The new Stockholm syndrome

[fridi]

Hundreds of burned cars, buildings in flames and raging mobs of angry young people throwing stones at the police, yelling "racists!" Those are hardly the first things you'd think of whenever you hear the name Sweden. But that's exactly what the Stockholm suburbs looked like a few days ago, and those images circulated around the whole world. The picture looks familiar from Paris (2005) and London (2011). But Sweden, with its image of a prosperous, harmonious and tolerant society that has become a synonym of a just social model, was supposed to look a bit different compared to France or Britain.

And yet...