The new face of Sweden
Scandinavians must prepare for more Muslim attacks.
Scandinavia will need to examine its exposure to radicalization as the region faces more terrorist attacks from homegrown assailants, Norway’s defense minister said.
“No matter what kind of scenario you look at, for the coming years you will most likely have some kind of terrorism situation to consider,” Ine Eriksen Soereide said Monday in an interview at her office in Oslo. “This is the new normal, it’s something that we have to get used to now.”
Copenhagen erupted in gunfire over the weekend when a man shot and killed two people and wounded five police officers in attacks that targeted a free-speech debate and a synagogue. The suspected killer, a 22-year-old who was born in Denmark, died in a shootout with police after an overnight manhunt.
According to Danish media, the killer was Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein. His parents are from Palestine, TV2 reported.
Norway, like Denmark, is a nation accustomed to freedoms that aren’t possible in many other parts of the world. Mothers are used to leaving their babies in strollers outside cafes and passers by have easy access to the nation’s parliament. Even after the 2011 hate killings by Anders Behring Breivik, which left 77 people dead and destroyed part of the prime minister’s office, security remains more relaxed than in many other parts of the world.
The attacks in Copenhagen, which were the deadliest in Scandinavia since the Breivik murders, hit close to home for Norwegians, Soereide said.
“Young radicalized people who go to Syria or Iraq and come back with the intent and capacity to undertake terrorist acts on Norwegian or European soil, they are to a large extent people who have grown up in our countries,” she said.
Though it’s unclear whether the Danish gunman acted alone or as part of a group, there are signs he has a number of sympathizers in Denmark. Broadcaster TV2 showed pictures of youths placing flowers at the site where El-Hussein was shot by police. According to Berlingske, a 26-year-old man from the city of Aarhus has expressed sympathy with the suspected killer, declaring “Je suis Omar” on Facebook.
Scandinavia enjoyed a wonderful post-war period of prosperity, which worked because it had a homogeneous population of well educated, hard working people who bought into the concept of everyone helping their neighbor while also creating wealth. That paradise began to erode when the countries began admitting gypsies and other welfare spongers across their borders, and today, the cities have the same ghettos and “n0-go” zones Scandinavians used to excoriate the United States for creating.
And now Muslim terrorists. The fact that state officials, like our own Obama, still refer to these monsters as “radicalized young people” indicates that they have no grasp of what is happening. This will all end badly.
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