Swedish police are dealing with unprecedented levels of attacks, targeting city centre locations too. The bomb squad was called to deal with 97 explosions in the first nine months of this year.The small Scandinavian country, which took more "Syrian refugees" than any other (per capita) is now enduring attacks by small explosives at a rate of one every two or three days. Everyone knows why this is occurring, but it's interesting to see the ways in which they pretend that they don't. There are five subsections in the article, and each follows the same pattern. They each tease at the truth and then pivot towards the lie. Rather than attempting to inform - the goal of journalism - they are attempting to subvert the degree to which their readers are informed.
Who is to blame?
The hook:
This category of crime was not even logged prior to 2017. Then, in 2018, there were 162 explosions and in the past two months alone the bomb squad have been called to almost 30.Hmm, so what could have happened around the middle of the decade to introduce a whole new category of crime into Swedish daily life? Oh dear, I feel myself about to have an unauthorized thought. Hopefully the BBC can set me straight.
The pivot:
The attacks are usually carried out by criminal gangs to scare rival groups or their close friends or family, she says. "This is a serious situation, but most people shouldn't be worried, because they are not going to be affected."Whew! As it turns out, the almost-daily grenade attacks on the streets of Sweden are not actually a big deal, because it will mostly only affect bad guys anyway.
For criminologist Amir Rostami the only relevant comparison is Mexico, plagued by gang violence. "This is unique in countries that pretty much don't have a war or don't have a long history of terrorism," he says.Amir Mohammadi Rostami just can't seem to put his finger on it either. Golly. He tells us it's very odd for a country not at war (i.e. one not being invaded by foreigners) or without a history of terrorism. His best comparison is to Mexico which, like Sweden, is inconveniently situated as a major route for trafficking drugs to its northern border.
Where are the explosions?
The hook:Sodermalm is a former working-class area that has become increasingly gentrified. Vintage boutiques and vegan delicatessens break up grids of mustard- and terracotta-painted apartment blocks. The building targeted is opposite a park and close to a school.The citizens are becoming concerned that the attacks are moving out of the slums and into the affluent white areas. Don't worry, the BBC is on the case!
The pivot:
No arrests have been made and police will not comment on potential motives. "If it was targeted then to be honest it makes us feel safer, because then the attack was not aimed to harm the public," says Ms Bradshaw, hoping it was not a random attack.You see, the attacks are most likely targeted, thus you aren't likely to be personally affected - well unless maybe you happen to be in the vicinity of one of the targets of the highly rational criminal gangs. So you'll likely not be blown to smithereens by an IED on your doorstep, and will still be able to enjoy all the other perks that diversity brings to your community.
Who are Sweden's gangs?
How will the BBC take on this touchy subject?The hook:
Swedish police do not record or release the ethnicity of suspects or convicted criminals, but intelligence chief Linda H Straaf says many do share a similar profile. "They have grown up in Sweden and they are from socio-economically weak groups, socio-economically weak areas, and many are perhaps second- or third-generation immigrants," she says.Some are starting to wonder if the mass importation of immigrants starting in 2015 has anything to do with the fact that gangs are starting to blow the place up.
Ideological debates about immigration have intensified since Sweden took in the highest number of asylum seekers per capita in the EU during the migrant crisis of 2015.
The pivot:
But Ms Straaf says it is "not correct" to suggest new arrivals are typically involved in gang networks. For many on the political right the explosions add fuel to their argument that Sweden has struggled to integrate migrants over the past two decades.In European press, "the political right" is effectively a slur. No one wants to be associated with the right wing by acknowledging arguments that Sweden has struggled to integrate immigrants.
But Malin Bradshaw believes crime levels are more to do with income and social status.
This kind of coverage is the jackpot for an SJW, whose highest virtue is to spout praise for social justice values directly into the face of contradictory truths. In this case, she was able to attach an image of her face to such pious claims in a major global news publication.
Esteemed Swedish crime authority Amir Mohammadi Rostami gets the last word in this section.
Amir Rostami says ethnicity rarely plays a big role in gang membership in Sweden. "When I interview gang members... the gang is their new country. The gang is their new identity."Ethnicity rarely plays a role, he says, yet I have to wonder what percentage of the gangs who are behind the epidemic explosives are ethnically Swedish. He can't say, since they have a policy of not releasing such statistics (for obvious reasons), but it can safely assumed to be 0%, with a margin of error of 0%. The Swedish police withhold the data about ethnicity and crime so that they can lie and say ethnicity "rarely" plays a role, when it is effectively the only role.
Interestingly enough, he validates the argument attributed in the same section to right wingers: that immigrants are failing to integrate into Swedish culture. They are not taking on a Swedish identity but the identities of local gangs of their own ethnicities. Rostami refutes the liberal claim that the immigrants are just as Swedish as anyone else. Very sloppy editing, BBC. I demand a correction.
Did Swedish media cover up?
I'm surprised they even take this on.The hook:
Another important layer of this story is how it has been covered by Swedish media. After last month's trio of attacks in Stockholm, public broadcaster SVT was accused of a leftist cover-up for leaving the story out of a main evening news programme.The pivot:
Christian Christensen, a journalism professor at Stockholm University, was himself surprised that some programmes paid little attention to the explosions, but feels there was extensive coverage in the big newspapers and on local news programmes.This is a double pivot occurring. First, Christian Christensen (who gets an award for having an awesome name) "feels" that the there was strong coverage, just not on some television shows. Thus, the widespread conviction that the media is concealing the reality of immigrant crime is just an artifact of the distribution of the heavy and thorough mainstream coverage. Second, the complaint that Sweden's situation has become a symbol for the problems of immigration is used as rationale to withhold data from the public. It's the old canard of "we must hide the truth lest the right-wingers exploit it for their advantage." That sentiment is all you really need to know in the political divide. Whichever side is making excuses for lying is probably not the side you want to be on.
"The problem is that Sweden is used symbolically as proof of problems with immigration, proof of problems with leftist policies - unfairly in many cases," he argues.
A recent study by polling company Kantar Sifo found that law and order was the most covered news topic on Swedish TV and radio and on social media.
What are authorities doing?
The hook:Police say they are trying to track down the perpetrators, but only one in 10 of such crimes in 2018 has led to a conviction.The pivot:
The home affairs minister has announced increased powers to search suspects' homes and greater efforts to break the culture of silence around gang crime. But in Sodermalm, resident Anders Herdenstam says there has to be a greater focus on integration. "I am not afraid for where I live. I am mo re concerned when it comes to developments in Sweden nationally."They saved the most extreme pivot for last. In a few sentences, they've spun concern that the justice system fails in 90% of terror attacks into a concern that people are responding to the blight of domestic terrorism with opinions that are not permitted under the tenets of Social Justice.
The hook-and-pivot method of taking a common-sense truth and converting it into a sophisticated lie is used constantly throughout the short article. The intention of the author to promote a narrative is as transparent as is the intention of a car salesman. The intention is clear, but what of the motivation? A common explanation would be sheer stupidity. While journalists do have lower-than-average IQs, they aren't so stupid as to not understand why the millions of migrants aren't behaving like Swedes.
Another explanation is that they are serving to defend the current social order. Surely the establishment doesn't want to permit the people to realize that their social experiments are destroying the greatest, most humane civilization that ever existed. They are personally vested in the system and risk to lose the countless bureaucracies from which they practice their petty tyrannies, as well as the media bully pulpits from which they wag their fingers at heretics, sing praises of their own virtues, and incite the people with prophesies of impending doom.
That model is closer to the truth than stupidity alone. Still, something is missing. For one, the SJWs are consumed with destroying social order, and any alliances with established power structures only last as long as they are convenient. (For instance, in the short interim between Russian Collusion and Ukrainian Collusion operations, AOC called Pelosi a racist and nearly destroyed the Democrat party.) Further, if the motivation is to defend the current order, then they aren't actually doing a very good job of it.
- They pivoted the blame for the incidents away from ethnic tensions caused by migration policies, and towards economic conditions. But that opens just as big a window for criticism of the social democracy as the one it closes. The whole point was supposed to be that these kinds of economic situations wouldn't happen.
- They use a crime expert with an ethnic name to make the claim that ethnicity plays no role in gang activity, when it would be more compelling if it was coming from an actual Swede. (Go with Christian, not Mohammadi.)
- They call claims of failed integration a right-wing theory, then include a contradicting quote from the criminologist who states that the immigrants are integrating into ethnic gangs rather than Swedish culture.
- That they acknowledge any of this at all, rather than dismissing it as right-wing conspiracy theory or ignoring it entirely. There was no need to include the fact that only 10% of Swedish terror attacks lead to criminal convictions, but they did, before concluding that the bigger problem than ethnic terrorism is that somewhere some white person might be racist.
A more effective model is simply that they are lying for the sake of lying itself. Their primary master is not a neoliberal world order, but a False Accuser. If their lies end up hurting the liberal order, then such is the cost of business. Concocting a web of subtle lies that cleverly defend a preferred social order is not actually the goal. No, it is actually more desirable to tell a garish outlandish lie if possible. While plausibility is always sought to defend against exposure, the actual goal is absurdity.
This model encompasses the scope of the previous one, but also fills all four listed gaps. The first shows that they are more interested in lying than in defending the liberal order. The second shows that what they really are after is a theatrical spectacle of ridiculing the truth. The third shows that they aren't really concerned if their lies contradict each other. In fact, all the better if they do. The fourth shows that they are willing to admit limited aspects of the truth so long as it serves as a backdrop to accentuate their eagerness to lie in stark contrast of the plainly visible truth. Think of Jim Carey in Liar Liar, unable to describe the blue pen as red. The goal of the liar is to do just that: to hold up a blue pen and call it red.
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