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Thread: As 1 of those featured in the documentary mentioned in this article & by President Trump I’d like to make a few points: yes there has been clear foreign influence in Swedish media, spreading far-right propaganda, BUT there is fire beyond that smoke nytimes.com/2019/08/10/wor…
For the past 5 years, my country of Sweden has seen a clear & undeniable rise in violent crime, gang activity, crimes against women (such as rape & assault), car burnings & bombs & we’ve seen entire areas of our cities become unsafe & totally or partially controlled by criminals
For reasons I will not speculate in here, there has been a clear unwillingness from the side of established media to report on these worrying developments (although there are some truly heroic Swedish journalists who have nearly sacrifices their careers to do so).
And in this same amount of time and over the 3 last elections we’ve seen the political landscape change, the anti-immigration party almost doubling their numbers each election (from approx. 4% to 20%) and the far left making similar (if not as large) gains as well
So yes, extremism is on the rise and foreign influence has been involved in this development but while Russian bots may stoke it, they did not start this fire. What started it was denial, pure and simple, denial and a culture of silence and virtue-signaling over truth.
There’s a lesson in this for all those who oppose Trump, who fear the AOC & Omar-clique & are feeling a sense of paradise lost - but that lesson is not to point fingers at a foreign boogeyman. These bots & agencies can do what they do because we fail to do what we should
And by “we” I mean journalists, the tellers of truths and exposers of injustice. Because journalists to such a large extent have become ideological activists, choosers of sides & defenders of candidates & causes we’re all a little less safe and a lot more vulnerable.
Foreign actors can easily play into the wars we started & pour fuel on the fires but they’re not the main bad guy, cause he’s calling from inside the house. Sweden is failing because those who were supposed to protect the country chose to instead protect an ideology & a narrative
One of the things I said in that infamous documentary was that the Swedish people feel lied to, and that that is why we became so vulnerable to foreign messaging & influence, especially on issues concerning immigration where we knew the establishment had blatantly lied.
A culture of distrust, caused by reckless politicians & ideology-driven journalist who chose a team and pushed a message, got us here, and now we’re all yelling at each other while our country goes down the tubes & outside actors soon can feast on the spoils of a war we caused.
Sorry abt the rant, I just wanted to emphasize this point that I felt was understated in an otherwise excellent piece. There are lessons for the US to learn from the Swedish example, and the main one is imho that democracy isn’t stolen by anyone - we are currently giving it away
