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INSIDE SWEDEN

Inside Sweden: More podcasts, escalating gang violence and royal stories

The Local's editor Emma Löfgren writes about some of the stories we've been covering this week in our Inside Sweden newsletter.

Published: 16 September 2023 07:16 CEST
Inside Sweden: More podcasts, escalating gang violence and royal stories
King Carl XVI Gustaf on the day of his 50th jubilee. Photo: Jessica Gow/TT

Hej,

The Local’s Sweden in Focus podcast is growing in popularity and we’re now considering expanding our podcast offering in response to feedback from readers and listeners.

It will depend on how many people are interested in more podcasts, and on whether or not we have the resources to actually record them, so if you have time to fill out this survey it would be so helpful to us.

If you’ve already filled out the survey, thank you. I’m slightly overwhelmed by how many people are using this survey to leave extremely kind and thorough feedback on the Sweden in Focus podcast and The Local. We’ll feed it back into our editorial decisions, so it’s very useful.

Gang conflict rocks Sweden

A gang conflict sparked a wave of violence in the university town of Uppsala and capital Stockholm this and last week, with six fatal shootings at the time of writing this newsletter on Friday afternoon.

According to reports in Swedish media, at least most of the recent incidents seem to be linked to a conflict between the leader of the so-called Foxtrot gang and one of its members after a falling out.

Sweden’s national police chief Anders Thornberg called the shootings “unprecedented” in that they seem to actively target the relatives of gang criminals, even if the victims have no criminal history themselves.

First, the mother of one of the gang leaders was murdered in an apparent revenge shooting after an attack on Foxtrot leader Rawa Majid, also known as “the Kurdish fox”, at his hideout in Istanbul, Turkey.

A 13-year-old boy was found shot dead, his body dumped in the forest.

A 25-year-old man who worked in the elderly care sector and had moved to Uppsala to study law, was gunned down outside his home when shooters mistook him for the relative of a gang member.

And the mother-in-law of Majid told Expressen she lives in fear after shots were fired at a building near her home. Police believe the shots were meant for her, but the shooters got the wrong address.

“I’ve been jumpy and terrified. My god! I had my son at home and I was on my way to my night job. It was expected, sure, but I have nothing to do with the conflict,” she told Expressen.

Police have made a series of arrests in connection with the shootings, but the violence could also have consequences for the rather strained diplomatic ties between Sweden and Turkey.

Majid, who is also suspected of being Sweden’s biggest drug trafficker, was briefly arrested in Turkey in spring, then released. When a Swedish prosecutor tried to get him extradited, Turkey said no on the grounds that he had been given Turkish citizenship and as such could not be extradited.

What’s more, Aftonbladet revealed on Friday that a confidential intelligence report which Sweden had handed to Turkey to help them arrest Majid had been leaked to people in the Foxtrot network.

So even if Swedish police manage to crack down on this recent violence, it won’t be over yet.

I’ve received questions from readers about what Sweden could do to combat gang violence, so I wanted to share this article by my colleague Richard from this summer, which looks at exactly that.

King celebrates 50th anniversary

King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden celebrated his 50th jubilee this week (spare a thought for Prince Daniel, whose 50th birthday on Friday was overshadowed by his father-in-law’s anniversary).

If you listen to our Sweden in Focus podcast, you can hear Paul put Becky and myself to the test to see how much we actually know about the king, and turns out it’s not a lot (in my defence, he has a lot of grandchildren – how is anyone supposed to be able to remember them?).

If you want to try the quiz yourself, here’s a link.

My only personal relation to the king is that my father used to teach summer classes at Sigtuna Boarding School back when the king attended it as a high school student (during term time).

One day, he spotted two American tourists wandering the grounds. They knew that the Swedish crown prince went there and asked my dad if it would be possible to see the prince’s room?

My dad generously said “of course”, took them to his own room and lied that it belonged to the prince. They were delighted. The prince’s room! What a story to tell their friends back home.

So if any of our readers from the US have parents or grandparents who once visited the Swedish Crown Prince’s room at Sigtuna Boarding School… er, I apologise.

Have a great weekend,

Emma

Inside Sweden is our weekly newsletter for members that gives you news, analysis and, sometimes, takes you behind the scenes at The Local. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to your inbox, by going to your newsletter preferences.

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For members

INSIDE SWEDEN

Inside Sweden: Why troll factory won’t spark a government crisis

The Local's editor Emma Löfgren rounds up the biggest stories of the week in our Inside Sweden newsletter.

Published: 18 May 2024 09:22 CEST
Inside Sweden: Why troll factory won't spark a government crisis

Hej,

News that the Sweden Democrats are operating a far-right troll factory – which among other things the party uses to smear political opponents as well as its supposed allies – has caused probably the biggest rift yet between them and the three other parties that make up Sweden’s ruling coalition.

The leaders of the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals all strongly criticised the Sweden Democrats’ blatant violation of the so-called “respect clause” in their Tidö collaboration agreement – the clause that states that the four parties should speak respectfully of each other in the media.

But after crisis talks held on Thursday, the conflict appears to be dying down.

The Sweden Democrats hit out strongly at the TV4 Kalla Fakta documentary where the troll factory was revealed, calling it a smear campaign and disinformation, but simultaneously went as far as to confirm that they do run anonymous social media accounts for which they refused to apologise.

They did say sorry to the Tidö parties for including them in the smear campaigns, and promised to remove some of the posts that had offended the other three parties, plus reassign a couple of members of staff to other duties until they’ve been given training on the Tidö “respect clause”.

But that doesn’t remove the fact that they vowed to continue the anonymous social media accounts whose existence they had prior to the documentary consistently denied, or the fact that some of the social media posts shared not only vague anti-immigration content, but white power propaganda.

The Liberals took the row the furthest, with Liberal leader Johan Pehrson describing people in his party as skitförbannade – pissed off as hell. He said ahead of the crisis meeting that they would demand that the Sweden Democrats cease all anonymous posting, which the latter rejected.

The party had two choices: walk out of the government collaboration and possibly spark a snap election, or walk back its strong words ahead of the meeting and wait for it to blow over.

They chose a kind of middle way, and called for an inquiry to be launched into banning political parties from operating anonymous social media accounts. The Social Democrats immediately accused the Liberals of trying to “bury the issue in an inquiry” – a classic Swedish political method of indecisive conflict avoidance which the Social Democrats themselves are well familiar with.

The Christian Democrats and Moderates both said that the Sweden Democrats had accepted their criticism and welcomed the party’s reshuffling of staff within its communications department, adding that it still had to prove its commitment to the Tidö agreement going forward.

So why isn’t this causing a bigger government crisis?

We asked Evelyn Jones, a politics reporter for the Dagens Nyheter daily, to come on the Sweden in Focus podcast to explain it to us:

“The Sweden Democrats are the biggest party in this coalition, even though they’re not part of the government. So the government really needs them. It’s hard for them to just stop cooperating with the Sweden Democrats,” she said.

“The cooperation between the government parties and the Sweden Democrats has been going pretty smoothly since the last election – more smoothly than a lot of people thought. This is probably the biggest crisis so far, but how big it is, is hard to say.”

You can listen to the full interview with her and the rest of the Sweden in Focus podcast here. 

In other news

If you are a descendant of a Sweden-born person and would like to find out more about them, there are ways to do that. I wrote this week about how to research your Swedish ancestry.

That guide was prompted by my interview with the chair of a community history group in a small parish in north-central Sweden, which has tried to get to the bottom of rumours that US mega star Taylor Swift’s ancestors hail from their village. I had so much fun writing this article.

The EU elections will be held on June 9th, but advance voting begins next week in Sweden. And poll cards are already being sent out, so if you’re eligible to vote you should receive yours soon.

Sweden’s consumer price index fell to 3.9 percent in April, below 4.0 percent for the first time in two years, reinforcing predictions that the central bank will keep lowering interest rates.

Sweden’s four-party government bloc has broken with the other parties in a parliamentary committee on public service broadcasting, adding what the opposition complains are “radically changed” proposals. How shocking are they?

Many people move to Sweden because of their partner’s career. Perhaps you’re one of these so-called “trailing spouses”. I’ve been asking readers in this situation how they’re settling in, and will have an article for you next week. There’s still time to answer our survey to share your experience.

Thanks for reading.

Have a good weekend,

Emma

Inside Sweden is our weekly newsletter for members which gives you news, analysis and, sometimes, takes you behind the scenes at The Local. It’s published each Saturday and with Membership+ you can also receive it directly to your inbox.

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