In 2017, three out of four people suspected of murder in Sweden were migrants — a figure that seems frightfully high. The funny thing is that the Swedish Social Democrats, and others you might call multiculturalists — the "politically correct" — they have not been interested in investigating this, even though these are issues that Swedish people are talking about.

In Sweden, however, what people talk about are "socioeconomic factors" — which they claim are the causes behind everything: crime, rape, marginalization, exclusion, unemployment and financial issues. The multiculturalists link these issues to our country and say they are something we are to blame for. Those are completely different from culture, which is something that people bring with them when they come to Sweden.

"Culture," they repeat over and over again, "has nothing to do with it!" So we ask them, "Then how do you explain that migrants from, say, Vietnam or Thailand, have a far lesser propensity for crime than migrants from other parts of the world?"

Orwell said something like, "I know enough about the working class not to idealize it." You can apply the same concept to... fantasies about other cultures: the fact that we know very little about them because if we knew enough... we would not idealize these countries the way many academics in Sweden, Paris, or London are doing: we would know too much.

Another aspect here relates to when migrants come to Sweden. They are greeted by those who know very little about their own culture, who care very little about it and who are happy to compare it unfavorably to other cultures. Almost like a pastime. "Oh, you know, the way we treat homosexuals or women or migrants or structural racism in Sweden..." It is simply not true. We all have these dinners and just sit around and harass our own country, and everyone else does the same and we love it.

If people come to Sweden, how are they supposed to respect Swedish culture if we do not respect it ourselves? But in Sweden, we are not allowed to do that. In basically every other country, every other culture, people have a certain respect — even in dictatorships, they love their country, the tradition, and so on. In dictatorships, of course, if they do not love their country, they are not allowed to say so. If Sweden is such a bad place, why is everyone coming here?... No one is escaping from Sweden to Yemen.

It is as if we simply cannot accept the fact that we are fortunate and privileged because it goes against our own self-deception.... This whole self-critical, self-harassing attitude is a perfect way to avoid the kind of shame of being privileged. This self-critical attitude among scores of Western elites can only occur in wealthy societies. It is an odd fruit among those who are troubled by the fact that they are privileged and fortunate. But why on earth be troubled by it? Why be ashamed by all those before us who made our country so successful? This is just head-spinningly grotesque.

So, this is a one-sided tolerance: self-criticism, even if sometimes possibly justified, is replaced by self-annihilation. An idea fostered from above by political elites whereby Western cultures, Western traditions, Western ideas are being dismissed for the benefit of some kind of multicultural veneration and idealization of anything exotic — the more exotic, the better.

You could say that this whole focus on.... sexual identities and so forth sounds not only like sidetracking, but also an attempt to... engage people in... relatively unimportant battles while there are much more important battles to be fought. Most prominently, the battle against globalization, neo-liberalism, the dismantling of national borders, and the intensifying aggression of predatory nations. Those are the most important.

[I]n dealing with the mullahs it is appeasement that encourages war.

[N]o sooner had Biden's appeasement squad been deployed than Ayatollah Ali Khamenei... revive[d] the embers of several conflicts into blazing flames.

The revised budget... includes a 62 percent raise in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' share. The Quds (Jerusalem) Force, which is in charge of exporting revolution and keeping the pot boiling in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza, sees its budget increased by almost 40 percent. Some estimates put the total increase of Iran's military budget since 2019 at around 150 percent

[Khamenei's] kind of war is labelled in many different ways: proxy, asymmetric, low-intensity, low-cost, cottage industry war.... he pursues it through surrogates and mercenaries recruited in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen.

According to best estimates the Islamic Republic has spent around $20 billion in its various low-cost wars since 2000, a relatively modest sum compared to the huge cost of a full-scale war.... the regime needs a minimum of $60 billion a year to cover its basic costs and survive while continuing its decades-long campaign to de-stabilize the Middle East in the hope of what Kayhan, a mouthpiece for Khamenei, describes as "the inevitable tsunami of Islamic revolution"....

Blinken talks of his hopes for a "breakthrough"... Khamenei, too, wants a breakthrough based in a promise to enrich the uranium he does not want or need at a lower grade in exchange for the cash flow he does need to reactivate his momentarily interrupted special kind of war against the US and its regional allies, indeed against what is often known as " the world order".

Fear of an illusory war may lead to a deal which would allow a real war to continue behind the façade of an illusory peace.