By Douglas Murray
Wednesday, June 12, 2019
Readers may recall a kerfuffle in February 2017, which
now seems like the long, distant past. It revolved around President Trump
riffing on the question of migration in front of a rally of his supporters:
You look at what’s happening in
Germany, you look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would
believe this. Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they
never thought possible.
As it happens, nothing had particularly happened the
night before in Sweden itself. Rather, the president appeared to be referring
to a segment he had seen on Fox News the previous evening, in which a
journalist reported on the social and criminal problems that Sweden had been
having as a result of the unchecked migration that peaked in 2015.
But such is the tenor of the times that the dominant
response to the President’s statement was to ridicule it, especially by
highlighting what a nirvana Sweden allegedly is. In other words, much of the
political and media class in America and around the world decided to take part
in covering up the problems which sudden non-European migration had brought to
Sweden. In their desire to lampoon Trump they ended up colluding in a
falsehood.
Just how false can once again be seen from the most
recent work from Paulina Neuding, one of the most indispensable journalists not
just in Europe but anywhere else. In recent years Neuding has, among other
things, been keeping a tally of “explosions” in Sweden. Not metaphorical ones,
but actual ones. So strangely self-censoring is the Swedish press that when
explosives are used (including grenade attacks, among other hitherto un-Swedish
activities) they are either ignored or reported merely as “explosions.” Some of these do turn out to be accidents,
but a great many do not, and the unwillingness of most of the media (local and
international) to look into these events is one of those things that I predict
historians will look back at and just whistle.
As Neuding reports, in just 24 hours, there were three
explosions in the city of Malmo, in southern Sweden. This included a bomb which ripped through two
apartment buildings on Friday evening. The scale of this assault (which is
mostly the result of violence between foreign-born gangs) is such that Neuding
says that it is time for Swedes to admit that they have a national emergency on
their hands.
3 explosions in Malmö in the last
24 hours. A bomb ripped through two apartment buildings in southern Sweden on
Friday (pic). My latest for Quillette: It’s
Time for Sweden to Admit Explosions Are a National Emergency
They won’t, of course.
Because there is almost no political or media desire to face up to or
even report these problems because they fear that to do so would give
ammunition to political parties which have long warned about such problems. It
would also open up a debate over whether the migration and asylum policies
which Sweden has enacted in this past generation are remotely wise or
sustainable. Anyhow — one for the history books, most likely. But an
interesting reminder that after the titters have died down, events do grind
remorselessly on.
No comments:
Post a Comment