Alternative War: Unabridged Read online

  “Do we profit from immigration?” he asked me. “I always wonder what the time perspective is. Refugees are not profitable in the national sense, not that I think they should be, people are people and should just do what they do.” Karlsson did, however, point out that, in terms of the Swedish economy, immigrant productivity at the fourth generation down the line is regarded as a simple win for the country as a whole. They give back more than is taken.

  The conversation followed an easy rhythm and we found ourselves discussing the original reason I made contact with Karlsson: Donald Trump’s “Last night in Sweden” comment made in Florida during the February rally. The very thing which was taken up by the Alt-Right, with that huge number of right-wing figures using their media platforms to paint a bleak picture of Malmö as a city where immigrant crime runs out of control and “No Go Zones” exist. Karlsson’s feelings on the matter were abundantly clear.

  “I don’t recognise my city in the way it is described in the foreign media. There is, or should I say ‘was’ because many people have been arrested recently and the crimes have declined because of that, a murder wave. The murder rate was still much lower than the average American city rate but it was high for Malmö and for Sweden. A spike.” In my own research, I’d found a time-established trend of people burning cars late in the summer, which – indicating a less than mysterious origin – stops when school starts. I’d also found public records confirming that some people do feel unsafe because of this. “Yes,” Karlsson agreed, “some crime is committed by people of a foreign background. Two summers ago there were some grenade attacks, which is highly unusual for Sweden and not many people were harmed by this but a few cars went up. So there was a surge in criminal activity but it is still much lower than in any random American town.”

  While the grenade attacks are out of, what I consider, the ordinary – a topic I later pursued with a criminologist from Malmö University – there was absolutely no sense of fear on the streets, even being there only days after the Stockholm terror attack. Karlsson re-enforced this, telling me: “the only people who say they feel unsafe on the streets are the people from the Sweden Democrats right-wing political party. They say they don’t feel safe and the people they are talking to don’t feel safe, so perhaps it’s your point of view in this which affects what you feel.” I couldn’t help but draw immediate comparisons to Britain’s Brexit voters, the UKIP political party, and Marine Le Pen’s electioneering in France. The rhetoric also mirrored that churned out by alt-right news outlets – such as Breitbart – in the wake of Trump’s comment.

  “Just a comment about the Sweden Democrats,” Karlsson added. “One of their full-time politicians, because we pay even the opposition to have full-time positions, went on one of the English news channels and said that we need to let the military go into Malmö and let them put things to rest. It was really quite a dramatic statement.” The city’s administration felt this was “really weird” and Karlsson fluidly addressed a concern impacting the whole of the Western world in the same answer. “The thing about these Alt-Righters is they get a lot of mileage out of their view because it gets spread like wildfire across the internet,” he said.

  Turning to sexual offences specifically, Karlsson was quick to make sure I knew Malmö had not recorded a recent drop in this type of crime.

  “The goal for any politician should be to lower it and it had been the case for a long time in Sweden that it actually had gone down.” But, he told me – also confirming my own research – recent changes in the law in 2005 and again in 2013 increased what must be recorded by the police. The truth is, the offending rates have remained largely static over the last few years, with only marginal movements.

  “One explanation is that we make more and more actions against the law,” Karlsson explained, qualifying the statement with confirmation that Sweden records one offence for every incident. A victim can be a victim multiple times with different crimes recorded and crimes in the country are never ‘downgraded’ or reclassified afterwards, as they are elsewhere. (This was one of the elements in my own parliamentary evidence which ended Police crime figures being used as a national statistic). Again, however, the issue of over-representation raised its head. “Even in the sexual crimes there is over-representation by immigrants but I can’t supply a great criminologist’s explanation for that. I’ve spoken to some police officers who say that there have been groups, men who drugged girls in nightclubs. But the instances of rape are so few that any offence like that would be noticed.” I couldn’t help but think of Rotherham as a British comparison.

  Karlsson’s view on sexual offences was, on the whole, incredibly progressive and enlightened. He finished up by telling me “the danger in this is that if you think rape is only committed by immigrants you can’t work with the things which prevent rape in the long term, which I think is working with the view of ‘what is a man’. You should work with boys early on to prevent rape later on.” This approach is one the whole world could stand to learn a lot from, with long-term preventative work focused on gender rather than race. It’s utterly pointless for society to continue to deny the existence of male privilege and misogyny inherent in every man, no matter what skin colour they are born with. “I don’t think you can say it is foreigners per se,” Karlsson added, pointing out something which, perhaps, should be more obvious to all of us. “No country in the world is based on rape and murder because it wouldn’t be before long that the society would fall apart.”

  As we drew close on time, Karlsson checking his watch, I asked what his response would be to the world be in the wake of Trump’s comments and the subsequent coverage. He took a deep breath and smiled. “Come and find out for yourself! And, of course, check your sources. Don’t take all of your information from Fox News or Alt-Right sites. Check just one other site, or two perhaps if you have enough time.”

  His background in epistemology shone brightly as I asked Karlsson if he thought this formed part of a broader problem in the world.

  “Oh yes. We should be able...we are in a situation where more information than ever is available to more people than ever and yet we choose our information before we read it” he said. “This should like the crowning moment of the human race, where all knowledge is available to everybody. But, instead, we misuse this marvellous opportunity we have to seek out information that just confirms what we already think. And that is a total disaster for our...I think it can lead to the destruction of the human race actually.” I was staggered at hearing this but found myself vigorously agreeing, mainly as it was the first time I’d heard the thought put concisely and vocalised outside of my own head. The deputy mayor drove the point home with a pertinent example. “The biggest challenges for us globally are the climate changes and if the ones that actually can do something about it are ignoring the problems because they are not reached by news...we are making decisions based on false facts.” There is an intricate link between climate and resources, which is broadly considered to form a staple element in hybrid conflicts, as the NATO documents set out, and Karlsson confirmed this without having the faintest idea how pertinent the observation was.

  Karlsson’s definition of the state of the world, delivered with his academic credentials, was both fascinating and timely, defining a period in history as eloquently as any of us are likely to hear it said. His words stayed with me as I wandered down the steps of the Stadhuset, looking over that combination of flowers and candles which formed just one of the city’s memorials to those killed and injured in Stockholm.

  Speaking to people like Karlsson, it was easy to believe Sweden was a progressive and caring society, dedicated to democracy and politically active in improving things for all those who live there. But Karlsson was just one voice of the many I needed to hear and my next appointment had already messaged me, this time without problems, to say they were at the Central Station waiting with a coffee.

  Five:

  Manne Gerell is a father of four, juggling those d
aily responsibilities with his busy work as a Lecturer at the University of Malmö. He made time to speak with me in between work at the office and running home to take care of his children. As a criminologist, Gerell specialises in research on the geography of crime, social disorganisation, and the principles of near repeats – something close to my heart as I developed the background work on predictive policing in the Met. Gerell isn’t just a research academic however, he also works closely with the Polisen across the whole of Sweden, assisting them in addressing issues of crime in the poorer neighbourhoods and districts. We met outside the Espresso House, in the huge and incredibly tidy food court area of Malmö’s Central Station, and Gerell was relaxed, sipping coffee while working on his laptop. As I had already found, the Swedish welcome was warm and friendly and the criminologist’s English was impeccable when compared to my Hej (hello) and Tack (thank you). We talked briefly about his background, idle but necessary exchanges to break the ice, and I was immediately reassured I’d come to see the right person.

  “I’m now a researcher at Malmö University,” he told me, pausing to ask if we needed to move when a spontaneous round of piano playing began – the station’s instrument is impeccably maintained and open to use. “I mainly study the geography of crime, why there’s more crime in some places than others,” he continued after I waved away the soundtrack as being okay. “So, I’ve been doing shootings and I’m working on a project on crime around local bus stops. How many people are going on the bus rather than how many people live in the local area. It’s a mix of where it’s really dangerous and,” he indicated at the station around us. “The victims don’t live here, nor do the offenders. So using crime per resident doesn’t work.”

  The world over, transit crime is a significant issue, from London to Mexico City, and it’s only relatively recently police forces have begun to tackle its transient nature in a meaningful way. In London, the Met opened a whole command to manage the issue, with the help of funding from then Mayor, Boris Johnson and, on my second trip to Mexico City, the NGO I worked with on the twenty-year crime analysis where building intricate hotspot maps in conjunction with the local authorities. “Also,” Gerell carried on, “I work with the police on a project: what the Swedish police call vulnerable or disadvantaged neighbourhoods. Basically, poorer or immigrant neighbourhoods with more than normal crime and, in particular, some types of crime.” Rather than being focused on solely the Eastern districts of Malmö, the areas highlighted to me by Nils Karlsson at the Stadhuset, Gerell’s work covers the whole of Sweden. “I work with police nationally,” he told me, almost shyly dismissive about the monumental scale of his work, “but those districts in Malmö are mainly in the East, the West of Malmö is a lot richer.”

  “That work by the police, that’s where the whole ‘no go zones’ thing comes from,” he added. The concept of an area where nobody could safely go, including the police, was a central theme in the alt-right coverage I was there to investigate. “The police in Sweden actually issue a report to identify which neighbourhoods have criminal networks and that’s been distorted into this kind of ‘no go zone’ discussion,” Gerell told me, adamant the term has resulted from nothing more than over-interpretation of the police reports. “The police don’t actually say they are ‘no go zones’ but the ones they label as problem areas, or vulnerable areas, are the ones the media and international media label,” he explained, which spoke volumes.

  He had worked in the specialist field for seven years and holds well-developed and grounded views on what sets crime and crime recording in Sweden apart from the rest of the world. “There are tonnes of differences, but obviously the actual laws are different in many cases. When it comes to the actual crime recording I think what’s been highlighted is how we tend to record every incident, every instance of crime. Someone could come in and say they had been raped every day by their husband and that’s one hundred or two hundred crimes. That’s one of the peculiarities of Swedish crime statistics,” he told me.

  From an expert standpoint of my own, I was curious as to what practical impact this has on the crime figures in respect of peaks and troughs, in particular thinking about other countries such as the UK where increases in reported offences are still, even in my wake, often attributed to mass reporting events – using terms like The Savile Effect52.

  “It depends on what crime. On average it shouldn’t have too much impact on the trends, but for a single year, in particular for crimes which are less common like rape, it could have a big impact on a single year if you have hundreds of rapes being reported by one person. But, for most crime types, it doesn’t really matter that much and would still be a minority of the crimes reported, like bicycle theft, for example.” Gerell highlighted, however, that there have been no hard quantitative studies on the impact of spikes in sexual offences caused by multiple reports with one victim. “There are several which mention that for some years it has had a big impact, with maybe a single victim, or a few victims, making up five percent or even ten percent of the crimes recorded,” he said.

  This analysis has only been done in certain years and Gerell recognised the true impact was unquantifiable. For me it was an area of personal curiosity and, if I were academically minded (which I’m not), I would be leaning towards the pursuit of this as a thesis.

  From my own background work before travelling, I had garnered evidence of a change over the last few years which broadly reflected an increase in the reporting of sexual offences in Sweden, allegedly because of enhanced trust in the response of the authorities. I put it to Gerell.

  “There have been some studies over the last few years which indicate people are more willing to report sexual offences than they used to be. So that’s been discussed and brought out a lot, but it seems that the willingness hasn’t gone down or up,” he replied.

  There had also been further changes in the Swedish definitions of sexual offences, those legislative changes I discussed with Karlsson, which have also been expanded to include internet-based crimes. Gerell was able to provide me with a great deal more, in terms of specifics. “The figures don’t distinguish between what happened online and in the physical world, so we really can’t distinguish the increase. But it’s also possible that people are less bothered to report offences which happened online. Some laws changed, which had a big impact on the rape statistics in 2005 and 2013. In 2005 many of the crimes which were classified as coercion or forced acts became rape, and in 2013 they amended ‘helpless state’ to a definition which included other vulnerabilities.” In more general terms, in respect of Sweden’s world crime ranking, Gerell said: “It’s probably pretty average to be a western country in north Europe. On a global scale, it’s very low because some countries have many more crimes than we do. But it depends on what crime type you look at.”

  “For instance,” he told me, “in western or north-western Europe crime isn’t that much lower than in the US but gun crime is much lower.” A quick search on the internet had already shown me there are about thirty-two guns per hundred Swedish citizens compared to the US, where the figure is over one hundred and ten per hundred inhabitants. Coming from the United Kingdom these possession figures both seem high, but Honduras had fewer guns per head than the Britain and still ranked number one for shooting homicides back in 2010, so legal possession and death hold no real bearing. The key factor appears to be societal behaviour, which makes sense. Over the last few years there was indeed an increase in Swedish gun violence and, also, in explosions involving the use of hand-grenades, Gerell added.

  “These are the trends where Sweden does stand out and, while there is no hard evidence linking it to immigration, it’s something that will come up in a discussion,” he said.

  I asked him about firearms possession rules and he explained you either have to be a hunter to have rifles, or a competitive sportsman to have pistols or automatic weapons. “Very few of the gun crimes are committed with legal weapons,” he told me, confirming my very brief co
nclusion on the Honduras crimes, adding: “They’ve been smuggled in from the rest of the world.”

  I pressed him on exactly where these illegal weapons are coming from.

  “There’s no solid evidence but it appears to come from the Balkans, from the surplus of the wars down there. But there’s also a fair share which comes from Slovakia. These are decommissioned or plugged and anyone can buy them without a licence, bring them to Sweden and reactivate them. They recently arrested a gunsmith here in Malmö who had done this with pistols and machine guns on a fairly large scale.” I made notes to pursue Balkan military surplus markets at some point, still entirely unaware of what I’d actually end up occupying myself with.

  Gerell compared the gun homicide rate with the UK, correctly identifying the figures used to be comparable but they had plummeted in England over the previous ten years, increasing again only recently, while Sweden saw a steady rise. In April 2017, the Metropolitan police told the media gun and knife crime had risen 42% and 24% respectively, and that recorded crime was otherwise elevated across virtually every category. The figures were released two days after Cressida Dick relieved my old nemesis Hogan-Howe as commissioner. Previous rises in some crime types were explained away by Scotland Yard as “statistical anomalies because of changes in how they are measured,” which refers to them having to do it properly because of me. Prior to that, they’d been deceiving the public for around thirty years.