Sedgwick, Mark. ‘Something Varied in the State of Denmark: Neo-Nationalism, Anti-Islamic Activism, and Street-Level Thuggery’. (2013)

Sedgwick, Mark. ‘Something Varied in the State of Denmark: Neo-Nationalism, Anti-Islamic Activism, and Street-Level Thuggery’. Politics, Religion & Ideology, vol. 14, no. 2, Routledge, June 2013, pp. 208–233.

The article argues that categories such as ‘Islamophobic’ and ‘Right Wing’ are inadequate and even misleading descriptors of reactions to Islam in Europe, and should be replaced by a distinction between neo-nationalism, anti-Islamic activism, and street-level thuggery. Neo-nationalism is a well-established but underused descriptor; anti-Islamic activism and street-level thuggery are more novel and are explored in the article. The article applies this three-fold distinction to the case of Denmark. It is argued that the neo-nationalist Danish People’s Party can be understood as a response to neo-nationalist views that are widespread among the Danish population. It is then argued that street-level thuggery, of which a small movement called Stop the Islamisation of Denmark is taken as an example, may be eye-catching, but is ultimately unimportant. Anti-Islamism, in contrast, may be important. Two Danish examples are examined: the very Danish Tidehverv movement, which shows how Christianity can still matter even in an apparently secular society, and the Free Press Society, a more influential Danish organization that is shown to be part of an international movement.

doi:10.1080/21567689.2013.792650.

Rydgren, Jens. ‘Explaining the Emergence of Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties: The Case of Denmark’. (2004) [PDF]

Rydgren, Jens. ‘Explaining the Emergence of Radical Right-Wing Populist Parties: The Case of Denmark’. West European Politics, vol. 27, no. 3, Routledge, May 2004, pp. 474–502.

This article aims to explain the emergence of the Danish People’s Party, a radical right-wing populist party, by using a model combining political opportunity structures and the diffusion of new master frames. The article shows that because of dealignment and realignment processes – as well as the politicisation of the immigration issue – niches were created on the electoral arena. The Danish People’s Party was able to mine these niches by adopting a master frame combining ethno-pluralist xenophobia and anti-political establishment populism, which had proved itself successful elsewhere in Western Europe (originally in France in the mid-1980s). In this process of adaptation, a far right circle of intellectuals, the Danish Association, played a key role as mediator. 

doi:10.1080/0140238042000228103.

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236803141_Radical_Right-wing_Populism_in_Denmark_and_Sweden_Explaining_Party_System_Change_and_Stability.

 

Farkas, Johan, and Christina Neumayer. Mimicking News: How the Credibility of an Established Tabloid Is Used When Disseminating Racism. (2020) [PDF]

Farkas, Johan, and Christina Neumayer. Mimicking News: How the Credibility of an Established Tabloid Is Used When Disseminating Racism. Vol. 41, Jan. 2020, pp. 1–22,

This article explores the mimicking of tabloid news as a form of covert racism, relying on the credibility of an established tabloid newspaper. The qualitative case study focuses on a digital platform for letters to the editor, operated without editorial curation pre-publication from 2010 to 2018 by one of Denmark’s largest newspapers, Ekstra Bladet . A discourse analysis of the 50 most shared letters to the editor on Facebook shows that nativist, far-right actors used the platform to disseminate fear-mongering discourses and xenophobic conspiracy theories, disguised as professional news and referred to as articles. These processes took place at the borderline of true and false as well as racist and civil discourse. At this borderline, a lack of supervision and moderation coupled with the openness and visual design of the platform facilitated new forms of covert racism between journalism and user-generated content.

doi:10.2478/nor-2020-0001.

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338692613_Mimicking_News_How_the_credibility_of_an_established_tabloid_is_used_when_disseminating_racism.

Lindekilde, Lasse. ‘The Mainstreaming of Far-Right Discourse in Denmark’. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies’ (2014)

Lindekilde, Lasse. ‘The Mainstreaming of Far-Right Discourse in Denmark’. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, vol. 12, no. 4, Routledge, Oct. 2014, pp. 363–382.

Building on two recent case studies of public debates concerning political meetings arranged by or involving controversial Muslim actors in Denmark, this article argues that an observed mainstreaming of intolerant discourses, most forcefully expressed by the Danish People’s Party, can be explained by the proliferation of a new form of “liberal intolerance” that has transformed old racist or nationalist intolerance into a discourse stressing liberal reasons (autonomy, gender equality, social cohesion, public-private divide, security risks) for not tolerating particular Muslim practices. By comparing the two cases, the different toleration/intoleration positions and arguments in the two debates are brought out, and four different modalities of “liberal intolerance” are identified. Further, the article shows how the spread of liberal intolerance discourses across the political spectrum in Denmark has significantly affected Danish (liberal) Muslim actors’ possibilities of political participation and room for maneuvering.

doi:10.1080/15562948.2014.894171.

Jessen, Anne, editor. Stuerent? Dansk Folkeparti, populisme, antimuslimsk retorik og offermytologi. (2009)

Jessen, Anne, editor. Stuerent? Dansk Folkeparti, populisme, antimuslimsk retorik og offermytologi. Translated by Rikke m. fl. Andreassen, 1. udgave, 1. oplag, Kbh.: Frydenlund, 2009.

En række samfundsdebattører og kulturfolk diskuterer partiet, brandet og konceptet Dansk Folkeparti og dets politikere.

https://bibliotek.dk/linkme.php?rec.id=870970-basis%3A27999417

Sauer, Birgit, and Birte Siim. ‘Inclusive Political Intersections of Migration, Race, Gender and Sexuality – The Cases of Austria and Denmark’. (2020) [PDF]

Sauer, Birgit, and Birte Siim. ‘Inclusive Political Intersections of Migration, Race, Gender and Sexuality – The Cases of Austria and Denmark’. NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, vol. 28, no. 1, Routledge, Jan. 2020, pp. 56–69.

The article aims to integrate key concepts from social movement, citizenship and gender theories with afocus on (political) intersectionality at the interface of migration, race, gender and sexuality. It explores the responses from civil society groups to the exclusive intersections of right-wing politics and discourses in Austria and Denmark with afocus on inclusive intersectionality and transversal politics. The article asks if and how the intersectional repertoires of NGOs were able to create transversal politics and joint activities and explains why these NGOs were unable to counter right-wing hegemony. It uses the cases of Austria and Denmark to illustrate the diverse mobilizations of counter-forces against the attempts to forge an anti-migration and anti-Muslim consensus. The focus is on the mobilization of anti-racist and pro-migrant groups, comparing their strategies and inclusionary repertoires including feminist claims, the framing of activist citizenship, acts of citizenship and of solidarity. The article scrutinizes strategies of transversal politics against the exclusionary right in the two countries; shows the influence of the different contexts of civil society mobilization, political cultures, welfare and gender regimes as well as the differences between right-wing forces in the two countries.

doi:10.1080/08038740.2019.1681510.

PDF: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/08038740.2019.1681510?needAccess=true

Siim, Birte, and Susi Meret. ‘Right-Wing Populism in Denmark: People, Nation and Welfare in the Construction of the “Other”’.(2016) [PDF]

Siim, Birte, and Susi Meret. ‘Right-Wing Populism in Denmark: People, Nation and Welfare in the Construction of the “Other”’. The Rise of the Far Right in Europe: Populist Shifts and ‘Othering’, Eds. Gabriella Lazaridis, Giovanna Campani, and Annie Benveniste, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016.

From introduction:

Scholars generally agree that Denmark and the other Scandinavian countries represent ‘an exceptionalism’ in terms of welfare state and gender regimes; it has been argued that this context also influenced the way populism emerged, developed and consolidated (Rydgren 2011) in the past half century. In particular, some of the scholarly literature in the Nordic context focuses on the particular relation between nationalism and populism, suggesting that contemporary forms of populism have been shaped and influenced by the historical context and the construction and perception of ‘the people’, ‘the nation’ and ‘the other’. This is for instance indicated by the way the nationalist populist Danish People’s Party (Dansk Folkeparti, DF) discursively constructs and relates party ideology and positions to the national question. Within this frame, the nation and those who belong to it are perceived to be threatened from immigration flows, from European integration and Islam. This approach to the nation-state carries historical legacies; scholars have observed that Scandinavia has through the years developed a particular form of ‘welfare nationalism’ (Brochmann and Hagelund 2012), which since the 1960s and 1970s linked national issues with social equality, democracy and gender equality in the construction of ‘national belonging’. This chapter suggests that these understandings of the nation and welfare state have in recent decades been seized by the populist right and re-interpreted by paradigms emphasising differences and cleavages between natives vs. foreigners, deserving vs. undeserving, friends vs. foes.

This contribution analyses two different organizations: The Danish People’s Party and the Free Press Society (Trykkefrihedsselskabet, TS); the first is one of the electorally most successful parliamentary represented populist parties; the second a grassroots’ radical right wing movement that focuses on the issue of Islam vis-à-vis the question of freedom of speech and free press.

doi:10.1057/978-1-137-55679-0.

PDF: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/60618473.pdf.

Wren, Karen. ‘Cultural Racism: Something Rotten in the State of Denmark?’ (2001) [PDF]

Wren, Karen. ‘Cultural Racism: Something Rotten in the State of Denmark?’ Social & Cultural Geography, vol. 2, no. 2, Jan. 2001, pp. 141–162. Taylor and Francis+NEJM,

Cultural racism has found fertile territory in a post-industrial Europe experiencing economic crisis and social disintegration, but its manifestations vary between countries. Denmark, a country traditionally regarded as liberal and tolerant, experienced a fundamental shift in attitude during the early 1980s that has seen it emerge potentially as one of the most racist countries in Europe. Paradoxically, liberal values are used as justification for negative representations of ‘others’. This paper examines the place-specific manifestations of cultural racism in Denmark, which can be identified as essentially anti-Muslim and anti-refugee. Through the use of interviews with minority women, newspaper extracts and material propagated by far-right organizations, the paper traces the evolution of this discourse, identifying its key actors as: specific far-right anti-immigration groups; the media; and a culturally deterministic academic research tradition. The subtle manifestation of cultural racism in Denmark, coupled with inadequate anti-racist opposition or legislation, have rendered it particularly damaging, and ‘legitimated’ a range of racist policies and practices.

doi:10.1080/14649360120047788.

PDF: http://www1.geo.ntnu.edu.tw/~moise/Data/Books/Reach%20of%20culture/cultural%20racism.pdf.

Yılmaz, Ferruh. ‘Right-Wing Hegemony and Immigration: How the Populist Far-Right Achieved Hegemony through the Immigration Debate in Europe’. (2012)

Yilmaz, Ferruh. ‘Right-Wing Hegemony and Immigration: How the Populist Far-Right Achieved Hegemony through the Immigration Debate in Europe’. Current Sociology, vol. 60, no. 3, May 2012, pp. 368–381.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the debate on Islam and Muslim immigrants has moved into the center of European political discourse. The increasing volume of publications about the role of Islam in social, cultural and political spheres indicates that Islam is now a major political issue, often associated with the debate on terrorism and security. This article argues that the shift in focus should be understood as the result of a hegemonic shift that goes back to the mid-1980s when the populist farright intervened in the immigration debate in Europe. The far-right not only presented immigration as a cultural threat to the future of European nations but also succeeded in moving immigration to the center of political discourse. This was done through successive right-wing political interventions that helped establish Muslim immigrants as an incompatible ontological category predicated on culture, and kept the national focus on immigration as an imminent threat to ‘our common’ achievements.

doi:10.1177/0011392111426192.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0011392111426192

Yılmaz, Ferruh. ‘Ethnicized Ontologies : From Foreign Worker to Muslim Immigrant : How Danish Public Discourse Moved to the Right through the Question of Immigration’. (2006) [PDF]

Yilmaz, Ferruh. Ethnicized Ontologies : From Foreign Worker to Muslim Immigrant : How Danish Public Discourse Moved to the Right through the Question of Immigration. Dissertation. UC San Diego, 2006

My thesis, in one sentence, is that the entire political discourse in Denmark (and in many parts of Europe) has moved to the right through the debate on immigration in the last two decades. The left/right distinction is pushed to the background and a cultural one – the ‘Danish people’ /the Muslim immigrant – has come to the forefront as the main dividing line. This means that the redistribution of resources is discussed as a matter of ethnicity and culture rather than other types of social identifications (e.g. class or gender). In short, a new basis for identification has become hegemonic through the articulation of a new internal division based on culture. The hegemonic change was the result of the nationalist/ racist Right’s populist intervention in the mid 1980s. Large sections of society did not feel that their concerns and demands were represented by the political system. In an environment of such profound displacement, it was relatively easy for the populist right to point to immigration as the main threat to society (associated with the welfare system) and to articulate an antagonism between the people (silent majority) and the political and cultural elite that let immigration happen. The new hegemony is based on a culturalized ontology of the social. The (re)production of immigrants as a threatening force is maintained through a constant focus on cultural issues that are considered as anti-society. In many parts of Europe, cycles of moral panics are created around issues such as honor killings, gang rapes, animal slaughter, violence, female genital mutilation, forced marriages and headscarves. These issues produce repeatedly an unbridgeable divide between Muslim (immigrant) and Danish culture. The orientation towards these issues disperses various social and political actors along the antagonistic divide, often creating insolvable tensions and fractions within social movements. Reproducing a left/ right opposition – regardless of its particular content – is what is at stake. The answer to the populist vision of society is the construction of a new type of hegemony: the strategy or ideal for a future world should be the re- ontologization of the social.

PDF: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8fd0g7h7.

Yılmaz, Ferruh. ‘Right-Wing Hegemony and Immigration: How the Populist Far-Right Achieved Hegemony through the Immigration Debate in Europe’. (2012)

Yilmaz, Ferruh. ‘Right-Wing Hegemony and Immigration: How the Populist Far-Right Achieved Hegemony through the Immigration Debate in Europe’. Current Sociology, vol. 60, no. 3, May 2012, pp. 368–381.

It is becoming increasingly clear that the debate on Islam and Muslim immigrants has moved into the center of European political discourse. The increasing volume of publications about the role of Islam in social, cultural and political spheres indicates that Islam is now a major political issue, often associated with the debate on terrorism and security. This article argues that the shift in focus should be understood as the result of a hegemonic shift that goes back to the mid-1980s when the populist farright intervened in the immigration debate in Europe. The far-right not only presented immigration as a cultural threat to the future of European nations but also succeeded in moving immigration to the center of political discourse. This was done through successive right-wing political interventions that helped establish Muslim immigrants as an incompatible ontological category predicated on culture, and kept the national focus on immigration as an imminent threat to ‘our common’ achievements.

doi:10.1177/0011392111426192.

Yılmaz, Ferruh. ‘The Politics of the Danish Cartoon Affair: Hegemonic Intervention by the Extreme Right’. (2011) [PDF]

Yilmaz, Ferruh. ‘The Politics of the Danish Cartoon Affair: Hegemonic Intervention by the Extreme Right’. Communication Studies, vol. 62, no. 1, Jan. 2011, pp. 5–22.

It is more than five years ago the Danish cartoon affair appeared for the first time on the monitors of the mainstream media, but the saga still continues. The controversy resulted in countless journal articles and more than two dozen books analyzing every aspect of the cartoon crisis. This was a true case of incitement to discourse about cultural and philosophical differences between Islam and the “West.” As such, the cartoons produced the effect that the publishers had hoped for. I argue in this article that the cartoon controversy should be understood in the context of populist radical right’s hegemonic intervention. Through incessant series of moral panics around Muslim immigrants and their cultural practices, European populist right movements hijacked and culturalized public discourse and thus achieved unprecedented influence on how societies conceive of themselves. The international dimension involves the ideological and organic connections between right wing forces, and the agendas that they are constantly pushing onto the public debate.

doi:10.1080/10510974.2011.533340.

PDF: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10510974.2011.533340?needAccess=true

Hervik, Peter. ‘Cultural War of Values: The Proliferation of Moral Identities in the Danish Public Sphere’. (2014)

Hervik, Peter. ‘Cultural War of Values: The Proliferation of Moral Identities in the Danish Public Sphere’. Becoming Minority: How Discourses and Policies Produce Minorities in Europe and India, Eds. J. Tripathy and S. Padmanabhan, New Delhi: Sage, 2014, 145–173.

This chapter looks at the drastic shift in the construction of minority others that came with the emergence of neo-nationalism, neo-racism and radical right populism in the post-1989 world. Through an analysis of a political philosophy launched in Denmark in the 1990s called the “Cultural War of Values”, I show that the moral identities proliferating in the Danish public sphere are fundamentally anti-political correct, anti-multiculturalist, and anti-Marxist as confrontation is also directed at political adversaries. Thus, the chapter’s key argument is that the social construction of thick minority identities can only be understood in relation to the cultural war of value strategy aimed at domestic political opponents.

https://vbn.aau.dk/en/publications/cultural-war-of-values-the-proliferation-of-moral-identities-in-t.

Hellström, Anders, and Peter Hervik. ‘Feeding the Beast: Nourishing Nativist Appeals in Sweden and in Denmark’. (2014) [PDF]

Hellström, Anders, and Peter Hervik. ‘Feeding the Beast: Nourishing Nativist Appeals in Sweden and in Denmark’. Journal of International Migration and Integration, vol. 15, no. 3, Aug. 2014, pp. 449–467.

Sweden and Denmark share a similar socio-political structure, yet these two countries demonstrate two distinct discourses on immigration. This article focuses on the tone of the debate in Denmark and Sweden concerning immigration and national identity. If the tone of debate is shaped by a language of fear, we argue, this predisposes people to vote for anti-immigration parties. Our analysis highlights the position of anti-immigration parties; hence, the Sweden Democrats (SD) in Sweden and the Danish People’s Party (DPP) in Denmark. We use frame analysis to detect recurrent frames in the media debate concerning the SD and the DPP in the political competition over votes. Our material concentrates on the run-up to the European Parliamentary (EP) elections of 2004 and 2009, in total 573 articles in ten major Danish and Swedish newspapers. We show that the harsh tone of the debate and the negative dialogue risks leading to the construction of beasts that are impossible to negotiate with. In the Swedish political debate, the SD is highly stigmatized as the beast (the extreme other) in Swedish politics and this stigma is used by the SD in the mobilization of votes. In Denmark the religion of Islam as such plays a similar role and provides the DPP with an identity. We conclude that we are confronted with a two-faced beast that feeds on perceptions of the people as ultimately afraid of what are not recognized as native goods.

doi:10.1007/s12134-013-0293-5.

PDF: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s12134-013-0293-5.

Boréus, Kristina. ‘Nationalism and Discursive Discrimination against Immigrants in Austria, Denmark and Sweden’. (2013)

Boréus, Kristina. ‘Nationalism and Discursive Discrimination against Immigrants in Austria, Denmark and Sweden’. Right-Wing Populism in Europe: Politics and Discourse, Eds. Ruth Wodak et al., Bloomsbury Academic, 2013, 293–307.

Uddrag: https://books.google.dk/books?id=Wrw8gC8vCnUC&lpg=PA293&ots=QjlIpzEDgV&dq=denmark%20discrimination&lr&pg=PA295#v=onepage&q=denmark%20discrimination&f=false.

Bloch, Katrina Rebecca. ‘“It Is Just SICKENING”: Emotions and Discourse in an Anti-Immigrant Discussion Forum’. (2016)

Bloch, Katrina Rebecca. ‘“It Is Just SICKENING”: Emotions and Discourse in an Anti-Immigrant Discussion Forum’. Sociological Focus, vol. 49, no. 4, Oct. 2016, pp. 257–270.

Following 9/11, organizations advocating for stricter immigration policy grew across the United States. This study examines the Web site and online discussion forum of Americans for Legal Immigration Political Action Committee (ALIPAC), a group identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as nativist extremist. While forum participants are geographically dispersed, social media provide them a space to interact with like-minded people. Results show that ALIPAC members provide shared accounts that construct positive moral identities. Forum participants promise positive emotions of pride and power for joining the group, despite the perception that outsiders perceive them as racists. Drawing from tenets of patriotism, participants construct virtual identities and reject the racist stigma by turning them on immigrants, civil rights organizations, and politicians. Participants claim their emotional responses are rational and morally superior to those of the perceived opposition. Failing to share their anger, sense of injustice, and disgust is framed as irrational.

doi:10.1080/00380237.2016.1169901.