The Observer has a terrible problem to deal with in their reporting on the mysterious series of bombings afflicting Malmo in Sweden. For of course they’d like to report on the series of bombings. And yet the institutional belief is that immigration is a good thing. Any idea that certain sectors, groupings, of immigrants might not be all peace and love is not a thought to be accepted.
No, this isn’t me going off about Islam. Nor even about immigration. Not even about selectivity in immigration. Rather, about how belief is perverting a newspaper.
So, their problem at The Observer. They report on the bombings. And they don’t mention, not directly, that this is entirely something going on in criminal gangs among certain groups of immigrants. Because that’s not part of the world view. But they also want to include direct quotes. Which they do, they being the only indications that this is indeed the work of certain subgroups among those recent immigrants:
Bombs and blood feuds: the wave of explosions rocking Sweden’s cities
Incidents involving explosives have risen to crisis levels in a country where the crime rate is low
It just never is mentioned that this is a performance by an immigrant subgroup. Except, those direct quotes they also want to fit in:
You might expect such a powerful explosion to be unusual in a middle-class district in otherwise safe, well-organised Sweden. But this bombing in November was one of three in the city in the space of 24 hours.
According to data released this month by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, there were 257 crimes involving explosives in the country last year, a 60% rise on 2018. Gangland shootings are also shockingly high, with 320 reported last year, 41 of them fatal. As recently as Tuesday, there were twin explosions in two apartment buildings in a Stockholm suburb. The last blast in Malmö was on 10 January.
“These explosions in public places are a serious problem specific to Sweden,” Linda Staaf, the head of the Swedish National Police’s intelligence service, told the Observer. “It’s not normal to see these kinds of explosions in a country without a war.”
Well, OK, yes. But, this all seems to be being done by people of no known ethnicity. What has made the Vikings start to Lindisfarne themselves?
“People are being forced to flee their homes in the middle of the night because of bomb attacks,” Ulf Kristersson, leader of the opposition Moderate party wrote in Aftonbladet after Tuesday’s blasts, before accusing prime minister Stefan Löfven of “refusing even to admit the connection between failed integration and growing gang criminality”.
That’s one of the only two mentions. This is the other:
The suspected gang leader was not in the end convicted for the murder, which the prosecutor claimed was in revenge for divorcing his sister. But, seeking revenge on his family, he had begun calling in real or imagined debts. Weeks before the attack, he texted his brother, asking him to “be nice” and give an associate the 750,000 krona (£60,000) he believed he owed. “Then we can solve everything between us in the family when the time is right, inshallah.”
Inshallah being one of those common local phrases as all who watched Swedish Chef know.
Back in the days when Pravda wasn’t telling the truth and Izvestia wasn’t detailing the news the ability to read those newspapers depended on working out what wasn’t being said. What wasn’t mentioned being the truth and the news that attention should be paid to.
It is something of a pity to see one of the great liberal newspapers of the world sliding down the same slippery path, isn’t it? Even if it’s self- not government- censorship it’s still a shame.
Yes – I read this item – re-reported by the BBC, I think – and immediately wondered at the circumlocutions used in the attempt to avoid linking the bombing to a specific ethnic group.
The result was, of course, to stress the fact that it WAS that group, bringing their preferred cultural method of settling arguments with them. But the intentional blindness presented in the piece reminded me of the original argument used to justify blaming CO2 concentrations for Climate Change – “we can’t think of anything else that it might be…”.
Some of those bombs are grenades, it really is a war zone in parts of the country. What makes it worse is that there is a sort of omerta amongst the establishment, broadcasters and national newspapers that means that the worst excesses of immigration policy aren’t discussed and those that break the silence are ostracised. What do you think of when you think of Sweden? If, like me, the very name conjures fuzzy ideas of an enlightened and harmonious vision of social democracy, sexual liberation and ABBA tunes, the journalist Kajsa Norman has some news for you. In her gripping… Read more »
It’s become so automatic they probably don’t even realise they are doing it.
Chalk up another victory for gun control
Probably why they always first report terrorist incidents in the UK as the work of a mentally ill Swedish citizen. Only days later do they change to a Pakistani member of the RoP.
Boston has a radio talk host (HowieCarrShow.com) who regularly ridicules news reports of mayhem committed by a “Taunton man” (who may live in Taunton but certainly isn’t from Taunton, and saying so doesn’t aid understanding but thwarts it).
Normally, the first indication that crimes are the work of those with a specific ethnicity is a plea that we need to take robust action to prevent indigenous white thugs from reacting badly.
It’s rather like the rape gangs of ‘Britons’.