It's hard to discern a pattern in the violence that has wracked the Swedish capital Stockholm for five nights. Rioting in the city's suburbs has raised the national debate about immigration, unemployment and social inequality.



The cars attacked in the violence are not high-end - not the BMWs and Porsches you might expect to see torched by class warriors - but the vans which ordinary people need to go about their business. Schools, a station and a library have been attacked as well as a bank and a police station.... Many said there was a wider context of a growing gap between rich and poor in Sweden.



On OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) figures, Sweden has seen the biggest increase in inequality of any developed country over the past 25 years. Immigrants and their descendants tend to congregate in areas such as Husby, the neighbourhood west of Stockholm where the violence started on Sunday. About 80% of the 11,000 residents are either first- or second-generation immigrants.



It is not any more the Sweden we all thought we knew.

It is hard,, to discern a pattern here:What do you know. Another Magic Dirt fail. Apparently even Scandinavian socialist magic isn't powerful enough to transform immigrants into Real Swedes Just Like All The Other Swedes Except For Their Darker Skin.Identity always trumps ideology, regardless of whether that ideology is free market capitalism, American civic nationalism, or socialism.Nations are. Nations are. Nations are. Nations are neither propositions nor geography nor political constructs. FFS, before you embarrass yourself with ignorant objections, look up the etymology of the freaking word! Nationalism is literally genetic tribalism and nations are nothing more than genetic tribes with shared cultural, religious, and linguistic customs.

Labels: decline and fall, immigration, nationalism