State of the Art. Work Stream 3 – the Danish Report: Militants from the Other Side. Anti-bodies to hate-speech and behavior in Denmark

The purpose of the State Of the Art (SOA) is to gain knowledge about the Danish Context on organisations, groups and movements in civil society countering hate speech, institutional racism and exclusionary practices and to identify gaps in national research on the issue that can be explored through field work, interviews and group discussions/dialogues, possibly to be debated at roundtable convening in the autumn of 2014.

The SOA gives an overview of the role of the state, institutions, the political parties and social movements in combating racism, discrimination hate-speech and exclusionary behaviours. It will first give a brief overview of the historical context in Denmark before WWII and after Denmark joined the EU in 1972, focusing on the different referendum and on the implications of the four Danish opt-outs to the Maastricht Treaty in 1994. Then it will discuss the role of the State and of the formal institutional organisations featuring what we define the ‘anti-bodies’, which combat racism, discrimination, hate-speech and exclusionary behaviours. The focus is on the implementation of UN, EU and CoE regulations and policies, foundation of legislation related to gender and minority groups (ethnicities, religious minority groups) as well as to decision makers (parties etc.).

The main-stream political parties, the Social Democratic Party (Socialdemokraterne), the Social Liberals (Radikale Venstre), the Conservative Party (Det Konservative Parti) and the Socialist Leftwing (Socialistiske Folkeparti) are characterised by relatively similar approaches and strategies towards the EU, racism, hate-speech and discriminatory and exclusionary behaviours. The Danish Peoples’ Party (DPP) is the ‘odd one’ in the Danish political system representing today EURO-sceptical and anti-immigration positions. The DPP is also the party which most explicitly argues for abolishing the so-called ‘racism’ or ‘discrimination’ paragraph (see Danish Populism. Analysis of Interviews, WS1). This position contrasts with the Socialist People’s Party and the Red-Green Unity List (Enhedslisten) which are more positive in terms of immigration and less restrictive in terms of integration, being also more supportive towards policies that aim at strengthening the struggle against racism, discrimination and hate-crimes.

Finally, the report will look more into detail at the role of social movements/NGO and other initiatives ‘from below’ in the struggles against racism, discrimination, hate-speech and exclusionary behaviour. A few relevant questions will be directly addressed: Who are the active social movements/groups in Denmark today?; What are these movements and groups’ policies and strategies to combat hate-speech and exclusionary behaviour?; What kind of activities have they been engaged in?. Our interest will also focus on collaborations, negotiations/networks and alliances between anti-body groups as well as on collaboration between these groups, as well as on the struggles involving anti-bodies against groups practicing hate-speech/behaviour. This part aims to discover gaps in our knowledge about what is going on –at national level and beyond and to some extent also below the nation state – at the local/urban level.