Fjordman’s latest essay has been published at FrontPage Mag. Some excerpts are below:

On April 4 2014, in Malmö District Court in Sweden, the provocative artist Dan Park was sentenced to three months in jail for hate speech (“hets mot folkgrupp”) for his works of art. The prosecutor even wanted the artist examined for mental illness, similar to the way Communist dictatorships have treated dissidents. The court did not support this suggestion, however. Park and his defense lawyer have indicated that they will appeal the verdict.

Ingrid Carlqvist, the editor of the newspaper Dispatch International, commented that the verdict essentially amounts to a ban on satire in Sweden, at least if the satire involves ideologically protected immigrant groups.

At the same time, and with a heavy heart, Carlqvist announced her own decision to leave her native Sweden. The repressive and totalitarian atmosphere in the country has simply become intolerable, especially if you happen to be a critic of Islamization, Multiculturalism or mass immigration. You then run a real risk of physical attacks. The level of political violence as well as street crime is only rivaled by the level of ideological censorship and repression. In combination, this has created a society plagued by levels of tension that are growing increasingly dangerous.

Malmö is Sweden’s third largest city. It is set to become the first Scandinavian town with a Muslim majority population. In recent years, it has achieved a certain notoriety for its crime problems.

The wave of robberies the city has witnessed is part of a “ war against Swedes.” This was the explanation given by young robbers with immigrant background for why they are robbing native Swedes. The sociologist Petra Åkesson interviewed boys between 15 and 17 years old, both individually and in groups. “When we are in the city and robbing, we are waging a war, waging a war against the Swedes.” This argument was repeated several times. “Power for me means that Swedes shall look at me, lie down on the ground and kiss my feet.” The boys explained, laughingly, that “We rob every single day, as much as we want to, whenever we want to.”

Yet suggesting that the ongoing rise in violent crime might have something to do with mass immigration of alien and aggressive cultures is quite literally banned by law. In March 2007 during a rally supported by SSU (the Social Democratic Youth League) a man carried a sign reading, “While Swedish girls are being gang raped by immigrant gangs the SSU is fighting racism.” He was promptly arrested and later sentenced to a fine. His crime? He had “expressed disrespect for a group of people with reference to their national or ethnic background.” The local court rejected the man’s free speech argument because even free speech has its limits, and he had clearly acted in too provocative a manner.

So-called “Islamophobia” is treated as a serious offense. In August 2013, Swedish prosecutors charged a 22-year-old non-Muslim Swedish man for honking his car horn outside the Fittja mosque near Stockholm, citing his intention to disturb the Muslim congregation there during prayers.

Expressing disrespect for ethnic Swedes, whites and European culture seems to be just fine, though. That’s not merely allowed under Multiculturalism, but virtually encouraged. Sweden’s allegedly conservative Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has stated that the original Swedish culture was merely barbarism; everything good was imported from abroad. He said this in 2006 following a visit to the town of Södertälje, near Stockholm.

A police station in Södertälje was in September 2005 hit by shots from an automatic weapon, following a direct confrontation between aggressive immigrant youths and the local police. The trouble started after a Swedish girl was called a “whore” and reacted negatively to the epithet.

If a leading politician had said that African, Asian or Islamic culture was “merely barbarism,” there would have been a huge public outcry and calls for his immediate resignation due to “racism.” His career might have been over. Yet disrespecting and mocking the traditions of the majority population is apparently no problem.

Read the rest at FrontPage Mag.

For a complete archive of Fjordman’s writings, see the multi-index listing in the Fjordman Files.