An American reminisces about a recent trip to Sweden, both in terms of what he saw of its current immigration crisis, as well as his hopes for its future resurrection.
I didn’t see it at first. I’ve now been to Sweden twice. Both times, I was struck by how White it is, how nice it is compared to my native America. In fact, for over a week, I was hard-pressed to tell that Sweden had any sort of real multicultural issues at all. Was I blind? Or was it because I’m used to America, which is an absolute sewer by comparison, and is basically Escape from New York melded with McDonald’s, that Sweden seemed mild?
I posted online, in a notable political group, that I’m not seeing the immigration problems. Ethnic Swedes said, “Just wait, you need to live here to see it, but trust us, you’ll see it.” I stayed longer, but I thought Swedes might just be hypersensitive. Sweden looks like Oregon to me, not the Mad Max, no-go zones of Fox News lore. My trip through pleasant, sunny, and beautiful Stockholm failed to yield anything that I have experienced in, say, Detroit, or even Houston, or Miami.
When we hit Malmö via train, I thought, “Here it goes,” expecting some Children of Men-type of experience (the 2006 movie, which contains some hair-raising immigration scenes). Instead, I got what looked like Kansas City – a mild, mostly White, Middle American town. I scratched my head in disbelief. What piece of the puzzle am I not getting? Intellectually, I know Sweden has immigration issues. I know this. I’m well aware of the news reports we are fed constantly in the online world of the Right about how dangerous Sweden is. I’m well aware of the rapes, the crimes, the riots, and other the insane things happening periodically that the mainstream media wants silence. So why am I not seeing anything to indicate this? Just fly into Atlanta or Chicago. You’ll see indicators. Real ones, not just Swedified immigrants, which so far, a week into my trip, is all I’m seeing. It was bad 10 years ago in Atlanta, never mind how it must be now. So why isn’t it here? Why can’t I see it?
Well, part of the reason is because Sweden, unlike America, used to have almost no immigration. In Sweden twenty years ago, there was immigration, but in most places it was still predominantly White. Thirty years ago, it was essentially all Whites in the countryside, and forty to fifty years ago, it was almost entirely Swedish. America hasn’t ever been that homogenous, and more than fifty years of mass immigration – and I mean REAL mass immigration – as in, higher than the scale that Sweden currently has of one million per year ad nauseam – has totally destroyed the fabric of American society and any sense of cultural cohesion. The nation doesn’t exist anymore, except in some small towns which are still secluded. It is this cultural miasma that has propelled Donald Trump to the forefront of White identity politics in the USA. I left America two years ago for Russia for a reason.
Back to Sweden, however. Sweden isn’t the same whatsoever, and can’t be compared in the same way. Walking around in Sweden’s largest cities, you’ll still see a large number of Nordic people, ethnically Swedish, and they aren’t beleaguered by the same sorts of American problems, such as mass obesity, severe drug issues, inability to dress themselves, incapacity of speaking with decorum, or braggart disorders. Instead, they are cursed with other problems, specific to Swedish culture, such as adhering to a fault to conformism and things such as the Jante Law. I began to feel hopeful about Sweden, however. I still needed to really see the worst aspects of Sweden first-hand. I didn’t want to lie to myself.
Stopping off in Rosengård, the neighborhood where the recent tragic shooting happened, I was shocked to see how nice the ghetto was in comparison to American ghettos. Then, one by one, we were surrounded by Arab kids pestering us with questions. This reminded me of East Jerusalem, in Palestine, where Arab kids swarm around Westerners to ask questions, sometimes. They asked us if it was nice here. My friend said yes. They swarmed away, saying “it’s not” (in Swedish). In terms of Swedish cultural customs, I could imagine this would be somewhat unnerving, given Swedish cultural norms. Even my Brown buddy felt nervous, as he is fairly “Swedified.” You know it’s bad when immigrants get nervous around other immigrants, and support immigration restriction. We walked around seeing lots of Middle Eastern people, barbecuing, playing basketball, standing around in groups. But nothing on the level of a place like Camden, New Jersey, which has heroin dealers on every corner, prostitutes smoking crack in alleyways, and 7-year-olds selling drugs to people in passing cars. But given that this area was basically all-White thirty years ago, from that perspective, it is shocking to note the transformation. The sense of alienation could be profound to an ethnic Swede, I imagine.
Back in Stockholm, we attended a Leftist function where we pretended to be trendy limousine Lefties so my friend could show me the reality of self-delusion amongst the Swedish Left. Of course, the only people at this Leftist function were White, middle-class people, and a few drunken crustpunks. Numerous speeches about systemic racism were made, all by self-hating White people. A lot of talk about capitalism. My buddy was the sole Brown guy there. All the Whites who preached the PC drivel seemed less enthused with his presence than mine, which is humorous for obvious reasons. I pretended to be a Black Lives Matters supporter.
On the train ride back from the Leftist event, suddenly it appeared as if this meeting of trendy Lefties had being a séance summoning forth the demonic apparitions of multiculturalism to surround us. Hijabs, Wahhabbi beardos, yelling and jabbering Arabs were suddenly so much more common. They stood in brutal contrast to the pristine, angelic-looking Swedes, with their male model physiques and manbuns, and the swimsuit edition women casually strutting through post-apocalyptic Sweden, stone-faced, stoic-eyed, faithful adherents of the Jante Law, Sweden’s state cultural religion. I started noticing things I had overlooked, like gypsies sitting outside of stores begging, or Somalians fighting in the streets in what appeared to be gangs. On some trains, the Arabs were jumping and hollering, play-fighting, yelling – was it Turkish? I have no idea, but suddenly, I felt alienated and out of place, and like this was no longer the calm, nice, quiet, and lovely Sweden I had seen at the beginning of my trip.
On the night of the Turkish coup against Erdogan, Turks drove down the streets in central Stockholm waving Turkish flags out of their cars, beeping their horns as we walked by. On this particular night, Sweden didn’t even feel like Sweden – it felt, again, like East Jerusalem, where I saw Palestinians shouting “Allahu akhbar” at Al Aqsa mosque. That being said – the only real issues I had with foreigners on my trip were with drunken English people, one of whom approached me and started yelling at me for no reason, calling me a pussy for not “doing my job.” When I yelled back at him in a thick Russian accent, his face went white. The Ghost of Marseille seemed to jolt him back to reality. But suddenly, all around me, I wasn’t in Europe anymore, but in some strange, dystopian future world with an amorphous cultural void, an abyssal lack of cohesion, and a sense of alienation that permeated all of existence.
Regardless, I couldn’t shake the feeling of something I never had in the America, namely the feeling that this can be reversed, that Sweden’s course is not yet sealed. As bad as things seemed, I still got the sense that if Swedes could overcome the social prohibitions stopping them from reclaiming their culture, Sweden could shock the world. Imagine a Right-wing Sweden. Glorious, is it not? There are signs that this is happening, thankfully, but not fast enough. Being ethnically Germanic, I myself feel a strong attachment to Sweden. I feel nothing in my soul for my nation of origin, the USA, but in Sweden there is a strong attachment, an ancient, blood memory of primordial ancestry. And this blood-memory is what leads me to believe that the Swedes themselves feel it as well – that they know deep down what is happening to their homeland.
Until that fateful day when the Northmen awake from their melancholic slumber and rub the dust from their eyes, paint runes on their swords, howl the Galdr, beat the drums of war, and once and for all put the skulls of the invading Skraelingar on pikes in the name of Odin, I will dare to dream that the Swedes will one day save their homeland. It’s something I feel in my bones, and deep in my soul. The Swedes I know all feel the same things. They can’t ignore it. And someday it will come to the point where the folksoul awakens, and the wrath pours out.
The first few paragraphs had that “the-floodwater-is-only-in-the-basement” to them. Distressing.
You redeemed the piece with the last paragraph. I hope you are right about Sweden; I fear you are wrong.