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§ Until recently, the very notion that some European neighborhoods
were "no-go" zones was vehemently dismissed by politicians and
commentators on both sides of the Atlantic as a myth, a lie, a vicious
right-wing calumny. But even as Swedish officials were denying the existence of
such zones in their own country, they were secretly mapping them out and
overseeing a police effort to liberate them.
§ The Sweden Democrats are on the rise because voters finally grasp
the extent and significance of the damage their elites have been doing to their
country -- and the elites, both in the media and in government, are scrambling
to snap into line in order to keep hold on power.
§ In some ways, the winds in Scandinavia may be turning, but it does
not seem as if Stanghelle and his ilk are about to speak the whole truth about
Islam, or to apologize for their inexcusable abuse of those who have.
Not long ago, Norwegian journalists were
virtually united in representing Sweden, with its exceedingly liberal
immigration policy and its strict limits on public discussion of the subject,
as a model of enlightened thinking that deserved to be emulated. Meanwhile
Denmark, with its far freer atmosphere of debate (remember the Danish cartoons)
and more sensible border controls, was almost universally depicted in Norway as
a deplorable hotbed of Islamophobia. That appears to be changing. As Hans
Rustad of the alternative Norwegian news website Document.no noted recently, the term
"Swedish conditions," which some of us have been using for years to
refer to the colossal scale of Sweden's Muslim-related problems, is actually
turning up these days in the mainstream Norwegian media -- although the
relationship of those conditions to Islam is still routinely underplayed, if
not entirely avoided.
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Until
recently, Denmark, with its far freer atmosphere of debate and more sensible
border controls, was almost universally depicted in Norway as a deplorable
hotbed of Islamophobia. Pictured: A Danish checkpoint on the border with
Germany, near Padborg, on January 6, 2016. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty
Images)
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Case in point: on August 10, the daily Aftenposten
ran a piece by Tarjei
Kramviken about an official Swedish report stating that police, during the past
couple of years, have been pursuing an organized campaign to "take back
neighborhoods from criminals who have set up parallel societies." But the
attempt, the report admitted, has failed. Instead, even more such neighborhoods
have sprung up, and the level of violence within them has become more common,
more brutal, and more spontaneous. If a police car crosses the invisible
border, it is pelted with rocks or bottles.
The neighborhoods in question are, of
course, Muslim neighborhoods, and the criminals are Muslims. Although the
persons in question are indeed criminals -- they carry guns, sell drugs, commit
burglaries, and break out into the occasional riot -- the use of the word criminals
seems somewhat euphemistic. We are not talking about some kind of Mafia that
has moved into certain neighborhoods, taken them over, and terrorized the
locals. The criminals are the locals. They are the young men who live
there. Maybe not every last young man, but a high percentage of them. Some of
these criminals, moreover, are mere children. One Stockholm cop told Kramviken
about "five-year-olds who give the finger to the police and say nasty
things."
What we are talking about here, needless
to say, is not conventional crime and run-of-the-mill perpetrators but the
violent psychopathology associated with a certain religion. We are also talking
about the notorious "no-go zones." Until recently, the very notion
that some European neighborhoods were "no-go" zones was vehemently
dismissed by politicians and commentators on both sides of the Atlantic as a
myth, a lie, a vicious right-wing calumny. But even as Swedish officials were
denying the existence of such zones in their own country, they were secretly
mapping them out and overseeing a police effort to liberate them.
To be sure, they don't call them
"no-go zones." Just as the British media refer euphemistically to
"Asian neighborhoods," Swedish officials label such heavily Muslim
areas as Rinkeby in Stockholm, Rosengård in Malmö, and Biskopsgården in
Gothenburg as "vulnerable areas" and "especially vulnerable
areas." Aftenposten's Kramviken, while frank about the nature and
level of criminal activities in these areas, is careful to skirt the issue of
Islam. The word appears nowhere in his article; instead, he focuses on the
Muslim neighborhoods' low rates of education and employment and high levels of
disability claims and long-term sick leave.
Kramviken's piece came a little over a
week after a commentary by Aftenposten's
editor-in-chief, Harald Stanghelle, who claimed to have noticed a rapid shift
in Sweden's public-debate climate over the last year or so, particularly as
regards the topic of immigration. Suddenly, mainstream Swedish politicians are
talking positively about "Swedish values" and listening to the
concerns of ordinary Swedes; Åsa Linderborg, a leftist editor at Sweden's daily
Aftonbladet, has actually apologized for calling Norway's Progress Party
"fascist" because of its support for immigration reform. Stanghelle
attributed this sea change to the current refugee crisis, the votes for Brexit
and Trump, and the growing success at the polls of the officially reviled
anti-mass-immigration Sweden Democrats Party.
Well, one thing is true: the Sweden
Democrats are on the rise because voters finally grasp the extent and
significance of the damage their elites have been doing to their country -- and
the elites, both in the media and in government, are scrambling to snap into
line in order to keep hold on power. What Stanghelle does not mention is that
the same exact shift is taking place, on a smaller scale, in Norway. One
example of this shift is Stanghelle's own essay, in which he writes with
apparent approval of what he depicts as the Swedish establishment's increasing
openness to critics of uncontrolled immigration -- even as he ignores the
massive role that the Norwegian media, including Aftenposten, have
played in the creating the disaster for which that immigration is responsible.
There is one word that is at the very
heart of what Stanghelle is writing about but that (as with Kramviken) appears
not once in his piece: namely, Islam. For years, Stanghelle's own rag has
systematically whitewashed, and outright celebrated, the "religion of
peace." even as it has mendaciously and malignantly demonized its critics.
In some ways, the winds in Scandinavia may be turning, but it does not seem as
if Stanghelle and his ilk are about to speak the whole truth about Islam, or to
apologize for their inexcusable abuse of those who have.
Bruce Bawer is the author of the new
novel The Alhambra (Swamp Fox Editions).
His book While Europe Slept (2006) was a New York Times bestseller and
National Book Critics Circle Award finalist.
