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I saw this post on twitter linked by spandrell on swedens demographic decline. Extremely grim, even though I am not swedish or white.
Here is a link to the substack article in question. Just 50 percent ethnic swedes, what is wrong with Scandinavia?
Having recently spent a couple of years in Sweden, what struck me about it was actually how, despite this reputation, its native culture was actually strikingly strong and resilient to universal culture intrusion. Compared to other European cultures I have lived in, they have an abundance of native rituals ranging from involved (midsummer celebrations) to small (corporate Christmas buffets, the sacred annual pastry cycle and other random food traditions, grown adults holding annual Skansen passes so they can go and dance to små grodorna around a tree whenever the occasion calls for it) which approximately everyone observes without a hint of irony. There is a harder-to-pin-down social/temperamental cultural package that struck me as every bit as peculiar as the Japanese one, political culture that has largely resisted US brainrot (I saw a peaceful and constructive 6-ish-way public debate between representatives of every major party including the turbofeminists and the anti-immigration populists in a town square) and plenty of civil-society institutions like only slightly culty countryside compounds hosting debate retreats for politically interested youths.
Moreover, most immigrants I encountered were getting rapidly and obviously assimilated into this package. A second-generation Swedish-Iranian invited me to a kräftskiva they were hosting at their place in some famous problematic suburb, and I have more than once been given the stink-eye by East Asians who lived there for a few years (but came to stay) for not making enough of an effort to learn the language. (I'm sorry! Towards the end I could do simple everyday conversations and read/fill in most of the paperwork that came my way, but I never found the time to take a course or deliberately practice.)
This all was a far cry from what I've experienced in Germany or Austria, where the immigrants proudly keep to themselves or at best get assimilated to anglophone universal culture directly, skipping the local step, and the natives are sheepish about what little distinct native habits remain, while the political culture can be summed up as binging on US news and being excited for native developments only insofar as votes for FPÖ/Greens/AfD/NEOS may contribute to owning the American outgroup or embolden them. In summary, Sweden is among the countries I would be least worried about.
My problem is primarily biological, I do not have any grievances with people but mass migration will always lead to ethnic conflicts within people. India has this happen with what we call votebanks. The super low tfr and ever incresing number of migrants and their higher tfr can never be a good sign for any society given how unstable this can be down the road.
Whether one assimilates or not is a short term question. I will get downvoted for this but my own states culture got destroyed overnight just by having a bunch of other people come in. Culture is an offshoot of people not the other way around.
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The same thing wrong with the entire rest of the world. India is now below replacement too, Sweden is just farther along. Other than Israel no country has figured out how to maintain both A) a national TFR above replacement and B) clean drinking water. There’s plenty of countries that can’t do either and a few that can only do one.
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Who cares?
No, seriously. If you’re going to drop Twitter/substack links, I’m going to have to ask you to put some more effort in. Talk about why you care, why others should care, your reasoning, your theories.
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It’s similar across Western Europe. It’s exactly 55% native in the UK, probably around 60% in Germany, about 55% in Sweden. France and Belgium are likely lower but it’s hard to say for certain, there’s far less data. I suspect it’s lower in Austria because the native birthrate is so low, but again hard to be sure.
UK and German stats are confounded by mass European immigration, if that’s what you care about, such that probably 70% total of births are to European parents. Percentage in Sweden is likely lower, and the same will probably be true in France/Belgium.
As the linked Substack article indicates, Sweden has also been a target nation for large-scale inter-European immigration, particularly from Finland. The same applies to France and Belgium, insofar as I know.
I'm not sure about whether even right-wing Swedes are particularly worried about "non-ethnic Swedes" whose non-ethnicness means that they have a Danish/Norwegian or Finnish (often Finland-Swedish) parent and otherwise are indistinguishable from "fully ethnic" Swedes. Indeed, inter-European immigrants and descendants often tend to vote for right-wing populists at greater rates than "full ethnics".
I don't think they really care as long as the immigrants aren't MENA/Muslims since the rest seem to integrate well, which is usually the primary concern outside of really far right circles.
I don't think anyone cares about Polish or Ukrainian immigrants for instance (outside of some unionist concerns).
Q: How do you recognize a second generation Polish or Ukrainian immigrant?
A: They have a funny (sur)name.
At least that's how it works in Finland.
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So what is it? Like 50% Swedes, 15% other Europeans, and 35% MENA?
If that's true, those numbers are really really bad and given continuing migration and higher birthrates among immigrant communities essentially terminal for Sweden.
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We have this thread every week now it seems. Whatever is causing dropping TFRs all over the world, it's not specific to Scandis and it's probably not one weird policy trick away from fixing either.
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Education levels, economic stagnation, and pessimism about the future, if I were to guess.
These people had life on easy mode, natural resources, human biocapital, a high trust society where you had little crime yet the lack of ambition and virtue signalling is going to cause problems that are damn near unfixable.
Well, not really. Sweden has historically had a lot of timber and iron ore, which isn't nothing, but it's not exactly brimming with hydrocarbons or valuable minerals.
The human biocapital in north west europe, especially Scandinavia is pretty good compared to a lot of other places. I forget which of them has higher reserves of natural resources but they all have people or rather used to.
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Culture becomes parasitic when its fate is no longer aligned with of its host body. Old successful cultures were symbionts, because, like mitochondria, their ability to reproduce and spread was mostly or entirely tied to the body's ability to reproduce and spread. The culture had to make sure its hosts completed their biological lifecycle, because cultures that didn't tended to be selected against.
Modern information technology, with relative peace and prosperity, has allowed culture to become more parasitic. The culture that spreads most successfully today has started interrupting or stalling the lifecycles of its host bodies, because that is time and energy being wasted from the culture's perspective. The culture is able to jump from host to host very rapidly. It has infected the nodes cultural transmission like media and academia and no longer needs old slow biological reproduction.
Intelligent people are the most malleable, the least biologically instinctive. They have the most modifiable behavior and in some respects are the most susceptible to these cultural pathogens, or at least become the most useful hosts. The selection pressure for immunity is no doubt intense, but it moves at the speed of biological reproduction so will take a while. I think something like this cycle has played out several times in history, but never before has it been so rapid and intense because of more limited technology.
Yeah, globalised bioleninism explains a ton
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