Artist: Maryam Jafri (Copenhagen / Denmark)
Presented work: „untitled” (2008)
Text by Mikkel Bolt
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Since the elections in November 2001 the political system in Denmark has developed a special combination of democracy, racism and chauvinism that we might term national democratic authenticity totalitarianism. This ideology about Danish nationality, comprising cultivation of authenticity as well as hatred of foreigners, has been carried forth with great force by the right-wing government of Anders Fogh Rasmussen. After assuming power Fogh Rasmussen launched the so-called ‘battle of culture’ that targeted left wing culture and Muslims as destructive of society. This campaign against foreigners can seem strange, as Denmark is among the least mixed countries in the Western world, as the country has very limited immigration and as the country even before 2001 had very severe immigration laws. But because politics in Denmark has been reduced to a question of authenticity, the idea of a multicultural society has become a threat. The challenge of globalisation has been met with entrenchment.
The xenophobic campaign against Muslim immigrants was accompanied by an attack on everything seemingly leftwing in Denmark. According to the government and the Dansk Folkeparti the country is in need of a cleansing of old left wing and 1968 ideas that threaten to destroy the Danish community in favour of a multicultural society. Another central dimension of the newly elected government’s politics has thus been so-called ‘welfare reforms’ that were in effect drastic cuts in the welfare system. But these have been presented as necessary measures in order to protect the welfare system and make it able to cope with future threats. The aim is to prevent a future crisis. The different attempts to critique these ‘reforms’ have been dismissed as irresponsible. The reforms are necessary. The government and its economists have spoken. All political discussions are overruled by this reference to the economy.
Since 2001 the government has to an unprecedented extent tried to put pressure on a number of public institutions like the state television and the universities wanting them to distance them from what the government perceives to be dangerous 68ist currents. Former employees from the state television have reported about a drastic increase in attempts to shape or influence programs and the university system is currently going through a changeover where corporate ideas are replacing classical notions of Bildung and autonomy. Funding for schools and hospitals are also being reduced.
In the summer and early autumn of 2008 the world took a big step into economic and geopolitical instability. After the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers and the partial nationalization of the American Insurance Group, it has become evident even in the mainstream media that the U.S. are in the grip of a financial meltdown due to trillions of dollars worth of bad loans, worthless assets, and opaque accounting practices that no one can unravel or understand, not even the originators themselves. How the Danish right-wing government will cope with the financial crisis, which is also beginning to show its face in Denmark, remains to be seen but further control and racist welfare is probably on the agenda.
Mikkel Bolt
In 1998 the President of the U.S. government agency Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Brooksley Born, presented a series of steps to bring the increasingly complex financial market under greater regulatory control. Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, and Robert Rubin, Secretary of the Treasury, opposed her, as did Lawrence Summers, Rubin’s successor and protégé. Greenspan told Born that she didn’t know what she was talking about and that she’d cause a financial crisis if she continued. In reference to the 2008 financial crisis Greenspan claimed no one could have known. Summers was forced to resign as President of Harvard University after controversy over his remarks that perhaps women were genetically less capable than men at math and science. He is currently working as an economic advisor to Obama. Rubin is head of Citibank, recipient of a loan from the U.S. government because it is nearly bankrupt.