A common conservative joke online is that if Tumblr were a country, it would look a lot like Sweden. Although some still see the Scandinavian nation as either a Christmas card full of blond-haired people listening to ABBA or a socialist paradise that America would be prudent to emulate, the truth is that Sweden is a place where violent crime has increased significantly over the last four decades.
One would think that such dramatic statistics would be discussed daily in the Swedish press. After all, as noir writers like Henning Mankell, the late Stieg Larsson, and Camilla Läckberg have shown, the Nordic thirst for murder may be unquenchable. The problem is that the current crime wave in Sweden is being driven by something that the elites refuse to acknowledge.
Ever since the creation of Sweden’s much-hailed welfare state in the 1950s, generations of economic migrants and political refugees have been coming to this once very homogenous nation in droves. Both the Social Democratic Party and the nominally conservative Moderate Party have been the main engineers and architects of this multiculturalism, and both have taken credit for transforming Sweden into a multi-ethnic nation where women wearing hijabs can be seen strolling along streets that had once given ground to Vikings.
Despite such left-wing idealism, cracks in the facade have been showing for years. The city of Malmö today has a majority population from the Middle East and a disturbingly high rate of anti-Semitic violence. Malmö and sections of other major cities also sport the same kind of “no-go” zones seen in Paris and London. Elsewhere, Sweden has gained infamy as Europe’s “rape capital,” with statistics that put this developed country on par with the likes of India and South Africa.
But again, in Tumblrland, you’re only allowed to talk about such things unless you are willfully ignorant and do not point out the obvious. In Sweden, if you want to keep your respectable job in academia or in journalism, you must repeat this mantra: It’s not the immigrants, it’s not the immigrants, it’s not the immigrants. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the Swedish media and the politicians they support care more about the dreaded specter of “Islamophobia” than they do about solving their country’s failing experiment with multiculturalism. That’s why when two asylum seekers from Eritrea went to an Ikea and stabbed to death a 55-year-old woman and her 28-year-old son in August, police rushed to protect immigrant neighborhoods from a (non-existent) “backlash.” It’s also helpful to remember that Sweden is the country that wants to reward returning ISIS jihadis with “psychological help” and jobs, while many of its own troops, many of whom have served honorably in Afghanistan, aren’t afforded the same luxuries.
Amidst this insanity, one voice has garnered attention on YouTube for speaking out against the shibboleths of Sweden’s privileged elites. Known as the Angry Foreigner, he is the man responsible for the hugely successful video “Welcome to Sweden.” Told with expletives and biting sarcasm, “Welcome to Sweden” hilariously dismantles all the lies that the Swedish elites like to tell themselves, from “Diversity Makes Us Stronger” to the completely ridiculous “Swedes Have No Culture.” Judging by its runaway popularity, “Welcome to Sweden” has tapped into Sweden’s “Silent Majority”—a majority that is getting much louder and less scared about voting for a “right-wing extremist” party like the Swedish Democrats.
Thanks to the popularity of “Welcome to Sweden,” the Angry Foreigner has surfaced in the English-speaking world, granting a few radio interviews. He has revealed many interesting facts about himself: 1) he is originally from Bosnia and came to Sweden as a war refugee in the 1990s; 2) although he was born into a Muslim family, he is a self-proclaimed atheist; and 3) he is a self-described left-libertarian who is primarily motivated by the cultural biases he sees in the Swedish media. Also, given Sweden’s crime of choice, the Angry Foreigner frequently talks about rape cases, especially those that involve Muslim immigrants.
Listening to the Angry Foreigner, one gets the sense that there is a growing solidarity between the American right and the European right. Sure, the American right will always be fundamentally classically liberal in its economic approach, while the European New and Old Right will forever be suspicious of capitalism. But both see the perils of unchecked immigration. In the American context, the problem is illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America—two of the world’s most violent places. In Europe, the threat is emanating from the Muslim Middle East and North Africa, with a vast array of economic migrants posing as refugees from Syria. For Americans, illegal immigration is primarily about economic and criminological dangers, while in Europe it is first and foremost a demographic challenge. Western and southern Europeans are just not breeding at replacement levels, thus programs like Angela Merkel’s plan to take in 800,000 refugees this year and thousands more over the coming years have the ability to dramatically alter the culture of Europe. And not for the better, as the Angry Foreigner likes to remind us.
Fundamentally, the current refugee crisis in Europe and America is a pitched battle between the masses and the elites. For some reason that baffles normal intelligence, leaders like Juha Sipila and the otter-faced thespian Benedict Cumberbatch feel the need to crucify themselves on the cross of multiculturalism. They are willing to give up on the wishes of their voters and spread comically theatrical lies about the nature of Europe’s refugees in order to achieve an end that can only be destructive.
The echoes of Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy are unmistakable. Maybe it’s too late to say that the Angry Foreigner’s “Welcome to Sweden” couldn’t happen here, but there’s something to be said for globalist liberalism current quest for self-immolation: If nothing else, it’s pushing the right back into the cultural driver’s seat.
Benjamin Welton is a writer in Boston.
