Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gang crisis shaking Sweden

ft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 384 posts

Re: Gang crisis shaking Sweden

#291

Post by arp242 »

searealist wrote: post #281
arp242 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we looking at the same chart like? Because that chart shows it's been roughly steady since 1990, with some peaks up and some peaks down: 1991 was an outlier upwards, 2012 an outlier downwards, but overall: roughly stable. This kind of variation is to be expected since in absolute numbers it's a relatively small number of people.

It’s clearly falling and then rising. Compare to Finland which has a similar fall, but continues to fall instead of rise.

> Compare to Finland which has a similar fall, but continues to fall instead of rise.

Just minutes ago in another comment you yourself posted a link which clearly and markedly shows that Finland has seen a marked and steep rise in the last few years: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38339299

Re: Gang crisis shaking Sweden

#292

Post by whstl »

OfSanguineFire wrote: post #250
marginalia_nu wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's largely the result of an ideological deadlock, where legitimate logistical concerns about immigration and integration were lumped up with islamophobia and racism. Immigration was also seen as desirable in order to address the demographic crisis and low birth rates. This in turn had the ironic side-effect of cementing a sort of structural racism where all these immigrants showed up and were given at best estate h…

"Turns out very few people want to lead a shitty life doing menial jobs as a second class citizen. Isn't that weird?" This describes the huge population of gastarbeiter in West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, but I am not aware of any violent movements arising from them being unhappy with their lot. (The violence one does remember from those years was from a different demographic entirely.) It describes the modern UA…

> "The violence one does remember from those years was from a different demographic entirely."

Indeed. Funny enough, in those discussions, a lot of people bring up the Vietnamese as a group that is well-represented in Germany, but are rarely if ever associated with violence.

The interesting part is that there used to be a problem with Vietnamese gangs post-reunification [1], entirely solved by now.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnamese_people_in_Germany#C...

Re: Gang crisis shaking Sweden

#293

Post by jacquesm »

crtified wrote: post #264
jacquesm wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very comparable in the Netherlands, fortunately for now still limited to the larger cities but it is also slowly spreading out from there. Most of this is drug related.

> Most of this is drug related. Perhaps, but we need to be careful what conclusions (and reactions) we take from that. People from all walks of life make regular usage of recreational intoxicants, often perfectly legally. Huge, legitimate global industries are dedicated to it. If that association were the primary basis upon which to categorise as a gang, or as morally corrupt, then the Champagne region of France, and…

Yes, that whole war-on-drugs thing was a giant mistake.

And agreed that there is a problem - now - but resolving that will be costly and time consuming and will require a lot of goodwill from all of the parties involved. I've worked in the mailroom of a bank, which was probably close to 70% minorities and it was awesome: I've never seen so much camaraderie anywhere else that I've worked. Turkish neighbors are great people, the young and coming Dutch kids living one door down not so much (vandalizing the property and causing a lot of trouble). It all depends and they're all individuals, as long as people paint whole groups with a single brush it can't ever work.

But free up enough money for education and you just might turn this around. Interesting tidbit: racism is everywhere I've lived, but it all depends on where on the color chart you are offset towards the 'white' end if you have more money and towards the left if you are poorer. It's pretty wild to see how universal this is, I've observed it pretty much everywhere that I've lived, even in places where people of color where the majority. They did the exact same thing. Baffling.

Re: Gang crisis shaking Sweden

#294

Post by sgift »

crtified wrote: post #264
jacquesm wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very comparable in the Netherlands, fortunately for now still limited to the larger cities but it is also slowly spreading out from there. Most of this is drug related.

> Most of this is drug related. Perhaps, but we need to be careful what conclusions (and reactions) we take from that. People from all walks of life make regular usage of recreational intoxicants, often perfectly legally. Huge, legitimate global industries are dedicated to it. If that association were the primary basis upon which to categorise as a gang, or as morally corrupt, then the Champagne region of France, and…

Usage is not the driver. It's the prosecution of drug production and distribution. Netherlands "allow" (yes, it's more complicated, but close enough) drug use, but producing drugs is forbidden. So, who supplies the drugs that people are allowed to consume? Gangs. Sweden has taken the war on drugs and dialed it up to 11, with the result that it has turned into a real war. And each time they dial it up even more you get another round of escalations.

Re: Gang crisis shaking Sweden

#295

Post by ersii »

codr7 wrote: post #278
davemccrea wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you offer some specifics? In what parts of Swedish society is this degradation most acute?

I'm 46 yo. When I grew up, the Swedish state took care of a lot of things; public transport, phone services, health care including pharmacies, postal services etc. It was mostly cheap and reliable. These days all of it has been privatized, which has made it more expensive and not nearly as reliable. Even government institutions, like the tax office have gone seriously downhill lately. You used to be able to go there…

> these days I'm more afraid of cops than criminals to be honest.

Could you expand on your thoughts regarding why you're more afraid of cops in Sweden?

Re: Gang crisis shaking Sweden

#296

Post by apienx »

davemccrea wrote: post #237
codr7 wrote: post #179

I grew up in Sweden, moved around a bit in Europe and lately came back. What worries me about the country is not primarily gang criminality, but the general degradation of everything that was once good about Swedish society. Probably still better than a lot of places. Immigrants who come here often praise the system, how well everything works here; but they have no idea how well it used to work.

Can you offer some specifics? In what parts of Swedish society is this degradation most acute?

Trust (societal as well as towards authorities).

Freedom of speech (and negative freedoms in general).

Re: Gang crisis shaking Sweden

#297

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

slaw wrote: post #65
frereubu wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happens if you're using Cloudflare DNS: https://jarv.is/notes/cloudflare-dns-archive-is-blocked/ (Sounds like iCloud private relay may do the same for the same reasons).

Switching Firefox setting 'Enable secure DNS using:' to 'Off', instead of 'Default Protection' which is Cloudflare helped. Thank you.

Changing that setting to use https://mullvad.net/en/help/dns-over-https-and-dns-over-tls instead would have helped also. Without degrading anything else.

Re: Gang crisis shaking Sweden

#299

Post by kypro »

silenced_trope wrote: post #102

> Those on the right largely blame immigration, which has added 2mn people to the country in recent decades. Those on the left point to social factors, including the privatisation of Sweden’s welfare system which has led to worse services in deprived areas. Probably both things are true. When countries take in large amounts of immigration, their generous welfare systems can become stressed. Sweden didn't balance the…

As long as the immigrants coming are paying into the system more than they take it's not a problem. The issue is purely the type of immigrants Sweden welcomed.

We should be clear about this because even at scale immigration can work well, and be a net benefit economically.

Another problem Sweden though is that they also didn't import people with compatible cultural values. So you have a population of people who are unable to economically contribute, and often unwilling to integrate.

I just wish people listened years ago when people like myself suggested it was likely to play out like this instead of being so mean and accusing us of all having hateful motives. There's no going back now.

Re: Gang crisis shaking Sweden

#300

Post by whstl »

thomasskis wrote: post #282
davemccrea wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you offer some specifics? In what parts of Swedish society is this degradation most acute?

I’m really curious how about how good it used to be? It feels to me like there’s a cultural resistance to be self critical of the whole, and that is slowing down wide-scale progress. I moved to Sweden 2 months ago (from Seattle, where I grew up) but over the last decade I’ve lived in Seoul, Singapore, Bangkok, and Reykjavik. The government here feels most similar to the US, worse in some ways. Paperwork is like a hob…

I have seen these issues here in Germany too. Fintech-banks like N26 or Revolut used to fill the gap and give you a quick bank account before you could settle down in a permanent address.

The problem is that they require a work permission for the account, which used to be quick, but since the immigration system is now overworked, they're giving one year Visas and taking their time to give the work permission. So N26 or Revolut are only really available for European citizens (that was the reality for a few years now, dunno if it changed).

Funny enough, more traditional banks have picked up the slack and dropped the strict requirements, and you can open an account from day one of being here with them.

Post reply on HN