The election victory last week by Denmark’s Social Democrats has prompted a debate among fellow European left-wing parties: Should they, too, adopt anti-migrant rhetoric, imitate their Danish counterparts and campaign for stricter immigration rules?
Because of a surge in support in the final weeks leading up to the June 5 parliamentary poll, the country’s Social Democrat-led bloc grabbed 91 of the 179 seats in the legislature, setting up the circumstances for Mette Frederiksen, 41, to become Denmark’s youngest prime minister. The Social Democrats won 48 seats and are now the largest party in the Danish parliament.
IMMIGRANTS AND ILLEGALS
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2016 – border control – Europe is disunited in its refugee policies and more countries are sealing themselves off. Now Denmark has tightened its already restrictive entry regulations for refugees and re-established checks on its border to Germany for the first time.
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December 2018
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2018 – Thousands of people gathered in Denmark’s Copenhagen and Aarhus to protest the government’s plans to send “”unwanted”” refugees to Lindholm Island.
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The victory is being credited largely to the Social Democrats’ U-turn on immigration and their embrace of much tougher anti-migrant policies more in keeping with those of their far-right rivals, including opposition to accepting refugees resettled by the United Nations; a focus on coaxing and cajoling migrants to return to their countries of origin; and harsher punishment for migrants, living in migrant-majority areas, who are found guilty of offenses.
The Social Democrats also campaigned for the closure of refugee facilities in Denmark, wanting asylum seekers to instead be held in camps established in North African countries close to conflict areas. During the campaign, Frederiksen argued it was neither “heroic nor humane to bring so many people here that the problems become huge in our own country.”
Whether all these policies will survive coalition talks with the SD’s partner left-wing parties remains to be seen. One of them, the Social Liberals, campaigned on an opposite platform, lamenting that Denmark had turned xenophobic.
Frederiksen’s ambition to become Denmark’s prime minister could still be thwarted by her left nationalism-shattering coalition talks, but she said her party is prepared to form a single-party minority government, which would allow her to ally with right-wing parties on her more restrictive immigration policy.
Common elements
There is common ground. The SD backed a range of much tougher border controls proposed by the outgoing Liberal Party government and its ally, the far-right Danish People’s Party, including the confiscation of valuables from asylum seekers to defray the costs to the state for admitting them, handling their immigration applications and housing them.
The SD’s electoral performance has prompted an intensification in a debate among other mainstream European left-wing parties about whether they, too, should overhaul their immigration thinking as they battle a headwind of frustration from their traditional working-class supporters.
Much of that frustration is rooted in disapproval of migration and anger at the impact of globalization and technological change, say analysts, and it explains the defections to the far-right and populist parties of large numbers of traditional left-wing supporters.
The former leader of Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) has pointed to the sharp change in the electoral fortunes of the Danes as a prompt for a rethink. In an opinion article in the Handelsblatt newspaper, Sigmar Gabriel praised the Danish SD’s stricter asylum policy as a role model for Germany.
More than 700,000 SPD voters deserted the party for the far right in 2017 parliamentary elections. Exit polling suggested migration was the key issue in the mass defection, which propelled the far-right Alternative for Germany into the Bundestag, marking a startling new phase in the party’s progress from the fringe of German politics closer to the center of power in Berlin.
Call for ‘clear policy’
Gabriel said Germany’s Social Democrats, who are mired in the worst crisis in their post-1945 history, should look toward Denmark. “Mette Frederiksen has shown that the Socialists can win elections if they stand for a clear policy,” Gabriel wrote. “The German comrades are far from it.”
In the run-up to the Danish polls, former Italian leftist leader Matteo Renzi also praised the Danish initiative. Along with former British Labor Party Prime Minister Tony Blair, he has long argued the mainstream left needs to rethink border policies.
But their opponents say that stealing the clothes of the populist right will end up undoing the mainstream left, forcing it to pay too high an ideological price. “The country’s Social Democrats have disgraced themselves with anti-immigrant rhetoric,” recently argued Rune Moller Stahl, a former political adviser to the Red-Green Alliance in the Danish parliament.
She points to the success in Spain of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialists, who turned more to the radical left rather than the populist right and triumphed in recent elections.
Other critics say swerving to the right may attract some traditional right-leaning voters, but the maneuver risks losing more left-leaning voters to resurgent Green and liberal parties, which did well in the recent parliamentary elections.
https://www.voanews.com/europe/europes-mainstream-left-debates-stricter-immigration-rules
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Who were the main runners and riders?
Coalition governments are a fact of life in Denmark and the main parties are organised in left-wing (red) and right-wing (blue).
Blue block
Danish People’s Party: Anti-immigration party who supported Denmark’s ruling coalition and came second in last general election.
Denmark’s Liberal Party (Venstre): Ruled in a three-party coalition and are led by Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen.
Liberal Alliance: Another member of the ruling coalition since November 2016 and promotes welfare cuts.
The Conservative People’s Party: The junior member of Denmark’s ruling coalition, led by Denmark’s justice minister, Søren Pape Poulsen.
Red block
Social Democratic Party: Centre-left party that has been in opposition despite winning the largest vote share in last year’s election.
Red-Green Alliance: Far-left party that combines socialism and environmentalism.
Socialist People’s Party: Like the Red-Green Alliance, it mixes green and socialist values.
The Alternative: Green political party that is also pro-European.
Danish Social Liberal Party: Centrist party that is predicted to improve on its 2015 showing.
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In Denmark, the government has adopted the terminology in a crackdown on migrant communities that many critics say is testing the basic tenets of equality under the law. The right wing coalition government has identified 30 rundown districts across the country, which it has officially labeled “ghettoes.” All have high immigrant, Muslim populations. The policy has dismayed many liberal Danes and has stoked fierce debate as European citizens head to the polls in European Parliamentary elections this week.
https://www.voanews.com/world-news/europe/denmark-targets-migrants-ghetto-crackdown-ahead-eu-election
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At the top of the list is Mjolnerparken, a suburb in the Norrebro district of Copenhagen. It doesn’t look like a slum. Residents and visitors glide along the cycle lanes among well-kept apartment blocks, while kebab and baklava stores rub shoulders with the ubiquitous Danish bakeries.
But the Danish government has officially classified Mjolnerparken as a “ghetto,” with relatively high crime and unemployment and a large number of non-Western immigrants. It plans drastic action.
From the age of 1, ghetto children will be forced to spend at least 25 hours per week attending classes in “Danish values.” Criminals from the ghettoes can be given tougher sentences. Some public housing will be sold off and the residents evicted in an effort to break up immigrant communities.
The chairman of the Mjolnerparken residents association, Muhammad Aslam, moved to Denmark from Pakistan when he was 7. His parents answered a government call for migrants to come and work in Danish factories. Aslam is outraged by the government’s latest plans.
“In our family’s wildest imagination we couldn’t see that happening in this country, which almost all countries used to look up to. This is a very dangerous tendency as we saw in Europe in the 1930s in Germany, making the Jews scapegoats for everything. The same is about to happen now in Europe, just with another minority,” Aslam says.
The ghetto plan has the strong backing of the far right Danish People’s Party, which is not in the coalition government but supports much of its agenda and is widely seen as having dragged the centrist parties toward its position on immigration.
“Certain aspects of migrants coming here to the country have been overrepresented in crime statistics, underrepresented in employment statistics, overrepresented in welfare statistics. So for us there is a very good case both culturally and economically,” the Danish People’s Party member of European Parliament candidate Anders Vistisen told VOA in a recent interview.
His party is being outflanked by even more extreme right wing politicians. Rasmus Paludan, who has set up the tiny Stram Kurs Party, has gained notoriety for provocative stunts, such as entering Muslim areas and burning or desecrating the Quran, and posting the footage on YouTube. One such incident in April prompted riots in the capital.
The anti-migrant rhetoric has dismayed many Danes, like Karen Melchior from the Social Liberal Party.
“We need to stand firmly to our values and defend them, rather than caving in toward the fear of the unknown and of migration and of people from outside of your village or outside of your country,” Melchior told VOA.
The stereotype of a liberal, tolerant and welcoming Denmark is out of date, and many Danes support the ghetto plan, says political analyst Karina Kosiara-Pedersen of the University of Copenhagen.
“This is regarded as welfare. It’s regarded as supporting the children to be able to have a good life in Denmark. The attitudes of the Danes have changed in these last 25 years. And it is an issue that divides the Danish public,” she said.
Being tough on immigration is now often seen as vote winner in Denmark and increasingly across Europe. The results of the EU Parliament elections, due early next week, will show whether the public agrees.
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