11 ms·

Fake Sweden expert on Fox News – no connection to Swedish security

• cmrdporcupine 10y ago
  Unfortunately the news cycle has already moved on.
• kevinbowman 10y ago
  I'm interested in how this is being reported on in the USA - is there a discussion about the complete fabrication of this story, or is the story itself successfully doing the rounds? It seems amazing that manipulation of the public on such a massive scale is even possible in somewhere like the USA, if that's what is happening.
  • stanleydrew 10y ago
    I saw something about it on Twitter. But it's Fox News, so wasn't really that unexpected. They have been attempting to manipulate the public on a massive scale for a long time, as long as the manipulation serves the preferred narrative.
    • JustSomeNobody 10y ago
      Surely, NBC, CNN, etc try and do this also? Note: Don't take this to mean I, in ANY way, support Fox News.
      • stanleydrew 10y ago
        I'm not suggesting they don't but we're not discussing a specific instance on any of those networks, so that's not really at issue here. I think Fox News showed that low-integrity narrative-fitting and selective editing are very profitable. Other networks have probably followed to some extent.
  • plandis 10y ago
    It's Fox News so only right-wing people are even listening to this crap.
• deleted 10y ago
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• hacker_9 10y ago
  Utterly embarrassing, but not unexpected. News in the US exists in a different reality compared to other countries. If the BBC did this it would be such an utter shock it would probably make the newspapers. But in the US? Business as usual.
• willvarfar 10y ago
  I don't get why the Right is so keen to vilify Sweden. I've lived abroad and travelled and feel I have a fair handle on all the countries I've visited and I'm living abroad now.. In Sweden! Nordic countries are by far the best functioning countries I've ever visited and should serve as positive examples.
  • JustSomeNobody 10y ago
    Before the election, some of the people I talked to said that if Trump won, they'd exit the country. When asked where they'd go, it was always Canada or Sweden. Maybe this has something to do with it?
    • briffle 10y ago
      Did any of them actually leave?
      • Sunset 10y ago
        No. It was just virtue signaling and a massive display of privilege, to be able to up and move over to another country on a whim.
      • JustSomeNobody 10y ago
        Why would that matter?
      • drumdance 10y ago
        I'm moving to Colombia for part of the year. Maybe full time in the next couple years.
  • spiderfarmer 10y ago
    The politics in Sweden are exactly the opposite of what Trump has in mind. The Right wants to pretend that Sweden is a mess so they can justify their own policies. They know that their electorate swallows whatever they tell them, because, well, they swallowed whatever they said during their campaign. So why change now?
• dep_b 10y ago
  It's a bit weird that a country safer than the US now gets portrayed as a sodom and gomorra of rape and violence. The striking difference between Swedes and immigrants in terms of violent crimes (four times as much, five times for rape) is declared for a large part by the fact that Swedes on average are nice and peaceful people. Fox and Trump blowing everything out of proportion shouldn't stop a healthy debate about what the benefits of the current wave of immigration for Sweden and the Swedes really are.
  • willvarfar 10y ago
    Immigrants don't commit crimes. Poor people commit crimes. It happens that the poorest people in Sweden right now are immigrants. The rape stats are also way different from how they are portrayed in the media. In Sweden, if you are in an abusive relationship, every instance of abuse is counted individually, and as Assange learned, the law is very strict. As other countries tend to do far worse at reporting and prosecuting abuse, and as other countries tend to count all occurrences of abuse together as one crime, the numbers are not directly comparable to other countries. Source: am living in Sweden in a "hotspot", am an immigrant but am rich and white. I saw nazis demonstrating in the local town center yesterday, which shocked me. Sweden is a very safe nice country, and the alt-Right in Sweden (SD being big where I am) and abroad are misrepresenting it.
    • nazgob 10y ago
      I also have decent memories from Sweden, I've been living there for a few years. Apart from stolen bike (worldwide phenomenon) and housing scam (classic Uppsala) it was fine. But rising power of SD in Sweden is very worrying. On the one hand you have some immigrants that are not always on-board with advances that Swedish society did and on the other you have nazis. Not sure about SD support now but it was over 10% last time I checked and much more in the north.
    • baobrain 10y ago
      I just want to point out that socioeconomic status is generally not an established correlate of crime, despite many thinking it is, though it's possible that the disparity may cause people to commit crime. It's probably not very accurate to attribute crime to immigrants being poor. Disclaimer: I am not an expert in criminology and also not very familiar with sweden's situation
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• spiderfarmer 10y ago
  Things like this makes me worried about the future of the USA. How can a country succeed in the future if they reject reality? I know Fox News is not representative of all US media, but even the president admits that his worldview is based on whatever the news editor cooks up that day.
  • JustSomeNobody 10y ago
    > I know Fox News is not representative of all US media... No? I mean, maybe they're the most egregious, but I'll bet each and every media outlet bends things from time to time to fit a narrative. Look at the live reporting that happened during the election. There was a lot of sputtering going on when THAT didn't fit their narrative.
    • splitrocket 10y ago
      Evidence? This is pretty clear case of a total failure to check the credentials of an "expert". Additionally, Fox has a history of similar failures. No other major news network comes even close. http://mashable.com/2015/10/16/fbi-arrests-fox-news-analyst/#wpbThHft6aqK http://mashable.com/2015/10/16/fbi-arrests-fox-news-analyst/...
      • saosebastiao 10y ago
        That's the generous interpretation. I'd consider it more likely that they were willing to intentionally fabricate expertise in order to project their world view, knowing that their viewers wouldn't care about the facts.
  • jjawssd 10y ago
    To understand what is happening ("How can a country succeed in the future if they reject reality?") you need to understand the concept of ideological subversion and the role played by the demoralization of a people. Highly recommended: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3qkf3bajd4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3qkf3bajd4
  • themihai 10y ago
• ptype 10y ago
  Ironically coming from DN, who under current editor Wolodarski has lost a huge amount of credibility among Swedish intellectuals. What used to be the premier journalistic publication of Sweden now runs a highly biased agenda, and has been involved in a number of journalistic scandals (cover ups etc).
  • jahaja 10y ago
    What scandals are you referring to?
    • ptype 10y ago
      I was on my phone earlier. DN under Wolodarski has received a lot of criticism, which I suspect you are actually aware of. Please find a few examples below. Aftonbladet: Journalists question the truthfulness of a series of DN's articles: http://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/article23755207.ab http://www.aftonbladet.se/kultur/article23755207.ab Alice Teodorescu of GP has criticised DN and their journalistic methods on numerous occasions, e.g. "DN on collision course with reality": http://www.gp.se/ledare/teodorescu-dn-p%C3%A5-kollisionskurs-med-verkligheten-1.4031463 http://www.gp.se/ledare/teodorescu-dn-p%C3%A5-kollisionskurs... Also worth seeing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRivdUJO1ls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRivdUJO1ls National economist Tino Sanandaji often uncovers errors in DN's journalism, e.g. this example of DN using incorrect statistics: http://tino.us/2014/06/p1-medier-granskar-dn-dn-star-bakom-halv-miljard-i-vinst-i-sandviken-och-kallar-metodkritik-for-asikter/ http://tino.us/2014/06/p1-medier-granskar-dn-dn-star-bakom-h... The DN cover up scandal (their rebuttal): http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/fragor-och-svar-om-dns-hantering-av-handelserna-i-kungstradgarden/ http://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/fragor-och-svar-om-dns-hant...
      • jahaja 10y ago
        This is blatant cherry-picking an I'm saying that as a person with left-wing ideals (DN is a right-wing newspaper). These are not "journalistic scandals" in any sense of the words you're making them out to be. Furthermore, using the same measurement standards as yourself, some of your sources are questionable at best in this matter. Especially GP which has taken a _sharp_, even populist, right turn since the appointment of Teodorescu, for which they've been much more criticized than DN. Sanandaji is not much better than an opportunist, gaining publicity by fueling a sense of media cover-up among right-wing populists. Lately he's been calling the lack of orders from public libraries for his newly released book about the costs of immigration censorship. This doesn't not even come close to "lost a huge amount of credibility among Swedish intellectuals" nor "has been involved in a number of journalistic scandals (cover ups etc)". You're simply being dishonest.
• spiderfarmer 10y ago
  When an immigrant politician in The Netherlands made up a "fact" about Dutch doctors pulling the plug on immigrants patients sooner because of racism / a language barrier, he was asked by all journalists why he would use an unsubstantiated rumor in his campaign and how he thought that using something like that was ethical. When I saw that I was proud to be a citizen of this country, even though we have our own Trump wannabe with even tinier hands: Geert Wilders.
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• byrnedo 10y ago
  Murders / 100k people in Sweden: 4. Chicago has 27.
  • rodionos 10y ago
    It's actually less than that for Sweden, namely 3.1 for the year of 2015: https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/013dc374/2 https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/013dc374/2. Top right chart.
  • danielvf 10y ago
    Comparing Sweden to Chicago seems a bit of a stretch. A number more directly comparable would be the US Non-Black homicide rate, which was 2.54 per 100,000 in 2015. I think that's lower than the Sweden figure in the sibling comment. [Edit: I had said that this rate was also lower than England. I was wrong on that one. ] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-2015/tables/expanded_homicide_data_table_3_murder_offenders_by_age_sex_and_race_2015.xls https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2015/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
    • AdeptusAquinas 10y ago
      The actual rate for Sweden and the UK is 0.9, each. So even the 'non-black' rate in the US is higher than both, put together. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intenti...
      • rodionos 10y ago
        I recommend double checking reference tables in Wikipedia. It is conveniently displayed first in search results, however for Sweden: https://www.bra.se/download/18.358de3051533ffea5ea7f2cf/1459417671952/Reported_offences_1950_2015.xls https://www.bra.se/download/18.358de3051533ffea5ea7f2cf/1459... > 305 Completed murder, manslaughter and assault resulting in death. > 9,851,017 Total population = 3.1 per 100000 people
        • 10y ago
• rodionos 10y ago
  Let's look at raw statistics for a second. The data comes from the Swedish crime agency bra.se: https://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statistics/crime-statistics.html https://www.bra.se/bra/bra-in-english/home/crime-and-statist... 1) Total numbers of offenses. Rape statistics chart is displayed below: https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/013dc374/1/#fullscreen https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/013dc374/1/#fullscreen 2) Population pro-rated: https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/013dc374/3/#fullscreen https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/013dc374/3/#fullscreen What happened in 2002-2004? As was discussed in media, the Swedish authorities have encouraged reporting of sex offenses and changed the methodology of how rape crime is reported and counted. One of the unintended side effects is that it's difficult to compare the time series, and this is one of the challenges that all statistical agencies are facing. If you change the definition, be prepared for misunderstanding and misreporting - both intentional and not. By the way, the country where Julian Assange is alleged of a sex assault is ... Sweden.
  • deleted 10y ago
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  • rodionos 10y ago
    By the way, here are two rape definitions used by the FBI: 'legacy' and 'revised': https://www.ucrdatatool.gov/offenses.cfm https://www.ucrdatatool.gov/offenses.cfm Made a difference to Brock Turner's case.
• Melchizedek 10y ago
  Nevertheless, what he said was completely correct. "National security advisor" in an American context is apparently not just someone who gives advise on national security, but a specific high ranking post. Nils Bildt however is an independent analyst from Sweden who is based in the US. If the Swedish government considers him an "expert" or not seems irrelevant. While the presentation of who he is was misleading, it doesn't seem like a huge conspiracy and could simply be a mistake. The reaction to it looks like a case of killing the messenger when you don't like the message.
• znfi 10y ago
  In what way is the term "defense and national security advisor" used in the US? Does this necessitate being an advisor to the military or the ministry for foreign affairs? Because this article to me, as a swede, seems to contain very little substance, and given that DN for no apparent reasons lists this guys whole criminal records makes you wonder what the purpose really is here. For comparison I'm not aware of ever having seen this detailed of a listing of someone's criminal record. There is no mention of any inaccuracies in what this person has said, only that the title chosen by Fox News is incorrect. It's also somewhat ironic that they quote Nils Bildt as complaining of the way media behave, when this whole article, and publication of his criminal record in particular, in many ways seems like a way to "punish" him for criticizing the politically correct image championed by the media over here. Finally, it might be worth pointing out that the surname Bildt is in Sweden strongly associated with the politician Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and former minister for foreign affairs.
• xorcist 10y ago
  The family name Bildt is an old noble one with registered heraldry and absolutely not a surname you can take in Sweden. It's also the surname of the prime minister at the time Nils emigrated. Perhaps that's a bit of background to who puts on such a charade.
• xname2 10y ago
  So many comments here imply that there is no immigration problem whatsoever in Sweden. It's all Trump/right-win made-up. But it is not true: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/world/europe/sweden-nation-of-open-arms-debates-implications-of-immigration.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/world/europe/sweden-natio... Sweden, Nation of Open Arms, Debates Implications of Immigration "In 2014, the anti-immigrant Sweden Democrats gained 12.9 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections to become the country’s third-largest party, up from only 2.9 percent eight years earlier."