Rasmus Paludan is campaigning for parliament again with his trademark anti-Islamic demonstration, this time in Sweden. Paludan is the leader of the Stram Kurs (Hard Line) party, which failed to gain parliamentary seats in Denmark in 2019. Swedish elections will be held in September.

Rasmus Paludan in action. Photo: Atila Altuntas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images.

Paludan has dual Danish-Swedish citizenship and perhaps believes that Sweden will be more receptive to his xenophobic message. The country has seen increasing criminality in its ethnic enclaves since the migration wave of 2015, when it accepted more than 160,000 refugees and migrants fleeing the war in Syria. The anti-Muslim Sweden Democrats party, which had been outside the pale for most of its 30-odd year existence, received 17 percent of the votes in the 2018 parliamentary elections.

Book and cities in flames

Paludan’s campaign shtick is setting fire to a copy of the Koran. He announced that he would do it on a tour of several Swedish cities during the Easter holidays and made good on the threat, provoking crowds of counter-demonstrators that the police couldn’t control. The demonstrators attacked the police (DK), injuring up to 100 of them, and set fire to police cars, a bus, and a school in Malmø.

“This is exactly the kind of violent reaction he wants,” said Sweden’s Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson.

Indeed it seemed almost too easy for Paludan, who lives under police protection. Afterward, he was interviewed on the Danish Broadcasting Corporation’s Debate radio program (DK). He said he was sorry to see the destructive reaction to his exercise but it proved his point: Many immigrants from Middle Eastern countries pose a threat to Western society because they do not respect liberal democratic values such as freedom of expression and due process. While Paludan has made some rather offensive racist remarks in the past, he now insists that he is motivated solely by the retrograde authoritarianism and misogyny of Islamist ideology.

Free speech is also for assholes

The edition of Debate was entitled “Whose Responsibility?” The moderator asked journalists and politicians whether Paludan didn’t also bear responsibility for the rioting and damage. She seemed disappointed when each of them maintained that, while they deplored Paludan’s bigotry and tactics, only the rioters bore legal responsibility. While condemning the rioting, even PM Andersson defended Paludan’s rights: “It is part of our democracy that people can express their opinions.”

Swedish national Police Chief Anders Thornberg, who believed that the demonstrators had attempted to kill police officers, condemned the riots as an attack on Swedish society. Even so, a few days later, the police reported Paludan (DK) for persecution of a social group by burning the Koran. Paludan had been acquitted of the same charge in Denmark in 2020.

On 23 April, a similar demonstration was held in Norway by the anti-Muslim SIAN organization, and it had the same result—counterdemonstrations that led to attacks on the police.

Paludan’s romantic side

An attorney in private practice, Paludan is indeed an enterprising fellow. He was convicted of inciting racial hatred in Denmark both before and after the 2019 election, in which the Hard Line party came up just short of the 2 percent threshold for parliamentary representation. Six years earlier, he’d been issued a restraining order for stalking and harassing a fellow University of Copenhagen student.

In 2021, the daily Ekstra Bladet reported that Paludan had held kinky chats on Discord with boys as young as 13 (DK). He denied knowing that they were underage and soon afterward married a 21-year-old woman who also had a colorful history. She had appeared on the reality-TV show Date Me Naked and the documentary In Love with a Murderer. The murderer in question was none other than Peter Madsen, who was serving life for killing and dismembering the Swedish journalist Kim Wall in his homemade submarine. Paludan’s wife had initiated the relationship herself when she was 17, but Madsen later dumped her for a Russian opposition activist.