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Elimination of the exploitation of man by man!
Yours in solidarity
Per Rasmussen
Denmark
http://home0.inet.tele.dk/pera/
http://w1.1559.telia.com/~u155900373/
-----Oprindelig meddelelse-----
Fra: Niels Erik Kaaber Rasmussen [mailto:nilleren@person.dk]
Sendt: 26. februar 2000 20:03
Til: forum-list@faklen.dk
Emne: Det, Haider prædiker i Wien, har man for længst indført i Danmark
På forsiden af Jyllands Posten idag - 26/2 - står nedenstående artikel
omhandlende udlandets syn på dansk udlændinge politik. Interessant.
-- Offentliggjort den 26.02.00 kl.01:29Internationale aviser: Danmark værre end Haider Af CARSTEN ELLEGAARD og JETTE ELBÆK MARESSA
Danmarks internationale ry som et venligt, åbent og tolerant land krakelerer.
I kølvandet på den store opmærksomhed på højrepopulisten Jörg Haider i Østrig, er det internationale søgelys nu rettet mod Danmark.
Både europæiske og amerikanske aviser beskriver i malende vendinger, hvordan Haiders fremmedfjendske teorier allerede er blevet til virkelighed i Danmark.
Den amerikanske avis International Herald Tribune konstaterer på forsiden af torsdagsudgaven, at statsminister Poul Nyrup Rasmussens nytårstale om familie, der føler sig fremmede i eget land til forveksling kan minde om den sprogbrug, som demagoger og racister benytter sig af.
Ordene i den danske debat minder uhyggeligt meget om de ideer, som Jörg Haider står for, skriver avisen.
Det store tyske dagblad Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung konstaterer kort og godt, at "Haiders ideer allerede er regeringspolitik i Danmark".
"Det, Haider prædiker i Wien, har man for længst indført i Danmark," skriver avisen.
Den betegner den danske indvandrerdebat som udslag af enten uvidenhed eller massepsykose.
Der gik heller ikke mange dage fra Haiders parti kom til magten i Østrig, før den hollandske avis Trouw fandt udviklingen i Danmark interessant. Med henvisning til Dansk Folkeparti konkluderer avisen: Hvad der er sket i Østrig nu, vil meget nemt kunne ske i Danmark efter næste folketingsvalg. --
...og her er så hvad International Herald Tribune skrev:
-- Paris, Thursday, February 24, 2000
Danes Struggle to Deal With Populist Instincts - Strains Over Immigration Unleash Anger
By John Vinocur International Herald Tribune
COPENHAGEN - The politician spoke dramatically about local families who feel outnumbered by immigrants in their own neighborhoods, who see themselves as strangers in their own land, and victims of ghettos they didn't create.
Perhaps because his countrymen were afraid of not being tolerant enough, the problems had been allowed to drift, the politician said. There were good foreigners who contributed to society, of course, but others, he went on, who didn't ''care a whit for our fundamental values.'' So the time had come to ''impose'' a number of ''requirements'' on the immigrants ''to ensure a coherent fabric of society.''
To call the tone of the speech populist - Europe's new tag word for political argumentation that runs to the edges of demagoguery or racism but does not cross the borders of still-polite convention - requires little daring. Its particularity was that it came last month from a totally traditional representative of European social democracy, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark.
More than anything else, the remarks, and the restrictions proposed this month for Denmark's immigrant community, seem to illustrate how much once-standard notions of political acceptability can be displaced in the debate about immigration and racism in Europe. Denmark is no Austria, but its image of apple-cheeked decency is living now with mainstream vocabulary and regulations that some Danes find distressingly close to the ideas of the Freedom Party of Joerg Haider.
Officials of the Social Democratic Party, which had fallen sharply in polls here before the speech, acknowledge the shift in register. Jacob Buksti, the party's parliamentary leader, said in an interview he was concerned that the effort to sound closer to the electorate's concerns about immigration is legitimizing the most repugnant views in the political marketplace.
''Things have moved in relation to what constitutes the politically correct,'' he said. ''How do you stop the movement in people's attitudes when you use the same language? The danger is that you soon have the same proposals as the far right or you begin to compete with it. It is sad, but the inner schweinhund [people's basest instincts] never gets enough to eat.''
In Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, a Social Democrat, defended himself against charges of populist instincts last week for saying in 1998 on the subject of immigrants that ''whoever misuses their rights as a guest here, then there's only one approach, and that's out - and fast.'' By way of explanation, he defined populism as playing with prejudices and falsifying facts to touch people's emotions; the chancellor pleaded not guilty.
But the minister of home affairs in Switzerland, Ruth Dreifuss, a Socialist who served last year as the country's rotating president, insisted just before the Freedom Party's entry in government in Austria that there had been a ''return of the repressed'' in European politics. She said it was granting acceptability to language and party programs that were instinctively rejected in the years following World War II.
The change in tone in Denmark comes in a set of circumstances that has destabilized Denmark's historical notions of its own decency. Historians early this year disclosed that Danish authorities had covered up a Danish initiative to hand over 21 Jewish refugees to Nazi officials during the German occupation, while several large Danish companies were revealed to have been required to pay secret compensation for collaboration with the Germans during the war. Virtually at the same time, Mr. Nyrup Rasmussen acknowledged publicly that his father had been a Nazi party member, a fact he said he had learned only three weeks earlier.
Denmark's problems with its feelings about foreigners are hardly unique. Like Austria or Switzerland, it is a small and extremely prosperous place that has allowed itself to feel its identity increasingly threatened by its immigrant population.
Running above 15 percent in the polls, the hard-right Danish People's Party has focused the national debate on its restrict-the-immigrants line in the manner of the Freedom Party, although the party says it has nothing to do with Mr. Haider or what it calls his deplorable remarks.
Only about 4.8 percent of Denmark's population of 5.5 million are refugees or immigrants. But the problem is their unemployment rate and nonintegration, which can cast them as drones and welfare cheats in a tight, industrious society. Indsam, an immigrant support organization, says about 65 percent of the foreign-born group is jobless, while the People's Party puts the figure at 80 percent.
By way of confirmation, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development lists Denmark as the country among the world's richest with the least success in bringing the foreign-born into the labor force. Based on its faster birth rate, some projections show that nonnative groups, including Turks, Pakistanis, Somalis and other Islamic peoples, will in 30 years outnumber native-born Danes on the national scale, or at least in certain communities.
Souhail Ibrahim, a Palestinian who quit the Social Democratic Party to try to form an immigrants' party, said: ''This projection is what it's all about. There are Danes who are afraid the foreigners will become the majority. So the Social Democrats changed their principles, and I quit on New Year's Day after 13 years as a member. I don't think Austria will do half of what they're doing to foreigners in Denmark. The Social Democrats are fighting for votes. But they can't win. If they continue this way, they'll become a minor party.''
In an effort to get a grip on the social problems involving immigrants and to respond to the apparent movement of its voters to the right, the Social Democrat-led government required on Jan. 1 that new refugees to the country remain in the residence assigned to them for three years or face a minimum loss of 15 percent of their social allowances.
This month, the government proposed a 78-point package of regulations that it claimed would accelerate integration. Rights groups particularly objected to a rule that would raise the minimum age for bringing a foreign spouse to the country from 18 to 25, a clear attempt to lower the foreign birth rate. At the same time, cities will be able to set quotas on the ethnic makeup of housing projects to try to halt the formation of immigrant enclaves, and immigrants who avoid Danish language classes will lose cash benefits.
Kristian Thulesen Dahl, the parliamentary leader of the People's Party, said the effort would not do the Social Democrats any good because they refuse to talk about numbers - ''and everybody here knows it's the 15,000 who come in every year that are changing our society.''
The fact is, the Social Democrats cannot outbid their classic opposition, the Liberals, who lead in the opinion polls, and have called for a halt to all aid to arriving foreigners during the first seven years of residence here. Populist wars are not joyful ones for European social democracy.
Mr. Buksti, a thoughtful man, talked about the Social Democrats' situation as somewhat ''schizophrenic.''
''The strange thing is that what's happening in this civilized society, this very Social Democratic-oriented country, is that the public debate is actually strengthening this populist situation. It's not for us to compete with the People's Party, but to close off some of their agenda, and then to open up new ideas.''
Which ones, he was asked. ''We've got to have a clear platform based on human dignity, and take it to them,'' Mr. Buksti said immediately. He paused a moment. Then he said, ''The depressing thing is that it's so difficult to get the message through.''
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