[My-ci] Danish youth revolt and the radicalization of the European creative class

[Matteo Pasquinelli]

The pink rebellion of Copenhagen
Danish youth revolt and the radicalization of the European creative  
class

by Alex Foti

http://multitudes.samizdat.net/THE-PINK-REBELLION-OF-COPENHAGEN.html
Le Danemark est le seul pays Ouest-Européen à battre les Pays-Bas sur  
le plan d’un sous-courant socio-politique profondement nationaliste,  
réactionnaire et xénophobe, ce qui n’est pas peu dire. Mais tout  
comme les Pays-Bas, l’étranger a plutot une perception sympathique de  
ce petit pays champêtre et soi-disant bon enfant. Les émeutes de  
Copenhague à l’occasion de l’éviction et de la destruction du centre  
culturel de jeunes ’Ungdomhuset’, batiment historique où Clara Zetkin  
proclama les Droits de la Femme au debut du siècle dernier, sont pour  
nous rappeller a la réalité alors que s’estompe le souvenir de  
Prague, de Goteborg et de Genes. La réalité d’un naufrage politique  
de l’Europe est de plus en plus manifeste, conséquence de  
l’aveuglement et de la surdite de ses élites technocratiques ; mais  
également celle du surgissement d’une nouvelle conscience rebelle au  
bel avenir. Et cela là ou on s’y attendait peut être le moins. A  
tort, et les héritiers des Vikings continueront de nous surprendre.  
Patrice Riemens





It was a very hot weekend in Copenhagen between March 1st and March  
3rd, particulary in Nørrebro, the alternative neighborhood where the  
evicted and demolished Ungdomshuset was located, and around  
Christiania, the hippy free city known Europe-wide being harassed by  
the Rasmussen government. But the the eviction and the three days and  
nights of heavy rioting that followed were initiated by the local  
socialdemocrats, who have been in charge of the city since 1900. The  
harsh treatment of protesters, Andersen’s mermaid who went pink, and  
the 600 arrests of activists, have prompted a wave of transnational  
solidarity among the European youth with appeals, actions, boycotts,  
and occupations of Danish consulates, not only in nearby Malmö,  
Göteborg, Hamburg, Oslo, Helsinki, but also in Berlin, Munich,  
Leipzig and every single German city, as well as in Warsaw, Poznan,  
Budapest, Amsterdam, Venice, Milan, Athens, Salonica, Istanbul.

Why in Denmark ? Why there such a forceful rebellion of the city’s  
dissenting youth, promptly joined by the immigrant youth ? How could  
a full-scale riot occur in peaceful and wealthy European capital,  
with burning barricades and sustained the clashes with the police,  
who had to bring in help from Sweden to put the situation back under  
control ? Wasn’t consumerist European youth supposed to be only eager  
to discover the world, flying and chatting low-cost ? Wasn’t the  
younger generation deemed to be irreversibly post-ideological, much  
less attracted to radical politics ?

In political terms, Denmark is a special country in more ways than  
one. It’s been part of the EU since 1973, but its people have opposed  
Maastricht with all their will, with major riots (the only comparable  
to last weekend’s in recent history) breaking out after the 1993  
referendum, which in retrospect were at least as important as the  
1995 French strikes in catalyzing the antiglobalization movement in  
Europe. And many Danes were in Göteborg, a crucial episode in the  
maturation of noglobal protest in Europe, just before Genoa. As the  
now respectable Italian right-wing leader and former fascist  
Gianfranco Fini said to Time magazine : "Genoa will be like Göteborg,  
or worse." (Since he went on to commandeer the riot cops in Genoa, he  
made sure his dire prediction would come true.) As a consequence of  
the fierce popular opposition to Maastricht, Denmark is not part of  
the euro, but it’s very much part of the eurocratic mainstream. The  
reason : flexicurity, currently the solution favored by the European  
Commission to temper the disasters (and limit the political costs)  
brought by unilateral flexibility, while forcing workfare down the  
throats of the unwilling youth of Europe. Although a Nordic country  
with an extensive welfare system and strong unions, social democracy  
hasn’t had an easy life in 21st century Denmark. A staunchly  
occidentalist, neoconservative right has been in power since 2001.  
Denmark has turned into a faithful bushist ally, more long-lasting  
than Berlusconi’s Italy. This exceptional partiality to NATO and  
America make the Danish version of flexicurity - the latest edition  
of Nordic social model after the demise of the top-down and  
paternalist, but generous and universalist, socialdemocratic welfare  
state - particularly liked by the Barroso commission.

Of course, the land which hosted the first Jacobin revolution outside  
France and invented quantum physics remains a land with a penchant  
for free thinkers and rabble rousers : the Danes have a fierce sense  
of humor, which compares favorably with their Scandinavian neighbors  
(remember The Kingdom by Lars von Trier ?). And Copenhagen, a city  
fully immersed in the informational networks and supply channels  
(think container and shipping giant Maersk) feeding the global  
economy, is full of them. With respect to the British or Italian  
creative class, Danish brainworkers are more radical and libertarian.  
Anarchism has flourished since the early 80s from anarchopunk to  
black bloc and beyond. Radicalism with red and green tinges is also  
in full bloom. In fact, generalized reliance on peer-to-peer sharing  
and free downloading has been furthered by collectives such as  
piratgruppe. And antiprecarity ideas and actions are currently  
fermented by groups like flexico. And who could ever forget such  
great subvertising stunts like anti-pepsi Guaraná Power (also a  
commercial success in the Jutland peninsula) ?

And this is just a fractal part of what Copenhagen’s creative class  
is able to achieve, when it thinks in terms of political action and  
cultural engagement. But Denmark is also a strongly agrarian economy  
which has prospered under the Common Agricultural Policy, thanks to  
its superior dairy and pork products that have conquered European,  
and world, markets. Farmers are as religious and narrow-minded, lily- 
white protestant and patriotic, just as urban dwellers tend to be  
secular and open-minded. The former have been pivotal in the rise to  
power of the Right, the latter are increasingly dissatisfied by the  
traditional Left.

The Danish antiglobalization movement has been the only one in Europe  
to develop its own independent political force. Sections of it joined  
the Red-Green alliance, bringing a woman under 30 to Parliament, and  
constituted a Pink list in Copenhagen’s municipal elections, which  
scored almost 10 per cent of votes at the city level, and in  
alternative neighborhoods like Nørrebro is firmly in the double  
digits. No wonder Andersen’s mermaid was covered in pink as a sign of  
solidarity with the protesters (the 69 signature instead refers to  
the street number of Undgomshuset, which uses it as some kind of punk  
ying and yang in its posters). The osmosis of activists into local  
politics and cooperative ventures has created a multi-level context,  
in which radical forces of all denominations can work in synergy if  
the situation requires, from the streets to the city to the  
parliament, with a tacit division of labor that respects political  
autonomy at all levels. The proliferation of networked autonomous  
struggles and alternative media networks combined with municipal  
representation has enabled a common political understanding of the  
connectedness of various forms of dissent and protest, and has  
encouraged experimentation with the possibilities of social  
radicalism in a European metropolis. This was not simply a rebellious  
episode : it will have far-reaching political consequences.

In the Nørrebro, the neighborhood’s culture of non-conformity has  
managed to bridge the divide between alternative youth and ghetto  
youth, or more sociologically speaking, between the mainly white  
creative class and the mainly immigrant service class. The  
neighborhood has long been an inclusive space for young bohemians and/ 
or immigrants : it hosts many venues of social interaction, and has a  
history of connections and exchanges between Arab kids and the mainly  
white activists. As the youth of Arab descent was heard saying during  
the riots : "You helped us, we help you." Militant antiracism was  
pivotal in breaking the wall of mistrust and building some mutual  
respect in Copenhagen, although deep differences still remain between  
the two groups. Unlike Paris, where the students storming the  
universities and the boulevards to protest against juvenile precarity  
and the French government did not really fundamentally connect with  
the rioters (there were actually tensions during the demonstrations  
between students and radicals and banlieusards intent on looting and  
fighting the police), in Copenhagen recent social turmoil has mostly  
seen white and non-white youth on the same side of the barricade.

Large-scale riots occur spontaneously in response to blatant  
violations of individual liberties and collective rights and arrogant  
abuses of state and police power. Think of Rodney King trial and the  
1992 L.A. riots, or remember the electrocution of teenagers running  
away from the cops which triggered the uprising of Paris banlieues in  
2005, and you can understand why the raid of the Danish special  
forces to evict Ungomdshuset in the early morning of the first of  
march, was just like a match thrown on the parched prairie. Riots are  
spontaneous processes emerging after all hopes in non-violent tools  
of protest and confrontation are exhausted, due to the deafness of  
power.

And Danish state power is as deaf as it is dumb. As soon as the Right  
took office, it launched a cultural crusade to protect the Occident  
from Muslim immigration, perceived as a threat to the Danish cultural  
identity. The extent of its hostility to migrants in Denmark (a very  
nativist state with very strict immigration laws, in an already  
xenophobic European Union) became clear to the whole world with the  
mishandling of the crisis of satirical cartoons. The cartoons,  
purportedly making fun on the Prophet, were in reality the political  
editorial of a conservative newspaper, traditionally expression of  
the right-wing agrarian interests above noted. Only a panislamic  
boycott of Danish products pushed the country’s multinationals to  
plead for a more sensible approach with the Danish Prime Minister,  
Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

In fact, the prime minister - whom Berlusconi advised as lover to his  
wife for his good looks (seriously !) - shares his last name with a  
prime mover of European politics, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, head of the  
European socialdemocrats in Strasbourg and influential in the  
Socialist International. The socialdemocratic blunder made in  
Copenhagen with the shady sale to a homophobic and islamophobic  
Christian sect of the social youth center Ungdomshuset, worsened by  
the forced eviction (there had already been skirmishes in September,  
so it was clear Copenhagen’s youth was going to explode at the next  
provocation) makes one thing clear : the two Rasmussens are one of a  
same kind ! European politicians, either socialdemocratic, liberal or  
conservative, increasingly look indistinguishable. They all share  
deference to financial markets, big corporations, have repressive and  
xenophobic instincts, and pander to firmly established interest  
groups and older generations. Even the mainstream Danish unions are  
realizing socialdemocrats are no longer reliable to defend the  
interests of employees, and when push comes to shove, they side with  
student protesters, as it happened during the general strikes and  
university occupations that rocked the country in the spring of 2006,  
when Rasmussen announced welfare "reforms" cutting benefits for  
youngsters and aged workers alike, which the socialdemocrats opposed  
only rhetorically. But it would be foolish to ascribe to a supposed  
Danish exceptionalism the extension and duration of the riots.  
Rather, by virtue of their socialist past and libertarian present,  
Danish movements are in a privileged position to fight against the  
sociopolitical consequences of both Atlanticist neoconservatism and  
European free-market liberalism. Copenhagen’s pink rebellion could be  
the harbinger of a more generalized youth insurgence in Europe,  
involving large sections of the so-called creative class of net/flex/ 
temp workers.

In fact, it makes sense to see in the Copenhagen riots as a  
continuation of the French protests of 2006, and both as instances of  
a new phase for radical movements after the decline which followed  
the failed attempt at blocking the Angloamerican invasion of Iraq. In  
particular, it is tempting to see it as an anticipation of the  
generalized rebellion of the European creative class against the  
hyprocrisy, arrogance and corruption elites ruling the EU, which have  
been delegitimized by the French-Dutch no, but are clinging to power  
as if Europe were an asset that belonged to them. The Brussels summit  
is supposed to spruce up the environmental credentials of the EU, in  
order to make it appealing at least to somebody beyond the privileged  
few. Later in March 2007, the Berlin summit (which will issue the  
Berlin declaration on the constitutional future of the EU) will  
celebrate half-a-century of European treaties, but it will be the  
death of European federalism and the transition to some kind of  
confederation of nation-states, combining the bellicosity and racism  
of the former with transfer of sovereignty of the latter. We’ll also  
see how thing turn out in Heilingdamm-Rostock in June, and how  
movements from East and West of Europe will be able to fight the G8  
and the huge transnational police force that will protect its closed- 
doors decisions. The insurgence of European youth in Copenhagen,  
Paris and elsewhere seems to point toward increasing political  
awareness and radicalization among young people working in  
information, knowledge, culture industries. Only the creative class  
can alter the course of European history away from its present  
reactionary path toward social emancipation of a finally mulatto  
eurogeneration. We have to act now for radical Europe, by connecting  
and solidarizing with major struggles like the Copenhagen and Athens  
revolts : let’s create a European space for radical youth culture !