Denmark, known to many Americans as the land of renewable energy and the feminist political thriller Borgen, is in the midst of passing a set of legal measures so clearly and nauseatingly racist and authoritarian as to demolish whatever impressions of progressivism Denmark had managed to create in our collective consciousness. But the dangers these laws reveal are hardly limited to Denmark: they illuminate how President Trump’s own racist demagoguery weakens the position of the United States to credibly respond to clear violations of human rights even in a close ally.
The situation is this: in response to higher crime rates and concerns that recent, mostly Muslim immigrants are not integrating sufficiently into Danish society, Denmark is passing a series of punitive laws that single out populations of so-called “ghetto” neighborhoods. In other words, where you live, not simply your immigration status, now places you in a separate category in the eyes of the law. Backers say the laws are meant to control crime, teach immigrants Danish values, and make sure the country’s generous welfare system is not abused; but a clearer eye might see laws that punish people for their religion and country of origin, and whose larger intent is to teach newer arrivals to Denmark that the country’s commitment to a free society is giving way to a Danish brand of illiberalism.
The measures include: separation of so-called “ghetto children” from their families for 25 hours a week so that they can be taught “Danish values” (this training begins at the tender age of 1); doubling punishments for crimes based on whether the perpetrator lives in a “ghetto” and based on income, employment, education, and “non-Western background”; and prison time for parents who dare send their children on extended trips to their home countries.
If you’re thinking to yourself that placing people in ghettos based on their race and religion, and subjecting them to punitive laws, sounds like a grotesque echo of Nazi policies — well, so do clear-minded Danes. Member of parliament Yildiz Akdogan notes that, “Danes had become so desensitized to harsh rhetoric about immigrants that they no longer register the negative connotation of the word ‘ghetto’ and its echoes of Nazi Germany’s separation of Jews.”
We will grant that the Danes have an obvious right to fight crime, and the right as well to encourage newcomers to adapt to the country’s existing social fabric. But the notion that the best or only way to deal with such challenges is via measures so patently racist, anti-Muslim, and antithetical to Western values is totally absurd. The Danes are looking to govern their society in ways that make it that much less of a society worth protecting; in unleashing majority power against a politically weak minority, they abuse democracy and help discredit, via a damning display of open racism, their own stated goals of a culturally homogenous society.
A disturbing question hovers over what’s going on in Denmark: if the Danes are unable to see the cruelty and evil of their ways, who possesses the standing to point this out to them? It’s unclear to me that the laws they’ve passed violate any European Union rules on human rights, although it seems preposterous that they would not. It is sickening to realize that, due to our president’s immoral and un-American sadism on the southern border, the United States cannot speak of immigrant rights on the world stage without being accused, justifiably, of rank hypocrisy. And in this awful situation, you begin to see how human rights abuses in enough places begin to be self-perpetuating: if everyone is doing it, who’s to say that it’s wrong?
Rather than using the stick of punishment for real and imagined offenses, why don’t the Danes try the carrot of enticement and engagement? Such as encouraging immigrants to participate in the political system, creating non-coercive opportunities for natives and new arrivals to get to know each other, and allowing opportunities for Danes to learn more about the newly arrived cultures? It is easy to guess the reason why: because this would reveal the lies of the racists that the new arrivals are violent, lazy, and irredeemably alien. As in the United States, the sense that a minority population might threaten the national culture at large bespeaks a deeply pessimistic lack of faith in the vitality of the majority culture.
The Danes should have a little more faith in themselves. A country that leads the world in fighting climate change is clearly a country that thinks about its impact on the greater world. These shameful events in Denmark should prompt public reflection and a debate about what that country’s deepest values are. Surely treating new arrivals like second-class citizens isn’t one of them.
As frustrating as it is to contemplate how our current president undercuts the United States’ ability to put moral pressure on allies like Denmark to change their illiberal ways, what is happening in Denmark has made me think a little more optimistically about America’s ability to navigate our current crisis. Despite the anti-Muslim policies of this administration, the concept of religious freedom is hard-wired into our country, and millions of Americans share a basic belief that whatever god one chooses to worship (or not) is a private matter, beyond the realm of politics. I believe this view will prevail, if only because the implications of living otherwise threaten too many of our heterodox faiths.
Similarly, the repugnance I feel when I see a country like Denmark identify itself at least partly on the superiority of a certain ethnic identity, and then act on that identity to treat newcomers as second-class citizens, is balanced by what I see as America’s fundamental commitment to a race-neutral existence. Certainly, this idea is contested, most notably by a Republican Party that has gone all-in on a white supremacist vision of this country. But this vision is already faltering, and sooner or later, it will fail, because it is a mindset that can only be perpetuated by anti-democratic and ultimately anti-human measures.
