The new Stockholm syndrome

Swedish politicians and the media are paralyzed by fear of even acknowledging the issue of Muslim hooliganism

By ILYA MEYER
Doha Forum521 (photo credit: FREDRIK SANDBERG / SCANPIX / REUTERS)
Doha Forum521
(photo credit: FREDRIK SANDBERG / SCANPIX / REUTERS)
Stockholm Syndrome is the irrational empathy of a cowed hostage for his captor, his subservient gratitude for not being further debased. The term was coined following a bank robbery in the Swedish capital in August 1973. In the course of that six-day ordeal, the victims bonded with the criminals even as their personal liberties were being trampled on.
That was Sweden, summer of 1973. The victims were alone, afraid, had no contact with the police and depended on their violent abusers for their survival.
Forty years later, summer of 2013, the majority of Swedish society has largely adopted this craven attitude towards violent radical Muslim abusers of their personal liberties.
Muslims. All Swedish Muslims? Far from it. On the contrary, most Swedish Muslims want no truck with the radicalized hooligans who are given a free rein by the country’s politicians and media. Many Swedes – including immigrants from Muslim states – complain that blind Swedish allegiance to political correctness ties the hands of the judiciary.
The media are culpable here.
There have been suggestions that left-wing tabloid Aftonbladet offered rioting youths thousands of kronor for “good” photographs of burning cars at the height of the recent urban unrest. One TV journalist documented his refusal to join this “arson auction.” So there is evidence the media are actively fuelling the problem while refusing to spotlight the common denominator – the ethnicity of the arsonists.
The rioters claim their actions are a response to systematic job discrimination. This argument holds little water. Although Sweden is by no means free of xenophobia, this does not translate into the workplace. Not least because most employers here have strong programs to support ethnic diversity. Job applicants at large companies such as Volvo, Scania, AstraZeneca and SKF have a better chance of succeeding if they are from a cultural minority – that’s how keen employers are to demonstrate their dedication to multiethnicity.
Ironically, demands to abandon the state religion of Political Correctness are gaining traction among Muslim Swedes, who fled their home countries years ago to escape the extremism now pursuing them in the new wave of Muslim immigration. Many immigrants from Muslim countries openly say what native Swedes don’t dare voice – that whatever their grievances, the thugs need to be made to fear the police, not to be allowed to disrespect them with impunity.
A June 3 editorial in the respected Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet notes that one group of Muslim rioters urged their co-religionists as follows: “The world and the future are yours. The future of the suburbs should not be determined by people who don’t live where you live, don’t have the same surnames you do, don’t look like you do.”
There are signs that the Swedish population, in general, and police officers, ambulance crews and firefighters, in particular, may all turn sharp right in the September 2014 general election because they are on the front line of this ethnic urban warfare, which is being increasingly seen as an attempt to subjugate Swedish society. Ambulances and fire engines are routinely torched and require police protection while performing emergency duties. Even the police have to travel in multiple vehicles, one squad car shielding the other.
How is all this impacting on Sweden’s tiny, embattled Jewish community? Jews have lived here for about 250 years and number about 16,000 souls. They are totally integrated linguistically, culturally and socially. However, the Jewish community is under pressure, nowhere more so than in Malmö, whose Jewish population has virtually halved in the past decade thanks to radicalized Islamists, a virulently anti-Jewish mayor and subjugated mainstream media that consistently ignore the onslaught for fear of being accused of racism.
Something is rotten in the generous state of Sweden when members of its 400,000-strong Muslim community demand that the state deal robustly with Muslim hooliganism, while politicians and the media are paralysed by fear of even acknowledging the issue’s existence.
That fear is eroding Sweden’s democracy. Because, so far, mob rule is winning. 
Ilya Meyer, deputy chairman of the West Sweden branch of the Sweden-Israel Friendship Association, blogs on Sweden and the Middle East at www.ilyameyer.com