Of Rodolfo Casadei

Source: Times
It is the industrialized country that has recovered best from the consequences of the global financial crisis 2008, the second best in the entire European Union for unemployment rate (5,9 percent) and the first for employment rate (82 percent of the workforce); its GDP is growing at the rate of 3 percent per year thanks also to investments in development and research, the highest in all of Europe (3,3 percent of GDP) and is positioned first in the world rankings of sustainable development, entrepreneurial opportunities and economic competitiveness. Yet in the elections scheduled for Sunday 9 September its main governing party risks recording its worst result of the last few 100 years, while the two opposition parties of the far left and especially the far right are credited with the best result in their young history.

How is this possible? It is possible if you are in Sweden, and if the best socio-economic data in the world or in Europe are accompanied by disturbing statistics like those that have recently hit the headlines: in a country of 10 million inhabitants where up to 10 years ago shootings were almost unheard of, some have been well recorded 320 last year, together with 110 murders and 7.226 reported rapes, il 10 percent more than 2016. Il 36 percent of women say they feel in danger at nightfall, and the police reports prove them right: Reports of sexual violence tripled between 2012 and the 2016, thus affecting the 4,1 percent of all women, against 1.4 percent six years ago.

Sweden, the showcase state of social democracy and progressivism, the “moral superpower” magnified by the liberal press around the world, lives the most paradoxical moment of its history. The country that exceeds the average in all indicators that make up the OECD "Better Life" Index (education, healthcare, accommodation, civic commitment, income, employment, ecc.) it is also the country that, according to the Swedish Police Authority, in peacetime it has experienced the highest number of hand grenade attacks in recent years: In the 2015 the attacks were 45, In the 2016 have increased to 52. The targets of the explosions were commercial businesses and private homes, but also police stations, like that of Rosengard, near Malmö. In the Stockholm area during the period 2010-2015 have been registered 189 injured by firearms; in the same period in the nearby and equally Nordic Copenhagen only 30 people have been victims of the same crime.
What is happening in civilized Sweden? To understand this, just scroll through the list of names of the places where criminal acts are concentrated: Rosengard, Rinkeby, Cyst, Västerås, ecc. These are suburbs of the three main cities of Sweden – Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö – mostly inhabited by immigrants. Official and detailed data does not exist because, as the Swedish journalist Paulina Neuding writes, «the latest report on crime among immigrants compiled by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (ABRUPT) was published in 2005. The report, which covers the period 1997-2001, shows that immigrants from the Middle East and Africa were significantly overrepresented among suspects in violent crimes, in particular sexual crimes. Another study, relating to gang rapes in Sweden in the 1990s, indicated that they were committed by first- and second-generation immigrants. Unfortunately, there are no more recent studies. Data is still being collected, but they are not compiled and made available to the public. The Swedish Minister of Justice, Morgan Johansson, he recently explained in an interview that there is no need to publish new reports, because the facts are well known based on previous studies".
One might think that violence concerns almost exclusively the population of foreign origin, which amounts to 1,7 millions of inhabitants, half European and half non-European, but this is not the case: in neighborhoods and suburbs with high safety risks (the Swedish police have registered them 53 throughout the country) firefighters and medical workers called to the scene during fires and accidents with injuries are attacked, as well as the policemen who intervene to enforce public order. In February, the attempt by the police to arrest a minor in Rinkeby caused a riot with shops looted and cars set on fire, and forced the police to retreat after three hours of clashes with groups of young people. Dozens of cars have been burned by masked youths this year in locations other than ethnic ghettos, come Gothenburg, Helsingborg, Kalmar, Oxy, The troll hat, Crown Farm, ecc. A study of 2014 on cases of rape on the street it found that in two thirds of the cases the suspects were foreign citizens.
This is not the only thing that scandalizes the Swedes and in the pre-election polls pushes them to take away votes from the Social Democratic Party, cornerstone of the executive and has always been the country's main political force, almost always in government, and shift them to the xenophobic Sweden Democrats. There is also the fact that Sweden was recently the country that welcomed the most asylum seekers in relation to its population, and who is the one who spends the most on their inclusion in the economy and social life. In the last five years they have entered Sweden 600 thousand migrants and asylum seekers. Each of them costs the community the equivalent of for a few years 8 thousand euros per year. More generally, according to the analyzes of Tino Sanandaji, Swedish economist of Iranian-Kurdish origin, immigrants capture the 58 percent of all social assistance. The government responds to attacks from the right-wing opposition and criticism from newspapers by saying that the integration of immigrants in Sweden is a success story: the Minister of Finance, Magdalena Andersson, explained that 82 percent of adult immigrants have a job. The fact is that in recent years Swedish healthcare, the school, public construction and security showed signs of stress.
On Sunday the discontent with a situation that is no longer that of the Felix Sweden of the past could have an echo in the polls, strong enough to make the formation of a new government coalition difficult. According to market research firm YouGov, the Sweden Democrats should even win the elections with 24 percent of the votes. According to other polls they will only be third with 17 percent, after social democrats and moderates.