countries.

If you're so safe why are 31% of Swedish women afraid to go outside late in the evening where they live? Six percentage points more than in the previous year.

@Finn123

Sweden counts rape differently than other countries. If a man kidnaps a teenager and locks her in his basement for 5 years and rapes her every night, in Sweden that's counted as 2000 cases of rape, but elsewhere it's just one twisted case. So the stats aren't going to be easily comparable.

Muslims continue to invade countries through trojan horse strategies but sadly the media covers it up and half the people who hear it believe it.

@v0ider I'd say you have the mentality of a child, but since you're actually 14, I won't even bother.

@niels0827
The muslim world takeover plans are about just as secret as those of the Komintern.
In plain sight, but only if one would choose to notice.

@ThorsomeTarmukas yes, because white people have never committed terorist attacks. Never. Just never happens. Absolutely never.

@Baconcheesewheel
I am a european from a country that has never had colonies. It is the country with the highest share of WHG (west-eurasian hunter-gatherers) and WHG+ANE. It is a non-indo-european country that has never had a war with another neighbouring non-indo-european country. Our native folklore has creation myths that depict how our land got free of ice age glaciers and glacial lakes - those stories could not have taken place anywhere else in the world, because everywhere else the coastlines were sinking due to melting glaciers. We have lived here since the end of the last ice age. So forgive me if I don't feel guilt over white colonialism.

@niels0827 So I have the mentality of a child because I think of the consequences of a choice and don't do things for the sake of seeming like a good and accepting person?

@v0ider
So you are saying you aren't doing something for the sake of seeming like a good person, and so you accept that being accepting and tolerant is a good/positive thing (at least in the case of Islam, a religion about as benign as any other Abrahamic faith). And so your condemnation of all Muslims, by your own words, is a bad thing. And therefore, you accept that you're being a jerk (for want of a stronger, yet not profane, term).

So, why are you being a jerk? Also, what are the friggin' "trojan Horse" tactics? 'Let us come to your country, go to work, follow the laws, raise kids, contribute to charity, contribute to the economy until you stop paying attention so we can deviously pray and wear headscarves in peace'? Or do you mean to tell me the CEO of Coca-cola and Dave Chappelle are collaborating to destroy America?

@quazimojojojo No, I'm not doing something to seem like a good person. Taking a snake out of the cold and into your house makes you seem like a good person but the snake will bite you anyway because it's a snake.

Muslims have always always aspired to take over Europe. We met their advances with military force in the old days and now we just open our gates for them. And now the Muslims we let in are rioting murdering raping and pushing for Sharia law. We can't tell which ones are violent and which ones aren't. That's what makes it a trojan horse.

I'm a Christian but I don't mind other religions. The choice to take the path to God is everyone's choice, who am I to make it for them? But I draw the line at Islam. Its teachings are just too barbaric and cruel to exist in a modern world.

@v0ider

To start, I apologize for the language in my previous comment. It was a bit petulant, and quite pedantic. There's also a TLDR at the end, because WOW there's a lot more to say about this than I first thought.

Regarding the condemnation of an entire belief system though: how much do you know about Islam? Have you read any of the Quran? Do you know about the 5 pillars? Have you spent much time interacting with Muslims? Condemning something in its entirety just because you were taught to hate the name just fuels more hatred and conflict, and leads to a lot of people being hurt and killed who really didn't have to be, and a lot of opportunities for wonderful things being lost.

I'm no authority on Islam by any stretch of the imagination, but I can tell you that it's basically impossible to get a group of people (group here defined as 2+ individuals) to agree 100% on all aspects of ANYTHING. Especially for something as deeply personal as religion. Islam is a religion which encompasses over 1 billion people, do you assume they all practice their religion identically, following the holy book to the letter? Christianity never held that kind of universal power, even when there were less than a billion people on the planet. Hell, at one point there were 3 people claiming to be the one true pope, there's been a split between Western and Eastern Christianity for almost 1000 years, and the Borgias got up to all kinds of stuff (which is seriously worth a read. There's a reason the have their own TV show now)

There were 8 (ish) crusades, ostensibly to defend christianity from islam. Only one of them achieved any success, and the last major one never even got to the Holy land. They just sacked Constantinople, a christian city, and went home. People in America argued it was God's will that black people be segregated from the whites, people argue it’s God’s will that they go to war, and pretty much every politician nowadays invokes God to argue that they are right. People have always perverted the teachings of religions to their own ends. Some people always will. The key word here, though, is Some.

Most people are good, well meaning people. If you haven't met very many nice people, then I apologize on behalf of humanity, because you've had the incredibly unfortunate experience of running into a lot of the minority we call 'bad people'. Most of us just want food, water, shelter, and something meaningful to do with our time (After the first 3 needs are met). The muslims I've met founded the local branch of the Food Recovery Network. I've never been to a volunteer event near where I live that didn't include at least one Indian and one Chinese immigrant. Even the Russians I've met pride themselves on their hospitality, they just keep a close eye on you until you prove you're not a bandit of some kind. Coincidentally, of my friends who were raped/otherwise sexually assaulted, the perpetrators all identified as some kind of christian, or agnostic (which makes sense, because christianity is by far the most prolific belief system in the US. It's about as surprising as saying most criminals in Japan are Japanese: 95%+ of the population).

My point? Stereotyping doesn’t help anyone, as it’s incorrect more often than not, and the world isn’t nearly as dark as you seem to think. It just seems that way from listening to the news because nobody would watch if the stories were all about how everything is getting better, which is bad business.

TLDR: that snake is almost certainly not poisonous, and, with the exception of those friggin huge snakes that don’t bite, but crush their prey then swallow it (which are pretty small portion of all snakes), it won’t bother you if it isn’t literally starving. And even the huge ones are just looking for a meal at the end of the day.

@quazimojojojo The Quran commands people to violently and brutally massacre infidels. If a Muslim does not go around killing infidels they are not a real Muslim and I have no problem with them. But it's the REAL Muslims that I don't want entering my beloved country.

@v0ider

I don't think I've ever seen someone use an inverse 'No true Scotsman' argument before. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

Two things though: as one who does not belong to a given ethnic/religious group (Muslim), and so do not have a deep understanding of their cultural values, on what authority do you define people as 'real' or 'not real' muslims? And, based on this definition, what constitutes a 'real' christian? I haven't heard of anyone stoning to death their rebellious children as of late. And does anyone who kills another immediately disqualify as a christian? What about anyone who has ever stolen something, or lied? Since United States law has clear distinctions between citizens and non-citizens, of which there are several categories, does anyone following those laws, and thus not treating foreigners as a neighbor, also disqualify? (from Deuteronomy, Exodus, and Leviticus, respectively)

Also, upvoting your own comments doesn't lend you credibility.

@quazimojojojo So you're saying if somebody goes against their religion they should still be considered a member of said religion? Liberal logic...

And it's not me upvoting my comments, If you haven't noticed I go offline right after posting so it couldn't be me.

@v0ider

No, I'm saying there is no universally accepted standard for what constitutes a 'true' or 'real' member of a religion, as evidenced by the existence of quite a few sects in all of the aforementioned faiths

Also, if your logic is applied consistently, then there are very very few people in this world who could be said to belong to any of the Abrahamic religions (judaism, christianity, islam), because they don't follow the holy book to the letter. Unless your definition of a 'real' member of that religion differs from what I just said. You haven't really been clear on that point, as you've only used vague phrases to define your view. 'Goes against their religion' can mean a lot of things.

You also haven’t commented on anything I’ve said regarding your religion, Christianity. And resorting to an insult, ‘Liberal logic’ doesn’t foster exchange of ideas and sure as hell doesn’t make the insulted party any more likely to reconsider their views.

For the record, I don’t consider myself a liberal. I consider myself a pragmatist. Muslims are comfortably over 10% of the world’s population, and a lot of them are smart, skilled, and/or speak English. That means there’s a significant chance that I’ll meet one, or several, one day who could potentially add something to my life (and I already have). It might be as small as a funny joke or a ride home from a party, or as large as a job opportunity (considering the resources some of those muslim countries have, it’s pretty likely you’ll work with one of them at some point or another too).

Stereotyping entire groups negatively and discriminating accordingly is not only counter to that famous Jesus quote “Love thy neighbor as thyself”, it’s really impractical. And also exhausting. Hatred just isn’t worth the time and effort. I’m not religious, but was raised Christian, and the most important things they taught me in catholic school were “the world isn’t simple” and “follow Jesus’s golden rule” (quoted above).

@quazimojojojo It's not Muslims I hate, it's Islam. I see Muslims as brainwashed people, how could you hate somebody who doesn't know any better? But I still think opening our borders is dangerous because you never know if you'll get a violent killer.

And I think following the teachings of a religion should be the basis of being a part of said religion.

@v0ider

Again, 'Following the teachings of a religion' is a very vague term. Do you mean a literal interpretation of the text, taken at face value with no consideration for deeper meaning? Complete disregard for the literal meaning of the text, viewing it as a metaphor to teach moral lessons? Somewhere in-between, and if so, where in-between?

Also, you seem to be under the impression that, with regards to border policy, there are only 2 options: let everyone in, or impose sweeping bans. The current policy regarding refugees and immigrants is already a pretty long and arduous process, specifically to weed out potentially violent or otherwise malicious people. Did you know it can take over 2 years to be admitted as a refugee in the US? Did you know that it's extremely difficult to even get a student visa to study in the US? Even if you have already been studying here for a few years and just want to finish your degree? And that's one of the easiest visas to get.

You CAN know if you'll let in a violent killer, and the people in charge of determining who can come into the US are pretty good at figuring that out already.

@v0ider I've thought about this a while, and came to an odd conclusion. Do you know that members of the KKK consider themselves to be deeply, firmly Christian?

Yet, most of us wouldn't say they are, would they?

Yet, since they are Christian, by their own words, should we ban all Christians from entering airports, for example? After all, we have these documented cases of murder, rape, and so on, right? They believe themselves to be deeply Christian, so is that not what we should think about the religion?

Perhaps what we need to do is get better at identifying extremism, and extremists, and rooting it out, instead of painting with a sweeping brush.

@ruggs KKK members aren't real Christians and Islam is inherently evil. There goes your whole argument.

@v0ider And Christianity is, inherently, any less evil? Have you ever taken the time to even skim through some of the horrific nonsense that comes out of the Old Testament? And yet, only few of those original rules are adhered to or even known about by Modern Christians. Why? Because we no longer live in the ancient world, and things that were once morally right have become morally wrong. They are written, but ignored.

The same can easily be said of Islam, Judaism, and any of the other religions to emerge in that same time frame. They were born into an era when killing anyone, for any reason (especially a different belief), was as common a crime as petty theft is today. Now that we live in an infinitely more peaceful world, we as a species have mostly left behind the "old ways" of our collective beliefs in order to behave, well, humanely.

To judge Islam as evil by a set of rules written in the 7th Century, is the same concept as judging Italians to be xenophobic due to the actions of Rome. It's a stretch.

@ItsAGiraffe It doesn't matter if it was written in the 7th century, people still are deceived by it leading them to acts of violence. That is wrong.

Italy doesn't govern and act the same way as Rome meaning there is no problem with it.

God's laws and the ways we follow them changed with the birth of Jesus and the new testament.

Please have a coherent thought before you post an argument. For your own good.

@v0ider
Please, I'm very interested in seeing from where you got that. Protip - it's not the Quran - it preaches love and cooperation with and towards "people of the book" - christians and jews (will happily bring out a quote from the Quran if you wish), interpreted by modern muslim scholars to also include other religions and non-religious people.

The idea that muslims in general are crude, barbaric people is one that needs to be laid to rest - they were probably the first to bring to law the *right* for women to inherit, permitted people within their borders to worship whatever religion they wanted during times when in many European countries you had both antisemitism and forced conversion to whatever variant of christianity was the state religion, and allowed culture and art to flourish when Europe was in the darkest of dark ages by comparison.

The preachings in the holy book are no more regressive (or progressive if you like optimism (seemingly you don't, though)) than those found in the old or new testament; possibly they are a bit more practical and applicable at times, as Mohammed also aimed to unite the arab people and was in no meaning considered holy himself, unlike Jesus.

What matters is how people interpret them.

Many muslim countries have lagged behind in their state-building-processes, and secular and islamist visions are competing for influence, although the secular visions are clearly, in practice, on the winning side, and has been, for some time. For people that until 1923 when the Ottoman empire collapsed had lived under an islamic state (side note: Islamic state as it may have been, in the late 18th century, European court women were amazed at the freedoms muslim women had in comparison to European women (Source: Women in the Middle East and North Africa, Guity Nashat & Judith E. Tucker)) this change to secularism is obviously dramatic, causing some to adapt a very extreme interpretation of Islam and force it on people at gunpoint (Note: many more muslims have died at the hands of "Islamic" terrorism than Europeans).

Basically - it's the people, not the religion. But, you know - the more we demonize muslims - the more they are alienated from the European communities, and do you know who takes advantage of that? Oh yeah, ISIS does. They don't want no muslims to integrate in our societies - they exist only because the hate against West has grown strong enough among some muslims after colonialism (along with the identity issues, problems with modern state building, and socio-economic cleavages that one shouldn't overlook as other reasons the middle east has lagged behind west in development, but that ISIS would never admit) brought big issues to many of the countries, colonialism first as post-WW1 western powers jumped atop the collapsed Ottoman empire's "abandoned" territories and established various forms of colonial rule, (the french in Syria, the british in Egypt (actually happened before WW1), Iran and Palestine, Russia in Iran) later as cold war-tensions made them a pawn in the game between the U.S. and the USSR, and even later as the U.S. decided to play world police and force democracy on countries that wasn't ready for it, in ways that just messed them up further.

Oh well, this post is getting too long for any sane being to read. But try looking to the majority of muslims, not the extremist minority that most muslims won't even recognize as being muslim, and you might get a different view. Think of them as people, and realize they were born no different from you.

@Cantremember
Quran (2:191-193) - "And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah is worse than killing... but if they desist, then lo! Allah is forgiving and merciful. And fight them until there is no more Fitnah and worship is for Allah alone. But if they cease, let there be no transgression except against Az-Zalimun"

Your denial is actually pathetic and I genuinely feel sorry for you. Have fun promoting the "religion of peace" currently invading your home.

@v0ider
Deuteronomy 13...
Since you seem to think Christianity is not just as violent... Instructions to kill an entire town if Anyone in it has attempted to bring anyone to another religion.

6 If your very own brother, or your son or daughter, or the wife you love, or your closest friend secretly entices you, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, 7 gods of the peoples around you, whether near or far, from one end of the land to the other), 8 do not yield to them or listen to them. Show them no pity. Do not spare them or shield them. 9 You must certainly put them to death. Your hand must be the first in putting them to death, and then the hands of all the people. 10 Stone them to death, because they tried to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. 11 Then all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again. 12 If you hear it said about one of the towns the Lord your God is giving you to live in 13 that troublemakers have arisen among you and have led the people of their town astray, saying, “Let us go and worship other gods” (gods you have not known), 14 then you must inquire, probe and investigate it thoroughly. And if it is true and it has been proved that this detestable thing has been done among you, 15 you must certainly put to the sword all who live in that town. You must destroy it completely,[b] both its people and its livestock. 16 You are to gather all the plunder of the town into the middle of the public square and completely burn the town and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. That town is to remain a ruin forever, never to be rebuilt,

And to deflect the reflexive "old testament doesn't count" most christians revert to... Mathew 5, words of Jesus himself that the old testament is still 100% THE LAW and any violation of it is still wrong...
17Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them, but to fulfill them. 18For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19So then, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do likewise will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.…

@Jes Yes the old testament is still in effect but with the death of Jesus on the cross the rules were made to apply on our hearts and minds instead of actions. Hebrews 8:10 and Jeremiah 31:31-33 tell about this. Christ died on the cross for our sins meaning we no longer had to answer to them ourselves with violence.

@v0ider
Jesus explicitly states that he is Not there to change so much as a word of the law, so to claim that Anything altered that is denying Christ, and separately... reread those sections you stated it is nothing to do with no longer having to follow the law in action but about the law being written into the heart and mind, in other words removing the desire to even Break those laws... at -best- it is an early reference to the world post-revelations, otherwise it is simply not supported by Anything else in the bible and merely used as one of the "excuses for why we ignore most of the bible but claim to keep it holy"

But regardless, getting back on topic... This does Nothing to diminish the obvious root hypocrisy of claiming that Islam is inherently violent and murderous while not calling out Christianity and Judaism for the exact same thing because of what is in their books goes beyond killing the 'infidel' but to kill entire cities on account of a single 'infidel'.

So you can either accept that all these religions have changed and learn to be tolerant, or you can be a hypocrite (that which Jesus found the most offensive) and continue to rail on them for your lack of understanding.

@Jes If what you just said was true there would not even be any sin in the world anymore. And he did not change a word of the law, you are correct on that. But he changed the way we follow them. Am I done repeating myself or are you going to continue running in circles?

@v0ider
Feel free to continue to repeat yourself until you realize that you are running in circles trying to prove that Jesus said he would change none of the law, but just ignore that and just Feel the law while disobeying it, it's the same thing... so feel free to Feel like you made a point here, I'm pretty sure everyone else reading this got it too, the point is "Hypocrites scream loudest when trying to divert people from their hypocrisy by accusing others of their own crimes."
Christians continue to invade countries through trojan horse strategies but sadly the media covers it up and half the people who hear it believe it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Theology#Dominion_Theology_and_the_Christian_Right

@v0ider
That's a very nice Quran quote you've got there. It's a shame it' s skewered to fit your narrative, and left out of context.
Here's the entirety of the verses in a modern translation, and with verse 190 added, as well as important parts highlighted with asterisks (by me):

(190) Fight in God's cause against those *who fight you*, but *do not overstep the limits*. God does not love those who overstep the limits. (191) Kill them wherever you encounter them, and drive them out from where they drove you out, for *persecution is more serious than killing*. Do not fight them at the Sacred Mosque *unless they fight you there.* If they fight you - kill them - this is what such disbelievers deserve - (192) *but if they stop, then God is most forgiving and merciful.* (193) Fight them until there is no more *persecution* [against muslims, personal remark] and worship is devoted to God. If they cease hostilities, there can be no [further] hostility, *except towards aggressors.*

From this, it's quite clear that the policy of Islam is defensive, and forgiving, when it comes to fighting. From verse 190, it's also clear that the fighting is not directed towards people of other faiths per se, but simply against those who fight you in the first place.

I think the only one in denial here is you, because you can't even post the whole source without undermining your own argument, and you only responded to the very first segment of my post, denying the (albeit rambly) core of it, addressing why you shouldn't considering muslims more brutish than anyone else; rather, they've been very progressive in some areas long before any other religions or groups followed suit.

@Cantremember So that justifies all their terrorist attacks over the last decades? Okay enjoy being dominated by Muslims.

@v0ider
"Their"?
What the fuck does a Malaysian, Indonesian, U.S., Greek, English, Algerian, Turkish, or hell, even an every day Egyptian, Saudi or Syrian muslim have to do with a select few terrorists' twisted interpretation and application of a religion that every muslim scholar frowns at?

The muslims are 1,5 billion worldwide. If there so are 100000 actively supporting a crazy self-proclaimed state, that's less than 0,1 % of the totalt population, but you let them represent the mass that is the other 1,4999 billion.

Hell, only a couple 100s have in any major way affected western states through terrorist means. Western casualties in civilians, also counting 9/11, still can't break the 10000 barrier. For contrast, additionally, many more *muslims*, more than 10 times more, in fact, have died just at the hands of ISIS, in wars as well as countless terrorist attacks, many more than have been committed on western countries.

Separate peaceful believers from a fundamentalist bunch of disillusioned "radical islamists" (not very keen on using that phrase as no other muslim would admit them to be muslims), and try tackling the real issue instead of further demonizing muslims and giving ISIS a bigger recruitment base.

@v0ider http://www.government.se/articles/2017/02/facts-about-migration-and-crime-in-sweden/

I promise to start respecting Iceland's opinion on pineapple and pizza when he stops thinking that rotten shark is food.

@ShoggothOnTheRoof Our new president does not like pineapple on Pizza and said it should be banned. Lots of people got "angry" as in say that they like pineapple on their pizza. Personally, I don´t care... (I like neither; ketchup nor melted cheese and because of that, I don´t eat pizza at all). So, our new President can dislike pineapple on Pizza and anybody else can like it very much. I could not care less...

@bubba Yes, I'm aware of that. However, in this comic it's Brother Iceland who's making the statement so that's who I'm going to address.

@ShoggothOnTheRoof Rotten shark is the kind of food that happens when you're sitting on a rock in the middle of the ocean over a hundred years ago. It's winter, ships aren't going to reach you. And you either find a way to make the shark not poisonous, or you starve to death. Once you've gone through it, you'll make damn sure your children suffer as you did. And that's how most regional "delicacies" happened. :p

@Ulminati
Finally! An explanation for Lutefisk!

@Drachenfrau

Actually no...

Lutfisk is what happens when you want to export large quantities of fish from the north of Europe to the south in the middle ages when there is no refrigeration and salt is an expensive commodity.
Instead you dry the fish, which preserves it, and export it like that.
Well in the south it then has to be soaked in water for a long time to be edible again.
Most of the nutrients will have gone and it taste almost nothing - but it's still fish, which was the point of the export.

Because during the middle ages Europe was of course Catholic and they where forbidden to eat meat on any holy day. The problem was that every single village and trade had their own saints and every saint had a holy day so there was a huge amount of days they where only allowed to eat fish, so the Mediterranean fish stock soon got over fished and depleted.
Thus they had to import huge quantities of dried lutfisk from the north of Europe where fish was plentiful.

So that's the explanation for lutfisk. :-)

I'm just gonna keep laughing at the pineapple joke and ignore all the "Sweden is hell" comments that seem very popular ^^
I may not be very proud or patriotic, but it kinda sucks when everyone seems to trash talk your country while I'm walking around late at night with my headphones wondering what the heck they're smoking.

@Crez That's pretty much how I feel as an American. Okay, my country isn't perfect, but come on.

@Crez I think Calle Bildt expressed a similar sentiment.