Let's not get too enamored with the problems we face here in America. Sweden has similar problems and I would not be surprised to learn that it's an issue or will soon become an issue in other nations.
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Sweden’s prime minister summons police and army chiefs, as gang violence surges
- Thread starter sun rise
- Start date
Although we wouldn't typically use the Army against street gangs. Though they might be more effective than the police currently are.
True. To me, it's related to the breakdown of order all over the world with the Russian-Ukrainian war, anti-Muslim propaganda and violence in India, the rise of fanaticism in many places, the US included and so forth. There are, of course local reasons why certain things are happening in certain countries.
Immigrants to Sweden from what I've read were more likely to be involved with crime but I've seen nothing to indicate why the problem is worse now how much of the gang violence is due to which group.
metis
aged ecumenical anthropologist
You are correct, and it is believed to be because of two main reasons: more guns as hunting is a major sport in Sweden and also gang violence has increased over the last two decades. However, its homicide rate is just a fraction of ours here in the States.
Reminds me of the old Avis slogan...
We're #2 so we try harder.
As opposed to Cracked magazine's slogan: "We're number two because we don't try as hard."
Gangs is the short answer.
Groups like Foxtrot and Dalen are responsible for importing large amounts of weapons to Sweden and are having a very active and public war over control of the drug industry.
The violence has become increasingly public and normalised, and includes very public murders of gang members, but also relatives or loose associates.
These are not small gangs, and immigration has provided fertile recruiting grounds unfortunately.
Dalen and Foxtrot are involved in an active and increasingly public war over drugs.
They have smuggled in large numbers of guns to support this.
PureX
Veteran Member
But why Sweden? Why not also Denmark and Norway and Germany and Poland, etc.?
Whilst physically they are in proximity, they're different countries, with different laws and acceptance standards for immigrants (or at least were. Swedish standards have more recently tightened).
In particular, Swedish acceptance of asylum seekers went beyond the level demanded by EU rules, with Norway not even being an EU member state.
You might this interesting on the issue;
The Rise of Sweden Democrats: Islam, Populism and the End of Swedish Exceptionalism
The humanitarian doctrine of “Swedish Exceptionalism” might have been a point of national pride and a marker of Swedish identity. That capacity has now been challenged by the growing popularity of the nationalist Sweden Democrats.
www.brookings.edu
It's worth noting, I'm not Swedish, and have only worked in Sweden for a couple of months total, back in 2017/18. I have a bunch of Swedish IRL friends (I worked 10+ years for a Swedish company so that's really my source for this. I'm far from an expert.
It's probably also worth noting that Germany and Denmark (at least) have had some issues.
Anecdotally, though, it might have been easier for 'new' gangs to establish themselves in Sweden than Germany due to the relative lack of strong organised domestic gangs in place when EU rules opened the borders to European refugees, and asylum rules opened them to middle eastern immigration (amongst others).