AN IRISH ANTI-IMMIGRATION video which has been viewed tens of thousands of times makes a string of false claims about Sweden — including that ethnic Swedes will be a minority within a decade and that the country suffers more bombings than any nation not at war.

In the video, a man called Michael McCarthy speaks directly to the camera as he makes a series of claims. As well as the other statements, he also says that the city of Malmö is as dangerous as Baghdad, the capital of Iraq.

None of these claims are backed up by facts.

McCarthy has previously posted misleading claims about migrants, many of which have been debunked. The Journal previously fact-checked claims by him that children are being taught Islamic prayers in schools; that footage of a woman being attacked in a church was from Europe; and that the majority of Irish people disagree with the EU. 

His video on Sweden has been viewed more than 43,000 times since being posted to Facebook on 2 August.

So, how do these claims stack up?

A Swedish minority

“This is disappearing,” McCarthy says in the video as an image of three white-skinned blonde adults wearing blue and yellow clothing appears on screen.

“Swedish people are set to become a minority in Sweden in just ten years time,” he says. As he speaks, a chart appears showing the ‘annual decline’ of white Europeans in a number of countries, and the projected year when the population of white people is set to reach under 50%. 

A screenshot of the chart from the video.

McCarthy seems to be using ‘white’ and ‘Swedish’ interchangeably here, given the words he uses and what the chart says. But even if you treat these two categories the same, the stats still don’t work.

No source for this chart is given. A search for the terms used in the chart does not shed any light on the source of the data, and directs back to versions of McCarthy’s video on different social media platforms. 

The chart in McCarthy’s video claims that 67% of Swedish people are white in 2025, and this is falling by 1.1% a year.

Even if these figures were true, they do not imply white people would be in a minority in ten years. Whether he means a 1.1% decrease per year, or a drop of 1.1 percentage points each year, you still get a figure higher than 50%. 

However, there are compelling reasons to think that these figures are false.

Sweden does not officially collect racial or ethnic statistics due to a legal prohibition, and “white” is not a recognised category in official statistics, let alone a rate of decrease in white people. There is no indication of where the 1.1% figure comes from, and it is not backed up by official statistics. 

The SCB (Sweden’s state statistics agency) does however collect data on where each person in the country was born, as well as the nationality of their parents. 

These figures are what are usually cited when estimates of Sweden’s ethnic makeup are given, such as in the CIA World Factbook, which says Sweden is 79.6% ethnically Swedish.

This information on parents nationality and country of birth like the most likely candidate for where the 67% figure came from. This was the proportion of Swedish citizens from 2018-2020 that were born in Sweden to two Swedish parents.

It should be noted that these statistics give us no information about what percentage of the population is white, which McCarthy seems to conflate with being Swedish.

People born in Sweden to two parents who were also born in Sweden may be non-white. And people born in a different country can also be white, or be born to two Swedish parents.

To give an idea of the breakdown, last year, more than 208,000 Swedish residents that were born outside the state were from other Nordic countries, and almost 380,000 were from non-Nordic EU countries. A further almost 350,000 were from non-EU European countries, including almost 60 thousand from Yugoslavia, a country that hasn’t existed since the early nineties.

In either case, there is no reliable source corroborating the claims made in the video. 

Bombings

McCarthy goes on to claim that this supposed change in demographics will cause Sweden to become particularly dangerous.

While there has been a significant increase in organised crime in Sweden since about 2005, the claims McCarthy makes about this subject are, again, not based in fact.

“Sweden has the most bombings of any country not in a war,” McCarthy says. “Sweden! A place people probably thought was very safe.”

So, is this true?

The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention has specific statistics on this, showing that there have been 129 explosions associated with criminal violence in 2024. It was 149 in 2023 and 90 in 2022. 

However, there are other countries not at war that have worse figures than this.

For example, in 2024, 248 bombings were recorded in Pakistan — a country that is not at war (albeit one that did experience escalated tensions with India this year). 

Colombia saw 457 launched explosives and controlled detonation devices in 2024, according to the Red Cross. 

It should be noted that these comparisons are not always apt. The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention warn that comparing figures between nations is tricky.

“Does Sweden stand out when it comes to explosions, compared to other countries?” a section on their website reads (in Swedish).

“It is not so easy to answer because it is difficult to find reliable comparative statistics,” it answers.

“Different countries register differently. What is legally considered an explosion in Sweden may be registered as something else in another country.”

The casualties that are caused by the explosions can help to give us an idea of the scale of such incidents. 

The casualty count, including deaths and injuries, from bombings in Pakistan in 2024 was 1,476. In Colombia, it was 719. 

Despite the number of explosions in Sweden, no deaths were recorded to have been caused by criminal explosives in 2024, police report.

“The explosion is used primarily as a marker and a threat,” an analysis by the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention reads. “The purpose is rarely to kill someone.”

Malmö and Baghdad

In the video, McCarthy says: “Malmö in Sweden is ranked as dangerous as Baghdad.” Onscreen, a headline echoing this claim appears.

This claim might sound familiar to recent claims about Ireland, repeated by Conor McGregor and Fox News, about how Dublin is ranked as the most dangerous city in Europe. And, indeed, this claim about Sweden has an almost identical unreliable source.

The headline that appeared onscreen was taken from the English newspaper The Express, which made that claim in January, linking back to a website called Numbeo – the same Serbian company that was behind the claim about Dublin being dangerous. 

Numbeo describes itself as “a crowd-sourced global database of quality of life data” and notes that data on crime is “derived from surveys conducted by visitors to our website,” rather than from facts.

The site also includes a disclaimer that none of its data has “necessarily been reviewed by people with the expertise” to provide “accurate or reliable information”.

“There is absolutely no assurance that any statement contained on the website is correct or precise,” it says.

While it did rank Malmö and Baghdad next to each other (the 97th and 96th most dangerous cities, respectively), it ranked other well-known cities as much worse, such as Manchester (89), Paris (80), Washington, DC (72), and Houston, Texas (51).

In other words, these rankings are worthless for giving an indication of crime in cities.

There has been a real surge in gang violence that has affected Sweden’s rankings in more rigorous studies of its safety. Nevertheless, Sweden’s levels of danger are dwarfed by Iraq’s, which is still the target of attacks by insurgent groups, such as Islamic State.

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