The great free market economist Milton Friedman once encountered a Swedish economist who bluntly told him: “In Scandinavia, we have no poverty.” Not one to be stumped, Friedman replied, “That’s interesting, because in America, among Scandinavians, we have no poverty, either.” In both countries, however, Scandinavians are committing cultural suicide.

Though rarely noticed, Americans of Scandinavian ancestry—particularly Swedish—are considerably wealthier (on average) than your average American. Their rates of poverty are much lower as well. [ If Sweden’s Big Welfare State Is Superior to America’s Medium Welfare State, then Why Do Swedes in America Earn Far More than Swedes in Sweden? , by Daniel J. Mitchell, Cato, September 13, 2012] And just like in their ancestral nations, Scandinavians build large governmental social safety nets and well-funded public schools wherever they go. (James Fulford has commented that the excellent results achieved in public schools in Finland are duplicated by public schools in Michigan—not in Detroit, but in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, populated almost entirely by Finns.)

But as well as prosperity and welfare states, Scandinavians on both sides of the Atlantic also have a penchant for bringing Muslims into their society, and developing the kind of suicidal public policies that come in hand in hand with mass alien immigration. I was reminded of this last Tuesday night when Minnesota elected a Muslim African-American Attorney General, Keith Ellison, and a Muslim Somali congresswoman, Ilhan Omar.

The latter filled the seat vacated by the former, it should be noted. That congressional district, the fifth, is not exactly the stereotype of Minnesota most of you have in your head. It encompasses several different suburbs of Minneapolis, and those areas are very white, very liberal, and very typically Minnesotan. The part of Minneapolis proper that it covers, however, is a melting pot of Third World peoples: Somalis, American Indians, blacks, Mexicans, Central Americans, and a handful of Hmong. One neighborhood in the district, Midtown, is the second most dangerous part of the city (the first is the all black ghetto known simply as “north Minneapolis”), and both grocery stores and public libraries feature private security guards throughout it. It is also home to the Schooner Tavern, a Mos Eisley cantina famous for its racial brawls , and South High School, also known for its racial brawls. [The fight at South High was more than a food fight, by Jamal Abdulahi, MinnPost.com, March 1, 2013]

The district’s Pioneer Cemetery, mostly made up of 19th-century graves of Scandinavians—including quite a few combat veterans of the Spanish-American War—is now decidedly out of place, surrounded as it is by Third Worlders, ghetto-marts hawking t-shirts glamorizing criminals and junkies, and government ads asking them to behave.

Note that in one of these photos, you can see Somali women in hijabs in the background of the cemetery.

For a more thorough sense of what it’s like, see my photo essay: What Dispossession Looks Like , American Renaissance, January 8, 2014.

This neighborhood is not unlike the “no-go zones” of Muslims in Sweden , most famously in Malmö. In a sense, it is appropriate that a place like this be represented consecutively by two black Muslims, even if it was represented by Christiansons, Linds, and Johnsons only a few generations ago .

More troubling than Congresswoman Omar: Keith Ellison’s becoming the state’s attorney general. Mr. Ellison not only is a black Muslim, but he has ties to the ferociously anti-white Nation of Islam, and as a reader of Jacobin magazine and an anti-ICE and anti-border fanatic (but pro-antifa ), was easily one of America’s Left-most congressman.

As AG, Ellison’s opportunities for malfeasance, obstruction, and anarcho-tyranny will be nearly infinite. Both African-Americans and African Muslims commit plenty of crime in Minnesota, and I tremble at the thought of how lenient their punishments may soon become. Again, the stereotype of Minnesota as a peaceful sleepy white land has not been true for some time. In the 1990s, crime got so bad in Minneapolis that it even earned the nickname “ Murderapolis .” [Nice City's Nasty Distinction: Murders Soar In Minneapolis, by Dirk Johnson, NYT, June 30, 1996]

For a closer look at who commits crime in the city, see my analysis: Race, Crime, and Loathing in Minnesota , American Renaissance, August 12, 2017.

True to its Nordic roots, Minnesota also periodically experiments with insane and suicidal social justice managerialism, such as the recent attempt to force public schools to have equal suspension rates for every race. If you are feeling masochistic, you can read about how violently that plan played out here: No Thug Left Behind , by Katherine Kersten, City Journal, Winter 2017. Attorney General Ellison is sure to encourage more similar programs, and enforce them in the most anti-white manner possible

One interesting way of noticing the collapse of Minnesota’s historic demographics is to look at the changes in its political representatives. Historically, they have been a mix of WASPs, Scandinavians, and German-Irish or Irishmen: Knute Nelson, Frank Kellogg, Alexander Ramsey. Its most notable figures were all the typical caricature of Midwesterners—polite, dorky, edging on boring—Eugene McCarthy, Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale.

But in recent decades, that has changed. While a mere five percent of the population, in my lifetime, four Minnesotan senators have been Jews. Today, the mayor of the capital, St. Paul, is black , and Minneapolis crossed that milestone back in 1994 (Sharon Sayles Belton, right, held office during the city’s “Murderapolis” period.) While the state has still only ever had white gentiles serve as governor, as of Tuesday, we know for certain that a far-Left, anti-white, Muslim, non-white can win a statewide race—even after accusations of abusing women were levied against him. [ Congressman Accused Of Domestic Abuse By Former Girlfriend ,” by Briana Bierschbach, NPR, August 3, 2018]

Sweden, with its state censorship, no-go zones, crime, Cultural Marxist social engineering, and apparent complete lack of interest in maintaining a cohesive historical national identity, is often cited by white dissidents as where the West is headed. [Stephen Pax Leonard on the Cultural Apocalypse, by Andrew Joyce, The Occidental Quarterly , Fall 2018.]

Minnesota, with its Swedish roots, seems interested in getting to that point more much quicker than the rest of America.

Gilbert Cavanaugh [Email him] is neither Scandinavian nor Somali.