Nationalism, xenophobia, and even fascism seems to be on the rise in Sweden - as it is in the rest of Europe. (I'm basing this solely on media coverage and personal observation.)<p>Posts like this show a poor attempt, with entirely subjective observations, to justify some of these attitudes. What's particularly scary is how the poster tries to disguise his views with a belief in socialist politics.
Swede here – I don't agree with this post. He does bring up some very good point about the real estate situation though.<p>I do, however, think that it's wrong to say that Stefan Löfven is a 'corrupt yokel'. He's been in a very hard situation politically, where he's been forced to rule as a minority. The opposition is doing everything they can to make sure that he looks incompetent as a leader, as it's basically ensuring their next election victory. He's only been in office since september, so it's not actually that weird that not too much has been done.<p>The whole post is filled with overstatements like this – and I'm kind of amused about the idea of escaping sweden because it left some of it's socialist ideals in the 60's to go to a country who despises socialism.
The same old xenophobe right-wing populist rhetoric we hear in Norway as well (though Sweden has admittedly met with larger issues than us).<p><pre><code> "Yes, there was a heavy blanket of socialism and collectivist values covering everything, but there was a core of pragmatism beneath the redness."
</code></pre>
Redness? Come on.
Dane here... we look at Sweden and sigh. The once prosperous and sensible country seems to have lost it. It's all about being "good" for other peoples money and it seems like there's a sort of self-hatred amongst ethnic Swedes. If you want to see the pinnacle of multiculturalism, feast your eyes on Sweden. I'll give it 10-20 years and then I think we will have a thorough breakdown in Swedish.
There are valid points in this post, eg <a href="http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-most-diverse-cities-are-often-the-most-segregated/" rel="nofollow">http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-most-diverse-cities-...</a><p>I thought he could almost be talking about London. Diversity is not integration. Lack of integration creates polarisation. A single example: different nationalities have different levels of education, therefore different incomes, therefore different social status, and different accommodation budgets, therefore geographic limitations, and common solutions. In my area, watching east africans try to steal phones off tables in coffee shops is so run of the mill it's boring. Same nationalities, same activities - community effects. Some places in London try to resolve such a situation by mixing up affordable housing with higher-income housing. The situation is then exacerbated, as the higher income people then have to live with what is in their culture unpleasant behaviour. Of course, everything just gets dismissed as racism, when it's in fact about culture, not race, and not applicable to all cultures. The dismissal resolves nothing. If we were talking about moving into the amazon, people would be outraged at the displacement of the locals, but somehow western cultures don't matter, or some sort of penance has to be paid for sins of some previous generations. Until the liberals learn to have a discussion instead of flippant dismissals and name calling, nothing will be resolved, and europe's moving to the right shows that their is something that needs to be resolved.
As a Singaporean, I laugh at these low immigration numbers. 150K per year out of 9.8 million residents, that's a drop in the ocean.<p>According to the government, the total population of Singapore is 5.26M. Out of this, 3.27M are citizens, with 540K Permanent Residents and 1.46M non-residents. In other words, about 2M or 38% of the population were not born in Singapore.[1] Note that this is a conservative estimate since an immigrant can become a Singapore Citizen after 2 years as a Permanent Resident.<p>And yes, obviously there is great concern because a lot of foreigners do not assimilate well either.[2]<p>[1] <a href="http://population.sg/resources/population-composition/" rel="nofollow">http://population.sg/resources/population-composition/</a>
[2] <a href="http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/rapid-growth-singapores-immigrant-population-brings-policy-challenges/" rel="nofollow">http://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/rapid-growth-singapor...</a>
I think some personality types are just prone to the attitude that everything's turning to shit. The same people that feel that the world is less safe today while statistics show the opposite. That doesn't mean he doesn't have some good points. Personally I'm particularly worried about the schooling system. The strain of immigration may be real, I don't know if it will be a net positive or negative in the end. To be safe I would prefer a more modest immigration policy.<p>I think Sweden is following a larger trend in the west of a more polarizing society with higher income inequality and the slashing of the social safety net. I think globalization and new technology is to blame for this, not naive politicians.
<i>Now, to be clear, it is my opinion that modest immigration is healthy for society and beneficial for trade, cultural development and so forth. Protectionism as a concept is counter-productive, while free trade and the ability for skilled labor to go where they’re in demand is beneficial for everyone.</i><p><i>Having said that, what Sweden is doing is something completely different. The once homogenous population has been forever altered by a rapid and massive addition of people from vastly different cultures and value-systems.</i><p>tl;dr: Protectionism is bad. Sweden should be protectionist and homogenous.<p>... if the rest of the article is like this I'm not sure of the value of it.
The EU asylum system [0] is currently debated and fairness will be improved. It is not an easy task, considering the UK threatening to leave, but Sweden and Italy are treated unfairly by their partners here.<p>[0] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Regulation" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dublin_Regulation</a>
Sweden is the best example of what happens when you have a completely liberal society. And, of course, it's bleeding to lots of places. And if you call them out, you are called racist.
I don't agree with the author on almost anything but I wholeheartedly agree that voting with your feet is the only type of voting that brings immediate results.<p>Voting with your feet > voting with your wallet > voting though a ballot box every 5 years (you should still do that though as it costs you nothing!)
I blame aftonbladet.se for 80% of the crap going on in Sweden at the moment. They really have made a huge difference to the worse of the mental health of the nation.
I didn't knew that ycombinator allowed such xenophobic views on their site. This is an example of some guy that thinks that only the pure swedish people is to be trusted.<p>I'm horrified at what Hacker News can become...
This reads exactly like Atlas Shrugged, complete with politicians bankrupting the system, unwarranted charity, non-objective scholars and a collapsing railroad system.<p>I don't know of the situation in Sweden, but I kept wondering if the post was satire. It seemed too one-sided to be totally honest.<p>And then things like "most of the west had a housing crash" don't increase your confidence in the writing.
Everyone has their own view and cling to their reality with confirmation bias and cherry picking. The optimists say we'll work out any problems, this is a transition period, the complainers are exaggerating and "everything's fine where I live" The pessimists will say things are only getting worse and that the optimists are ignoring real problems.<p>I live in Stockholm and try very hard to have a nuanced view. Unfortunately, more and more, I see the pessimists view. It isn't as bad as the worst pessimists are saying, but it's also far from as good as the optimists are claiming. Sweden is a 2/3 parts tenderizing frog that's ignoring that the temperature is rising and 1/3 that's boiling.<p>If we see past the actual issues, which are complex and multifaceted, there's a number of trends in Sweden that's deeply disturbing<p>1) The level of discourse is only getting worse and more polarized. Populism, emotions and who can make most noise wins over any rational nuanced debate.<p>2) The quality of politicians are becoming more corrupt and separated from their voters, while resorting to pandering to whatever gives them votes, money and power. It's frightening to see the lack of competence in any party right now.<p>3) A naive sense of security and refusal of many Swedes to believe things are getting worse and that we are facing real problems. We don't seem to value what we always had and can't conceive we'll ever lose it. Even though education, pensions and care is going down the drain and crime rates rapidly rising.<p>Someone will twist or focus on some minor facet to state that's not the case at all. Everyone will like and tweet that article clinging to the feeling that we're still great.<p>4) Inability to treat root causes rather than symptoms.<p>5) A toxic media climate dominated by "feel good" articles and vicious attacks on any dissidents.<p>6) Exaggerating and focusing on the wrong topics. We can have a turbulent feminist debate in all the newspapers about manspreading in the subway, while ignoring issues like cultural violence against women, because it isn't "political correct" to even discuss that topic.<p>Sweden's problems are not only Sweden's... but symptomatic of the problems we're facing in general in Europe and the world: Inability to deal with rampant complexity and globalization, a financial system predicated on unsustainable expansion, booming population and third-world poverty meeting first world abundance.<p>We just want to feel like good people in a world where it's more and more everyone for themselves... Just saying all this makes me depressed, think I'll go back to believing we're awesome.
the xenophobia in this rant basically amounts to "sweden for swedes", but it's more striking when you read this on the About page:<p><i>Please note that I enforce a zero-tolerance policy towards racism, violence and extremist comments.<p>Judging other people by the color of their skin is manifestly absurd. So please don’t submit such comments here</i><p>Edit: removed some sarcasm
I couldn't manage to find one single positive article in this <i>report</i>[1]. So it's good for they that they got the opportunity to move (apparently they moved back for family reasons).<p>[1] Really? Not even an article about a particularly delicious meal of köttbullar?