One of the most beautiful, egalitarian countries in the world was also the site of disturbing protests in May. Janine di Giovanni visits Stockholm and attempts to understand why.
Sweden, in the summer at least, must be one of the most glorious places in the world. The midnight sun makes the crime low and the people cheerful from midsummer until the first days of autumn. A country of 9.5 million souls, it has remained peaceful since the early-19th century and was neutral during World War II. In 2013, The Economist declared the Nordic countries the best governed in the world, and put Sweden in the first place.
A man sits injured on a street bench after a stone hit his head on May 22, 2013, during a demonstration against police violence and vandalism in the Stockholm suburb of Husby. Rioting spread across Stockholm's immigrant districts in a third night of unrest, raising fears that decades of integration efforts have gone dangerously awry.
As far as city living
goes, Stockholm is so damned politically correct, and so damned easy. It
has a low-density population. Escape from the city is easy. More than
30,000 islands are in the Swedish archipelago, making the hop from urban
life to bucolic isolation available to anyone who can jump on a boat
leaving the city every few minutes.
Beautiful,
chic young people dine out in cool neighborhoods like SoFo at a
fraction of what you would pay in Paris, London, or New York. The city
is awash with blonde babies, because the system has made it painless to
go on maternity leave (there is an established paternity leave as well),
then glide back into the workforce.
For the rest of the story: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/17/the-ugly-side-of-sweden.html
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