Sweden has recently been in the news after Donald Trump referred to as fact a Fox News report based on the statements of a certain Nils Bildt, a Swedish mythomaniac who passed off as news the usual anti-immigration and anti-Islam propaganda spread by the “Sverigedemokraterna” (Swedish Democrats) party, a nationalist-inspired political faction founded by some neo-Nazi groups.
The Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided to reply by publishing a significant and exhaustive press release in English, “Facts about migration and crime in Sweden,” which demolishes some of the most widespread false opinions/news currently circulating, based on facts and statistics extracted through official channels, primarily Police Force data.
Some of the most concise and meaningful excerpts are:
“Despite the fact that the number of immigrants in Sweden has increased since the 1990s, exposure to violent crimes has declined.”
And on the rapes:
“The number of reported rapes in Sweden has risen. But the definition of rape has broadened over time, which makes it difficult to compare the figures. It is also misleading to compare the figures with other countries, as many acts that are considered rape under Swedish law are not considered rape in many other countries. For example: If a woman in Sweden reports that she has been raped by her husband every night for a year, that is counted as 365 separate offences; in most other countries this would be registered as a single offence, or would not be registered as an offence at all..”
From my Italian perspective, for example, if all Italian women had the same zero tolerance level and considered “rape” a man groping them on a bus (an act that falls within the definition of rape in Sweden), it is likely that the percentage of women who would report having been sexually abused in Italy would be close to 90%.
And on the question of crime in relation to migration, the document focuses on the fact that there is a perceptual bias that leads us to believe foreigners are more suspect than native Swedes per se, but the emphasis in the analysis of crime should instead be on the individual’s socio-economic conditions.
Despite the apologies since offered by Fox News regarding this Nils Bildt, the problem now is that this indefinite stain on Sweden will remain forever and the country will be “the land where the most rapes in Europe occur, by Muslim hands”. And this would just be a sequel to an old falsehood put into circulation on 27 June 1960 by US President Eisenhower about the supposedly high number of suicides in Sweden. In his speech the president said that the “paternalism” of Swedish socialism had led to a loss of personal ambition, and that this lack of struggle had led to a high number of suicides, double that of the United States. This statement, false even then, has over time turned into “Sweden has the highest suicide rate in the world”. Eisenhower’s goal was political: he wanted to discredit the country that was demonstrating the most positive experience of socialism and socio-economic reforms in the world while at the same time managing to maintain both private property and professional achievements, as well as social justice and strength in its labor unions. And not because Eisenhower had anything against the nation itself, of course, but because a state model of this kind could only be an obstacle in the construction of an anti-communist narrative. While it was easy to throw dirt and hatred at the Soviet Union and its lack of freedom (and liberalism), it was much more complex to do so to the meek, wealthy, orderly and socially balanced Sweden, where workers and bosses spoke to each other on the solid ground of political and union certainties, based on fairness and justice.
Paradoxically, this stigma Sweden bears as an “unhappy” nation in spite of its wealth and socialism still remains nearly 60 years later, and today, not only the US along with the rest of the world, but even the Swedes themselves to a certain extent continue to quote this manipulative cliché as if it were true, although Sweden is only 35th in the world’s suicide ranking, and the number is constantly decreasing.
To understand how this could have happened it may be useful to point out – as an anthropological-cultural note – that it was an event that occurred in Sweden in 1973 that led to the theory of the so-called “Stockholm Syndrome”, a psychological mechanism that leads to developing a positive feeling towards one’s persecutor. This is an interesting issue but beyond the scope of this article, and more information can be found on Wikipedia.
Unfortunately, another broadside attack against this country was recently made by the Italian-Swedish director Erik Gandini with his, to say the least, mystifying documentary “The Swedish Theory of Love”, in which he jumbles disparate information with the aim of demonstrating a supposed Swedish individualism. Forcing affinity between different concepts such as “autonomy” and “abandonment”, and “individuality” and “individualism”, Gandini tries to demolish the Swedish welfare state created in the 1960s by the Social Democrat Olof Palme, one of the most enlightened prime ministers in history. Palme dreamed of a state capable of providing not only for basic needs (which would have been enough) but also superior ones such as offering everyone a chance to realize their full potential, regardless of gender, age, social situation or wealth. And he succeeded: in Sweden now everyone can access education up to a university degree, gender equality is a fact (including LGBTQIA), and the protection of citizens is something that can be taken for granted. And all this despite a long-lasting government by the Moderate Party coalition until three years ago that made substantial cuts to the welfare state, reducing public healthcare to its lowest levels.
It is no coincidence that Trump has today singled out Sweden, after Barak Obama had repeatedly pointed to it as a model during his presidency: Sweden is a thorn in the side of those who cannot reach its level and certainly its exalted public administration, distribution of resources, low crime rate, high quality of life, almost non-existent unemployment and support of culture in all its forms are likely to arouse envy in those who struggle with erratic public services and insecurity at all levels, from housing to employment. In addition, Sweden is among the most generous countries when it comes to immigration and asylum, with substantial investment (both material and political) into strategies for integration. It nevertheless maintains a government budget surplus, which is expected to remain as such until 2020.
However, in his documentary Gandini tries to build a “theory” that the support offered by this social system designed to make people autonomous and free to make choices ultimately leads to individualism. This is similar to Eisenhower stating that the lack of obstacles that socialism provides makes people less combative and therefore more prone to suicide. Given that the idea that socialism can generate individualism is a philosophical paradox in itself, in his documentary Gandini forces semantics continuously in his narration, using examples of marginal significance − if any − such as a small community of people who live in the woods basically to partake in group sex to overcome loneliness.
In an attempt to draw conclusions from Gandini’s criticism of Swedish society, one could say that he is promoting a patriarchal society, and he seems to yearn for a kind of familistic organization of society, because the welfarist Swedish State just makes everyone selfish in the end. And this is where I think lies the more macroscopic misjudgment: it is not true that Swedes consider welfare unimportant – quite the contrary. Simply put, Swedes do not want to have to deal with their neighbor and prefer that the State take care of that through taxation, so that everyone has access to social services and everything else. Swedes tolerate the states of poverty, abandonment, chaos and inequality with unease. Swedes do not like to be in the position of having to give or to receive in person, as they have a particular sense of personal dignity, privacy and shyness. They are emotionally cold and controlled people, and this is why they want a functioning state: they don’t want the individual to be dependent on family, volunteer aid, church or a two-faced charity for their well-being. They want it to be a guaranteed right.
But Gandini’s documentary is appreciated abroad, and in Italy especially, because it makes us happy to think that in this “model nation” everyone is deprived in terms of human relationships, and instead, there is loneliness, despair and suicide. A successful Sweden scares everybody. We need to look down on it in order to endure our strangled lives, organized crime and a state in chaos, corruption, feminicide, tolerated prostitution, abandoned elderly people, unemployment, a minimum pension level of €500, tax evasion, sky high pollution, et cetera, et cetera. Without ever wondering whether living (and dying) alone can actually be a personal choice, Gandini tells us about this immense solitude as if it were a product of social democracy. Just like Gandini, I am a person who chose Sweden to be my home country (and I am also a film director), and I experience his documentary’s mystification as embarrassing. Had I known him personally, I would have suggested that he go back to live in Brescia, where his neoliberal spirit would find better company, rather than stay in a country that he does not appreciate.
Sweden is not for everyone: it is a nation that one must deserve.
[Originally published on Popoff Quotidiano, translation revised by Ellen McRae]