“We compare Islamism to Nazism and communism because they are all three of them a totalitarian ideology,” says Karen Jespersen, who co-wrote the book with her husband, Ralf Pittlekow. Their politically incorrect analysis would suggest they’re right-wingers. But they’re diehard Social Democrats — proud veterans of the student protests of the 1960s.
Sculptor/welder Charlotte Steem lives in Christiania, a Danish commune where freedom of speech is espoused. She says the violence with which some Muslims reacted to the Mohammed cartoons has undermined many of her convictions.
An anti-immigrant backlash, bordering on xenophobia, is sweeping across Europe. Sentiments once associated with ultra right-wing parties are becoming mainstream. Many taboos are being broken — nowhere more starkly than in Denmark — the erstwhile poster child of the welcoming and nurturing welfare state.
Earlier this year, that haven of solidarity and liberalism was shaken by violent protests and deaths in the Muslim world over cartoons of Mohammed that were published in a Danish paper. Suddenly, Danes began to see their own Muslim immigrants as a threat to their national identity.
The cartoon crisis hit hard in the Copenhagen commune of Christiania, a bastion of the counterculture where freedom of speech is the paramount value.
Sculptor/welder Charlotte Steem, one of the commune’s 800 residents, says the violence with which some Muslims reacted to the Mohammed cartoons has undermined many of her convictions.
“There are a lot of things I don’t understand in [the] Muslim world,” Steem says. She recognizes the free society of her country but says she doesn’t know whether borders can remain open.
Only a few years ago, Denmark was proud of its open-door policy, and even the mildest critique of immigration would have been labeled racist.
But the mood shifted after Sept. 11, and the terrorist attacks in Europe. After many years of leftist rule, a right-wing government came to power, introducing Europe’s toughest immigration laws.
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