By Lukas Slothuus , Jacobin, 04/May 2022

COPENHAGEN - While sections of the Social Democrats clearly look to and even migrated from the Left, the dominant wing of the ruling party is now firmly oriented toward the Right.

The demise of DPP is both cause and effect of the rightward turn of the Social Democrats. The anti-immigrant chauvinism of the “ghetto plan” is clear evidence of this.

The plan introduced arbitrary punishment for inhabitants of deprived areas (“ghettos”) allowing the Social Democrats to evict tenants and sell off public housing. This development gives the lie to the Right’s insistence that they are the defenders of the welfare state.

Anton Ösgård and Jonas Algers have rightly argued that when Denmark’s ruling party established these laws, “the racialized stigmatization of the poor in fact goes hand in hand with the privatization of their homes.” Ignoring this fact, some have argued that the tougher anti-immigration policies of the Social Democrats offer a path to power that should be copied by center-left parties across Europe.

Yet political scientists have convincingly shown that such “accommodation” does not work. Rightward turns on immigration not only legitimize the far right’s agenda, they can also bolster its electoral support.

The diffusion of far-right positions across most of the political spectrum is evidence of this. Although support for DPP has sharply fallen, two parties further to the right emerged out of this overall crisis situation.

First among these is the New Right, pursuing the economically right-wing platform of the Conservatives twinned with an even more extreme version of the exclusionary politics of the Danish People’s Party.

Second, Hard Line, an out-and-out fascist and racist party campaigning for the forced expulsion of all Danish Muslims and the codified white supremacy in Denmark. Notably, this party built a major source of support online, where it used YouTube to radicalize teenagers online. Open agitation and provocation on the streets has been Hard Line’s preferred strategy.

The group has toured the most deprived and ethnically diverse Danish neighborhoods, led by the lawyer Rasmus Paludan, setting alight copies of the Quran in front of Muslim residents.

One of the attendees of the vandalism of Jorn’s painting was convicted of assault in 2016 when he attacked two staff members at another museum — and his defense lawyer was none other than Paludan.

As a follow-up to his assault, the far-right activist contributed a performance piece to a Polish exhibition last year in which he shouted the N-word while in blackface, set a Confederate flag alight, and reenacted the killing of George Floyd.

The party narrowly missed the 2 percent electoral threshold in the 2019 parliamentary elections and was denied the right to run in elections by the Electoral Commission due to voter registration fraud in February 2022.

These crises lead to multiple splinter-successors, including Nej til Islam I Danmark (No to Islam in Denmark) and Patriots Go Live, the group responsible for filming the vandalism at the Jorn Museum.