"pathological altruism"

Pathological altruism is a term I've seen bandied about with increasing frequency on the right. It refers to an attitude taken toward actual dangers in which the person harboring the attitude is in willful denial that any danger exists, preferring instead to view affairs through a lens of compassion, succor, and peacemaking ("Aw, nice grizzly!"). The Swedish attitude toward a huge influx of unassimilating Muslim migrants is an example of this orientation: many Swedes actively reject the idea that they might be doing anything wrong by accepting so many ISIS-ready people from the Middle East; cultural suicide isn't even a concept for them.

Sweden may be known for its popular music, IKEA and a generous welfare state. It is also increasingly associated with a rising number of Islamic State recruits, bombings and hand grenade attacks.

In a period of two weeks earlier this year, five explosions took place in the country. It’s not unusual these days — Swedes have grown accustomed to headlines of violent crime, witness intimidation and gangland executions. In a country long renowned for its safety, voters cite “law and order” as the most important issue ahead of the general election in September.

The topic of crime is sensitive, however, and debate about the issue in the consensus-oriented Scandinavian society is restricted by taboos.

To understand crime in Sweden, it’s important to note that Sweden has benefited from the West’s broad decline in deadly violence, particularly when it comes to spontaneous violence and alcohol-related killings. The overall drop in homicides has been, however, far smaller in Sweden than in neighboring countries.

Gang-related gun murders, now mainly a phenomenon among men with immigrant backgrounds in the country’s parallel societies, increased from 4 per year in the early 1990s to around 40 last year. Because of this, Sweden has gone from being a low-crime country to having homicide rates significantly above the Western European average. Social unrest, with car torchings, attacks on first responders and even riots, is a recurring phenomenon.

Shootings in the country have become so common that they don’t make top headlines anymore, unless they are spectacular or lead to fatalities. News of attacks are quickly replaced with headlines about sports events and celebrities, as readers have become desensitized to the violence. A generation ago, bombings against the police and riots were extremely rare events. Today, reading about such incidents is considered part of daily life.

The rising levels of violence have not gone unnoticed by Sweden’s Scandinavian neighbors. Norwegians commonly use the phrase “Swedish conditions” to describe crime and social unrest. The view from Denmark was made clear when former President of NATO and Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in an interview on Swedish TV: “I often use Sweden as a deterring example.” [italics added]

NB: the above article comes, surprisingly enough, from left-leaning Politico.

Attitudes and beliefs have consequences, and those consequences can be deadly. I've wanted to talk about the case of the young, idealistic couple—Jay Austin and Lauren Geoghegan—who had been biking and blogging across the world, only to be killed in Tajikistan by a group of ISIS sympathizers, but Paul Joseph Watson has done a pretty good job of saying what I'd have wanted to say:


On a related note, Sarah Hoyt thinks the left has a death wish. I've never been a fan of Hoyt's writing (she's not a native English-speaker, and it sometimes shows in how she puts her thoughts together), but I agree with her general thesis in the above-linked article.