In an Age of Right-Wing Populism, Why Are Denmark’s Liberals Winning?

18 comments

1. Because they’re actually clamping down on migration. Somehow we conflated wanting to protect a nations sovereignty and citizens with “racism.” This is one of the dumber cultural imports from America. 

2. [removed]

3. My guess is cause they are actually working on workers issues like salleries, housing making workers feel like they have an ally against the Elon Musks & Jeff Besoses of the world 🤷‍♂️

4. Oh. The right wing populist party got 24% of the parliament one year. They still refused to enter into a government.

   People realized they just wanted to criticize without responsibility and the right populist hasn’t really been able to get off the ground since.

   We dodged a bullet.

5. Because Trump is threatening Greenland.

   Edit: Should have added a question mark or kept my job shut.

6. Denmarks liberals are more right than germany`s conservative party, at least when it comes to migration. Skilled and Integrated are the keywords too many governments do not want to know and use.

   But hey, Mosque’s everywhere!

   Try building a church anywhere southeast of greece…

7. The Soc Dems has adopted a lot of the policies of the right wing, adressing the populations concerns about mass immigration from in particular the MENAPT countries and African in general. If they had ignored it, a lot of people would have voted for someone else.

8. Paywall. Since can’t access the article I will just say that American writing for NYT surely will reveal this secret for us, since he traveled to Denmark.

9. Pay wall, so only got the headline to work with.

   Denmark sort of works. The economy. Is good. The institutions are trusted. It’s known for high levels of cooperation to achieve stability. It might swing a little to the “left” or “right” politically from election to election, but since the voices on the wings are rarely silenced or excluded from speaking. Be it in parliament or the news, you do not get to built a massive block of angry people feeling life is unfair.
   The rally call for allowing right wing growth in many other countries is immigration, but since the other political parties adopted the tuff on immigration policies, the right wing fizzled out.

   It’s similar to the workers rights issues that fuels left winged politics in other parts of the world. In Denmark the ideas blended into other political parties and today it would be political suicide claiming to be against the welfare state. A union leader 5 decades ago screamed in a public speech: “We have won like hell”. Meaning that since the battle was won, then how do you keep the kettle boiling and secure high union membership rates and people voting socialist ideology.

10. They have changed their policies, a lot. They have adopted right wing rhetoric and politics on refugees/immigrants. And they don’t care who gets caught in the crossfire.

    They are also making the life of unemployed people, people with disabilities and illnesses worse.

    They are protecting farmers over protecting our waters and stopping climate change.

    They are increasing pension age and have removed a Holliday.

    They are cracking down on our freedom but wanting to surveil the whole population.
    But everything is fine!

    They have changed drastically in my life time.

11. Long but excellent article, which gave me a new word, *the brahmin left*. In some ways, its too bad the article is so long. A lot of people will do a TL;DR and comment without bothering to read the article from top to bottom.

    It describes in broad strokes the political thinking behind leftist opposition to immigration. For a Danish citizen like me, it lacks nuance but manages to get the essentials across.

    I see this article more as an attempt to suggest a new policy direction for the US Democratic Party in order to regain political power and influence.

    With Sweden and Germany already on track to implement similar changes, you can debate why this article is relevant for r/europe but, I guess not everyone in Europe has gotten the message.

12. Because the liberals adopted most of the right-wing populists policies, which basically killed the right wing party.

    Now here’s the question, who is the bigger populist, the right wing party or the other parties that adopted their policies? And is being a populist always bad? It seems to have worked out well for Denmark, while the established parties in Sweden put their heads in the sand and ignored the right-wing populists for a decade.

13. It is also the trump effect. Everyone gets a good look at what right wing extremism in the US is like and then not want that for their own country anymore. Happened last time trump was in office too

14. Because Denmark Liberal’s gone hard in immigration and left the far-right with nobody to scapegoat. European far-right won the immigration debate by tapping themselves into concern about immigration.

15. For people commenting with “Cause they kept all the bad people out who are destroying our culture” I gotta ask. Should you be allowed to move to other European countries? Should people from Germany be allowed to move to France for work for example? If so, why? If the new German immigrant wants to keep some of their German heritage and integrates German tradition into their new French lifestyle, is that bad and should be discouraged?

    I moved thousands of miles a few years back and I didn’t really take to my new culture all that well. I cook my own food because I don’t like most of the restaurants, I don’t really participate in big events around the city, and I mostly keep to myself. But I moved here because I’m a specialist in my field and jobs are sparse, most people in my field need to move. Am I evil for destroying my new communities culture by brining some of my own from home or by not participating in my new area’s culture?

16. Prime minister, or Statsminister, is Soc Dem, but the government is governing like a centric-right leaning government. A compromise to make SVM government possible. Both wings are opposition

17. Because, unlike many left wing parties in other countries, they didn’t try to stay pure and be holier than their electorate, but they embraced compromise and, most importantly, listened to the population on the themes they care about. That’s the way.

18. The NY Times has no clue about most things, including Danish politics.

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