Sweden has had this year’s first national trauma. On 31 March an elderly couple were going to park their car outside a supermarket in Landskrona, a town in the south-west of Sweden. They found a parking lot for disabled persons, but it was occupied by a young man in his twenties. The old man honked in order to make the young man move. The young man, later found to be Ahmad Akileh, born in 1986 in Lebanon, got offensed and a quarrel began. Akileh threw the old man, 72 years old, onto the hood of his car and punched brutally. His wife, 78 years old, saw the abuse and went up to help her husband. She was also assaulted and got punched so hard that she fell to the ground and hit her head seriously. The young man fled. The following day the old woman died from her injuries. The national trauma was a fact. How could a young man do such a horrible thing to an elderly couple?
Some of the local companies promised to give a sum of money to the person who could help the police to find the perpetrator. The rumours started. Landskrona is a town that has severe problems with unemployment, mass immigration, segregation, and crime is on the increase especially among the young immigrant gangs. People don’t dare to go outdoors alone in the evening anylonger.
After some days Akileh was found. His mother said directly that it wasn’t his intention to kill the woman. It appeared that his wife, his new-born daughter and a brother also had been in the car at the scene of the crime. Apparently, they had done nothing to help the old couple, for example helping them or calling the police.
The leaders of four local Muslim associations held a press conference to deplore the “accident” and warn that it could “cause xenophobia”. Indeed. That’s the real news angle here. That’s the ticket: A purely hypothetical outbreak of violent attacks on Muslims always trumps actual violent attacks on non-Muslims. And the Swedish press suddenly forgot about the victim and started writing sobstories about the perpetrator. “Now he cannot hold his little baby anylonger” and suchlike articles were to be found, and one in the tabloid the Expressen.
It is as usual utterly important for the press to emphasize that this was a crime perpetrated by an individual and that is very uncommon and will probably never happen again. It could have been anyone, they state repeatedly. This way of trying to smooth things over when the setting involves immigration cannot be seen in other matters. It is not the case when it comes to a crime of violence towards a woman. Then it is always a symptom of the patriarchal society that all men participate to build and uphold. So all men are on principle guilty when one woman is abused. Different reasoning apparently applies for different topics.
A “ordinary” conclusion in the politically correct media is that the blame almost must be put on the political party the Sweden Democrats. This has become a common dodge for the media in order to have a scapegoat when immigrants are involved in something negative. This accusation was especially suitable, since the Sweden Democrats had got more than 20 per cent of the votes in the recent election in Landskrona. So it simply must be their fault, something that was stated in the subsequent debate!
On the Internet the name of the perpetrator was published early, in contrast to the politically correct media where the perpetrators always are kept in the dark particularly if he is an immigrant. On the Internet people could also say the truth behind the criminal development in Landskrona and elsewhere, i.e. that the mass immigration has caused precarious situations in Landskrona and in a considerable number of other places. But this fact is absolutely unmentionable officially. The on-line publication led to a debate according to which the hatred on the Internet was alleged to be spiteful. At last this alleged hatred seemed to be even worse than the crime itself. Now the media’s role had turned into defending the perpetrator. This poor guy had been so maltreated and slandered on the Internet.
On 5 April there was a manifestation in Landskrona against the violence. But TV4 called it a manifestation against racism. In consideration of the perpetrator? So the attacked woman had not been exposed to a racist crime? The low-water mark is the tabloid Expressen that finally accuses everyone who is against the murder of being racists. Or how should their article otherwise be interpreted?
Would the wrath in Landskrona have been exactly as severe, if the suspected perpetrator had been blond and blue-eyed?
The newspaper makes excuses for the violence and tries to blame those who are against it. Sweden’s national trauma has consequently led to a medial trauma and it might be the last straw.
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