Background:
Are Swedish politicians beginning to realize what grave mistakes they have made in this field in the past?
Perhaps.
While most Western politicians are naive in general and especially naive in the domain of immigrant issues, the Swedish Social Democrats are probably among the most stubborn advocates of multi-culturalism found worldwide.
I sincerely question if Mona Sahlin, the present leader of this legendary party, actually understands that the blatant incapability of the Social Democrats to deal with the related problems of immigration and organized crime is one of the main reasons why her party lost last election to the Conservatives.
Göran Johansson could be one of the first leading Social Democrats to, fully, understand that few Swedes and few immigrants as well ever will believe in Multi-Culturalism.
Today, support for the Social Democrats and the cradle-to-grave ‘welfare state’ this party always have been so intimately associated with, is at an all time low.
Despite of this, you will still hear many Swedes saying that at least until the 1970’s, the policies of the Social Democrats were sensible and produced true development and progress in all areas of society.
In the beginning of the 1970’s, Sweden was one of the richest countries on Earth together with the US and Switzerland. Swedes who traveled to leading industrial nations like France and Britain felt like they were visiting Third World countries.
By the early 1990s, much of this had changed. Several incompetent governments in a row (both Social Democratic lead ones as well as Center-Right ones) had failed to get a grip on inflation, unemployment, irresponsible unions and problems of slow economic growth.
Whether it predominantely was due to the measures of the Conservative dominated government of 1991-1994 or its Social Democratic lead successor, a new, more Capitalist friendly climate was established in Sweden as a consequence of the economical crises around 1990-1993. Since then, Sweden has enjoyed one of the healthiest economical developments of all OECD countries.
Although the only ones who deny the apparent success of the corporate friendly ‘New Swedish Model’ are certain ignorant Communists (who few care about), most Swedes agree that serious problems remain in their country:
- The unsuccessful assimilation of non-European immigrants (mainly a ‘Muslim’ problem).
- The increase in organized crime (to a large extent connected to biker gangs, maffias dominated by different ethnic groups like Kosovo Albanians and Russians etc and drug related crimes).
The failures in these two areas (which naturally are related), together with the fact that unemployment remained rather high despite srong economic growth, were key factors behind the triumph of the Conservatives in last year’s election.
The Conservatives, who presently govern Sweden with the support of The Christian Democrats, The Liberal Party and The Center Party (although the actual government is dominated by Conservative ministers), have been very successful in creating new jobs and have also introduced welcome tax cuts. But, still most would say there are few visable signs of any greater competence in dealing with the problems of immigration and organized crime.
More and more honest, hard working, native Swedes are beginning to distrust the ability of politicians in general as well as the people within law enforcement to deal with these questions and restore order.
Traditionally, the Conservatives have been more strongly opposed to (especially non-Western) immigration than the other Swedish parties and that might still be the case. However, their ‘support parties’ are more or less as liberal in this area as the leftist ones and that might explain the present status quo.
When it comes to crime fighting, all Swedish parties seem to have a lot of things to say but few ideas of what to do.
The Social Democratic politician Göran Johansson is unique in the way that he is the only leading Swedish politician that dares to say that continuing to accept immigrants of Middle East origin to Sweden means giving in to organized crime.
It sounds more like he’s saying that the problem is that these people should come in for *free*, instead of having to pay money. The “problem” (according to what I read that he said) is that there are *more deserving* people who should come into their country (from these same places) who didn’t get the chance, because they weren’t able to come in for free.
I read it that he is saying that it should be *more possible* for people to come in, rather than blocking them from coming in...