Most of the nations of Europe, seemingly having decided to not have a next generation to carry on the Continent’s cultures and traditions, have been very open about allowing mass migration. In a lot of those places, like Sweden, that isn’t working out so well. This formerly peaceful Scandinavian nation is now dealing with an unprecedented problem with gang violence, resulting in “no-go” zones in some of their principle cities and towns.
But while the gang violence is still on the rise, there are signs that the Swedish people are beginning to push back, at least on the drug addicts and other undesirables in some of their cities’ “no-go” zones.
Residents in the Stockholm suburb of Husby have started taking the law into their own hands after law enforcement, despite pleas from locals, has done little to alleviate problems with migrant crime.
Husby, northwest of Stockholm, is one of many areas across Sweden that are considered “vulnerable” due to high unemployment and high rates of crime, with a 2017 report claiming there were as many as 61 “no-go areas”, with 23 of them considered “particularly vulnerable.”
In recent months, residents of the area have complained of growing insecurity, telling local police about months of problems with homeless drug addicts who often camp out in storage rooms and basements of people’s homes, the newspaper Aftonbladet reports .
The description of some of the problem areas in Sweden will sound familiar to anyone who currently lives in, say, San Francisco or Los Angeles.
Locals have stated that areas of Husby have become littered with syringes. Robberies have surged, with even the local mosque being subjected to thefts. Several women have also been robbed in the area as they went to a local shop or to do their laundry.
Even local criminals have reported thefts to police, claiming they fear for the safety of their family members in the area.
You know things are bad when the local mosque has been robbed. Whatever else you might say about Muslim communities, they are usually pretty good at discouraging such thievery. But, growing tired of the problems, some young Swedes are… having dialogues with the problem people. If you read carefully, “having a dialogue” seems to translate into “kicking the crap out of them.” The Swedes, after all, once had a reputation for kicking the crap out of people.
Residents, mostly young people, have pushed back against the surging crime and started meeting in the evenings to search for addicts in the area.
“We have made several reports to the police, but it feels like we have not been taken seriously, because there has been no change. So we decided to find these addicts and try to have a dialogue with them,” one of the youths, an 18-year-old, said:
We’ve tried to talk to them to get them to stop robbing and stealing, but these people are on different substances and drugs and they haven’t been receptive to dialogue. Many of them have also been armed and once one of them attacked us. Then we fought back.
Videos have since been posted on social media showing the vigilantes chasing addicts, while some addicts were found in parts of Husby badly beaten.
What’s more, it’s working.
By the end of July, however, many of the addicts appear to have left the area and reports of thefts and assaults have subsided for several weeks. Two members of a local NGO claimed that while they condemned the violence against the addicts, it appears to have worked in forcing them to leave the area.
The NGO workers blamed the lack of action by the police for allowing the situation to rise to the level of violence.
One may suspect that the statement that the local NGO “…condemned the violence” was a pro forma thing, intended to check the right PC box, as they immediately go on to say, in effect, “…hey, it works, beat up a few addicts and thieves and the rest leave the area.”
It’s a shame that it’s come to this, in Sweden or anywhere else. Vigilante justice can be effective, as it apparently was here, but these kinds of things happen where there either was no civil order to begin with or when civil order has broken down. It seems that civil order in these Swedish towns is breaking down, just as civil order in places like Chicago and Detroit has broken down.
Also, Sweden is a country with a significant outdoor tradition but still has pretty strict gun control laws, meaning that the Swedish people have little or no armed recourse against the more violent criminal gangs. A few beat-downs will work to deter addicts and thieves; but Sweden has bigger problems, and it’s unclear how or if they’ll be able to get things under control.
It’s not a good time to live in Europe.