Sweden: Vad Fan Gör Du?

I.

Sweden is a country about which I know very little and were it not for ABBA and the cinematic charms of Britt Ekland, I'd probably care even less.

However, as even left-leaning Prime Minister, Stefan Löfven, was on the radio this week telling everyone how angry he was with what's happening in his country and promising to get tough, I suppose I should say something ... 

II.

Until recently, Sweden was inhabited almost exclusively by Germanic peoples and therefore enjoyed a high level of ethno-cultural homogeneity. It may not have been the most exciting place on Earth, but there are worse things than living in a happy, healthy, peaceful and prosperous country eating meatballs, surrounded by forests and beautiful landscapes, but with easy access to an IKEA.

In the past few years, however, Sweden has become a more diverse nation due to immigration from Africa and the Middle East. A significant number of the population now have a non-Nordic background and this has resulted in a number of what government officials and the mainstream media like to call social challenges.   

Proponents of mass immigration continue to argue that, despite these challenges and the establishment of so-called vulnerable areas in numerous towns and cities, there have been important economic and cultural benefits and people should just relax a little [tagga ned] when considering the newcomers. 

Opponents, meanwhile, can't see beyond the shocking crime statistics and growing civil unrest; from gang violence, rape, and arson attacks at one end of the scale; to young Muslim women refusing to shake hands on the other. For them, the cow is very much on the ice, so to speak.

Sadly, it does seem as if the prolonged period of Scandinavian serenity enjoyed by the Swedes is about to end. Which is a pity - but who's to blame for this other than the super-liberal Swedes themselves? Especially, of course, those in positions of political power, including Herr Löfven.

Ultimately, what Douglas Murray refers to as the strange death of Europe is both an act of self-negation and an act of faith carried out in the name of moral-idealism ...  

See: Douglas Murray, The Strange Death of Europe (Bloomsbury, 2017). 

Yellow Fever (Notes on the Politics of Asian Girl Fetish)

Bérénice Lim Marloe as Sévérine 

There's something about Asian girls. They're cute. They're smart. 

They have a kind of thing going on.

A friend asked who was my favourite Bond Girl ...

When I replied it was the character Sévérine, portrayed by the beautiful French actress Bérénice Marloe in the 2012 film Skyfall, she smiled and said that this exposed my Asian Girl Fetish (Marloe's father is of Cambodian and Chinese descent) and that this in turn indicated I had politically suspect views and subscribed to a number of pernicious racial and sexual stereotypes.

This may or may not be true, but it kind of made me wish I'd answered differently - although if, for example, I'd named Britt Ekland as Mary Goodnight in The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), couldn't this be said to reveal my Nordic Girl Fetish and indicate subscription to an equal number of stereotypes, perhaps even more pernicious and politically suspect in character ...?          

However, happy to play along, I asked what she meant. And she explained that many men who identify as members of the so-called alt-right have a particular penchant for dating women of SE Asian origin, despite their fantasies of white supremacy and purity of blood.

Not surprisingly, this topic has caused heated debate on various white nationalist and neo-Nazi websites and demonstrates to many commentators that there's an amusing level of erotico-ideological confusion within the alt-right world. But, as Audrea Lim points out, there is, actually, no real contradiction in this Asian fetish when one realises how it arises at the intersection of two popular racial myths:

"First is the idea of the 'model minority,' in which Asian-Americans are painted as all hard-working, high-achieving and sufficiently well-behaved to assimilate. If Asians are the model minority [...] then perhaps that opens the door to acceptance from white supremacists.

      The second myth is that of the subservient, hypersexual Asian woman."

For many misogynysts, across the political spectrum, the sad fact is that most white women are - thanks to feminism - simply too much trouble; i.e., too unwilling to serve and to pleasure their menfolk. Asian girls, in contrast, are so much more amenable - and - whisper it - far more uninhibited in the bedroom. This idea - deeply ingrained within the pornographic imagination - has its roots in America's post-war experiences in the bars and brothels of Japan, Korea and Vietnam.

Thus it is that the alt-right Asian fetish combines these ideas and "highlights a tension within the project of white supremacism as America grows more diverse [...] The new, ugly truth? Maintaining white power may require some compromises on white purity".

May require, indeed, sleeping with the enemy ...

See: Audrea Lim, 'The Alt-Right's Asian Fetish', New York Times (Jan 6, 2018): click here to read online.