Article 13 and Political Complacency
I know a lot of people don’t really care too much about a tiny country with only 6 million people in it at the northern edges of Europe, but I think that our example is a pretty important one.
We are often, by leftists, hailed as a socialist utopia; there’s no dictatorship or closed borders, everybody have social security and we get a living wage for studying at university, which is free. We’re also supposedly very welcome to LGBTQ+ people, and we’re also seemingly feminist.
While historical facts support that we are, indeed, all of these things (legally, anyway), I’d also like to point out that as a small country we suffer from an inferiority complex which makes us ignore and downplay all those things that might otherwise diminish our international reputation. Case in point; a media company normalizing sexual sadism in the workplace, no Danish history class teaching us that we were the seventh largest lave nation, and new ghetto laws.
But sexism, racism and discrimination against the handicapped and members of the LGBTQ+ community are kept quiet, it is in colonial terms “colourblind” (which, tbf only applies to racism, but the concept can definitely be applied to every other type of discrimination again). We don’t see it and we don’t want to see it.
The Personal is Political
First of all, I’d like to give a personal example; my mother is a wheelchair user. She has a cyst in her backbone that slowly destroys her nerves over time. That means she can walk, a little (40 meters), and she uses a wheelchair to support her when she cannot. She’s not allowed in busses without a helper. This is an intersectional discrimination that spans race, ability and class. Why? Because, first of all, the government is supposed to supply a helper if a person with a disability does not have the funds to do so, and being disabled that is generally the case, but the government has decided that she doesn’t need one. Which, as she does not have a car and needs to take the bus, which won’t allow her on without a helper, clearly isn’t the case.
Now, this could all be dealt with very simply; by having the bus driver get up and help her onto the bus. But he’s not allowed to because the bus driver getting out of his seat becomes a “terror threat”. Which is preposterous, and blatant racism. We are not under threat, there is no current terror alert. But it’s so easy to essentialize all people of Arabic descent into a demonized stereotype that most of them do not even support, for the sake of gaining political support from nationalists.
So she’s not allowed on busses.
When this was first was revealed to us last year at a bus station in town my mother threw a fit in public. Do not make the mistake of thinking that a wheelchair user is meek or mellow; most of them could beat America’s beloved captain in an arm wrestling match. And my mother has a temper that could make a dragon look like your friendly neighborhood Labrador.
And what happens? Nobody comes to her aide and gets angry on her behalf, as social moral ought to demand, I dare say (because, honestly, if your company makes up those kinds of rules an little civil disobedience might be a good idea— how would they know anyway?). Instead they tell her to be quiet, maybe clam down and stop disturbing the social harmony.
The end of that story is that we have to take a cab home.
Then, a couple of months later, I’m in a cultural studies class at uni. And we’re talking about Othering and everyday discrimination. So our professor asks us for examples. Most people talk about our nationalist party and things on the media. I raise my hand and relate this story. I’m sitting at the back of a class of 20 white women (Denmark is about 93% White people last I checked), and I can see the way all their shoulders stiffen, and I listen as the professor tries to justify, too shocked to hear such a confrontational speech, too shocked as she’s confronted by her own privilege as a walking, able person.
And I think about history…
In 1940 Denmark is occupied by Nazi Germany.
We are… a pathetically little country at this point, a downtrodden empire as we are taught to believe (“exaggeration encourages understanding” and all that). So 45 minutes after they invade we’ve surrendered without a fight.
The story we tell afterwards, is of brave Danes trafficking jews to Sweden, who is neutral in the fight. We celebrate the Resistance (to the point that some university dorms still only allow admittance to descendants of the resistance). We speak of how the navy bombed their own ships so that the Germans couldn’t use them. And at this point because of 6000 brave danish soldiers who joined the Allies we have by Danish effort been named an Ally nation.
What do we not talk about?
We don’t talk about how the entire nation bowed it’s head and thought “oh well, it can’t be too bad” “it won’t affect me”. And so we went through our days, accepting and often supporting the Germans, until one day in 1943 when the Nazi German government said “enough with your cowardice, it’s time to abolish your law which prevents state sanctioned murder”. And the Danish government proudly stepped down in protest (btw that government was a coalition of all the danish parties except the communist party, which had the sense to say “fuck no I’m not supporting a nazi even if it kills me”. They were all very brave to have lasted so long, I’m sure they slept at night).
And just like that the Danish people were suddenly against the Germans, and all for the Allied nations.
We were one of the only un-destroyed states after the war. Why? Because we had the gall to side with the victor, even if it meant murder of men and women, experimentation on disabled and ghettoization of millions, and we had the luck of timing.
But that’s not the story we tell.
Of course, it’s not the story we tell, because it would demand we take responsibility.
Today, I would say, we have not changed all that much.
Nationalism is on the rise, and the government is giving the money away to the rich. And who do we blame? The unemployed, the disabled, people of colour. And it’s just enough to make the rest of the populations, those who grew up in the suburbs and just want a job, those who are privileged, and even a lot of those who aren’t say “oh calm down”, “why are they doing that? It doesn’t affect me”, “it’s probably not so bad.”
They vote, maybe, and then they put their heads back in the sand, patting their backs for acting appropriately and never realising that their way of life is in danger at worst, or implicitly destroys the lives of others.
That’s willful ignorance.
That’s political complacency.
And I hear a lot from it from Europeans in relation to Article 11 and 13 these days. “It’ll be impossible for them to enforce it” “I’ll just get a VPN” “even if it happens we’ll be fine.”
I read somewhere a while back that the concentration camps started with the confinement of disabled. The Nazi government was testing the population to see if they would respond positively or negatively. When there was no negative response, when people shrugged and continued living their lives, unaffected, they upped the pressure, pushed the boundaries of social moral. And that ended in the torture of, experimentation on, and murder of millions.
I got an email from Avaz a couple of days ago stating that the Egyptian government had passed a law that legalized the complete surveillance of the Egyptian people, as well as well as disallowed the sharing of content, much like we see today in the European Union. Would the Arabic spring have happened if that law had been passed before 2011? I doubt it.
And I’m sure there are so many countries we don’t talk about because they’re not part of the so called First World, because they do not speak up with a lot enough voice on the internet, who have already suffered similarly.
We need the internet to be free. We need freedom of speech to keep existing in our world.
Political complacency is never acceptable.
And Democracy isn’t a natural right. It’s a concept we have to continue fighting for, always. Or the people in power will take it away at first chance.
So please, wherever you are in the world, help us so we don’t lose our voice.
And let’s show international solidarity to our brothers and sisters outside our borders.
Nationalism and political complacency has persisted long enough.
