Submited by Dr. Binoy Kampmark
The great centrist European tradition of social democracy has been receiving a rattle for the last few decades. The European Parliament elections were a reminder how much their appeal has diminished. In Denmark, by way of contrast, they have established something of a bridgehead, defeating the centre-right coalition led by the Venstre party’s Lars Løkke Rasmussen in Wednesday’s election. The Left parties won some 52.1% of the vote with 41% netted by right wing opponents. Extreme parties such as Stram Kurs were kept out.
Mette Frederiksen. IMAGE: Tim K Jensen/Ritzau Scanpix/Reuters
But the analysis from outside the country is typically skewed, seeing such a victory as a return to worn social democratic clothing with a grand spring clean. The votes, seen in raw terms, do show a return to form for the left. This ignores the actual change of political attire. Danish voters did not return to any temple of the left and renew progressive vows. The left, more to the point, has edged, in some cases leaped, to the right.
The response of the Danish Social Democrats in 2015 was not to convince voters about an existing vision for a future vote, but to ape that of the victors. That year had seen the arrival of 21,000 migrants, causing disruption in the electoral mood. “I know that many Danes are worried about the future,” claimed the newly elected leader of the party, Mette Frederiksen. “Worried about jobs, about open borders. About whether we can find a balance in immigration policy.” In an interview with TV2, she opined that Denmark was not good at integrating refugee arrivals; nor was it “heroic or humane to bring so many people here that the problems become huge in our own country.”
Frederiksen’s policy has been to play the devil, the humanitarian and the dissembler. Social welfare has been returned to the centre of political discussions, but the issue of refugees and asylum seekers has also prominently, and negatively featured. To TV2 on Monday, she spoke of her interest in implementing “an economic plan that benefits the fight against inequality and invests in welfare.” The civic compact of the welfare state is to be renewed, but the outsiders, those desperate to be admitted to it, are to be kept at arm’s length.
In the last four years, strict immigration laws passed by the Rasmussen government have received approval from the Social Democrats. Frederiksen was doing everything to shrink the gulf with her opponents, not accentuate the difference. To that end, her party, in 824 legislative votes since 2015, has voted with the government in over 90% of instances.
Nasty measures sharpened for populist appeal have gotten the nod of approval: the banishment of rejected asylum seekers unable to return home and foreigners convicted of crimes to the island of Lindholm, known for hosting cattle and swine said to possess viral diseases worthy of studying; the grant of intrusive police powers enabling the confiscation of goods held by refugees deemed non-essential and worth more than 10,000 kroner; and fining those wearing garments covering faces in public places.
In February, the Danish parliament passed the L 140 bill shifting the focus on immigration away from integration to that of repatriation, including those who do not have permanent status and UN quota refugees. The Social Democrats went along with this “paradigm shift”, despite disagreeing with the reduction of the social welfare benefit known as the integrationsydelsen. The crude note behind the bill was struck by their spokesperson for immigration Mattias Tesfaye: “People will be given the more honest message that their stay in Denmark is temporary.”
Spokesperson for the Red-Green alliance Pelle Dragsted summed up the view in some disgust. “The essence of this is about making life harder and more unpleasant for people who have come here to escape Assad’s barrel bombs and the sex slavery and terror of Islamic State.”
The Social Democrats have also campaigned on shifting the focus from Denmark the processing state to countries, and regions, of origin, dubbing it a “Marshall plan for Africa”. Go to the source of ruination, and improve it with structural and financial incentives. We shall help more, goes the party’s policy, though “we cannot help all in Europe and Denmark.”
Despite a collapse in the 2019 election (their number of 37 mandates shorn by 21), the Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti) supplies a text book example of how parties of the far right can terrify and convince their opponents into shifting ground. When its candidates first started finding a voice in Denmark’s parliament in 1998, the focus was always on tightening immigration, with a conspicuous anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant bias. The welfare state would take pride and place, but outsiders would be frowned upon.
The DPP, in other words, sounded much like convinced Social Democrats incarnations, at least on social and economic policy. They proved religious defenders against any increases in the legal retirement age, advocates for lower taxes for low wage earners and promoters of better labour conditions. In 2001, 2011 and again in 2015, they made good their reputation of being kingmakers but would often to do with forces infected by economic rationalism.
While disaffected Social Democratic voters would find a temporary home in the DPP, this was done at some cost. Knowing this, Frederiksen was always careful to keep the DPP close, mindful of any future power arrangements. “In Denmark,” she claimed in 2017, “you are entitled to almost all benefits from day one. It’s a difficult system when large numbers of people come into the country.”
Frederiksen was also handed a pre-electoral gift by her opponent. A day before the poll, Prime Minister Rasmussen was keen to shake off some of the more influential rightist groups that might have a say in a future government. The New Right and Stram Kurs, for instance, were not going to be “realistic” partners in any conservative bloc. “If there’s a blue majority tomorrow, I feel convinced that it would include parties that I will not accommodate.”
Rasmussen saw the situation mirrored on the part of his Social Democrat opponents. Should the progressives do well in the elections, Frederiksen would have to share with parties of the far left persuasion. “The alternative is there will be no blue majority. And then we have a situation in which a Social Democratic prime ministerial candidate must accommodate the far left. Neither option is in Denmark’s interests.” The desired route? A partnership with the Social Democrats to push the extreme wings of both sides out. The idea lacked wings, and never took off.
The pooh-poohing of fellow conservative members so close to the vote did Rasmussen few favours. Frederiksen found herself able to muster the numbers of a red bloc, though its shape is still forming. The extreme voices of the Stram Kurs movement were kept out. Denmark has confirmed its status as a political mutation parochial of the welfare state but sharply sceptical about refugees. What this says about social democracy is also significant: to be relevant, argues Frederiksen, the movement must be able to “appeal to those who are most strongly affected by the challenges of the future and the changes in our society”. If this demands dry tear ducts and a hardening of the heart towards outsiders, then so be it. To the victor go the dubious and tarnished spoils.
Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com
Defending the interests of the working class has always been the standard by which left-wing politics have been measured. It seems that for the author left-wing politics consists in allowing more Mohammedans to settle in the country and letting them import reactionary foreign customs like covering their faces. What does that have to do with defending the interests of the working class? It seems that for the author the goal of the left should be to accommodate population replacement accompanied by imposition of authoritarian Middle Eastern customs. Muslim immigration has had a devastating impact on Europe. It has entailed importing reactionary and violent ideologies victimizing homosexuals, Jews, women and other existing inhabitants. What duty do Europeans have to subject themselves to this kind of torture?
Lefwing parties have long ago abandoned the working classes. I suspect in no small part because they were taken over by university graduates from the upper classes, who talked the talk about helping the working class, but who knew next to nothing about them. And who sought to broaden the fields of interests of those parties to things that interested them as well, like women’s rights, the 3rd world, gay rights. Which over time became their main focus, because as I said, they no longer had any real connection to the working class to begin with. This process already started in the 1960’s and 70’s. Just look at the student protests of that age. And those were the people that entered and took over leftwing politics.
True.
And that is why formerly Leftist voters the world-over are starting to vote Right even though the Right kills their economic prosperity even more. It did not help that Leftist parties also starting espousing destructive Globalist Economic policies.The Left needs to be purged root and branch.
The duty of sacrificing ourselves for the benefit of ZioUSA interests.
Your’e delirious. To think that the Islamization of Europe serves American or Israeli interests you have to be a Mohammedan fanatic. Next you’ll be quoting from the Protocols.
Bless you, oh innocent one.
You really have no idea what the cunning plans they have for us whiteys.
Call your shrink.
Will do, do you want me to call your school teacher as well.
Islamization is a threat, but it’s not threat to the so-called white race, it’s a threat to civilization. Calling it a threat to whites is a completely batshit notion. Many Mohammedans are whiter than I am. Look at Grand Shmoofty Khamenei! His milky complexion reminds me of Robert E. Lee’s. The ideals and the achievment of Western Civ are not the bailiwick of Europeans alone. They belong to mankind as a whole. To claim that primitive superstitions threaten the white race is being deliberately obtuse. They threaten civilization and all humanity.
Well you wouldn’t have this kind of migration if the West would have stuck its nose in places it doesn’t belong, so I say fuck it, kill off western so called civilization. Its the natural order of things civilizations rise and fall, again fuck comfortable debouched and decadent westerners. I feel as sorry for them as the late era Romans, which is not much.
I disagree. Some migration is the result of western meddling, but by no means all of it, or even most of it for that matter. For example the Syrian civil war was not caused by the west or by Israel, it was caused by a conflict between Iran and the Arab monarchies. The US invasion of Afghanistan was at least partly caused by the fact that Afghanistan had become a center for international terrorism that threatened the west. Furthermore it wasn’t “the west” as such that meddled in Mohammedan countries, it was certain very specific western countries, namely the US, France and Britain. However migrants have flowed into many countries that had nothing to do with the actions of these countries. The Bosnian Muslims who fled to Switzerland in the 1990s were fleeing from a war that had not been caused by the west. And they fled to a country that has always been neutral. It is doubtful to what extent Middle Eastern migrants are really forced to migrate, since they are mostly young men. But when populations are forced to migrate by war, the entire family must move, because whoever stays behind is killed. When NATO intervened in Libya in 2011, it did so at France’s behest. But as we now know, President Sarkozy was acting on behalf of Qatar, from which he was receiving vast payments. Qatar is the principal backer of the Muslim Brotherhood, so one could say that NATO was doing the Muslim Brotherhood’s dirty work in Libya. It wasn’t a western war, it was a Muslim Brotherhood war. You recite some typically superficial propaganda points that are not backed up by any facts
I know of nothing more primitive than the Talmud, of sucking the bird of the circumcised, of wanting the death of all the idolatrous Christians, of wanting the goyim, believed to be animals, slaves of the Jews. The protocols of Sion will be a fake, like perhaps the phrase of Marie Antoinette who told the French people without bread to eat croissants, but the French peasants were hungry, like the Polish taxed by the Jews on behalf of the nobles and we know how it ended.
Zenobia. None of the Invaders go to saud or Yankees client states apart from Turkey. Even there Erdogan uses them as a tool. If it did not suit him he would have mavhinegunned them on the border.
Israel takes no invader moslems. There is much documnetation on Yankee and Israeli Zionist heads of thinktanks talking about Open Borders etc. Yet ,they take none themselves!
Black Africans are also the victims of Islamization. Fulani herders killed 8000 Nigerian Christians last year. And yellow-skinned Buddhists in Thailand are also victims of jihadis. To think that Islamization is directed at whites you have to be profoundly ignorant of current affairs.
Nowhere did i say it is only a problem for Europe. I know well what is happening in Nigeria and Thailand and i sympathise with them as well.
I agree with you.
” What duty do Europeans have to subject themselves to this kind of torture?”
Perhaps its because NATO Europeans have been complicit with Israel, the USA in all the fabricated wars in oil and resource rich countries of the world that do not have the military ability to tell the US ,et al to ‘Fuck Off and Die ‘.
Wars have always caused migration and migration has always caused the living standards of the so called Working Class to fall and that creates great and justifiable discontent from the majority of the existing populations. .
KARMA
Jews are more credible when they speak as communists than as Zionists.
Denmark is run by a US gay couple(D) from US Embassy north of Copenhagen on all important matters.
It makes it difficult for any conservative and national movements to get a voice beyond LGBT issues, Green Energy, Clima Change, planned parenthood, endless refugee and fictional moslém problems, oppressing of white hetero men in favour of feminism. All US Democrats key points.
Thus Denmark has shifted their traditions to those of the Democrats in US, Hallowen Day, Gay parades, Valentines Day, which the Danes now call “our national values” while moslems are banned for threatening the national culture.
Thus the previous female PM from the same party SocialDemocrats showed off her knowledge of math by naming Pythagoras to be a restaurant in Copenhagen plus muslim women with scarf to be “oppressed” because they participated in the public debate with intelligent statements against the deadweight of Denmarks heavy bureaucracy.
Here we go again to please US Democrats with a new female PM in rainbow colours promoting herself with all the US Democrats new hot air campaigns: Green Deal, Green Alternative Energy, Clima Change bs, Smart Cities, more bureaucracy less private entrepreneurs, more jobs to refugees and less to native Danes.
Spokesperson for the Red-Green alliance Pelle Dragsted summed up the view in some disgust. “The essence of this is about making life harder and more unpleasant for people who have come here to escape Assad’s barrel bombs and the sex slavery and terror of Islamic State.”
Sorry to burst your bubble, Pelle, but those people escaped those the moment they crossed Syria’s border. If they went any further they want to live the good life in Denmark. And are thus no longer refugees but immigrants. And immigrants don’t get to invite themselves by showing up on your doorstep and demanding you give them a place at your expense, they have to prove their worth to be even let in and to be able to earn their own keep. But if you had lived outside your SJW bubble you would have known that.
Haha,well argued. Although a Leftist ,I despise these foolish ultra -inclusive types who have forgotten all about their historic constituents. These fools should all be purged from the traditional Leftist parties. Let them go form their own Bleeding Hearts Party. Yet ,they wont do that because they know without the traditional Left Party backing they will go nowhere in a hurry.
Oh, in the Netherlands they do have their own bleeding hearts party, Green Left. And its doing very well. Thing is the old traditional left wing parties are dying anyway because the working class has ditched them for eurosceptic nationalist parties. And those parties are just too proud or stubborn to do what is needed to win them back. They still think they can play the old traditionalist working class card and the bleeding hearts card at the same time. You can’t. The working class has nothing to gain and everything to lose from mass immigration.
Very true.
Exactly. I’m a Marxist too, and proud of it. These postmodern nincompoops deny everything that Marxism stands for.
Bravo!