https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17411/goran-adamson
In 2017, three out of four people suspected of murder in Sweden were migrants — a figure that seems frightfully high. The funny thing is that the Swedish Social Democrats, and others you might call multiculturalists — the “politically correct” — they have not been interested in investigating this, even though these are issues that Swedish people are talking about.
In Sweden, however, what people talk about are “socioeconomic factors” — which they claim are the causes behind everything: crime, rape, marginalization, exclusion, unemployment and financial issues. The multiculturalists link these issues to our country and say they are something we are to blame for. Those are completely different from culture, which is something that people bring with them when they come to Sweden.
“Culture,” they repeat over and over again, “has nothing to do with it!” So we ask them, “Then how do you explain that migrants from, say, Vietnam or Thailand, have a far lesser propensity for crime than migrants from other parts of the world?”
Orwell said something like, “I know enough about the working class not to idealize it.” You can apply the same concept to… fantasies about other cultures: the fact that we know very little about them because if we knew enough… we would not idealize these countries the way many academics in Sweden, Paris, or London are doing: we would know too much.
Another aspect here relates to when migrants come to Sweden. They are greeted by those who know very little about their own culture, who care very little about it and who are happy to compare it unfavorably to other cultures. Almost like a pastime. “Oh, you know, the way we treat homosexuals or women or migrants or structural racism in Sweden…” It is simply not true. We all have these dinners and just sit around and harass our own country, and everyone else does the same and we love it.
If people come to Sweden, how are they supposed to respect Swedish culture if we do not respect it ourselves? But in Sweden, we are not allowed to do that. In basically every other country, every other culture, people have a certain respect — even in dictatorships, they love their country, the tradition, and so on. In dictatorships, of course, if they do not love their country, they are not allowed to say so. If Sweden is such a bad place, why is everyone coming here?… No one is escaping from Sweden to Yemen.
It is as if we simply cannot accept the fact that we are fortunate and privileged because it goes against our own self-deception…. This whole self-critical, self-harassing attitude is a perfect way to avoid the kind of shame of being privileged. This self-critical attitude among scores of Western elites can only occur in wealthy societies. It is an odd fruit among those who are troubled by the fact that they are privileged and fortunate. But why on earth be troubled by it? Why be ashamed by all those before us who made our country so successful? This is just head-spinningly grotesque.
So, this is a one-sided tolerance: self-criticism, even if sometimes possibly justified, is replaced by self-annihilation. An idea fostered from above by political elites whereby Western cultures, Western traditions, Western ideas are being dismissed for the benefit of some kind of multicultural veneration and idealization of anything exotic — the more exotic, the better.
You could say that this whole focus on…. sexual identities and so forth sounds not only like sidetracking, but also an attempt to… engage people in… relatively unimportant battles while there are much more important battles to be fought. Most prominently, the battle against globalization, neo-liberalism, the dismantling of national borders, and the intensifying aggression of predatory nations. Those are the most important.
Göran Adamson, an associate professor of sociology with a PhD from the London School of economics, is engaged in public debate in Sweden focusing on issues of free speech and diversity; and an outspoken critic of “multiculturalism.” His most recent book — Masochist Nationalism: Multicultural Self-hatred and the Infatuation with the Exotic — was published by Routledge in March 2021.
Grégoire Canlorbe: You have been working on a statistical study of the relationship between ethnic background and crime in Sweden. Have you found a connection?
Göran Adamson: Important information was just revealed in an update of the 2005 prevention agency report I recently headed — a completely private initiative. It had been almost 20 years since the Swedish state had done any research about the relationship between migration and crime. The two most salient features we found were that that among people who were suspects or were, with good reason, suspected of a crime were migrants. The result was more than half — about six out of 10 in Sweden. When it comes to the murder rate, people suspected, with good reason, of murder made up about 73% or 74%. In 2017, three out of four people suspected of murder in Sweden were migrants — a figure that seems frightfully high. The funny thing is that the Swedish Social Democrats, and others you might call multiculturalists — the “politically correct” — they have not been interested in investigating this, even though these are issues that Swedish people are talking about. Maybe the most important issue — and the reason why the other party, Sweden Democrats, has become so huge over the last 10 years; they are now almost the biggest party in Sweden — like Marine Le Pen’s National Rally Party in France. I think if you check the migrants who are the most likely suspects of crime, many of these people are, regrettably, Muslims — the risk that this person has committed a crime is about roughly three times higher than for a Swede. So, sadly you could say that there is a link.
If you were to say that crime among migrants has to do with culture, I think unfortunately it is fair to say that an association has to be made.
