How to Be Danish: A Journey to the Cultural Heart of Denmark by Patrick Kingsley
Authors: Patrick Kingsley
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and Danes? But then there’s a more frustrated question: why won’t foreigners integrate? The first example sounds vaguely inclusive, but the second is slightly oppressive. Literally, the word implies some kind of mutual effort on the part of both Danes and newcomers. But often it is simply used to mean one-way assimilation.
The role the DFP played in the creation of these ideas and policies showed how far to the right the Danish immigration debate had shifted. Back in the 80s, the likes of Søren Krarup were ridiculed by those from the centre-right. After Krarup ran a large newspaper advert asking Danes to stop giving money to refugees – “No, not a single krone” – the prime minister, Venstre’s Poul Hartling, called himfanatical and hysterical. Other Venstre politicians responded by personally collecting money on the streets. When the DFP was founded a decade later – following a split from the far-right Progress Party in 1995 – it was ridiculed by those from the left and the centre-right alike. The Conservative leader Hans Engell said he doubted the DFP would ever form the basis of a coalition government. In 1999, the Social Democrat prime minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen told DFP politicians that “no matter how hard you try, you will never be decent.”
But times change. In the 2001 election, the DFP won 12% of the vote, becoming Denmark’s third-largest parliamentary party – a position they’ve held ever since. As a result, they entered into a loose alliance with the same centre-right parties – Venstre and the Conservatives – that had tried to distance themselves from the DFP during the previous decade. And as the documentary Ordet Fanger shows, Venstre’s new prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen started mimicking – to a word – the reactionary language Pia Kjaersgaard (the one-time DFP leader) had been using ten years earlier. “Denmark can’t be the benefits office for the whole world,” said Kjaersgaard in 1993. “Denmark can’t be the benefits office for the whole world,” said Fogh Rasmussen in 2003.
Since the Social Democrats were re-elected in 2011, the spotlight has shifted – slightly. The DFP aren’t in the news every week, and Danish debate is preoccupied with the financial crisis.
Meanwhile, the government has thrown immigrants a few olive branches. Immigrants who want to marry a foreigner now have to have lived in Denmark for only 26 years, rather than 28. In a symbolic move, the Ministry of Integration has folded and been incorporated into other departments. The notorious points system has been repealed – though, like the closure of the integration ministry, this change is largely cosmetic. Points or not, Denmark’s immigration rules are still almost as strict as they were before. In fact, though they’ve hit the pause button on the xenophobic rhetoric, the Social Democrats haven’t exactly rewound everything either. Nyrup Rasmussen may have once called the DFP “indecent” – but a decade on, his Social Democrat successors aren’t doing a great deal to revoke their policies. “It’s not so easy for them though,” argues Alev. “Even among the supporters of the Social Democrats there are a lot of people who could potentially shift to the Dansk Folkeparti.”
Outside of politics, xenophobia still regularly rears its head in Danish public life. In April 2012, a regional newspaper reported that “ Neger stjal bil fra 80-arig ” – or “Negro stole car from 80-year-old.” It was a conscious choice, the editor argued. “I do not think it is an offensive word,” he said. “If he had been a red-head, I would have written that. If he had been bald, I would have written that.”
A month later, it emerged that the Danish Film Institute had rejected a producer’s funding application because, among other reasons, “Films featuring cast members withanother ethnic background haven’t shown to be especially sellable in the provinces.”
•
From the outside,
The role the DFP played in the creation of these ideas and policies showed how far to the right the Danish immigration debate had shifted. Back in the 80s, the likes of Søren Krarup were ridiculed by those from the centre-right. After Krarup ran a large newspaper advert asking Danes to stop giving money to refugees – “No, not a single krone” – the prime minister, Venstre’s Poul Hartling, called himfanatical and hysterical. Other Venstre politicians responded by personally collecting money on the streets. When the DFP was founded a decade later – following a split from the far-right Progress Party in 1995 – it was ridiculed by those from the left and the centre-right alike. The Conservative leader Hans Engell said he doubted the DFP would ever form the basis of a coalition government. In 1999, the Social Democrat prime minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen told DFP politicians that “no matter how hard you try, you will never be decent.”
But times change. In the 2001 election, the DFP won 12% of the vote, becoming Denmark’s third-largest parliamentary party – a position they’ve held ever since. As a result, they entered into a loose alliance with the same centre-right parties – Venstre and the Conservatives – that had tried to distance themselves from the DFP during the previous decade. And as the documentary Ordet Fanger shows, Venstre’s new prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen started mimicking – to a word – the reactionary language Pia Kjaersgaard (the one-time DFP leader) had been using ten years earlier. “Denmark can’t be the benefits office for the whole world,” said Kjaersgaard in 1993. “Denmark can’t be the benefits office for the whole world,” said Fogh Rasmussen in 2003.
Since the Social Democrats were re-elected in 2011, the spotlight has shifted – slightly. The DFP aren’t in the news every week, and Danish debate is preoccupied with the financial crisis.
Meanwhile, the government has thrown immigrants a few olive branches. Immigrants who want to marry a foreigner now have to have lived in Denmark for only 26 years, rather than 28. In a symbolic move, the Ministry of Integration has folded and been incorporated into other departments. The notorious points system has been repealed – though, like the closure of the integration ministry, this change is largely cosmetic. Points or not, Denmark’s immigration rules are still almost as strict as they were before. In fact, though they’ve hit the pause button on the xenophobic rhetoric, the Social Democrats haven’t exactly rewound everything either. Nyrup Rasmussen may have once called the DFP “indecent” – but a decade on, his Social Democrat successors aren’t doing a great deal to revoke their policies. “It’s not so easy for them though,” argues Alev. “Even among the supporters of the Social Democrats there are a lot of people who could potentially shift to the Dansk Folkeparti.”
Outside of politics, xenophobia still regularly rears its head in Danish public life. In April 2012, a regional newspaper reported that “ Neger stjal bil fra 80-arig ” – or “Negro stole car from 80-year-old.” It was a conscious choice, the editor argued. “I do not think it is an offensive word,” he said. “If he had been a red-head, I would have written that. If he had been bald, I would have written that.”
A month later, it emerged that the Danish Film Institute had rejected a producer’s funding application because, among other reasons, “Films featuring cast members withanother ethnic background haven’t shown to be especially sellable in the provinces.”
•
From the outside,
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