Perhaps I was too quick to say that Denmark is trailing the Anglo-American world in social justice activism and scandals.  Peter Rasmussen has posted a useful list of the “most absurd PC moments in Denmark in 2019” (DK) on Quora. He links to his individual commentaries on five incidents – good examples of how the country is striving to catch up to the achievements in outrage and grievance in more advanced precincts.

 Hating hate
The first concerns Facebook comments  by Black Lives Matter spokesperson Bwalya Sørensen about Pernille Vermund, the leader of the New Right party (and subject of a recent post). Vermund had expressed her happiness that a 14-year-old Thai girl who had been forced to leave Denmark because of strict family reunification rules was allowed to return. Sørensen wrote to Vermund: “You disgusting Nazi shit… How dare you use a little girl to spread your racist, hateful, verbal diarrhea… You stinking pile of garbage …” (my translation, may differ from the original English). Sørensen seemed to imply that Vermund  favored deporting all Muslims (“her evil wish to shamelessly follow in her Fuhrers [sic] footsteps and cleanse Denmark of a whole religious group, 30s style”) and was therefore being hypocritical. As far as I know, the girl, known by her nickname, Mint, is not a Muslim. 

Job theft 
The second instance involves criticism in an op-ed piece of a thin actress for playing a fat character in the film Harpiks (Resin). This was considered discriminatory and fat-phobic because fat characters should be played only by fat actors – the same type of objection that led Scarlett Johansson to drop out of a transgender role. The writer is shown wearing a shoulder bag with the slogan “Fatties against fascism.” 

Depicting another ethnic group
In a similar vein, a documentary film, Dreams from the Outback, was excluded from film festivals (DK) because the  director was white and whites should not be allowed to make films about Australian aborigines and other minority cultures. The director noted that aborigines don’t often have the resources to make a film themselves, and they might well benefit from an increase in awareness in the outside world.

Everyday abuse is worse on holidays 
Fourth, Micah Oh, who teaches structural racism and cultural appropriation at the University of Copenhagen, warned against girls’ dressing up for Halloween as the Arab Princess Jasmine from Disney’s Aladdin because it could be perceived as “everyday racism” and offend people. Parents should tell them that they should be Sleeping Beauty instead. But with “Little girls first of all need to pretend to be princesses,” wasn’t Oh being somewhat discriminatory herself by stereotyping girls like that, besides ignoring the same pitfalls for all the little boys who might also wish to play princess?

Fighting racism with its own weapons
Finally, the Nørrebro Pride parade is an alternative to and protest against the annual Copenhagen Pride parade because of the latter’s commercialization, its acceptance of sponsorship from capitalist conglomerates and financial firms, and the participation of “racist politicians.” In the Nørrebro Pride parade, the LGBT+ people of color – “double minorities” – marched at the head of the procession, while white LGBT+ persons came afterward and cleaned up after the party. The parade thus not only offered an alternative for those who didn’t wish to be associated with mainstream racism; by reintroducing racial segregation, it also provided an opportunity for the descendants of racist oppressors to experience racism themselves.

While these events represent  noteworthy strides in identitarian political action, they fall short of the dramatic harassment, physical attacks, vandalism and riots that greeted, say, Milo at Berkeley or Charles Murray at Middlebury. No one was fired or even hounded off social media for following a custom or holding an opinion that was unremarkable ten years ago. Some targets may have suffered slight reputational damage, and others might have been slightly guilted – those racist princess costumes! These results may be disappointing to subjugated and aggrieved groups whose existence is being denied or erased, but the local warriors are mashaling their forces and learning the necessary epithets, tropes and tactics, and perhaps this is only the warm-up stage in the long struggle for intersectional justice and equity in Denmark. 

Tak, Peter.