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How the Workers Became Muslims
How the Workers Became Muslims

Immigration, Culture, and
Hegemonic Transformation in Europe
Ferruh Yılmaz
University of Michigan Press

Ann Arbor
Copyright © 2016 by Ferruh Yılmaz
All rights reserved
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Yılmaz, Ferruh.
How the workers became Muslims : immigration, culture, and hegemonic
transformation in Europe / Ferruh Yılmaz.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-472-07308-5 (hardback) — isbn 978-0-472-05308-7
(paperback) — isbn 978-0-472-12178-6 (ebook)
1. Muslims—Europe—Public opinion. 2. Immigrants—Europe—
Attitudes. 3. Europe—Emigration and immigration—Public opinion.
4. Public opinion—Europe. 5. Islamic countries—Foreign public opinion,
European. 6. Islamophobia—Europe. 7. Public opinion—Europe.
8. Xenophobia—Europe. 9. Islam—Public opinion. I. Title.
d1056.2.m87y55 2016
331.6'2088297094—dc23
2015031991
For Soek-Fang
I wish you could have seen this book.
Preface
In early 2015, I went to a lecture by a European scholar about Islamophobia

and the Far Right in Europe. As is the case usually, someone in the audience
responded to the talk by “explaining” why the racist reactions against Mus-
lim immigrants were justified: Muslims were culturally different and their
culture was incompatible with European values. She garnered her “explana-
tion” with vivid details of firsthand experiences with Muslim immigrants
that she then generalized to the “evil” nature of “them.” I commented on
her generalizations and pointed at the racist implications of her “descrip-
tions,” to which she simply responded: “I am not racist, I am just talking
about realities.”
The more interesting aspect of this incident was the reaction of the mod-
erator, who was a professor of European history: he did not like the accusa-
tions of racism, and he said that the person in the audience was expressing
the genuine concerns of Europeans and we should allow people express their
sincere sentiments. After the talk, I asked him whether he would have al-
lowed her to say exactly the same things about Jews. He said no.
I certainly believe that her experiences were genuine and her sentiments
were sincere but so were so many ordinary Germans’ “sentiments” about Jews
during the Nazi Germany. What has changed since then? The views or Jews?
I do not believe that the world can be experienced purely without the
intermediation of language. Once language enters the process, it shapes our
experiences through the identity categories that render the otherwise cha-
otic social world intelligible. It would be impossible to experience Jews or
Muslims (or any other category) as entities if we did not catalog them with
certain attributes. Since we cannot experience all Jews or Muslims at once,
we need to connect our particular experiences to the entire category, the
existence of which we can only know through the representations of those
categories.
viii Preface
I have never been in favor of banning racist or hate speech. First, it is a

complicated issue; racist messages and hate speech can be coded and pack-
aged to avoid legal troubles. Second, rather than banning racist views or hate
speech, they should be made unacceptable by banning them from common
sense.
I am therefore more interested in studying how particular instances of
bad behavior or violence are made to characterize an entire ethnic, racial, or
religious category of people; how these generalizations come to be viewed as
sincere and therefore acceptable and justifiable; and finally how these gener-
alizations are particularized as reasonable with respect to just one particular
group so that a translation between historical experiences becomes impos-
sible (e.g., “this situation is completely different from the previous ones,
because Muslims are essentially different”). In short, I am interested in how
a professor of history can imply that there is an essential difference between
Jews and Muslims without a second thought.
A quite young man was so distressed about the pervasive discrimination
and persecution of his people with the same religious background that he
bought a pistol, went to the building that symbolized the system that he so
deeply hated, and assassinated a man who represented that system. His par-
ents were poor immigrants without job and security. He himself had been
treated as an outcast and dropped out of school in his teenage years and
moved to another country. He became more religious than his parents or his
uncle, who gave him shelter and helped him. He became more and more
agitated and radicalized by the news about the constant discrimination and
suffering of his own people. After the assassination, he declared, “I acted . . .
because of love for my parents and for my people who were subjected un-
justly to outrageous treatment.” One of the leaders of the country he acted
against fulminated: “This odious attack . . . once again deprives our people
from attaining the peace and quiet they have so deserved” (Marrus 1988: 69).
This is not the story of Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, a twenty-two-
year-old man, who was born to Jordanian-Palestinian immigrant parents
and raised in Denmark. On February 14, 2015, El-Hussein went to a public
event called “Art, Blasphemy and Freedom of Expression,” where Lars Vilks,
who is famous for his drawings of the prophet Muhammed, was among the
speakers and killed one of the participants. Later that night, he attacked the
Great Synagogue in Copenhagen, killing yet another person before he was
shot and killed by the Danish police. It was not El-Hussein who declared his
act as a revenge for the “outrageous treatment” of his people, something that
he could have done if he had been given the chance. But the Danish prime
minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt’s, condemnation of the attack echoed the
Preface ix
sentiments from the first story: “There are dark forces who believe darkness
is stronger than light. . . . We stand united as Danes.”
Nor is it the story of the two young men who attacked the French sa-
tirical weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo and killed twelve people in January
2015. They, too, were said to be radicalized by the pervasive discrimination
they suffered in France as well as the treatment of Muslims globally. The
French president, François Hollande, called the attacks “an act of excep-
tional barbarism” and called for unity.
It is the story of Herschel Grynszpan, a seventeen-year-old Jewish boy
who was born to Polish-Jewish parents in Hanover, Germany. On Novem-
ber 7, 1938, he shot the third secretary of the German Embassy in Paris and
declared that it was an act against the “outrageous treatment” of Jews in
Germany. It was Joseph Goebbels who declared that the attack deprived
“our people” of “peace and quiet.” The attack was used by Nazis to organize
Kristallnacht pogroms against Germany’s Jewish minority on November 9,
1938. The Nazis used the assassination to focus attention on “Jewish terror-
ism” and demonstrate the “Jews’ responsibility for the outbreak of war in
Europe” (Marrus 1998: 75). Many Jews at the time argued that Grynszpan’s
action worsened the conditions of Jews in Europe. Marrus (1988) is uncon-
vinced that this is the case: the Nazis could have found another pretext to
do what they did. Marrus describes Grynszpan as a frustrated and depressed
young man who “sought a violent way out, and he was not the last person to
find this kind of solution to an impossible problem” (79).
There is no way I can condone the heinous murders in Paris or Copen-
hagen. However, the similarities between Grynszpan’s story and the stories
of young “Muslim immigrants” who are agitated, radicalized, and retort to
violence against those whom they see as symbols of the suffering of “their
people” are striking. The irony is that while nobody would today hold Gryn-
szpan responsible for the Nazis’ actions, the treatment of Muslim immi-
grants is often justified by the actions of young Muslims. It has become
perfectly sensible to argue that Muslims bring it upon themselves. History
often repeats itself because we lack the framework within which stories and
experiences can be translated into one another.
Acknowledgments
The book was written over a protracted period of time, and I accumulated
many debts across the continents, but there are institutions and people who
were involved in a more direct manner, and I would like to take this oppor-
tunity to express my gratitude to them.
First of all, this project would not have started without a scholarship from
the Danish Social Science Research Council (now the Danish Council for
Independent Research). Special thanks to the anonymous grant-reviewers
who believed in my project. I hope they will like the result. A special thanks
to the Danish Refugee Council, which granted me free access to its newspa-
per archive on immigrants and refugees and allowed me to photocopy more
than ten thousand pages from the archive. The Council’s contribution to
this project has been invaluable. The Documentation and Advisory Center
on Racial Discrimination and its leader, Niels-Erik Hansen, were very help-
ful with documents, office space, and practical questions; they deserve many
thanks. Arly Christensen (RIP) and Bente Christensen gave me moral and
practical support in Denmark.
During my fieldwork in the summer of 2001 in Denmark, every news-
paper and media institution I contacted granted me access, allowing me to
follow their news-making decisions and routines without any constraints.
These media are Ekstra Bladet, Jyllands-Posten, Politiken, and TV-Avisen
(Danmarks Radio). The journalists and management I met at these me-
dia were extremely helpful and friendly. Special thanks to the late editor
in chief at Politiken, Tøger Seidenfaden, for his permission to use Pol-Info
(now Infomedia), the electronic database for all newspapers in Denmark.
Thanks also to Line Vikkelsø Slot for finding student interviewers in the
Department of Sociology at the University of Copenhagen. They are Anders
Hoff, Christina Viskum Lytken Larsen, Helle Kløft Schademan, Anne Ma-
xii Acknowledgments
rie Krag, Marius Sylverstersen, Rikke Kamstrup, and Camilla Rasmussen.

Selma Atçeken transcribed some of my interviews.
One of the greatest influences on my intellectual development was my
visit with the Discourse and Rhetoric Group at Loughborough University
in the United Kingdom, where I spent several months participating in their
weekly sessions on analysis and theory, and especially the sessions that fo-
cused on my project and transcripts. Special thanks to Jonathan Potter, Mi-
chael Billig, and Derek Edwards for the many face-to-face meetings and
discussions.
I am grateful for the Fellowship in Media, Religion, and Culture from
the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of
Colorado–Boulder. The seminars and comments from the participants have
been very helpful. I especially want to thank Stewart Hoover and Lynn
Schofield Clark for their feedback.
I truly appreciate the fellowship, office space, and support provided by
the Center for Global Communication Studies (CGCS) at the Annenberg
School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, especially the direc-
tor of the Center, Monroe Price. I thank Marwan Kraidy for facilitating my
affiliation with CGCS and being a wonderful host in Philadelphia during an
extraordinarily difficult time in my life.
Gayle Aruta, Sylvia Beauvais, and Rita Koryan provided invaluable logis-
tic support in different phases of this protracted project.
Many people have commented on this work. I have been fortunate to
have a wide network of scholars who generously shared their published and
unpublished work and ideas with me and spent time discussing my ideas,
chapters, and proposals. Michael Schudson, Robert Horwitz, George Lip-
sitz, Klaus Bruhn Jensen, and Yen Espiritu patiently read and commented
on the first drafts of the manuscript and supported me throughout the pro-
cess. Erik Larson helped me to find my way through SPSS. I want to thank
Rikke Andreassen, Rebecca Atencio, Mohammed Bamyeh, Marie Demker,
Bülent Diken, Nancy Fisher, Myria Georgiou, Kevin Gotham, Randall
Halle, John Haslam, Radha Hegde, Peter Hervik, Stig Hjarvard, Christian
Horst, Mustafa Hussain, Sara Jul Jacobsen, Tina Gudrun Jensen, Rene Elley
Karpantschof, Arun Kundnani, Louise Lund Liebmann, Nancy Maveety,
Elizabeth McMahon, Toby Miller, Benjamin Moffitt, Aurélien Mondon,
Mahmut Mutman, Maria Oskarson, Radhika Parameswaran, Michael Ne-
beling Petersen, Kaya Şahin, Deniz Serinci, Annebelle Sreberny, Gavan Tit-
ley, Pradip Thomas, Thomas Tufte, Frank Ukadike, Margaret Wetherell, and
Yasemin Yıldız for sharing their work and giving me advice and recommen-
dations on drafts of chapters and ideas. Schirin Amir-Moazami and Frank
Peter made it possible to present my research to international audiences at
Acknowledgments xiii
the Governmentalization of Islam in Europe conference in Frankfurt an der

Oder, Germany, in 2009, and they were the editors for a special issue of
Current Sociology where parts of the book material were published. Karina
Horsti invited me to MigraNord conference in Helsinki, Finland, in 2010,
and Kaarina Nikunen to the European Communication Research and Edu-
cation Association’s (ECREA) conference in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2014. I am
also grateful to my colleagues in the Department of Communication at Tu-
lane University for great intellectual, emotional, and logistic support.
The book-writing process has a lot of ups and downs, and I received
much-needed support in various forms from Rod Benson, Gholam Khia-
bany, Vicki Mayer, Mehdi Semati, Ben Pitcher, Mauro Porto, Khaldoun
Samman, and Ruth Wodak. These acknowledgments provide me with an
opportunity to thank Daniel Hallin for his academic guidance, for his
moral, practical, and intellectual support, for having faith in me, for his
patience, precision, and timeliness, and last but not least for his friendship.
Ernesto Laclau (RIP) deserves special thanks for being a great intellectual
mentor and inspiration. I cannot overstate his contributions to this book.
He truly believed that this book provided a multidisciplinary contribution
to hegemony theory. He promised to write a foreword for this book but
passed away before he could do it.
Aaron McCollough, my editor at the University of Michigan Press sim-
ply is the person who made it possible to publish this book. I truly appreci-
ate his patience, timeliness, and support.
Finally, I do not know how I would keep my sanity if not for my wife,
Esra Özcan, who was beside me listening to my frustrations and ideas, read-
ing all of my papers for language and providing logistic support and love.
New Orleans, May 2015

Ferruh Yılmaz
An earlier version of chapter 1 was published in Journal of Language and

Politics 14, no. 6 in 2015 with the title “Analyzing Variations and Stability in
Discourse: Hegemony, Nation, and Muslim Immigrants.” It is reproduced
here in expanded form with permission. Parts of this book were used in pre-
viously published articles: “From Immigrant Worker to Muslim Immigrant:
Challenges for Feminism” in European Journal of Women’s Studies (22, no. 1
[2015]), and “Right-Wing Hegemony and Immigration: How the Populist
Far-Right Achieved Hegemony through the Immigration Debate in Eu-
rope” in Current Sociology (60, no. 3 [2012]). The materials from the articles
are reproduced in this book with permission.
Contents
Introduction 1
Far-Right Hegemony 5
A Short History of Immigration to Denmark 8
Theoretical Framework: Heterogeneity of the Social and Empty Signifiers 10
Rhetorical Texture of Society: Discourse and Heterogeneity 12
Culturalization, Culture, and Identity 15
Race, Racism, and Islamophobia 18
Hegemony 19
Moral Panics and Crises 23
Data and Analysis 23
Chapters 28
Chapter 1. Discourse and Hegemony 31
Empty Signifier: Common Sense 32
Heterogeneity and Culturalized Discourse 36
Chapter 2. Crisis and Hegemonic Displacement 59
The Mid-1980s: A Turning Point 59
Crisis and Political Intervention 63
Moral Panics 65
The Political Landscape and Immigration Discourse Prior to and
around 1984 67
Beginnings of a Moral Panic: 1984 71
Constructing Refugees as a Threat to Social Cohesion 74
The Media 79
The Discrepancy between Editorials and News Coverage 81
Culture and Immigration in 1984 84
Intensification of the Moral Panic around Refugees 87
Letters to the Editor: Distance between the Elite and the “People” 93
Populist Intervention 96
Populism and the Far Right 98
xvi Contents
Chapter 3. Rhetoric of the Hegemonic Intervention 101

September 21, 1986: A Rhetorical Intervention 103
Right Time, “Wrong Target,” and Appropriate Rhetoric:
Gaining Access to Discourse 107
Rhetorical Strategies 108
Après the Intervention: Culturalization and the
Political Mobilization of the Far Right 117
The Far-Right Symbiosis 121
The Long-Term Effects of Krarup’s Intervention 123
The Focus Moves from Refugees (Victims) to Immigrants
(Cultural Aliens) 125
A New Round of Crisis around Immigrants 129
Chapter 4. Culture, Ethnicity, and New Hegemony 138
Crises around Muslims, 1987‒2001 142
Centrality of Culture in Immigration Discourse 143
Centrality of Immigration and Cultural Identity to Social Imaginary 150
Reimagining the Past 153
The Present: The Populist Right’s Vision Is the New Common Sense 159
2001: The Populist Vision Moves into the Center of Political Discourse 162
Gender and Sexuality as Core Danish Values 166
“Cohesive Force of Society” and Democracy 170
The Transformation of the Political Parties 172
The Crisis of the Center-Left 174
The Transformation of Immigrant Organizations:
From Worker to Muslim 177
The Hegemonic Effect: Imagining the Future 179
Conclusion: “I Can’t Breathe” 183
The Hegemonic Displacement Is a Pan-European Phenomenon 190
Populism, Neoliberalism, and Democracy 194
Appendix 1: Declaration of Integration and
Active Residency in Danish Society 199
Appendix 2: Krarup’s First Advertisement,
Jyllands-Posten, September 21, 1986 202
Appendix 3: Krarup’s Second Advertisement,
Jyllands-Posten, September 28, 1986 205
Notes 209
References 219
Index 231
Introduction
Unless we expel the Jewish people soon, they will have judaized our people within a
very short time.
—Adolf Hitler, from a speech at Nuremberg,
January 13, 1923
(Jäckel 1981: 52)
There may be second, third, fourth generation [of Muslim immigrants in Europe],
they don’t consider themselves part of that country. They’re actually going in there to
colonize, to overtake the culture.
—Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana
(Diamond 2015)
My grandparents came of age in France in the 1930s. Then as now, disquiet

abounded about the impact of immigration from the East, on jobs, on the social
order, on a venerable civilization. It was a different East (Europe instead of Middle),
and it threatened Judaization instead of Islamification. Then as now, ordinary and
well-meaning people believed that they had legitimate reason to be afraid of others
who were not like them. Then as now, ordinary and well-meaning people were
seduced by demagogues playing to the all-too-human tendency to generalize and
categorize. [. . .] I am not safe as “a Jew in France.” Nor are any of the “Muslims”
here. No one can ever be safe in a category. (Mouillot 2015)
The whole world was shaken by the terrible attacks on Charlie Hebdo maga-
zine and the Jewish supermarket in Paris and against the public event “Art,
Blasphemy, and Freedom of Expression,” in Copenhagen a few weeks later. In
a show of solidarity and unity, 3.7 million people marched in France, the larg-
est demonstration ever in France. Over forty presidents and prime ministers,
including leaders from Britain, Germany, Spain, Israel, and Palestine, joined
the demonstrators. The New York Times noted that “Jews, Muslims, Chris-
tians, atheists and people of all races, ages and political stripes [responded to
2 How the Workers Became Muslims
the attacks and] swarmed central Paris beneath a bright blue sky, calling for
peace and an end to violent extremism” (Alderman and Bilefsky 2015). CNN
called the marches “a gesture of unity” (Fantz 2015). The general sentiment,
that the Paris attack targeted “our core values,” was summed up in the stu-
dent column in the International Communication Association’s newsletter
in March 2015: “Terror attacks targeted not only citizens but also democratic
values—starting with freedom of speech and freedom of religion.”
The killings in Paris were an appalling offense to human life and dignity.
But the suggestion that violence by self-proclaimed jihadists is the biggest
threat to freedom of speech and democracy in Western societies indicates
a curious, selective amnesia. Journalists and citizens are often killed or im-
prisoned all over the world—including the Western world—for exposing
corruption and illegal government activities. When Michael Page, a white
supremacist and U.S. Army veteran, attacked a Sikh temple in Wisconsin
on August 5, 2012, and killed six Sikhs, probably because he thought they
were Muslim, it did not attract the same kind of attention and worldwide
condemnation as an attack against freedom of religion. Neither did the nu-
merous attacks on French Muslims, nor other, ongoing instances of horrific
carnage around the world (e.g., Central African Republic, Nigeria, Gaza,
Pakistan) committed in the name of religion. In France, and in many other
nations whose leaders participated in the demonstrations, people are ar-
rested and prosecuted for making comments deemed to be anti-Semitic or
encouraging terrorism; most countries in the Western Hemisphere formally
limit free speech. Furthermore, I assume that most of the demonstrators
would not accept the kind of insulting speech that Charlie Hebdo stood for
if the speech was directed at other minorities.
The massive demonstrations indicate that the attacks signify something
bigger than the horrific killings: that Muslims and their actions in the name
of religion constitute a greater threat to our basic freedoms and values in
the West. And inversely, the reactions to the attacks also create a sense that
despite “our internal differences” we in the “West” share some core values
such as freedom of speech and democracy.
European countries do not go in panic mode only when there is a mas-
sacre of this caliber. Denmark, for example, went into overdrive in the sum-
mer of 2013 about the importance of pork meatballs to Danish culture and
identity. Switzerland had a referendum on minarets (of which there are few
in that country); Sweden and Germany were each shaken by the murder
of a young woman, which was labeled as “honor crime,” a peculiar form
of violence against women that is deemed to be rooted in Muslim culture.
European public sentiment is often in high alert over highly publicized is-
Introduction 3
sues such as female genital mutilation, gang rapes, forced marriages, veils,
girls who are not allowed to attend swimming classes, parallel societies—all
presented as signs of a “creeping Islamization” that threatens basic norms
and values. The media frenzies around these issues are so intense that it is
difficult not to feel alarmed, even if one wants to distance oneself from the
often racist and Islamophobic overtones of the debates. The result is a sense
that there was a time when members of society lived in peaceful coexistence
that has been broken by the newcomers. The constant incitement to dis-
course on Islam and Muslim immigrants ontologizes Muslims vis-à-vis “us.”
I went to Denmark in 1979 as a young, left-wing activist who had no idea
what the term “identity” meant. Within two decades, I became a “Muslim”:
by the mid-1990s, I was answering yes when people asked me if I were a
Muslim. I said yes despite the fact that I have never identified myself with
anything religious. On the contrary, my political formation had made me
think of religion as the opium of people. I also “learned” not only about the
term “identity” but that identity is anchored in culture as a set of traditions,
norms, and values, although they never made sense to me: I did not share
more traditions, norms, and values with people from the same ethnic back-
ground than with my Danish friends.
My “conversion” had nothing to do with religion but with the central
place immigration took in the public debate, which increasingly organized
public and private talk around immigration and its impact on society. Not
only did immigration move into the center of public debate, it also influ-
enced how we talked about it and how we positioned ourselves in the de-
bate. In my first years in Denmark, I lived in a progressive commune with
a small group of people. We talked a lot about politics; our political views
and values bound us together and made us part of the same collectivity (i.e.,
identity). The ethnonational or other differences between us were mere nu-
ances that did not matter much in the grand scheme of political divisions.
In the early and mid-1980s, we protested the new right-wing government’s
assault on labor unions and its dismantling of the welfare system; the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan; Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons against
the Kurds; and the Turkish military regime’s brutal oppression and violation
of human rights. We protested against violations of rights hard-won through
decades of struggles.
My friends’ or my political views and values did not change much over
the course of the two decades I lived in Denmark, but we started to talk first
about refugees and then immigrants more and more as cycles of controver-
sies and moral panics kept the issue on public agenda. The controversies and
moral panics were first about the number of refugees, but the focus quickly
changed to the immigrants and “their culture.” A story about a “forced mar-
riage” among immigrants would quickly be echoed in the mass media and
become amplified in public consciousness. The steady stream of these stories
about immigrants’ cultural values and practices would force us to discuss the
cultural characteristics of immigrants, which did not seem to fit with our
progressive outlook. By the mid-1990s, our political conversations would
generally concern immigration, racism, and culture; these issues no longer
bound us against a common political opponent. The conversations about
immigrants constantly interpellated me as an immigrant and my friends as
Danes although they did not see me as part of the category of immigrants
whose “cultural values”—now in focus—were regarded as alien. Outside my
social and political circles, I had always been an immigrant. The slightest
variation in your accent gives you away in Denmark. Although in the begin-
ning I was interpellated with an ethnonational label whose signification was
more ambiguous vis-à-vis the political configuration of society and did not
lead to questions about my culture; in the 1990s, the less ambiguous label
was “cultural-religious” (i.e., Muslim). Yet I did not act like other Muslims
as generally portrayed in the media. People would ask me questions: “Why
do you drink beer? Are you not Muslim?” To resist the implied categorical
attributions, I started to respond with “Yes, I am Muslim.” Any other answer
would confirm my status as an exception to the rule. This is how I turned
into a Muslim a decade and half after my arrival.
My story is not unique. During my early years in Denmark, immigrant
organizations were generally national or ethnic (e.g., the Moroccan Associa-
tion in Denmark) and often affiliated with political organizations on the
Danish left. The Union of Workers from Turkey was known to have connec-
tions to the Communist Party; others were affiliated with Social Democrats
or groups on the New Left (e.g., the Organization of Workers from Turkey).
The immigrant organizations defined themselves by their class positions. By
the time I left Denmark, ethnonational worker associations had been re-
placed by cross-national Muslim associations.
As Saunders (2012) notes, when the first immigrants came to Europe,
they were not Muslims—they were Turks, Arabs, Indians, Pakistanis, or
North Africans.
Islam may have been the religion of these twentieth century arrivals,
but in general their faith was just part of the background of their
lives. It wasn’t the way they thought of themselves, it wasn’t some-
thing they sought out in others. Despite their religion’s claims to uni-
versality, they felt more affinity with non-Muslim immigrants from
Introduction 5
their birthplace than they did with Muslims from other countries.
And most were too busy struggling to find work and housing to think
much about religion. (139)
They faced discrimination as Turks, “Pakis,” or Arabs. The second genera-

tion joined the antiracist movements of the host countries. As political par-
ties, journalists, and activists started to call them “Muslims,” young people
started to embrace Islam as “a way to hold their heads up in a country that
had belittled and humiliated them” (Saunders 2012: 140). They began to call
themselves Muslims, or Danish, German, or British Muslims, not Turks,
Pakistanis, or Arabs. Islam was indeed an essential part of “integration.” It
means, as Fernando (2014) notes, that the Muslim being hailed by the ma-
jority is not the same Muslim that “Muslims” inhabit.
The story of how I (and other immigrants) became Muslim illustrates the
main analytical points of this book, which tells a story about the culturaliza-
tion of discourse and the production of Muslim immigrants as a distinct
ontology that displaced the old hegemonic structure in Denmark and else-
where in Europe. Although this book is about Denmark, the mechanisms
through which political discourse is culturalized and pushed to the right
are similar across Europe, so that this book is a case study that can be used
to understand the dynamics and state of European public discourse(s) on
European/national identity and immigration.
Far-Right Hegemony
In their seminal work Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, Laclau and Mouffe
(2001) explored the possibilities for a revised socialist strategy under new
fragmented political and social conditions. Two and half decades later, we
can note that it is not the socialist movement but the populist Far Right
that has shown an ability to adopt a successful strategy, which has led to
the reconfiguration of internal fault lines in European societies. This book
anatomizes such a reconfiguration through a case study of what has been
taking place in Denmark since the mid-1980s. Examining the intervention
strategies of the populist Far Right, which has achieved an unprecedented
influence on mainstream politics and changed the parameters of political
discourse, may provide clues about why the Left is unable to provide a viable
alternative vision and is in a deep crisis. This in turn can open up new ways
of thinking about progressive politics.
That Europe has been moving to the right over the question of Mus-
lim immigration has become commonplace, even in mainstream media. The

Economist wrote that the Netherlands had turned sharply to the right after
the far-right, anti-immigrant, anti-Islam Freedom Party had come in third
in the summer elections of 2010. Similar comments were made when in
2007 Nicolas Sarkozy defeated Socialist Segolene Royal after an explicitly
anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim campaign, and again in 2010 when far-right
Sweden Democrats entered parliament for the first time, and when in 2014
when the far-right Danish People’s Party, the French National Front, and the
UK Independence Party (UKIP) finished first in European Parliament elec-
tions. Der Spiegel summed it up on September 28, 2010: “All across Europe,
right-wing populist parties are enjoying significant popular support . . . they
are exploiting fear of Muslim immigration and frustration with the political
establishment—and are forcing mainstream parties to shift to the right.”
Although the fear of Muslims is sometimes linked to the September 11
attacks (e.g., Fekete 2009), the common assumption is that the turn to the
right reflects tensions about globalization, demographic changes, and the
increasing number of immigrants—anxieties that the Right has been able to
capitalize on. Too often, social scientists view social change as a mechanical
result of agentless structural changes, to which political forces respond but
are not decisive in determining their direction. To describe political articula-
tion as reaction or response to structural changes is to assume that tensions
around immigration are natural, prepolitical reflexes, an orientation that
closes down theoretical and analytical avenues that might allow for a fuller
grasp of the nature of the Right’s interventions as well as the nature of the
social and political change in Europe.
I argue that the Right’s ability to adopt a successful hegemonic strat-
egy has led to the reconfiguration of the internal fault lines in European
societies, that is, to a shift in what Laclau and Mouffe (2001: xiv) call the
“ontology of the social.” This book is an anatomy of that reconfiguration in
Denmark. Although the populist Right’s strategy is crucial in the analysis of
the reconfiguration traced here, this book is not a study of the dynamics of
the Far Right or of populism in Denmark.
There is no consensus about what term to use to describe the far-right par-
ties that have become central players in European political discourse during
the last three decades. Some scholars opt for the term “extreme right” (Born-
schier 2010; Fekete 2009; Hainsworth 2008; Ignazi 2003; Klandermans and
Mayer 2006; Schain, Zolberg, and Hossay 2002), others for “radical right”
(Givens 2005; Kitschelt 1995; Mouffe 1995; Norris 2005; Rydgren 2004, 2013;
Williams 2006) or “populist radical right (Betz 1994; Mondon 2013; Mudde
2007; Rydgren 2010), or “far right” (Ellinas 2010) or “right-wing populism”
Introduction 7
(Berezin 2009; Betz and Meret 2013) or just populism (Panizza 2005; Taggart
2000) or neopopulism (Betz and Immerfall 1998). Berggren and coauthors
(2007) prefer to call these parties “fascist.” Whichever term is used, they
generally refer to parties and groups that focus on an identity politics of im-
migration and generally participate in the electoral process.
Although there are various explanations for these parties’ success—for
example, popular anxieties around Europeanization (Berezin 2009), chang-
ing social structures such as postindustrialization and globalization (Ignazi
2003; Andersen 2004; Rydgren 2004), the disappearance of political differ-
ence between left and right and the void left by the Left’s inability to adopt
to the new epoch (Betz and Meret 2013; Mondon 2013; Mouffe 1995), and the
change in balance from the salience of economic (class) cleavages to cultural
cleavages (Rydgren 2004; Bornschier 2010)—almost all explanations point
to the fact that the mobilization of far-right “movements and milieus today
is closely related to the anti-Islam and anti-Muslim issue” (Meret 2011: 256).
The latter set of explanations, which draw attention to the discord be-
tween West European party systems (which are historically organized
around class cleavages) and the new sociopolitical space that emphasizes
cultural cleavages, sound similar to the explanations set forth in this book.
According to these explanations, the economic cleavage dimension, which is
about the degree of state involvement in the economy, pitted workers against
capital, whereas the cultural cleavage dimension, which is mostly about is-
sues such as immigration, law and order, and abortion, puts workers against
left-libertarian positions. It is argued that it is the increased salience of the
cultural cleavage dimension that created optimal conditions for populist far-
right forces to effectively mobilize working-class voters against libertarian
elite and their “treasonous” immigration policies.
This explanation, however, is inadequate when we consider the transfor-
mation of both mainstream and far-right parties, which adopted gay-friendly
and antimisogynic rhetoric (as opposed to the “homophobic and misogynic
Muslims”). Moreover, it refers to “structural changes” as the background for
the political shift as if the structural changes preceded the political articula-
tions of those changes—an assumption at odds with the theoretical orienta-
tion of this book (see below).
A more suitable explanation is that the mainstream Left’s adoption of
neoliberal orthodoxies created a political void where discontent with the
system was no longer represented in the mainstream political system (i.e.,
crisis of representation). The populist Far Right successfully articulated this
discontent in terms of a new antagonism “which has shifted the understand-
ing of politics in the minds of the classes populaires from a class struggle, in
the Marxist sense of the term, to a struggle of race and ‘civilization’” (Mon-
don 2013: 159).
As the entire political spectrum was pushed to the right through the dis-
course on Muslim immigration, the formation of what Gramsci (1971) called
a “historical bloc” is observable in the alliances forged across the political
spectrum around what are posed as “core values,” virtually none of which
had been considered universal (or even common) before their juxtaposi-
tion with Muslim immigrants. The concept of class has become marginal
in political representation. Likewise, the positions of feminists, gays, envi-
ronmentalists, and human rights activists are gradually being disarticulated
from the progressive politics with which they had traditionally been aligned,
as strategic demands once borne by conjunctural political articulations are
being elevated to universal values that are articulated as aspects of national
or “Western” culture. Many left-wing activists align themselves with right-
wing political forces in their defense of what are purported to be established,
long-held common values, such as women’s emancipation, gay rights, or
freedom of speech. In this epistemic collusion between the Right and the
Left, the figure of Muslim immigrant helps create the very social cohesion
that is presented as preexisting and under threat. The assumption is that
social cohesion is anchored in cultural sameness, but this assumption itself is
produced by references to an ethnically homogeneous past, not only in the
populist imagination but in all kinds of discourse including “progressive”
academic research. The common understanding of the past as ethnically and
culturally homogenous and therefore harmonious is indicative of the popu-
list hegemony. The projection of cultural cohesion into the past is one of the
major ways in which the new hegemonic vision is established.
A Short History of Immigration to Denmark
To realize that neither immigration nor negative attitudes toward immigrants

are new phenomena, one only needs to watch the much-praised movie Pelle
the Conqueror. The movie is about the life of Swedish immigrants in Den-
mark. The Danish historian Bent Østergaard (2007) argues that immigra-
tion has always been part of Denmark’s (and Europe’s) history. Germans,
Swedes, Poles, Russians, Jews, Roma people, Hungarians, the Dutch, and
many other ethnic groups settled in Denmark. The common assumption
is that the earlier immigrants were culturally similar and were easily assimi-
lated into host societies, whereas the new non-Western (especially Muslim)
immigrants with their essentially different culture threaten the core values of
Introduction 9
Western liberal democracies. Both Østergaard (2007) and Lucassen (2005)

challenge this common assumption: Østergaard argues that all immigrants
have contributed positively to the economic and cultural development of
society, whereas Lucassen shows that earlier immigrants such as the Irish in
England, the Poles in Germany, and the Italians in France were also consid-
ered inherently different and were seen as cultural/religious threats.
The main argument of this book in this context is that the new immi-
grants were relabeled as “Muslims” after the 1980s as the result of political
articulation. They did not arrive as Muslims, nor did they identify as such;
they were part of the labor force in Denmark.
The contemporary phase of immigration in Denmark is usually seen as
beginning in the second half of 1960s when groups of “foreign workers”
from Turkey, Yugoslavia, Spain, Morocco, and later from Pakistan began to
work in Danish factories and farms (Mikkelsen 2001; Jensen 2000; Madsen
2000; Gaasholt and Togeby 1995; Østergaard 2007). At first, the flow of a
foreign “workforce” did not happen in an organized fashion in the sense that
they were not recruited systematically in their country of origin but received
work permits if they found jobs while in Denmark. The first restrictions—
which made it necessary to apply for work permits from abroad with an
actual job offer—were introduced in 1970 and in 1973 when the oil crisis
led to economic stagnation, the Danish parliament (Folketinget) imposed a
complete ban on the immigration of foreign workers.
However, the law was not effective in stopping immigration, which con-
tinued in two distinctive forms: First, “guest workers” did not return to their
countries of origin. Instead, they were joined by their spouses and children
in Denmark, and because of family reunion laws the number of immigrants
continued to increase. The second form of immigration was, after 1984,
through political asylum with the arrival of large refugee groups from Iran,
Iraq, Lebanon (Palestinians), Bosnia, Albania, and Somalia, as well as, the
latest, from Syria. As a result, the debate since the mid-1980s centered on
asylum and family reunion laws, which have been continuously tightened
since that time. According to the figures from Statistics Denmark (2015: 4),
foreigners and their descendants make up 11.1 percent of the population in
Denmark, and approximately 58 percent of foreigners come from so-called
non-Western countries. It is the non-Western part of the immigrants—rather
than Germans or Americans—who are the objects of the intense debates.
Because the authorities do not classify immigrants according to religion, it
is difficult to know the precise number of “Muslim” immigrants. Although
not all non-Western immigrants are Muslims, the word “immigrant” would
automatically trigger “Muslim” in the minds of Danes.
The first two decades (1964–84) of debate on the latest immigration

phase showed many similarities to the last century’s debate on Swedish im-
migrants: concerns about wage suppression, working conditions, criminal-
ity, the burden on welfare system, and immigrants’ social problems. Culture,
ethnicity, and religion, although present in discourse, were not the domi-
nant themes, at least quantitatively. In 1970, there were only 14 (out of a total
448) newspaper stories that focused on cultural problems (Madsen 2000).
By 2015, Danish newspapers were even discussing whether Danes would buy
halal chocolate candy (e.g., Ekstra Bladet had a poll on the issue where 87.13
percent of those who voted said no).
Theoretical Framework: Heterogeneity of the

Social and Empty Signifiers
Two important views of language offer ways to think about the discursive
nature of social life. The Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure proposed a
fundamental distinction between language and the reality it purportedly
describes. He challenged the status of language as a relatively transparent
medium between things and meaning by pointing to the constitutive nature
of language. In my context, the important aspect of his theory is the distinc-
tion between “signifier” and “signified.” The meaning of a sign is produced
through the differential system of language: words (signifiers) gain their
meanings not from what they signify (signified) but through their differ-
ence from other signifiers. Saussure argued that the meaning of a word—for
example, “dog”—is produced by its place in a paradigmatic and syntagmatic
chain rather than by the thing itself.1
When we talk about a more complex sign, such as culture, or under that
sign, a signifier such as “Dane” or “Danish,” what are we talking about? A
common definition would be that someone Danish (i.e., a Dane) was born
in Denmark, as opposed to an immigrant. Is that sufficient? What about
being born abroad to Danish parents? What about those born in Denmark
but to non-Danish parents? It is evident that the meaning of the signifier
“Dane” becomes immediately vague and contested as soon as we begin using
and then attempting to definitively capture the meaning of the term. Once
we put the meaning of the sign into the exigencies of human communica-
tion, “Dane” becomes even more complicated and polysemic: people use
the word to signify a wide variety of features, some of which may be con-
tradictory. Danes may be simultaneously described friendly and unfriendly
depending on the rhetorical context of the utterance. Of course, the signi-
Introduction 11
fier “native” (i.e., Dane) cannot signify a clear concept of a thing, person,
or group. The meaning of the signifier “Dane” is, therefore, arbitrary to the
extent that it is almost empty, an important point I will examine in chapter
1. What is important for the current discussion is that the meaning of the
sign “Dane” may be temporarily fixed at a concrete moment of communica-
tion, which limits the possibilities of proliferation. On the other hand, total
closure is never possible because the local premises that limit proliferation
of signification change from context to context and can always be contested.
In this temporary fixity of meaning, Danes talk about themselves, and are
talked about, as if Danish culture is the most natural and given entity in the
world, as if there is a clear definition of a group of people who have some-
thing in common, regardless of the myriad problems with pinpointing what
that common essence is.
Starting from the view of language not as langue (i.e., a structural system
in Saussure’s sense), but as parole (i.e., actual acts of speech), Bakhtin’s ideas
about dialogism, heteroglossia, and the centripetal/centrifugal forces of lan-
guage offer useful ways to think about culture and discourse. According to
Bakhtin (1981), “The dialogic orientation of discourse is a phenomenon that
is, of course, a property of any discourse” (279). Moreover,
A unitary language is not something given . . . but is always in essence

posited . . . and at every moment of its linguistic life it is opposed to
the realities of heteroglossia. But at the same time it makes its real
presence felt as a force for overcoming this heteroglossia, imposing
specific limits to it, guaranteeing a certain maximum of mutual un-
derstanding and crystallizing into a real, although still relative, unity.
(270)
Thus, “Every extra-artistic prose discourse . . . cannot fail to be oriented

toward the ‘already uttered,’ the ‘already known,’ the ‘common opinion’ and
so forth” (279). But the already uttered, the already known, and the com-
mon opinion (e.g., Danish culture) is not an element of discourse fixed once
and for all. Instead, it is inherently heteroglot in nature, such that meaning
can only be fixed in the concrete context of utterance. But any concrete
context of utterance is already embedded in the matrix of heteroglossia,
wherein centrifugal forces continuously attempt to disperse meaning away
from the center whereas centripetal forces attempt to centralize and unify
the language—that is, exert a homogenizing and hierarchizing influence.
Bakhtin’s conceptualization of the processes of heteroglossia is similar
to what Laclau and Mouffe refer to as the “heterogeneity of the social,” in
which any systematic language is an attempt to suppress heterogeneity by

imposing specific limits to it, by making its own language “common sense,”
that is, the center toward which all other utterances are oriented. I argue
that this center is not a patterned discourse—or articulation of differences
in an equivalential2 link, as Laclau and Mouffe (2001) would argue—but
ontological categories that are persistently referred to and that can only be
apprehended through empty signifiers.
Rhetorical Texture of Society: Discourse and Heterogeneity
This book does not depend on a distinction between discourse and reality.
The ontological structure of society is not something already given in nature
or in economic relationships among members of a society, but is created
through an articulation of relations. As such, they are political relationships.
The identity of a social formation such as the working class, for instance,
does not originate in objectively identifiable material interests but in the ar-
ticulation of particular interests common to a group of people. In this sense,
there is no difference between the ontological category of “working class”
and the articulation of it with reference to their common interests. Those
interests have been, as we have seen throughout history, articulated in dif-
ferent ways while keeping the category of “working class” intact. What kept
“working class” intact was not the consistent ontic content of the category
but the experienced gap between its members and capitalists. The continu-
ing political representation of “working class” interests as opposed to capital-
ists is what once sustained the ontological structure of society in class terms.
I do not use the term “working class” ironically here, just as I do not
use the term “Muslim” ironically unless there is a specific contextual rea-
son for it. To do so would be to indicate some kind of false consciousness,
which amounts to taking ontological changes as inaccurate reflections of a
real world whose composition is given in the relations of production prior
to political articulation. It would suggest interpreting the focus on Muslim
immigrants as a new form of racism masking a social division based on
class distinction—a reality to which I, as a leftist intellectual, might perhaps
have privileged access—narrows down the analytical venues one can take.
Instead, I consider class, as much as Muslim immigrants, the result of par-
ticular political articulations that have ontologizing effects. As a hegemonic
construct, the ontological category of class has its own organizations, po-
litical parties, labor unions, and cultural institutions. It makes no sense to
discuss the falsity or reality of this construct because the social is always the
Introduction 13
playground of political articulations that have the power of turning the same
ontic content into a different ontological category. Yesterday’s foreign work-
ers are now largely represented through religiously oriented organizations
and therefore have truly become Muslim immigrants.
Following Laclau and Mouffe (2001), I take discourse as the human
meaning-making process in general, including both linguistic and nonlin-
guistic elements,3 offering as an example Wittgenstein’s concept of language
games, which “include within an indissoluble totality both language and
the actions interconnected with it. . . . The linguistic and non-linguistic ele-
ments are not merely juxtaposed but constitute a differential and structured
system of positions—that is, a discourse” (108). In other words, the whole
social space is discursive. It is a vast argumentative texture through which
people construct their reality.
For Laclau (2014), the rhetorical nature of society means that society does
not have an objective referent (substance or essence). We can therefore only
approach it by using metonyms, metaphors, allusions, or analogies that give
us a sense of what society is like, for example, a statistical chart that takes
parts as indicators of the whole. The intelligibility and stability of discourse
on society is the result of the repetition and regularity in dispersion in dis-
course (Bowman 2007).
In my theoretical universe, the rhetoricity of society has as much to do
with the inherently fragmented and disjointed nature of the social world.
The relative stability of our sense of the social world and our place in it has
much more to do with the commonsensical way we imagine the ontological
structure of society than regularity in dispersion in discourse. Like Laclau
and Mouffe’s (2001: 125) understanding of society as a figuration without an
essence, I take the ontologies of the social as empty categories that cannot be
apprehended objectively because every statement about the ontic content of
an ontological category may be contradicted by a concrete example, a testi-
mony, a statistic, or a label. The following example illustrates the heterogenic
and rhetorical nature of human world.
While we were walking on the busiest pedestrian street of Copenhagen,
my friend’s mother wanted to eat sausage from one of the street vendors.
My friend warned her that it was made of pork. “If God created it, I don’t
mind eating it,” she replied. His father, on the other hand, did not want
to eat pork because, he said, he did not like the taste (even though he had
never tried it before). My friend’s mother was relatively pious Muslim and
observed the religious rituals, whereas religion was not part of his father’s life
at all. Yet it was the pious mother who chose to eat pork and used a religious
language to justify it, while his secular father, who refused to eat pork, justi-
fied his choice in “secular” terms. The interesting point here is not only that
“the meanings of a single religious sign or practice may be multiple and in-
consistent, and may change as a particular sign is used to work on the world
and the self ” as Orsi (2003: 172) argues, but also that the inconsistencies are
nevertheless informed by a sense of our place in the world.
In our dealings with the social world, we are much more goal ori-
ented than we may recognize and we draw on many different—sometimes
contradictory—ideas to fit the demands of the rhetorical situation. As an ex-
ample related to the discussion above, Eliasoph’s (1998) ethnographic study
among members of a country club demonstrates that expressions of racism
cannot be taken at face value as reflections of racist minds, but as markers
belonging to the context in which they are uttered. Eliasoph argues that the
group atmosphere in the country club was more racist and sexist than most
of its individual members, and that the same person could tell racist jokes
“just to keep the tone right” in social gatherings while seriously expressing
nonracist attitudes in more private settings, a discrepancy she explains with
reference to Goffman’s (1959) distinction between backstage/frontstage in
interactional needs (Eliasoph 1998: 100–103). The implication is that beliefs,
attitudes, and cognitions are not entities separable from interaction, but are
constructed and managed during interaction (Potter 1998; Potter and Weth-
erell 1987; Edwards and Potter 1992) in an essentially heterogeneous social
world. This implies that our utterances about the world should not be taken
as reflections of our mental picture of the world; we may say different things
at different moments about the same piece of reality depending on the situ-
ation and those with whom we are speaking. This is not about impression
management techniques, which imply a distinction between sincere and in-
sincere, but about the inherently fragmented and episodic character of our
relationship with the world, which renders our accounts of it variable and
inconsistent.
Social scientists have long been aware of inconsistencies in people’s ex-
pressions of opinions and attitudes, especially in opinion poll and survey
questions, often explaining it with reference to ambivalent feelings toward
objects of discourse. Acknowledging the ambivalence in people’s attitudes
toward the world, however, is based on the assumption that the world is
readily there independent of our accounts of them.
If all discourse is contextual and thus rhetorical, the critical question
becomes: How can we make sense of ontologies of the social that appear to
be stable constructions? In other words, once we begin to conceive the social
world in terms of indefinite series of linguistic possibilities, which can be
realized in a wide variety of ways and that are continually reformulated in
Introduction 15
the course of an ongoing interpretative process, how do we account for the

fact that we all speak about “society,” for instance, as a stable entity and seem
to understand each other? How do we speak about “culture” and understand
each other? How do we even begin to conceptualize politics that deal with
putative structures such as culture if discourse is heterogeneous, fragmented,
and episodic?
We enlist categories as if they are independent, self-contained, and stable
entities with which we orient ourselves and about which we express our
views because, in fact, they enable us to speak about the world, interact with
one another, and allow us to associate ourselves with collectivities, however
contingent they may be. In this book, these categories are understood as
discursive resources that help us to organize and talk about the world, rather
than evidence of mental reflections of objective structures whose meanings
are given through their place in a real world of objects. They help us to con-
struct our subjectivities through positions in and about the world; they help
us apprehend ourselves as subjects distinct from one another as well as from
the objects with which we deal.
It is within this general framework that we can consider a major concep-
tual category on which this study hinges—culture—and the process I have
referred to as “culturalization.”
Culturalization, Culture, and Identity
In 1986, an Iranian refugee in Denmark tried to kill his wife. The incident,
reported on the inner pages of national newspapers among other local crime
stories, was attributed to the husband’s jealousy. There is no mention of
culture or cultural background as an explanation for a husband’s emotions
or motives or his crime of domestic violence. By the end of the decade, the
discussion was all about culture as the background for whatever immigrants
might be doing.
In the early 1990s, I was called by a journalist colleague from the Dan-
ish Broadcasting Corporation to comment on a murder case in a live radio
broadcast. An older Turkish man had killed his grandchild and injured his
daughter-in-law with a cooking pan. I was invited to explain what in Turk-
ish culture might have made him commit the murder. “He must be out
of his mind,” I cried out. “What is there to explain?” I was invited to the
studio to say just that, but one of station’s correspondents had already made
a report that aired immediately after my interview. His narrative techniques
surrounded the murder with cultural mystery and mystique: the Turks in the
town acted suspiciously and were not willing to talk about the murder or the
murderer. Later it turned out that there was no story, no cultural explana-
tion: the Turkish man was mentally ill and had previously been in mental
institutions. There was nothing to talk about after all.
The question is this: Would there be a story worthy to be discussed in a
news/actuality program if the murderer had not been an immigrant? Cer-
tainly not: murder stories do not normally find their way into “serious” me-
dia such as radio or TV news unless the murder has a larger impact on
society (e.g., the victim or the murderer is a public figure or the murder is
part of a “trend”). What made it a notable story was not so much the mur-
der itself but who committed it. What is the implication of reporting on a
murder case when an immigrant commits it? The media does not report on
events as they happen; they ascribe significance to events. In the minds of
the journalists, a murder committed by an immigrant is more significant
than an “ordinary murder” because of the assumed alterity of it.
The radio program was but one of a long series of media stories about a
deviant act as reflective of “their culture.” These stories produce “immigrants’
culture” as a meaningful category through single acts of deviance woven into
parts of the same overall category. A murder committed by an immigrant
is metonymically made to stand for the entirety of culture. Through the
constant focus on the cultural difference, “immigrant” became a cultural/
ethnic/Muslim object to be examined, debated, and policed.
The term “culturalization” is central to this book, but I do not use the
terms “culture” or “cultural” as a way of classifying people or their identities.
Raymond Williams describes culture as “a description of a particular way of
life which expresses certain meanings and values, not only in art and learn-
ing, but in institutions and ordinary behavior” (quoted in Hall 1993: 351).
In this anthropological sense, culture is understood a symbolic meaning-
making system in the same way as ideology (Geertz 1973).
It is clear that this sense of culture conflicts with the notion of the social
as a heterogenetic space. If we use symbols flexibly to meet the rhetorical
demands of a particular context, it is difficult to map out a systematic way
of producing meaning; our enunciations in different contexts will be inher-
ently unsystematic and inconsistent and will not reflect a “particular way of
life” or shared values. In my theoretical universe, values are flexible resources
people draw on to do various things. In other words, culture is the totality
of the symbols available for discourse. It is a fragmented domain in which
inconsistent and episodic references to values and categories are made and
established. What makes the fragmented discursive resources appear to be
articulated in systematic ways in particular historical and political conjunc-
Introduction 17
tures are the pervasive juxtapositions with ontologies of the social, not the
built-in systematicity of culture, as I will discuss in chapter 1.
The same goes for the term “identity.” The term is used, even in its ver-
nacular form, as an academic abstraction: one’s attachment to a collectivity.
But the attachment to a particular collectivity in everyday life is flexible;
even during a particular conversation we may identify ourselves as a dancer,
and then as the focus of the conversation shifts, we may express our belong-
ingness in terms of the neighborhood we live in, the food we share, the mu-
sic we listen to, our annoyance with a particular group of people, and so on.
But if “identity” triggers references to cultural (ethnic or national) categories
of belongingness, it is because the social and political ontologies are often
interpellated through cultural indicators and cultural resources (i.e., norms
and values) are articulated in relation (or attached) to these ontologies. In
the Danish context, for example, the continuity of “nation” is now continu-
ously linked to identity projects that present culture as the politically neces-
sary precondition for functional homogeneity. It leads to the culturalization
of politics in which political values “are talked about as culture either in the
sense of being linked to nationally specific and favorable historical traditions
or ways of life (including, in the Danish case, secularized religion)” Mourit-
sen (2006: 73). These values are usually opposed to the so-called immigrant
or Muslim culture, which generally refers to internalized religious norms
and values about family, gender relations, punishment forms, food (halal),
and so on, which are assumed to determine Muslims’ behavior. Muslim cul-
ture, in this sense, is considered to be in opposition to Danish culture, which
is described as either inherently secular or inherently Christian (or alterna-
tively as secularized Christian).
This book argues that it is the culturalization of discourse—that is, the
pervasive references to culturally interpellated ontologies of the social—that
turns a right (e.g., a political value such as freedom of speech) into a cultural
value. In other words, it is the purported existential connection between
freedom of speech and a nation that owns it as a cultural value. It is clear
that political values that were originally conceptualized as rights “do not
have their origins in processes of cultural evolution but have come about
as the result of major conflicts and sharp breaks with the past” (Chanock
2000: 16). Even in anthropology, “culture” did not come into widespread
use until the 1960s (Jenkins 1997) and the notion of culture was not central
to the sociopolitical imagination until the mid-1980s (Schierup 1993).4 By
the late 1980s, culture had become a commonsense frame for organizing,
managing, and explaining the world. According to Fredric Jameson (1991),
this “universal” trend expands “culture throughout the social realm, to the
point at which everything in our social life—from economic value and state
power to practices and to the very structure of the psyche itself—can be said
to have become ‘cultural’ in some original and as yet untheorised sense” (48).
Thus, “culturalization” means that the sociopolitical world is predomi-
nantly understood as defined by differential norms and values: culture, as
Soysal (2009: 5) noted, has “become the predominant mode of addressing
citizenship, security, and even economy, which were conventionally consid-
ered to be distinct from culture.” It is important to note that in everyday (or
political) discourse actors do not always use categories in the same analytical
and distinctive way as academics (e.g., Roy [2010] makes a clear distinction
between culture and religion). Rather, these categories are used flexibly and
interchangeably: “Muslim” can mean a racial category as well as deracialize
immigrants; it can be used in the place of culture or to deculturize an act. It
is the persistent references to culture that ontologize cultural-religious cat-
egories whereby social and political problems are explained by reference to
the incommensurable nature of cultural differences. The culturalization of
discourse has changed the understanding politics as the site where problems
caused by cultural encounters are handled (see also Lentin and Titley 2011).
Race, Racism, and Islamophobia
For readers of this book, it will increasingly become clear that I generally
refrain from using the terms “race,” “racism,” or “Islamophobia.” If we
define “racism” broadly as the discrimination of individuals or groups of
people on the basis of ethnic, cultural, or color differences, then racism is
the pervasive feature of European countries including Denmark. The term
“cultural racism,” understood as ways of talking about immigrants’ tradi-
tions, norms, and values as inferior to those of the host country, would be
particularly appropriate to describe the discourse on immigrants because
statements from leading politicians, intellectuals, journalists, and experts
generally refer to “immigrants’ culture” as an inferior category that needs
to be changed and made compatible with the norms and values of the host
country. Because of the xenophobic and nationalist tone of the debate on
Muslim immigrants, many scholars considers the new phenomenon as the
good old racism in new clothes with labels such as Islamophobia or cul-
tural, differential, or symbolic racism (see, e.g., Balibar 1991; Blaut 1992;
Modood 2005; Wren 2001).
This book’s focus is, however, not on racist discrimination of immigrants
but more generally on how the culture, understood as a totality of traditions,
Introduction 19
norms, and values, is used to ontologize immigrants—an ontologization that

reshapes the social horizon and realigns various social and political groups in
relation to a new ontological structure of society. The culturalized category
of “immigrant” signifies the disintegration of the harmonious cohesive past
by culturalizing the past via today’s obsession with cultural values. Focus-
ing on cultural racism and Islamophobia as racism in new clothes distracts
from the broader implications of the culturalization of discourse. For the
same reason, I do not use the term “Islamophobia” to describe a negative
representations of Muslims, although the way Muslims are talked about and
policed fits the definition of Islamophobia as “the fear of Islam.” I refrain
from using the term for two reasons: first, it would be analytically difficult
to categorize a statement as Islamophobic that encourages Muslim immi-
grants to “acknowledge the historical superiority of democracy, acknowledge
women’s competences and gender equality; acknowledge reason and science
as the foundation for human interaction” (Villy Søvndal, the previous leader
of the Socialist People’s Party in Denmark, quoted in Andreassen 2012: 152).
Second, the term “Islamophobia” narrows down the analytical focus to nega-
tive attitude expressions (of which there are plenty) about Islam.
A further problem is that the terms “Muslim,” “ethnic minority,” “immi-
grant,” “immigrant culture,” and “Islam” are often used synonymously and
interchangeably, which makes it difficult to pinpoint Islamophobic state-
ments in discourse. My argument is that even when people do not engage in
fear-mongering around Islam and express sympathetic “attitudes,” the new
ontological horizon constrains the way they navigate the new social land-
scape, often leading to epistemic collusion between Left and Right (as can
be seen in Søvndal’s statement).
Hegemony
The obvious methodological challenge in examining the culturalization of

immigration discourse is how to generalize the hegemonic character of the
cultural paradigm. Demonstrating that references to culture in the immi-
gration debate are widespread does not necessarily prove that there is new
type of hegemony in Denmark (and, by extension, in Europe). Hegemony
is first and foremost a theoretical construct, and I can only make a qualified
argument about a new type of hegemony: a new historical bloc is formed
around “common interests” now understood as shared values that secure so-
cial cohesion (and subsequently the welfare system). As my discussion above
indicates, it does not mean that this is merely predicated on culture; it means
that the welfare system (or democracy) is now presented as anchored in a

“cultural sameness” whose continuity becomes the political goal. Erased is
the traditional notion that the welfare system and democracy are the result
of the social democratic consensus based on class politics.
I take as my starting point the theory of hegemony as proposed by
Gramsci (1971) and extended by Laclau and Mouffe (2001). For Gramsci,
hegemony is about a political force gaining
the upper hand, to propagate itself over the whole social area—
bringing about not only a unison of economic and political aims,
but also intellectual and moral unity, posing all the questions around
which the struggle rages not on a corporate but on a “universal” plan,
and thus creating the hegemony of a fundamental social group over a
series of subordinate groups. (Gramsci 1971: 181–82)
This is not to say that the dominant group dupes the masses into buying its
messages; it means that the dominant group aligns its own interests with
the interests of subordinate groups thereby forming what he calls “a certain
compromise equilibrium” between the dominant and subordinate groups.
Gramsci calls this formation a “historical bloc.” For Gramsci, this formation
happens first and foremost ideologically: “The realization of a hegemonic
apparatus, insofar as it creates a new ideological terrain, determines a reform
of consciousness and methods of knowledge . . . when one succeeds intro-
ducing a new morality in conformity with a new conception of the world ”
(Gramsci 1971: 365–66; emphasis added). As Hall (1977: 332) unpacks it,
Ideology provides the “cement” in a social formation, “preserving the

ideological unity of the entire social bloc.” This operates, not because
the dominant classes can prescribe classes (they too, “live” in their
own ideologies), but because they strive and to a degree succeed in
framing all competing definitions of reality within their range, bring-
ing all alternatives within their horizon of thought.
Reality is framed, in my words, within the ontological horizon of society.

Although the role of the political leadership and ideology in the formation
of hegemony is crucial for Gramsci (1971), he nevertheless sees “the material
forces of production [as the] basis for the emergence of the various social
groupings” (180).
This is where Laclau and Mouffe part with Gramsci, who insisted on
Introduction 21
material reality as the terrain where social classes are formed. As discussed
above, for Laclau and Mouffe—and for this book—a class does not exist
independent of the political articulation of its existence. Gramsci recognized
the fragmented and disjointed character of popular thought (i.e., common
sense) and understood it is the terrain that hegemonic projects attempt to
master, but he saw inconsistency as a flaw and weakness. Working-class con-
sciousness, for example, had to be brought in line with its “real” interests,
becoming conscious of its own social being, strength, tasks, and becoming
(Gramsci 2000: 196). For Laclau and Mouffe, the openness and incomplete-
ness of the social as a field open to articulatory practices is a precondition to
the hegemonic articulation of a sociopolitical identity. There is no difference
between consciousness and “real” interests as if the latter are readily available
prior to linguistic articulations of them. In this sense, ideology is no longer
a useful concept as a representation of an objective reality because reality
is always/already a discursive construction. For Laclau and Mouffe (2001),
hegemony is “a political type of relation, a form . . . of politics; but not a de-
terminable location within a topography of the social” (138). In other words,
the ontological structure of society is not given prior to political articula-
tions of it but rather is the very result of those articulations of the relations
between social forces.
It is important here to clarify the distinctive poststructuralist vocabulary
Laclau and Mouffe employ to discuss hegemony. They make a distinction
between discourse and the field of discursivity. Their understanding of dis-
course is similar to that of Foucault.5 “A discourse is an attempt to fix the
elements of discourse into a web of meanings in a particular domain of
discourse (e.g., the medicinal discourse) and therefore “an attempt to domi-
nate the field of discursivity, to arrest the flow of differences, to construct a
center” (Laclau and Mouffe 2001: 112).
There is a general field of discursivity, wherein free-floating elements
are transformed into “moments” in an articulatory practice, a moment be-
ing the temporary fixity of the meaning of a single element articulated in a
chain of equivalence. Laclau and Mouffe (2001: 113) use the term “floating
signifier” to designate any signifier that has not yet been “captured” in an
articulation that partially fixes its meaning in relation to other signifiers.
The signifier “body” would, for example, mean different things for different
people and can be considered a floating signifier. It is only by its place in a
chain of equivalence that is articulated in an antagonistic relation to another
chain of equivalence that the floating element is transformed into a discur-
sive moment. For example, the meaning of “body” is fixed in a particular
way in medical discourse, where it becomes a “nodal point,” as opposed to

alternative treatment.
Discursive formations are constituted around nodal points—points of
condensation of a number of social relations. Nodal points function as “mag-
netic” focal points that pull different elements of discourse into a forma-
tion, an articulated totality of its differential elements. If we use Laclau and
Mouffe’s perspective, signifiers such as gender equality, freedom of speech,
or tolerance for gays would be articulated as parts of a totality that could be
articulated around the nodal point “socialism,” as opposed to “capitalism,”
which is presented as a purveyor of patriarchal, oppressive, homophobic
practices. In current hegemonic articulations, these elements are partially
fixed as parts of the common cultural repertoire of the Danish nation (or the
West), as opposed to Islam, which subverts these ideals.
However, my understanding of partial fixity of meaning is slightly dif-
ferent from that of Laclau and Mouffe. The contribution of this book is its
reconceptualization of the articulation process not as the articulation of ele-
ments (i.e., values) in a consistent discourse but as the persistent juxtaposi-
tion of elements with an ontological entity. In other words, the partial fixity
of a signifier is related to its use in conjunction with an ontological category
rather than as parts of a totality in an equivalential chain because the mean-
ing of a particular signifier is constantly subverted in written and spoken
discourse. As an example, a headscarf—even as Muslim garb—can signify
a number of different things depending on the rhetorical situation. When
used in conjunction with the category of Muslim immigrant, however, its
meaning is partially fixed to signify a cultural/religious ontology. The pro-
liferation of possible meanings of the signified is limited when it is situated
as an element that signifies an ontological category rather than a particular
meaning (e.g., oppression of women). Thus, “headscarf ” becomes a signifier
of ontological difference. In another example, we do not attach a particular
ontological meaning to, say, gang rape. But when used in conjunction with
Muslim immigrant, it becomes a deviant act that threatens “our way of life.”
Thus, “gang rape” comes to signify the antagonistic relationship between
opposing social forces. The idea that social harmony existed prior to Mus-
lims’ arrival becomes a nodal point around which the cultural identity of the
Danish nation as something that binds “us” is forged politically.
The last point indicates that “the hegemonic articulation of meaning and
identity [collectivity] is intrinsically linked to the construction of social an-
tagonism, which involves the exclusion of a threatening Otherness that stabi-
lizes the discursive system [i.e., the ontological structure]” (Torfing 2005: 15).
Introduction 23
Moral Panics and Crises
If discourse is full of variations, inconsistencies, and contradictions, how can

a political force intervene in discourse and successfully articulate relatively
coherent and stabile identities?
Gramsci argues that change occurs when a situation of well-being is
threatened and the normality of the situation can no longer be sustained
by hegemonic forces. During these hegemonic crises, social groups become
detached from their traditional political parties, which are not capable of
adapting themselves to new tasks and new epochs—a situation that is evi-
dent in the rapid dissolution of traditional working-class social democratic
parties and the increasing support for the populist Far Right. However, as
will become clearer, this process is not about a shift in “previously existing
disposition of social forces” (Gramsci 1971: 178), but the transformation of
the identities of social forces. In other words, it is not classes that become
detached from their traditional representatives but the very ontological ba-
sis on which the parties are formed shifts, causing an identity crisis for the
traditional parties.
The interesting question that does not get proper attention in abstract
treatises on discourse theory is how the displacement from one ontologi-
cal structure (class) to another (culture) actually happens and how new on-
tologies are produced in political life. This book’s answer is that deliberately
provoked, sustained moral panics maintain public focus on “folk devils”
who over time become ontologized vis-à-vis society. I will discuss the role
of moral panics in hegemonic interventions in detail in chapter 2; suffice
it to note here that continual crises and moral panics around immigrants’
“cultural or religious [Islamic] practices” function to sustain public focus
on Muslims as an antagonistic force that threatens the unity and harmony
of the nation. The unending problems with Muslim immigrants create an
impression of an impending danger, and the presentation of Muslim immi-
grants as an impending cultural threat creates an sense of cultural sameness
across the sociopolitical spectrum vis-à-vis Muslims. The creation of the feel-
ing of cultural unity is similar to what Gramsci calls the creation of a new
historical bloc.
Data and Analysis
There is a consensus among scholars that Denmark experienced a swift right-

turn in the immigration debate in the mid-1980s, although they have vary-
ing explanations for the turn (Andersen 2004; Gaasholt and Togeby 1995;
Rydgren 2004; Schierup 1993; Østergaard 2007). Danish historian Bent
Østergaard (2007) considers the new immigration law of 1983 as the turn-
ing point that made the opposition to immigration a permanent fixture in
the Danish political landscape. Østergaard describes the years between 1983
and 2001 as the period that would shape the immigration debate for years to
come. I know from my own experiences as a journalist who covered the im-
migration debate from the early 1980s that a right-wing intervention in 1986
played a decisive role in turning the focus in the immigration debate from
issues related to rights and humanitarian help to cultural issues. I therefore
chose to examine the period before and after this intervention (1984–87) and
included media coverage from 2001 to see how much culture had become
the defining feature of the immigration debate before the 2001 elections
fundamentally changed the political landscape.
The data for this project come from two major sources: newspaper ar-
ticles from five major Danish daily national newspapers (Politiken, Berlingske
Tidende, Jyllands-Posten, Ekstra Bladet, and BT ) taken from a set of three-
month periods. I chose to focus on newspaper clips from September through
November 1984, 1986, and 1987. The fourth set of clips is from June through
August 2001. The newspaper clips come from the Danish Refugee Council’s
media archive, which is the only media archive in Denmark with an entire
collection of newspaper clips on immigrants and refugees dating back to
the early 1980s.6 I photocopied almost eleven thousand pages of news and
feature stories, background articles, editorials, and letters to the editor from
the newspapers mentioned above.
The stories examined in this study should be understood to represent a
critical part of a media environment in which the newspapers were the main
source of information along with only two TV channels (one of them began
broadcasting in 1988).
The newspapers are politically and stylistically different, and none have
direct political affiliations, although most have clear political leanings.7
Jyllands-Posten, the largest with a daily circulation of 150,000,8 was estab-
lished in 1871 as a regional paper for the Jutland (Jylland) Peninsula and
now has two daily sections for local news of Copenhagen and Aarhus. The
paper is known for its right-wing views. This was the paper that caused the
“cartoon crisis” by publishing drawings of the prophet Mohammed to teach
Muslim immigrants that in a democracy they have to accept being ridiculed.
Politiken, established in 1884, is the second largest newspaper with a cir-
culation of 129,000, and can be said to reflect “social liberal” political values
at the opposite end of the spectrum from Jyllands-Posten. Politiken had the
Introduction 25
most consistent “immigrant-friendly” line throughout the project period.

It had been affiliated with the Social Liberals but lost its direct links with
political parties during the second half of the twentieth century.9
Berlingske Tidende, established 1749, has circulation close to that of Poli-
tiken and is known for its conservative views and is considered the voice
of corporate business, in contrast to the values of Jyllands-Posten, which is
traditionally linked to agricultural sector.
Ekstra Bladet and BT are sensationalist tabloids published respectively by
the Politiken and Berlingske publishing houses. Both have circulations around
100,000. Despite great similarities in coverage and style, Ekstra Bladet had a
reputation as the voice of “the little man,” including immigrants, and took
an aggressive, antiracist line at the beginning of the study period, whereas
BT was considered more conservative. In 1987, however, Ekstra Bladet had a
sudden shift with reference to “Danes’ real concerns” and, during the 1990s,
ran several aggressive campaigns against immigrants and immigration. In
1986, Ekstra Bladet called Søren Krarup “the black priest” but a decade later
offered him a column. BT, on the other hand, always had an anti-immigrant
sentiment albeit without aggressive campaigns.
My first objective for the analysis of the newspaper data was to quanti-
tatively map out the themes, topics, categories, metaphors, and frames (cul-
tural or humanitarian) commonly deployed in public debate. I did a con-
tent analysis to paint a broad picture of shifting trends over time. Since this
methodology can only identify manifest content and not capture contextual
information or intricacies of discourse, content analysis was supported by
textual analysis of some newspaper stories to better explain the points made
about the statistical data.
My second objective was to map out the rhetorical strategies of Søren
Krarup, a key figure in the Far Right’s 1986 intervention. He rearranged
the discursive landscape with two remarkable advertisements in Septem-
ber 1986. He can be characterized as the ideological father of one of the
largest and most influential far-right parties in Europe, the Danish People’s
Party, for which he was a member of the Folketinget (the Danish Parliament)
between 2001 and 2011. He also had a column in Jyllands-Posten and later
Ekstra Bladet for decades. Krarup’s discursive intervention required a type
of analysis that could focus closely on how he managed to shape the prem-
ises for debate. With the exception of Engelbreth Larsen (2001) and Yılmaz
(2000), there has been little research on his intervention.
The second data set comes from qualitative interviews conducted in the
summer of 2001 with thirty-nine ethnic Danes. They were ordinary Danes
in the sense that they were not in positions of power or members of or-
ganizations particularly engaged with immigration, such as the racist and

populist Danish Association or antiracist movements or organizations. The
interviewers (myself and sociology students from the University of Copen-
hagen) were told to include people from various backgrounds in terms of age
and occupation, for example, teachers, students, retirees, nurses, academics,
and workers. Immigrants were not included in the sample because I wanted
to analyze how ethnic Danes spoke about immigrants.
The interviews were done in private homes and took the form of relaxed,
loosely structured conversations. Participants were encouraged to speak
about Danishness, Danish culture, Denmark’s place in the world, immi-
grants, immigration, and related issues. Each interview lasted about an hour
and was analyzed qualitatively. The quotations from these interviews used in
this book are my translations.
The theoretical orientation set forth above necessitates some explication
of the interpretive approach to both newspaper data and what interviewees
said. A qualitative method widely used by scholars involves grouping similar
statements and presenting them as their analytically derived categories. This
method enables discussion of representations of social groups, ideologies,
or discourses as easily recognizable categories. Often, of course, the social
groups, ideologies, or discourses are conceptualized prior to the analysis and
the analytical work focuses on finding the linguistic evidence of these enti-
ties. The impulse is to select parts of the data that fit the analytical or theo-
retical constructs. The challenge to this approach is to treat social groups,
ideologies, or discourses not as categories existing prior to the discourse but
as categories to which people orient themselves and about which they talk in
flexible and often inconsistent ways. To do so, we need to make clear distinc-
tions between our own analytical categories and the categories used by the
participants in our sample. Our concept of the “working class” or “culture,”
for instance, and the way articles or the participants’ remarks deploy “work-
ing class” or “culture” may be quite different.
If the starting point for analysis is that discourse is inherently dialogic,
contextual, and episodic, it is far more difficult to conclude from any series
of examples that a given utterance signifies a larger construction. If we focus
on discourse as social action in which people orient themselves in creative
ways, it is, in fact, all too easy to come across utterances that point in con-
tradictory directions, and it is inadequate to simply treat them as anoma-
lies. Analysis sensitive to the context in which utterances are made promises
more insight into potentially different versions of reality that statements
might be trying to establish or rebut. Even repetition across interviews does
Introduction 27
not necessarily mean that there is a pattern because each statement may be
connected to other, possibly contradictory, signs and may be used to achieve
differing and sometimes conflicting outcomes. What looks like patterned
ways of speaking may actually be the effect of the researchers’ attempt to cre-
ate analytical categories of attitude patterns. It is not sufficient to simply take
similar statements out of their immediate contexts and put them together in
abstract analytical categories presented as conclusions (see chapter 1).
The analytical solution in this book is to combine three different meth-
odologies: content analysis, discourse analysis, and rhetorical analysis. Con-
tent analysis usually means determining the presence of certain words or
concepts within texts and counting them. In this approach, words and con-
cepts are taken to be indicative of the categories that researchers are seeking
in the material analyzed. Researchers quantify these words or concepts and
make inferences about the relationship between the words and the messages
(or broader categories such as ideologies). My approach is, however, a bit
different. Rather than counting words or concepts, I read all stories at least
twice and tried to determine the perspective(s) from which a story was writ-
ten. If there were more than one perspective, they were coded as such. I also
coded the newspaper data for topics, sources, tone, labels, and metaphors.
I draw on discourse analysis, which related to discursive psychology
(which, in turn, is influenced by rhetorical analysis, constructivism, and
ethnomethodology). My approach relates mainly to the rhetorical analy-
sis tradition in Michael Billig’s (1996) sense, which emphasizes the action-
oriented nature of discourse and sees categorical distinctions such as human
and nonhuman, artificial and natural, child and adult, and representation
and reality as resources people use to say contentious things about the world,
to claim and dispute things, to describe and account for how things are, or
to justify change or continuity (see also Edwards 1995; Edwards and Potter
1992). It means that in discourse, categorical distinctions are deployed ac-
cording to the purpose of the talk rather than as abstract entities that are
valid across contexts.
My main concern for the research was to examine the culturalization
(and therefore ontologization) of immigrants by far-right political forces
in a complex interplay with other actors, how the Far Right’s framing of
immigration as a cultural issue has become the main way the media cover
immigration, and how culturalized discourse enables certain kinds of talk
about immigrants (as evidenced in the interview material) while simultane-
ously constraining the social horizon in terms of how people navigate the
social landscape.
Chapters
This book is concerned with social change. I am interested in how, in fewer

than three decades, political discourse in Denmark moved to the right via
the question of immigration. This was made possible by redefining the
main social antagonism as one between incommensurable cultures rather
than classes. In other words, the way the structure of society is envisioned
changed from class ontology to cultural ontology, rearticulating other di-
visive issues (e.g., gender, sexuality, democracy, and welfare) around a new
antagonistic frontier that takes cultural values and norms as the touchstone
for social harmony in postwar Denmark and Europe.
The first chapter takes as it starting point the rhetorical nature of meaning.
People “give shifting, inconsistent and varied pictures of their social worlds”
(Wetherell and Potter 1992: 171) because they use language to act upon the
world rather than simply express what they think about the world. In other
words, what they “think” about the world changes as the discursive (rhetorical)
context changes. That the world can be described in a wide variety of ways in
ongoing interpretative activities makes it difficult to conceptualize hegemony,
which requires some level of fixity of meaning across the rhetorical contexts.
To identify how and where that fixity happens is the first goal of this chapter.
My argument is that although the meaning of an element is only fixed in its
immediate context, the meaning of social categories repeated across contexts
can only be fixed if they are emptied of content. It is the empty signifier, the
empty character of a social category, that provides a basis for constructing
and maintaining the distinction upon which social antagonisms depend. The
second goal of this chapter is to demonstrate how a fine-grained analysis of ut-
terances can shed light on the ways in which hegemonic articulations may be
reflected in discourse as people orient themselves to social-ontological distinc-
tions using available—and constraining—discursive resources. Qualitative in-
terviews provide material for a rhetorical interpretation (using tools provided
by discursive psychology and Toulmin’s argumentative analysis) that shows the
likely presence of a hegemonic formation operating around the antagonistic
signifiers “Dane” and “Muslim immigrant.”
Chapter 2 begins to explore the nature of discursive change, examining
events in the mid-1980s to identify the social and political dynamics that
opened the way for new articulations about immigration and immigrants
that had the potential to disrupt both discursive order and political consen-
sus. Shortly after the 1983 consensual passage of a humanitarian law grant-
ing immigrants extensive rights, a complex interplay among actors with
access to public discourse—particularly state actors from the mainstream
Introduction 29
Right—resulted in publicity that created a moral panic concerning refugees

seeking asylum in Denmark. The chapter presents an analysis of the press
conventions and the particular rhetorical strategies that made refugees a fo-
cus of increased interest and a challenge to taken-for-granted humanitarian
assumptions. It also examines the more diffused utterances found in letters
to the editor, indexing not only conflicted discourse regarding immigrants
but links to dissatisfaction with the mainstream political order, that is, an
incipient crisis of representation.
Chapter 3 continues the examination of discursive change by present-
ing a close analysis of the nature and effects of a single discursive moment
in September 1986. It argues that Søren Krarup’s two advertisements in a
national newspaper and the responses they sparked had a decisive impact on
consolidating a new set of discursive resources that culturalized the debate
on immigration in general. Krarup successfully created a huge controversy
by calling for a boycott of an iconic humanitarian fundraising campaign.
Krarup’s bold rhetorical strategy sheds light on the ways in which his popu-
list rhetoric managed to turn the brewing moral panic around asylum seekers
into a hegemonic crisis by articulating discontent with Denmark’s immigra-
tion policy as discontent with the representational system (i.e., the political
and cultural elite). His intervention did more than bring immigration to
the center of attention: it created a powerful discursive ground onto which
many actors intentionally entered just to defeat him. During the battle, Kra-
rup’s premises that the future of the nation was the primary worry of the
Danish people, that alien Muslim immigrants posed a threat to the Danish
nation, and that the political order no longer represented the Danish people
went unquestioned. Analyses of newspaper reports show how even Krarup’s
opponents acknowledged that the Danish people were deeply concerned
about the future of the nation and conceded that “we have to listen to peo-
ple.” They also acceded to a culturalized discourse that took for granted his
claim about the unbridgeable cultural difference between immigrants and
Danes. This chapter also examines the period after Krarup’s intervention in
which the new family reunification laws became the new battleground. The
shift in focus from refugees to immigrants meant a simultaneous shift from
humanitarian considerations (for or against refugees) to cultural issues (posi-
tive or negative about immigrants) and therefore contributed immensely to
the culturalization of the immigration debate. By the end of 1987, the debate
about immigration was largely made up of arguments about the significance
of cultural differences.
Chapter 4 takes up the question of how we know the culturalized ontol-
ogy of the social discussed in previous chapters had become hegemonic by
2001 and traces how power now operates through a culturalized discursive
system that antagonizes Muslim immigrants vis-à-vis the Danish nation and
structures the social field along a divide that reorganizes the political spectrum.
As noted above, many consider 2001 the turning point: a right-wing
government came to power after an explicitly anti-Muslim immigration
campaign and immediately placed immigration at the center of its politics
by replacing the Ministry of Interior with a new Ministry for Refugees, Im-
migrants, and Integration. The new ministry was tasked to create policy
initiatives to reinstate the cohesive force of society, which was claimed to
be broken by the cultural practices of Muslim immigrants. The mainstream
Left, which was rapidly losing its voter base over the question of Muslim
immigration to the populist Far Right and the Liberal Party (which had
also adopted the populist rhetoric of the Far Right), responded by adopt-
ing a similar populist rhetoric on cultural values. The immigration debate
rapidly displaced traditional class-based struggles with attention to culture.
Values and norms were presented as the glue that keeps society together.
In other words, the immigration debate produced a new kind of historical
bloc. The hegemonic displacement that has taken place has disoriented the
mainstream Left, which is now in complete disarray.
The chapter also analyzes how the new social imaginary not only shifted
the focus in mainstream political discourse, but also transformed populist
forces from economically ultra-neoliberal positions to a modified welfare de-
fenders, albeit only for ethnic Danes; from being misogynic and homopho-
bic to becoming defenders of gender equality and homosexual rights. One
of the central arguments of this chapter is that gender and sexuality have
become central signifiers of core Danish values and therefore the symbols of
the antagonism between the Danish nation and Muslim immigrants. In the
process, immigrants’ own representations also changed from workers associ-
ations affiliated with progressive parties to religious or cultural associations.
The chapter concludes with a section that demonstrates the limits the
new hegemonic formation imposes on political subjects even when they try
to oppose its ideological propositions. In the new political environment,
both the political establishment and those who claim to challenge the popu-
list Right’s vision of society nevertheless base their arguments on the same
ontology of the social, creating an epistemic collusion between right and left
and even imprisoning the critique within the boundaries of the new ontol-
ogy of the social.
Chapter 1
Discourse and Hegemony
A heated public debate about Danish culture and Muslim immigrants

erupted during “cucumber time”1 in the summer of 2013 and prompted Den-
mark’s Social Democrat prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, to issue
a public statement that “Danish traditions furtively sneak away out of our
institutions” (Berlingske Tidende, September 13, 2013). The debate, dubbed
the “meatball wars,” was about the importance of pork meatballs to Dan-
ish culture and identity. It began after newspapers reported that some day
care centers served only halal meat because the overwhelming majority of the
children were Muslim and did not eat pork. The populist far-right Danish
People’s Party (DPP) complained about such discrimination against Danish
food culture. This was just one recent event in a chain of continuing fierce
debates on Muslim immigrants’ impact on Danish culture and identity.
Preoccupation with the threat to Danish national culture is normally
considered the DPP’s political turf but, in fact, it has been populated by
actors from the Left and Right for a long time. As many scholars have ob-
served, Islam and Muslims have become an imminent threat to the “core
values” of European nations, bringing together diverse groups from across
the political spectrum.2 Denmark is undoubtedly one of the most notable
examples of the preoccupation with the threat posed to national identity
(Akkerman and Hagelund 2007). The Left and Right “converge on the more
or less explicitly stated suspicion that religious Muslims remain outside of a
civility shared by majority of society” (Henkel 2012: 353).
A closer look, however, may complicate the neat image of Danish culture
that such generalizations elicit. For instance, ethnically Danish Anne Vang,
the Social Democratic mayor for children and youth in Copenhagen, argued
that “there are many other ways of being Danish than shoveling meatballs
into your mouth,” whereas Latifa Ljørring, a Muslim city council candidate
31
for the right-wing Liberal Party, argued that she defended meatballs in all
institutions because “we live in Denmark” (Berlingske Tidende, September
13, 2013). It is clear that the sides in the meatball debate did not themselves
neatly correspond to a divide between Danes and Muslims. It is not only
public arguments that complicate the purported cultural divide; the way
people talk and write about “us” and “them” is generally so full of variations
and contradictions that a picture of stable patterns fails to emerge.
This state of affairs raises questions about how to reach conclusions
about local, national, or global discourses about “us” and “them.” How can
we identify who “we” and “they” are—that is, demarcate social or cultural
groups on the basis of belongingness or otherness—when worldviews, be-
liefs, and characteristics attributed to either side of the equation defy dichot-
omous classifications? As scholars from different disciplines have argued, pu-
tative reality—the very objects of discourse—is not as stable as it may seem
and the social is inherently heterogeneous. Yet we manage to talk about the
world in a meaningful way. How can we explain that we talk about society
and politics as more or less stable categories? And, of key interest in this
book, how is it possible to begin conceptualizing hegemony that presup-
poses some degree of stability of the social world and the identity categories
embedded in it?
These are basic questions for this chapter, which seeks to understand if
and how meaning can be fixed within the heterogeneity of discourse, and to
propose a framework that brings theories of hegemony and signification into
relation with fine-grained empirical analysis in order to illustrate that “im-
migrant” has become a culturalized category of common sense and identify
how hegemony seems to work in concrete instances.
Empty Signifier: Common Sense
I argue that if we are able to talk about the world in terms of stable entities
and relate ourselves to one another socially and politically, it is because the
terms and concepts that define those entities are emptied of content. We use
them as empty signifiers. In other words, signifying stability is not a matter
of dichotomous constructions of “us” and “them” with corresponding binary
representations but of relatively abstract ontological distinctions that limit
the discursive resources available for navigating the social landscape.
There is, however, more to this argument: although the ontological enti-
ties are emptied of content when used to generalize across individual in-
Discourse and Hegemony 33
stances of an entity, they can be overdetermined by a limited number of fea-

tures from a particular field of discourse, for example, economy or culture.
“Working class” is mainly an economic category3 that can be described by
its location within relations of production, limiting discursive resources for
talking about the working class. “Immigrant,” on the other hand, can be an
economic or cultural category or both, depending on concrete contexts of
utterance. Nevertheless, in certain historical conjunctures the discursive rep-
ertoires for imagining the category “immigrant” may be limited to the field
of culture through repetitive moments of discourse that direct attention to
culture as the determining field of discursivity.
We can talk about various entities as the most natural things in the world
as long as we keep them at an abstract level and treat them as shared knowl-
edge or, more simply, common sense. For example, we talk about Danes
and Danish culture as commonsensical entities. But as soon as we start talk-
ing about Danes, Danish culture, or Danishness in concrete terms, we find
complication and polysemy: people use the words to signify a wide variety
of features, some of which contradict others. The meaning of the sign seems
to be only temporarily fixed at a concrete moment of communication. This
limits the possibility of proliferation of the signified. Thus, if a durable cat-
egory is to be signified across concrete occasions, its content needs to be
fairly abstract to fulfill this function.
By emptying a category of specific content, we are able to use it to refer
to something beyond our immediate grasp. In this way, “Danish” does not
signify a determinate group of people with particular characteristics com-
mon to the group but “the presence of meaning in opposition to its absence:
a specific institution which has no positive, determinate function—its only
function is the purely negative one of signaling the presence and actuality
of social institution as such” (Žižek 1999). The signifier needs some external
reference, which cannot, for the same reasons, have positive content. “Dan-
ish” and “Dane” each signify a distinction from something else, depending
on concrete context of utterance. For instance, in a rhetorical context Danes
could be distinguished from Germans by assigning opposite characteristics
(e.g., free-mindedness vs. authoritarianism). Neither vague characteriza-
tion in and of itself signifies Danes or Germans. They are simply associated
with Danes and Germans in that particular context; in another context they
could apply interchangeably. The terms signal the distinction, an antagonistic
relationship between two categories, Danes and Germans, constructed as
two incompatible categories by association with incompatible characteristics
flexibly articulated from case to case. The ontological constant is the an-
tagonistic divide. What the empty signifier—“Dane,” “Danishness,” “Dan-

ish culture”—marks is the divide itself, which does not consist of objective
relations between two positive entities.
In this book, these categories are taken as common sense, where com-
mon sense is understood as a discursive resource appealed to and managed
interactionally in concrete instances, not as something identified as a discur-
sive structure.4 Commonsense talk requires some emptying of the signifiers
that mark ontological categories such as “Danish” and the concepts associ-
ated with these categories in order to treat them in a taken-for-granted man-
ner. It is the empty character of the category that stabilizes its meaning but
only to the extent it is treated as taken for granted. As soon as the meaning of
“Danishness” is concretized, however, it becomes contestable. That points to
continuous hegemonic struggle. Each utterance invests “Dane” with a par-
ticular meaning that subverts its emptiness and makes impossible its closure.
Richard Jenkins’s 1999 study of how Danishness was invoked in politi-
cal debate about the European Union offers clues as to how the process
of speaking about Danes at an abstract level works when each moment of
utterance renders it open to destabilization. He studied letters to the editor
in a small-town newspaper during the referendum debate on the Treaty on
European Union. He found that many contributors easily referred to Dan-
ishness as if everybody knew what it was. “On closer inspection, however,
they did not always agree about what it was that they had in common. It is
the assumption of Danish cultural homogeneity—and the mobilization of
that idea as a political and rhetorical resource—that we are talking about
here, rather than its actual existence” (Jenkins 1999: 131). He showed not
only how differently—and in contradictory ways—Danishness could be de-
scribed but also how many characteristics assigned to Danishness could be
used to argue either for or against the European Union. The commonsense
character of “Danishness” was maintained despite its inherently polysemic
nature through some external reference that helped to sustain Danishness
as an ontological category. As Jenkins observed, various external threats to
Danishness (Germany, immigrants, cultural and political elites) were con-
jured up regularly for both sides of the argument (133).5 It is not the assign-
ment of specific characteristics that comprises the category of Danishness
but its difference: it is the antagonistic relationship between some external
categories and Danes. This enables people to speak generally about it.
To exist, Danishness needs an externality. At the same time, the neces-
sary external threat prevents Danishness from being full and in harmony
with itself. It can never achieve complete closure or positivity. As Laclau and
Mouffe (2001: 125) argue, the antagonistic other prevents me from being
totally myself, as it cannot achieve a full presence: “Its objective being is a

symbol of my non-being and, in this way, it is overflowed by a plurality of
meanings which prevent its being fixed as full positivity.” Michael Nebeling
Petersen (2013) suggests, for example, that homosexuality has become one of
the symbols of Danish cultural identity, but the social coherence that is sup-
posed to be therefore marked cannot fully be achieved because of the threat
from homophobic Muslims. It is indeed because of the imagined threat that
homosexuals came to be included in the collectivity. In other words, Dan-
ishness is the name of the desire to constitute a totality rather than the total-
ity itself. This explains Jenkins’s observation about the great emphasis on the
cultural homogeneity of Denmark.6 Danishness is the name of the attempt
to constitute a cultural homogeneity that can never be achieved because it
can only negatively be signified through the presence of an other that pre-
vents the fullness of the Danish identity. Without an other, there would only
be Danes, and Danishness would lose its meaning. The antagonistic other
constantly threatening the social formation has to be continuously produced
in discourse.
There is, of course, also no positive content attached to the social other.
As this study will show, the antagonistic divide, once established, can be
maintained and naturalized through politico-rhetorical moves that repeat-
edly reproduce the divide through a persistent focus—via repetitive chains
of putative crises—on the alien cultural practices of immigrants. The di-
chotomized social space around two poles, “us” and “them,” functions as
a magnetic focal point, pulling certain meanings toward itself and leaving
others, potentially subversive, out of what Laclau and Mouffe (2001) call
“equivalential chains.” As Laclau (2008: 74) argues, “All social elements . . .
locate their identities around either of these two poles, whose internal com-
ponents . . . [are] in a mere relation of equivalence.”
Laclau and Mouffe rarely get their hands dirty with hands-on analysis
of how their theory of hegemony and discourse applies to what is happen-
ing. On the other hand, the discourse analytical approaches, particularly
discursive psychology, that influence this study’s analyses of empirical ma-
terial rarely lift the gaze from the immediate to look at how larger con-
texts (e.g., the social imaginary of the ontological structure of society) not
explicitly formulated in the course of interaction may enable or constrain
talk or text. Yet Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of discourse shares many ba-
sic assumptions of discursive psychology concerning the nature of interac-
tion, language, and social life, including a rhetorical approach to language
and meaning. While discursive psychology tends to focus on the here and
now of discourse, Laclau and Mouffe focus on how social life is organized
around certain moments of discourse that both produce and constrain the
way social identities are envisioned and talked about. They are interested in
the structuring effects of power, a virtual absence in discursive psychology.7
Conjoined with the discourse analytical approaches, Laclau and Mouffe’s
discourse theory offers a theoretical model that attempts to understand how
movements, classes, and other types of social identities are established and
sustained over time as relatively stable entities despite the inherently rhetori-
cal and contingent nature of discourse, which they refer to as “the openness
of the social” or “radical relationalism.”
Because discourse is episodic and full of variations, is it possible to ana-
lyze hegemonic formations through an analysis of written or spoken texts?
My answer is a careful yes. The ways in which hegemonic articulations are
stabilized and institutionalized are reflected in discourse in the sense that
people orient themselves to the abstract socio-ontological categories their
arguments refer to. They talk about social division both in concrete and in
abstract ways. While concrete talk is full of variations, speakers often resort
to abstract discourse to fix the meaning of a social division. In this process,
some discursive resources are more readily available than others or are con-
sidered more appropriate because they are repeatedly used in the media.
An analysis that is sensitive to variations can demonstrate which discursive
resources are treated as more appropriate in which kinds of situations, and
how they may indicate hegemonic articulations.
Heterogeneity and Culturalized Discourse
An analysis that is attuned to Laclau and Mouffe’s framework, and that is

sensitive to the contexts of utterances, offers insight into different versions
of reality embodied in stretches of discourse, and therefore also offers insight
into hegemonic articulations as they actually play out. “Hegemonic articu-
lation” in my theoretical universe means the consistent ways in which we
imagine social and political identities and the relationships between them.
My particular concern here is the way a culturalized ontology of the social
simultaneously enables and constrains the discursive repertoire for talking
about society.
In a study with many affinities to this one, Hervik (2004; 2011) notices
that a key feature of neoracist discourse, as expressed in interviews with
Danes, is the construction of a rigid dichotomy between Danes and foreign-
ers, to the point that it is unbridgeable.8 The cultural distinction between
“we” and “they” is present in all interviews even when the question is about
a specific person. When one participant is asked about Wilson Kipketer, the
Kenya-born, black track-and-field athlete who won the 800-meter world

championship for Denmark, he leaps automatically into “we” and “they,” as
if everyone would know which people he is referring to: “They can do some-
thing we can’t. They are, they are good at playing cricket and we don’t even
know the rules” (Søren, 27, carpenter/student) (Hervik 2011: 96; emphasis
added). When the same person is asked about the headscarf, he switches
from a gendered pronoun to the unspecified “it”: “I think it doesn’t make
sense. This is about keeping ‘it’ [cultural difference] within the four walls of
the home” (96). Hervik concludes that the tendency to treat “we” and “they”
categories as taken-for-granted common sense is salient in most interviews,
as in a statement by a young teacher: “Even when they try their hardest to
do like the Danes do—in order to be accepted, then that is still never suf-
ficient. They can’t all of sudden have blond hair like the Danes” (Helle, 25,
teacher) (97). Hervik notes that regardless of the concreteness of the ques-
tioners’ terms, participants immediately turn to the general, abstract stock of
“they” without specifying who “they” are, indicating commonsense reason-
ing. Such findings are completely in line with this analysis and replicate the
experience with my interview sample, where categories such as “Danes” and
“immigrants/Muslims” are persistently used as empty commonsense entities
able to function as points of reference for identification.
Hervik makes an unwarranted leap, however, to a broader conclusion
that the categorical distinction operates through two sets of mutually ex-
clusive characteristics. To support his argument, he uses a table from Ulla
Fadel (1999) that shows the dichotomous character of the distinction (see
table 1.1).
I am not sure that Hervik’s data support such a conclusion, because I do
Table 1.1. Danish and Non-Danish Attributes

Foreigners (immigrants) Danes
Group-oriented Individualist
Live in large families Live in nuclear families
Have many children Have few children
Exploit society Contribute to society
Dirty/smell bad Clean/do not smell
Loud/bad-tempered Quiet/calm
Fight/kill each other Talk/compromise
Poor upon arrival Rich before immigrants arrived
Submissive to religious and moral doctrines Casual relationship to religion
Traditional, old-fashioned Modern
Suppress women Women emancipated
Women wear headscarves and long dresses Women wear bikinis or go topless on beaches
Source: From Hervik 2011: 97.
not have access to the interview material. A closer look at the three excerpts
above, however, reveals them to be responses to specific questions, which
means that they cannot be readily generalized to the overall ontological cat-
egories except by taking them out of context. The first statement equates
“them” to sportsmen precisely because the question was about the athlete
Wilson Kipteker. The respondent seems to describe “them” positively by as-
signing the cultural competence of knowing rules. Taking such statements
out of their interactional contexts makes it difficult to see the rhetorical
work a respondent is accomplishing. It is, therefore, difficult to see what
triggers the leap to talking about “their” competence in cricket when the
question is about an athlete. In the second excerpt, the same respondent is
asked about the Muslim headscarf. Instead of talking about the category of
“they,” he switches to using “it” to signify the headscarf in the first use, cul-
tural difference in the second. This is probably a choice that makes his nega-
tive evaluation less connected to the group than to the practice itself. What
is clear is that he is not talking about the same category of people in the two
excerpts. Black athletes from Kenya or cricket players from India have noth-
ing in common with Muslim women with headscarves. What binds them
together is the topic itself (immigrants). The same kind of variation is also
evident in the third excerpt, which describes “them” in a positive manner
as victims of racial discrimination. In this context, “they” are the ones who
have a darker skin (or hair) color.
There is nothing that binds these three notions of “them” into a cat-
egory except the pronoun “they” knitting together the category. It is clear
that there are Danes who have competence in sports or cricket and many
immigrants have never heard of cricket. The three notions of “them” are
produced in interaction. If both “they” and “we” are filled with particular
content when uttered, the particular content cannot defensibly be taken out
of the interactional contexts to appear as generalizations about immigrants
and Danes, respectively.
I produced a table with the same dichotomous division of characteristics
using my own sample of semistructured qualitative interviews with ordinary
Danes conducted in the summer of 2001 (see table 1.2).9
The statements in table 1.2 are not generalized in the same way as in
Fadel’s table because it was difficult to turn contextually responsive utter-
ances into abstract general opinions about immigrants or Danes. The state-
ments were made answering questions and responding to cues the inter-
viewer provided in an ongoing conversation. For instance, the statement
“Muslim women in Denmark are not allowed to do many things on their
own” was uttered in a context in which the respondent was trying to explain
why crime rates were relatively low among Muslim women, and functioned
to avoid a sweeping generalization about immigrants by a respondent in-

vested in questioning the representation of immigrants as linked to high
crime rates. Without statistics to hand, knowledge of the low representation
of women was a resource useful for challenging statistics, as extract 1 shows.
Extract 1
Uhm, you gradually become so affected by all those statistics you get
thrown at you. One of the things I pay closer attention to, it is that
the least criminal group in Denmark, it is the Muslim women. It
goes, of course, without saying that it is so, (.)10 what shall I say, (.) so
strict regulations for what they are culturally allowed at all to do on
their own, but, but this is something you seldom hear, isn’t it? This is
one of those things that you can look up for, like, weird, isn’t it? But
you hear (.) you [long pause] . . .
(Birgitte, Ph.D. in natural sciences, researcher
in a research institute; translated by the author)
Table 1.2. Statements about Immigrants and Danes

Immigrants Danes
Do not speak Danish properly. Language is important for Danish
Youth give themselves Danish names to identity.
avoid discrimination (on the phone, It is difficult to understand Danes from
implies that “they” speak Danish the west coast.
fluently). It is not in Danish culture to
A Turk is more open. discriminate.
They are reserved, maybe because of We are tolerant and hospitable.
religion. We are not open to other cultures.
They speak loudly and are noisy. We are open to the world.
They don’t respect women in general. We close our doors and don’t even speak
Women in family are valued highly. with our neighbors.
Muslim women in DK are not allowed to We are discreet and restrained.
do many things on their own. Danes respect and understand people.
In Danish view, Islam and culture are the We have sexual emancipation.
same. Christendom binds us together in
They want to do something with their European culture.
lives. They want to do something with their
They do not want education. lives.
They have a very strong faith (religion). We have free will, we are rational.
We have to remember that where they We are law-abiding and not corrupt.
come from people are not as law- We don’t pay taxes either but avoid them
abiding and decent as us. less than other Europeans.
They don’t pay taxes.
I will return to this interview in detail below, but for now it is important
to note that the statement about Muslim women is not a generalized state-
ment about their nature but a reflexive moment that assesses the strength
of the speaker’s argument. It is brought in as a rebuttal to a potential objec-
tion to her premise that culture does not make immigrants criminal. As
such, it has a clear rhetorical function in her account, even though it is not
a well-thought-out or well-executed rhetorical move but introduced in a
haphazard manner, just as the pauses indicate. The speaker, Birgitte, is chal-
lenging the idea that immigrants are culturally conditioned to be criminal,
but she immediately weakens her own argument by culturalizing her own
rebuttal by referring to what Muslim women are “culturally allowed to do.”
The repeated “but, but” indicates that she has problems relating back to her
main argument that culture does not make immigrants criminal once she
has offered her own cultural explanation.
It is clear that descriptions and attributes are used in a flexible manner
to establish one’s ethos, support or undermine claims, or defend or criticize
actions or practices; they are not direct reflections of what one “really” may
think about a group or an issue. Even this little extract offers contradictory
postures on culture: on the one hand, it is a tacit challenge, deducible from
the context, to the idea that culture determines behavior; on the other hand,
it is an explicit argument that reculturalizes and essentializes immigrants to
explain why immigrant women may not be as criminal as immigrant men.
Further, unlike Fadel’s table, mine shows that the same characteristics can
be attributed to both groups and that opposite characteristics can be used to
describe the same group. Danes and immigrants are simultaneously described
as reserved and open, immigrants as respectful and disrespectful of women,
capable and incapable of speaking proper Danish.11 One of the respondents
explained that language is important for Danish identity when asked about
Danish culture but expressed, during the same interview, a desire for subtitles
when Danes from the west coast are interviewed on television.
The only way to construct a binary table is by taking single phrases or sen-
tences out of their rhetorical contexts to present them as general descriptions
of the categories of Danes and the immigrants. My sample is full of what one
easily could recognize as “prejudiced”12 expressions. One respondent says:
“You think of criminality, you think of immigrants,” but unlike Birgitte,
who attributes this tendency to the selective nature of statistics and media
repetition of these statistics, this respondent explains immigrants’ criminal-
ity with conditions in their homeland: “I also think that we should remem-
ber where they come from—a place where they are not as law-abiding and
decent as most of us Danes are.” According to another interviewee, “They
have to learn that you do not steal and you do not rape young women.”
One respondent says, “Here we don’t kill [people]. We don’t do such things
in Denmark. It is illegal and it is punishable.” As discussed below, Birgitte
makes a similar statement about values: “My set of values tells me that you
don’t kick down an old lady.”
In most cases, these utterances are not challenged by the interviewer, ei-
ther for interactional reasons or because they sound commonsensical. If they
were challenged, it is difficult to imagine that the interviewees would insist
that all people who are not Danes are law-breaking, rape young women, or
kill people, and that these acts are legal in their home countries, all the while
insisting that Danes never commit such criminal acts. It is easy to see how
tempting it is to read expressions of a prejudiced mind-set and present them
as dichotomic constructions of Danes and immigrants. What is there to talk
about, after all, if we can only understand people’s statements in their local
contexts, which are episodic and ultimately subversive to the notion of gen-
eralized categories of the social? I believe that the need to generalize about
discourse is behind this common practice of attributing opposite charac-
teristics to both sides of the equation of “us” and “them.” As Hervik notes,
respondents easily turn to “us” and “them” and do often present accounts
as generalized statements about these categories. It is the persistent use of
“they” and “we” distinction that creates the appearance that people always
express their opinions about the general category of immigrants and Danes.
For many social scientists, the production of social power is assumed to
be predicated on representations of social groups on the basis of race, ethnic-
ity, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or social class, and the
analytical focus is on clarifying the links between particular linguistic real-
izations and larger constructs such as ideologies or dominant discourses.13
My perspective makes it difficult to take the particular linguistic realizations
(e.g., words, terms, renditions, or categorical statements) at face value as
indicators of power relations or a hegemonic formation. I suggest instead an
eclectic analytical approach that pays more attention to how the imagined
ontological structure of society enables as well as limits the availability of
discursive resources for talking about social identity categories. My argu-
ment in this book is that in the discursive environment that developed in
Denmark after 1986, social divisions came to be imagined as based on es-
sential cultural differences often articulated in contradictory ways in actual
discourse. The identity categories can only be stabilized across contexts if
emptied of content.
A longer extract from the interview with Birgitte enables us to see her
statement about immigrants’ violent nature—surely recordable as racist and
prejudiced on a dichotomous list—in its larger context, providing a deeper

understanding. This interview took place not long after publicity about a
violent attack against an old Danish woman by young men identified as
immigrants. Concrete cases reported in the media, such as this attack, are
powerful factual resources for talking about immigrants in general terms
because these cases, often explained with reference to immigrants’ cultural
background, produce immigrants as an abstract cultural category as opposed
to Danes, rather than as concrete human beings in various types of relation-
ships with their surroundings. This is part of the context imported into the
response to the fourth question.
Extract 2
Q1: But when we speak about problems and all those things, do you
think of them [immigrants] altogether or do you think of particu-
lar ones?
R: But then again, I think this problem is related to a particular social
group. And it is not the average. I am sure that it isn’t a coinci-
dence who have the good social opportunities and who have the
bad social opportunities. I believe an American who comes here
with a medical education has better opportunities, also for better
social terms, whereas if you have an equivalent background from
Bosnia, there you don’t have as good opportunities.
Q2: It is about discrimination, you think?
R: Prejudice. I think again it is self-perpetuating. Again something
like, how many of them are there? I think so. How much have we
heard of problems with American migrants, and how much have
we heard of problems with second-generation Pakistani, Turkish
migrants? [. . . ]
Q4: You said “those halal hippies” [a derogatory term coined by the
immigrant politician Naser Khader meaning politically correct
but irresponsible liberals]. That’s what I wanted to ask you, that
they have “phobia against conflict.” For instance, they don’t want
to discuss whether refugees and immigrants should be expelled
when they commit criminal acts. Who did you think of there?
Did you think of someone who seeks asylum or the youths in
Vollsmose [a neighborhood in Odense with a concentration of
immigrants] or—
R: I am thinking especially those youths in Vollsmose, where there
were two groups of opinions about how it should be handled,
right? One of them, it was we simply shouldn’t touch this at all—

“away, on a deserted island, home, away from this country!” Or
“Just decapitate them!” This was one side of it. The other side it
was “Send them on holiday, a holiday of adventure of one month
in the Bahamas with some pedagogical support and let’s convert
them!” Right? I mean, there are somehow these two sides. On
the one side you have the hawks [those who advocate tightening
immigration policy], and then you have those Naser Khader calls
halal hippies on the other side.
Q5: I understand it so that halal hippies wouldn’t debate at all whether
they should be expelled.
R: Not that they won’t debate, but they just take—they have just the
fear of contact to sanction.
Q6: How do you think one should sanction?
R: [Sigh]. Again, it is difficult to have the right answer to this. I again
think that you have to look at what they would respect. What
is it—again in their set of cultural values, which is also mixed?
There are things that are Danish, there are things they have gotten
from their parents and grandparents during their upbringing at
home. What is it that they would respect? What is it that would
make them behave properly? I can’t judge it. There isn’t of course
an easy answer to that. Or so somebody would have found it, and
done it. But (.) It wasn’t an especially clear answer.
Q7: Can you expel them, for instance?
R: I think it is difficult to expel some young people who if their par-
ents stay here in the country, and they are maybe eighteen years
old or seventeen, they cannot be expelled, children whose family
is in this country. I mean, it is difficult. On the other hand you
have to sanction strongly, especially if it is repeatedly and you
have—I mean also that you must—we have some rules that you
have to submit yourself to. My set of values says that you don’t
kick down an old lady. That is, there are, there are some—I can
understand that groups of seventeen-year-old Danes and immi-
grants may fight over, what do I know, their attitude toward girls
or something else. But that you—[long pause]
Q8: Do you think it has something to do with their ethnicity?
R: No, I don’t think it has. I think it has something to do with being
really, really deprived. Of course, you also have Danes who do
such things. But there are probably—there it is pushed to the
extreme because they are under pressure from forty sides. That’s
what I mean them—if you have immigrant background, you are

under pressure on many fronts. It isn’t just skin color or language,
your name in itself. I mean, if you call—if you call with your
name and want to rent a room, it is easy for Niels Hansen [a typi-
cal Danish name] to rent a room than it is with your name to rent
a room. It is so simple. There is—there have been research on this
that I have seen, [laughs].
Q9: You said that it is maybe their culture [unclear]. Where do you
see the biggest difference?
R: On what? (.) There, I mean if you are a second-generation mi-
grant, that is, you grew up in this country and—then you have a
culture that is mixed.
Q10: I know that. But what is the Danish, what is the non-Danish
for you?
R: It depends again on what the non-Danish—what it is the back-
ground they come from? Again, I don’t think you can generalize.
I mean, I believe also that, heh, there may be—of course indi-
vidual within families. I mean, there will be families where you (.)
have another—after two generations in a country have another
cultural standpoint than other families that have lived here in two
generations. It is extremely difficult [long pause] to express a sim-
ple formulation on, “Well, bilingual background, then you have
those and those cultural problems!” I don’t think you can say that.
My first observation is that the interview moves in a circular and contra-

dictory fashion. Contradictions and the circularity are results of the limits of
the social imaginary. The respondent is intellectual and reflexive; she is tuned
in to the notion of prejudice and often reflects upon what might possibly
be seen as her own prejudices with short anecdotes during the interview.
Although reflexivity may be heightened by my presence as an immigrant and
social researcher, it also helps construct Birgitte’s ethos as a rational person
who is able to distinguish between her own possible prejudice and real prob-
lems in the world. It is in the description of that reality that talk becomes
circular in the sense that, despite attempts to deconstruct immigrants as a
culturally defined group, she cannot move out of the realm of culture.
The extract is taken out of a larger discussion about “real problems” and
what one can do about them. The real problems, taken to be independent
of the speaker’s mind, are criminal acts by second-generation immigrants.14
In answer to my first question, she defines immigrants as a social group
characterized by their marginalized position within society. Marginalization
is caused by Danes’ prejudices,15 a view she repeats later (in response to Q8)
with confidence. Both answers are direct responses to my questions that
encourage her to denounce cultural definitions that otherwise might imply
prejudiced thinking that link criminality to people’s ethnic background. A
question such as “Do you think it [criminality] has something to do with
their ethnicity?” would in most cases cue the respondents to become sensi-
tive to the issue of prejudice. That is what happens here.
Despite her deliberate efforts to deculturalize criminality among young
immigrants, Birgitte reverts to cultural explanations in her answer to ques-
tion 7, where she says, “My set of values says that you don’t kick down
an old lady.” Why the circularity and contradiction, as she simultaneously
denounces cultural explanations and explains a violent incident with immi-
grants’ value system as the main culprit?
The answer may be in the dilemma she creates for herself. On the one
hand, she deconstructs criminality statistics by adjusting them for other fac-
tors, which implies that the problems with criminality are not related to
culture or ethnicity. On the other hand, we have a “real problem” and real
problems need real solutions. The problems, however, have been repeatedly
defined as cultural in Denmark’s public discourse. The dilemma is produced
because she wants to be able to talk about these real problems and sanctions
against this group of youngsters without being identified as prejudiced, as
her phrase “fear of contact” (Q5) indicates. To achieve this effect, she con-
structs a dichotomy between hawks (i.e., prejudiced people who want to
expel these youth groups) and “halal hippies.”16 The dichotomy enables her
to distance herself from both sides and establish her position as a balanced,
moderate one.
Talk is flexible. What one says to establish one’s ethos in one context may
work against one’s position in another. When I ask how one can sanction
this group of youths (Q6), the dichotomy creates a problem: Birgitte has
to produce a concrete answer that is moderate and properly distanced from
both sides of the debate as constructed by her, and one that is not linked
to culture. She has put herself into a difficult situation. She cannot say im-
migrants should be sent “away, on a deserted island, home, away from coun-
try!” which would put her in the same category as prejudiced persons; on the
other hand, she needs to produce something more concrete than those who
say, “Send them to the Bahamas with some pedagogical support,” avoiding
discussion of the real problems. Because of the dilemma, she has tremendous
difficulty suggesting any concrete solutions.
I suspect the challenge of proposing concrete but noncultural solutions
is related to a second dilemma, which is not as explicit as the first. Her
definition of the problem as rooted in social conditions (i.e., deprivation, in

response to Q8) presupposes social solutions. “Immigrant youth,” however,
is a cultural demarcation, and a cultural category demands cultural solutions
specific to the group persistently defined by cultural characteristics. Thus, it
is the category “immigrant youth” that forces the conversation into a circular
pattern difficult to break out of. First, Birgitte relates criminality to margin-
alization and discrimination (in response to Q1)—parameters external to the
group. If one accepts this as the premise, then the focus should stay on social
structures, but this could put her in the “halal hippie” category, those who
often are accused of finding excuses for immigrants in the name of tolerance.
At the same time, she insists that something should be done (“You have to
sanction strongly,” in response to Q7).
Something should be done about what? Crime or immigrants? It is pre-
cisely here that discourse on immigrants becomes tricky and slippery, not
only in the context of this particular interaction but in general. Once paired
with immigrants, crime becomes more than simple crime; it refers back to
its predicate, which renders it a specific phenomenon. Specific problems re-
quire specific solutions. But when Birgitte tries to avoid defining immigrants
by their culture, she has a problem. If criminality is related to external social
factors such as poverty and discrimination, how can we sanction against
the group instead of focusing on the social and political structures that the
problem is rooted in or make them respect rules and behave properly (Q6)?
She is aware of these contradictions, as indicated by her last sentence in this
response: “But (.) it wasn’t an especially clear answer.” It would be a great
help if the transcription were able to show intonation, here indicating an
attitude of having given up.17 Birgitte’s feeling for the dilemma becomes
clearer in the next answer (Q7), which ends with an interrupted sentence
and long pause immediately after she implies some fundamental cultural
differences with reference to values.
The statement “My set of values says that you don’t kick down an old
lady” has to be understood in the context of this dilemmatic situation rather
than as a simple reflection of a “prejudiced” mind. Rather, it seems to be
a resource brought in while navigating between hawks and halal hippies.
However, once the focus is on the group and their actions, solutions also
need to be related to the group because there is no other commonsense way
of imagining immigrants other than as a cultural group, culturalizing dis-
course regardless of one’s intentions.
Birgitte’s statement about values responds to a well-publicized incident
around the time of the interview. In the ensuing public debate, many puta-
tive experts weighed in with cultural explanations about violence by immi-
grant youth. Reference to the incident pushes Birgitte back into the sphere
of cultural explanations. She immediately becomes aware of it, as indicated
by the interrupted sentence: “That is, there are, there are some—.” That
young Danes or immigrants fight over girls is understandable, but violence
against an old lady does not fall within the definition of ordinary youth
culture. It must be something specific to that group.18
The tension between Birgitte’s attempts to deconstruct the cultural cat-
egory of immigrants and the difficulty of describing them in other terms is
the predicament of the hegemonic social imaginary. The cultural category
of immigrants is not only the result of the particular interaction. It is a
pervasive feature of the discourse on immigration to the point that cultural
inflection has become the common stock of the social imaginary in gen-
eral. Demarcating a social group with specific problems—social, cultural, or
medical—implies a targeted effort focused on roots of the problem specific
to this group. As I will show, the discursive resources for the demarcation
are often limited to a repertoire of cultural characteristics made pervasive by
recurrent public debates around particular incidents consistently linked to
immigrants’ cultural background. Attempts to counter the cultural explana-
tions of criminality bounce back from the notion of immigrants as a cultural
category.
We may say that criminality is a social problem, but if the sole access to
the social is through the cultural ontology of the social that limits the social
horizon, we immediately face an impasse. That is what is happening here.
What makes “kicking down an old lady” into a specific cultural phenom-
enon is not the act itself but the fact that it is locked into a relationship with
an ontological category that produces its meaning. If challenged, Birgitte
would likely rebut the conclusion: no culture makes one kick an old lady,
and Danish youth might well do the same thing. In the following, Else (67,
retired) refers to the same incident:
Extract 3
R: Now what I am saying here is not coming out anywhere, is it?

I: No, it’s not.
R: That I won’t suddenly have a lot of Turks standing here—and
beating me up?
I: [Laughs]. You don’t have to be afraid of it. No—because Turks are
that kind who beat people?
R: What?
I: Are Turks the kind who beat people?
R: No, but you don’t have to say much to them, those young people.
But the Danes are also like that. Then they get involved in fights.
Take Vollsmose. The police become afraid. They couldn’t cope
with it.
I: Is it a particular incident you are thinking of in Vollsmose?
R: It was that thing that they—they knock on the door and then just
walk in and then steal from an older lady. And then they kick the
door in—Well, I could tell you about many incidents. It hasn’t
been so fun out there, but they are about to gain control over it
now. Then there was somebody who got beaten up dead, not dead
but was almost dead—had to escape, go underground. And it
doesn’t look like anything, when it is our country.
In this rare example, the interviewer challenges the respondent about the
prejudiced implications of what she is saying. The response is a rejection of
the implied conclusion, “No, but you don’t have to say much to them. . . .
Danes are also like that.” In this case, however, reflexivity falls short of re-
tracting what was said before. Instead, the concrete incident is used to ex-
plain why she is afraid of “those young people.” Concrete incidents are taken
to produce factual data and enable respondents to speak about prejudice-
relevant issues without appearing prejudiced. In this extract, the concrete
incident is used to justify the generalized conclusion that immigrants, as an
abstract category, have a violent nature. In fact, in the next extract from the
same interview, Else becomes more reflexive:
Extract 4
R: Why should we have them [immigrants] all here and feed? We—
others, we have been working, earning money, and paying taxes
all these years, and what do they do? It pours down with cuts and
cuts on us—because they [immigrants] come here.
I: Do you have any personal experiences with it?
R: No, on the contrary I only have positive [experiences]. Because I
go to a night school, and there are many of them, too, and they
want to do something with their lives. And they are very compe-
tent.
The sudden change in the characterization of immigrants from negative to

positive happens several times during the interview. But it is not only the
characterization of the category that changes but the very category of im-
migrants itself. The first is an abstract category of immigrants as a burden on

the welfare system, which Else takes those she considers real Danes to have
created. The second is a concrete category of people in night school, who
have personal perseverance and competence. The negativity of the first cat-
egory is tied to the economic consequences of immigrants’ presence in Den-
mark rather than to their character. The interesting part is that in her first
answer, Else describes immigrants as an antagonistic category: undeserving
aliens, they prevent Danes from enjoying the system they have built up;
they cause Danes’ welfare benefits to be constantly eroded. It is only at this
abstract, conceptual level that Else can treat immigrants as a force preventing
enjoyment of harmony and rewards. The antagonistic “they” indeed creates
in reverse and sustains the pure idea of a “we” whose communitarian fullness
is absent as the result of that subversive force (Laclau 1996: 42). Laclau and
Mouffe (2001: 7) argue that this hegemonic identity alludes to an absent
totality rather than signifying any positive content. Of course, depending on
the rhetorical context of a given speech act, abstract notions may be brought
in to describe individual cases and vice versa.
In Danish political discourse, as I will show in chapter 4, the immigrant
threat to the welfare system is repeatedly articulated as a matter of cultural
differences by the Far Right and by the mainstream Left and Right. The
welfare system itself is often associated with a mythical Danish cultural ho-
mogeneity. Thus, the welfare system is presented as the result of historicized
ethnic solidarity rather than as the result of decades-long political struggles
based on class solidarity. As a consequence, the erosion of the welfare system
is not tied to the neoliberal policies of the various coalition governments
since the 1980s but to immigration associated with the destruction of the
national state, in a signifying structure where immigration is symptomatic
of globalization and Europeanization. As extract 3 demonstrates, this is
only possible when “immigrant” is an abstract category functionally associ-
ated with preventing the Danish nation from living in harmony with itself.
When it comes to the concrete, individual immigrants, the attributes are not
as clear-cut as at the abstract level.
What makes interactions flow as if speakers are talking about the same
category is the use of the pronoun “they.” It is the naming that binds hetero-
geneous and contradictory elements within a single category. Else’s “they”
shifts as the result of the different local contexts in which immigrants are the
topic. The first context is general political debate, where she has sympathies
for the populist far-right Danish People’s Party. The second context is her
own immediate connections, where her orientation is not toward political
discourse.
As Wetherell (1998: 401) observed, the flexibility and openness of the

social arise “because of the reflexivity built into social interaction and the
emergent and transformative properties of that interaction.” This type of
seamless shift from one categorization to another is a typical feature of any
text, making it problematic to generalize about categories across texts. This
is not an argument against the common observation that racism and Is-
lamophobia are widespread phenomena in Denmark and elsewhere. On
the contrary, we can analyze the function of these seamless shifts that, in
particular texts, may display consistent patterns, including justifications of
discrimination. Rather, my argument is that the stability of the categories is
not a matter of binary representations but the effect of abstract ontological
distinctions that limit discursive resources available for navigating the social
landscape.
Another example from my interviews elaborates this point. In this ex-
cerpt, immigrants’ cultural values are explicitly tied to their violent nature.
If discourse is inherently rhetorical (i.e., goal-oriented rather than expressing
mind-sets), we should be able to analyze the argumentative texture of the
social fabric through an analytical model that explicates the basic premises
that license the kind of inferences that can be made. Such basic premises
are usually treated as established, commonsense knowledge, which does not
need further discussion. To this end, I introduce an argumentative model
by Toulmin (1958). His model enables us to detect how discourse on immi-
grants is informed by basic assumptions about the essential role of culture in
immigrants’ conduct.
Toulmin’s model is built upon the Aristotelian syllogism, which has three
components: a minor premise (singular premise), a major premise (universal
premise), and a conclusion. The classic example is the following:
Socrates is a man (minor/singular premise).

All men are mortal (major/universal premise).
So Socrates is mortal (conclusion).
In this example, we have information for all three components of the schema.
According to the model, the major premise provides a certainty that proves
the truth-value of the argument.
Toulmin suggests instead a fourfold model, called a T-schema, where
the conclusion (C) remains but the major premise is replaced by the term
“warrant” (W), and the minor premise by “data” (D), and “backing” (B) is
the fourth component. The difference from Aristotle’s model is that “war-
rants” are not like premises that provide the facts for the argumentation but
are themselves subject to questioning and have to justify their authority. A

warrant is an inference-license that legitimizes the step from data (D) to
conclusion (C) but is relatively local and cannot necessarily be carried over
to the next argument, where it may be that an opposite warrant is used to
link evidence (data) to conclusion. “Backing,” in turn, is used to support
and explain the warrant and may be carried out by referring to taxonomic
classifications, statutes, laws, or statistical statements that are more readily
accepted and can be used at a more general level. With this model in mind,
let us look at an example that would not be considered controversial if only
the conclusion were explicit:
Whales give birth (D).

Mammals are birth-giving animals (W).
So whales are mammals (C).
The argument can be set up in a following T-schema (fig. 1.1).
Fig. 1.1. T-schema (Whales = mammals)
Backing is not explicated here, but it would be a reference to an encyclope-

dic entry or a taxonomic classification in a biology book. There is, of course,
nothing wrong with this reasoning as long as the warrant is unquestioned.
In fact, warrants are often conceded without challenge and their backing is
understood. However, not only the warrant but also the very category of
mammals can be challenged as a valid taxonomy to classify living organisms.
In three-line argument above, the warrant has a scientific authority about it

and would almost never be disputed. Yet even a slightly different dictionary
definition of mammals can make this otherwise robust argument unstable.19
According to Toulmin, the rationality of an argument cannot be assessed
by its truth-value. Rather, rationality is field-variant and depends on the pos-
sibility of establishing inference-warrants in the relevant field, or, in other
words it depends on “to what extent there are already established warrants
in science, in ethics or morality, in law, art-criticism, character-judging, or
whatever it may be; and how far the procedures for deciding what principles
are sound, and what warrants are acceptable, are generally understood and
agreed” (Toulmin 1958: 176).
In the following extract, Mikkel (32, student) describes immigrants as ag-
gressive and violent people. The established warrant that makes the inference
about immigrants’ violent nature on the basis of a single episode of violence
would be the essential role culture plays in human conduct, or, in other
words, culture determines behavior. This warrant is supported by the cul-
tural ontology of the social, without which it would be difficult to navigate
the social landscape. My analysis also draws on terminology from discursive
psychology in addition to Toulmin’s terms.20
Extract 5
I: Did you experience problems with immigrants?

R: Nooo, I can’t say I did. I mean, no, I didn’t. It—it, uh, it was, no!
Then I would have remembered it, right? It—it is—but there
is much, some of them are a little dominant in the streets, right?
Yeah, I mean, I did, I didn’t, it wasn’t myself, right? And it . . . I
wouldn’t want to judge anybody in that case, but I was in a dance
club where there was, uh, a friend of mine. He knew, uh, yeah, he
knows a biker, right? And uh, this biker and some of his friends,
they had probably provoked some Turks, right? And then, uh, one
of the Turks, he hit the biker on the head with a bottle, right? And
it it was, you know, it was, I am not saying that there is something
he can’t, I mean, I am not on the biker’s side here, okay, not at all,
but I am just saying it is such a typical reaction from an immi-
grant, or I just feel so, right? When they are out, you know, then
they are very aggressive, like, and they by definition they are not
afraid of anybody. They, they have, like, their honor. . . . I would
never dare hitting a biker on the head with a bottle, so, uh, or
there are some people who just scare me, right? But it is as if it
doesn’t apply to them. They just don’t, they just don’t care, so, they
were only two, the Turks together, right?
Mikkel describes immigrants as violent people—a characterization that

points to press stories about “immigrant youth” appearing during the in-
terview period in addition to being prevalent in Danish discourse about
immigrants for decades. Although he says he never had any problems with
immigrants, he immediately begins a complex argumentative discourse that
constructs immigrants as violent. His language is not simply referential,
merely indexing the event (a fight) and the social categories he is speaking
of (immigrants/Turks, bikers) and then telling his opinions. The categories
and his views of them are tightly woven together. The problems that can be
deduced from his description of the event are not presented as his personal
views about immigrants, which in this case would indicate prejudice against
immigrants. Instead, the problems are tied to the immigrants’ own nature,
and this conclusion is supported by testimonial evidence and commonsense
reasoning.
The argumentative scheme seems simple: if you dare hit a biker on the
head with a bottle, then you must have an aggressive nature because, as we
all know, everybody else would be scared of bikers. The use of honor as a
value system provides the link from the two individual Turks to the general-
ized category of immigrants (and Muslims). To support his conclusion, Mik-
kel uses a variety of rhetorical devices, including categorization (Turks are
immigrants, “typical reaction from immigrants”), particularization (bikers
do not equal Danes and bikers’ violent behavior does not represent Danish
norms), and a combination of vivid (“they hit the biker”) and systematically
vague formulations (“And it it was, you know, it was, I am not saying that
there is something he can’t, I mean, I am not on the biker’s side here”)—
narrative techniques that bind events, categories, and arguments together.
He invokes commonsense knowledge through the repeated phrases “you
know” and “right?” Mikkel talks about “they” doing this and that but uses
the pronoun for both the two Turks and the entire category of immigrants.
The rhetorical devices operate to present an unprejudiced mind without
opinions about immigrants prior to the interview question but coming to
the negative conclusion reluctantly through rational inferences, step by step,
which are explicated for the interviewer. All this helps construct the realism
of his descriptions and the truth-value of his conclusions. In Shotter’s (1993)
words, “It is by the use of such rhetorical devices—as reference to ‘special
methods of investigation,’ ‘objective evidence,’ special methods of proof,’
‘independent witness,’ etc.—that those with competence in such procedures
can construct their statements as ‘factual statements,’ and claim authority

for them as revealing a special ‘true’ reality behind appearances” (25). Such
factual versions are constructed not only to make an argument but also to
undermine alternative versions often absent from the explicit argumentation
(Billig 1988; 1991). Mikkel, for instance, leaves out an obvious comparison:
bikers also operate with a strong code of honor.
For my purposes, the most important components of Mikkel’s argumen-
tative scheme are the warrant and the backing. Both make the connections
between different parts of his argument possible, but these parts are left out
as commonsense knowledge: the role of culture in human conduct (culture
determines the Turks’ behavior), the backing for which is the unspoken cul-
tural ontology of the social. A T-schema of the argument makes the structure
clearer (fig. 1.2).
Fig. 1.2. T-schema (honor)
We do not need the T-schema in order to analyze this feature of discourse,

but the model enables us to analyze systematically the complex argumenta-
tive organization of the utterance and explicate hidden premises that war-
rant the conclusions. Mikkel does not make the warrant explicit in the inter-
action, but the implicit categories treated as common sense have a built-in
quality about them and can be inferred from the logical organization of the
local argument.21 There is usually no semantic need to make basic proposi-
tions explicit except for interactive purposes. The quality of “sharedness” is
what renders implicit the common knowledge propositions. Explicating the
basic premise might, in the hierarchical organization of the overall argu-
ment, move it into a C (conclusion) position, which may open it up for

contestation.
The perfection with which this argument corresponds to the T-schema
is not often found in natural conversation. What we are dealing with here
resembles a theoretical discourse more than a practical discourse (e.g., who
is going to take garbage out). I connect the theoretical character of the re-
sponse to the specific interactional character of the interview situation: Mik-
kel is questioned by a social researcher in whose presence he probably feels
a need to justify not only his specific claims but also their rationality. One
way of establishing rationality is to explicate all the inferences one is mak-
ing. As Edwards (2003) demonstrates in his analysis of a similar discourse,
the speaker displays a sense of inferential carefulness through expressions of
epistemological concerns (“as if,” “it wasn’t myself ”) and by appeals to com-
mon knowledge (“yeah,” “you know,” “right?”), which are not necessarily
expressions of what a speaker actually thinks is common knowledge.
The culturalized ontology of the social that belongs to the backing is
also important. This makes the whole argumentative chain intelligible. It is
the basic proposition that holds together the various elements of discourse
because it tells us about the object of discourse. We may differ in how and
what we conclude about that object, but we do not differ in regard to the
premise that the basic object is cultural.
A caveat here may prevent a possible misunderstanding. If rationality is
localized, contextualized, and shaped by the goals of particular argument, we
cannot speak of a single logic that always leads to the same conclusion out of
the same set of data and warrants. In our analytical example, Mikkel might
have employed the same backing, the same essentialist cultural paradigm
that culture determines behavior, yet ended up concluding how wonderful
and respectable immigrants are because of their culture. Or he might have
advanced both arguments at once. The important point for our purposes
here is that the question about immigrants orients the respondent toward
the cultural repertoire readily available for talk. The interviews offered many
examples of the fluid use of resources present in the discursive environment.
One respondent, for instance, stated, “We don’t punish with the death pen-
alty and such things in Denmark and Europe,” a reference to a controversy
of June 2001. A member of the Social Liberal Party (Det Radikale Venstre),
identified as a Muslim, allegedly refused to condemn the death penalty. Al-
though it was revealed that fellow party members, identified as Danish, were
also sympathetic to the death penalty, they were never questioned about it in
the media, nor did the newspapers indicate any public debate about them,
in contrast to the extensive coverage and debate around the Muslim candi-
date. In essence, the controversy was not so much about the death penalty as
about how much “we” can tolerate “their” culture. In this environment, the
respondent’s statement, “We don’t punish with the death penalty” should
not be taken as a reflection of what she may actually think but as an example
of the death penalty functioning as a useful, flexible rhetorical tool in ap-
prehending cultural dichotomy. The concrete attributes clearly do not hold
up under even slight scrutiny. The respondent’s utterance actually indexed
Western culture in general as opposed to “their Muslim culture,” but the
dichotomy cannot survive the simple observation that the United States has
the death penalty and Turkey does not.
A variety of statements from my sample—“Here we don’t kill [people],
we don’t do such things in Denmark, it is illegal and it is punishable”; “They
have to learn that you do not steal and you do not rape young women”;
“We should remember where they come from—a place where they are not
as law-abiding and decent as most of us Danes are”—need not be taken as
interviewees’ firm beliefs. Few would say that murder is legal in immigrants’
home countries or that theft and rape are acceptable. In fact, most respon-
dents might deny such propositions if their statements were challenged or
they were questioned in a different context. Such statements should be read
as attempts to apprehend an otherwise ungraspable antagonistic relation be-
tween “my being” and the other’s threat to it through publicized, concrete
acts. I think this is, I assume, what Laclau (2014) means when he writes that
“there is no ontic content that, by itself, has a precise ontological significa-
tion” (115). “If I identify with a certain content, the latter ceases to be mere
content; it is invested in such a way that it becomes a symbol of my own
being. That is, it comes to fulfill a different ontological role. But this new
role is only possible insofar as another ‘positive’ content becomes a threat to
my own identity” (113).22
Thus, the interviewees’ utterances above, whatever ontic content they
may have (i.e., whatever content they attribute to a category), indicate an
affective investment in the ontological role the statements play. In particular,
they indicate the constitutive divide between Danes and immigrants, two
antagonistic social formations defined by cultural incompatibility. The ac-
tual, opposing attributes change with the rhetorical situation, but the place
assigned to the category of immigrants is repeated across instances of dis-
course, within and beyond interviews. It is the abstract and empty quality
of the signifier “[Muslim] immigrant,”23 rather than the concrete use of it,
that allows meaning to be fixed and appear as a stable entity across contexts.
Does my focus on the context of interviewees’ utterances mean that
their seemingly “prejudiced” utterances do not have racist and discrimina-

tory implications? Certainly not. On the contrary, even apparently positive,
nonprejudiced statements can be recruited to discriminate against people of
different race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. Racism, in my theo-
retical universe, is not an ideology or discourse that guides people’s under-
standing and evaluation of other social groups. I use the term “racism” as dis-
criminatory practice on the basis of “perceived”24 ethnic, cultural, or racial
differences.25 People deploy ethnicity, culture, religion, and race as flexible
resources to signify difference per se. Discrimination does not require racist
intent or negative evaluation of a group. A number of studies that pay atten-
tion to the intricacies of discourse argue that there is an enduring tendency
to justify discrimination even when people display egalitarian and antiracist
sentiments.26 As we have seen in the analysis of the interview extract with
Birgitte, a person may end up justifying discourses that have discriminatory
implications despite attempts to argue against discrimination on the basis of
culture, when the only “realistic” and viable access to describing immigrants
is through a cultural ontology, which provides a readily available repertoire
of cultural designations for making sense of a social world structured by
cultural divisions.
Racism, of course, is not dependent on culturalization; it has been prac-
ticed since time immemorial. As will become apparent, however, the cultur-
alization of discourse on immigration in Denmark has made racism widely
acceptable and one of the cornerstones of the new hegemonic order. First,
culturalization has made racism almost invisible by displacing skin color
and focusing on the immigrants’ cultural background as the marker of dif-
ference. The most important function of the shift has been lumping to-
gether all immigrants into a larger civilizational category, “Muslim,” a term
that functions to mark anxiety and threat. As Yıldız (2009: 475) argues in
German context, “As ‘Muslims’ . . . they can be imagined as being part of
a much larger and much more globally extended community than before.
Without a change in actual numbers, this indexical function alone multi-
plies their size in the dominant social imaginary.” The instances of violence
I discussed earlier, repeatedly linked to the category of Muslim, are therefore
taken to be indicative of the threat posed by Muslims to “a homogeneous
Danish culture, perceived as a historically rooted asset of traditions” such
as gender equality, tolerance toward homosexuality, and freedom of speech
(Wren 2001: 148). The perceived immediate threat to such common achieve-
ments can bring together diverse groups in defense of some imagined shared
cultural values. The convergence of left and right creates a new sense of
commonality—a commonality that can constitute the basis for a new “his-
torical bloc” in Gramscian sense (1971).
This chapter has sought to identify a cultural antagonism that forms a
critical dividing line through which society is envisioned. When society can
be imagined in the cultural terms identified here, such divisions are equally
available for institutionalization (e.g., in representation systems, laws, po-
litical platforms, and schools) and subjectification processes. All these mark
a hegemonic formation that can come to subordinate other antagonisms
along the main dividing line. Specifically political articulations, often them-
selves hegemonic projects pursued through public discourse in the media,
attempt to naturalize class, ethnic, religious, gender, or other differences as
a basis of the social divisions on which their own representations rest. In
the case at hand, culture is the naturalized site of antagonism. It is impor-
tant to understand that these are “only the possible differences among actors
who populate the social; they do not naturally carry a political valence” (De
Leon, Desai, and Tuğal 2009: 194). It is through the work of political forces
that some differences gain particular political valence—in this case, that a
culturalized antagonism becomes hegemonic.
Hegemony is never complete because of the heterogeneous nature of the
social. Thus, it demands a constant struggle to keep the ontological order in
place. In the following chapters, I turn to the milieu in which the hegemonic
project of the political right was initiated in the mid-1980s, the political mo-
ment of the key rhetorical intervention that bent signification along certain
lines, and the ways in which a culturalized hegemonic order has been estab-
lished and is now sustained in politics, institutions, public discourse, and
subjective identifications.
Chapter 2
Crisis and Hegemonic Displacement
The previous chapter concluded with a quote from De Leon, Desai, and
Tuğal (2009) in which they argue that cleavages do not in themselves have
a political valence. It is through the work of political forces that cleavages
gain political valence and shape the social horizon. The question is, How do
cleavages come to carry political valence and become hegemonic? In particu-
lar, how did cultural cleavages acquire so much political valence that they
dislocated more traditional socioeconomic cleavages and transformed old
political identities in Denmark, reconfiguring the political landscape? These
are the leading questions discussed in the next two chapters. In this chapter,
I analyze how the Danish justice minister from the Conservative Party and
his accomplices within the police and immigration services created a moral
panic in an already anxious economic and political environment in the mid-
1980s. The moral panic destabilized the political representation system and
created an opportunity for an intervention by the populist Far Right that
managed to become a permanent fixture in political discourse. Their vision
has become the basis for the hegemonic social imaginary (i.e., the ontologi-
cal structure of society). I analyze the complex interplay among various po-
litical actors in the creation and capitalization the moral panic that opened
up the space for this populist intervention.
The Mid-1980s: A Turning Point
There is a general agreement among scholars that a fundamental shift in

immigration discourse occurred in the mid-1980s:1 the focus shifted from
immigrants’ social problems to their (problematic) culture, which was
mainly expressed in terms of the “Muslim threat.” Gaasholt and Togeby
59
(1995: 162) argue that the rhetoric on immigration changed character during
1984‒85. At the beginning of the 1980s, the focus was on “respectful inte-
gration of immigrants” and “immigrants’ rights”; in the second half, Danes
discussed “making demands of immigrants,” “refugees of convenience,” and
“the Muslim threat.” Madsen (2000: 87) points to a remarkable jump in the
polls of Danes’ views on “whether immigrants constitute a threat to our na-
tional character”: 23 percent declared agreement with the statement in 1985,
whereas that figure jumped to around 40 percent in 1987 and 42 percent in
1998. In 2010, 54.9 percent said they regard Islam as a problem for the cohe-
sion of Danish society.2 Thus, “immigration as a threat” to national identity
became a permanent sentiment among Danes. “Immigrant” also became
synonymous with “Muslim immigrant.”
Not only has the focus shifted in immigration discourse; immigration
gradually became the most important and salient issue. In the 1970s and
1980s, Danes were concerned about economic questions such as taxes, pub-
lic spending, and unemployment; during the 2001 election, however, two in-
terrelated topics dominated opinion polls: welfare services and immigration
(i.e., the perceived strain on the welfare state caused by immigrants; Togeby
2003). In 1987, only 4 percent of the voters mentioned immigration as the
most important issue affecting how they vote, but by 2001, 20 percent of the
voters considered immigration the most important issue, and about half of
all voters named immigration as one of the most important issues for their
decision about how to vote (Andersen 2004; Rydgren 2004; Togeby 2003).
Depending on their field and the object of their study, scholars have dif-
ferent explanations for the shift in immigration discourse and the salience
of immigration in public discourse. According to some scholars of immi-
gration, the salience of the issue reflects people’s reactions to demographic
changes, that is, the increasing numbers of immigrants (Gaasholt and To-
geby 1995; Hervik 2002; Necef 2001). Others, especially scholars of the Far
Right,3 point to structural transformations such as postindustrialism, global-
ization, and Europeanization as the background for anxieties around immi-
gration. According to these scholars, conflict in the industrial era was largely
structured by the socioeconomic left-right dimension (i.e., socioeconomic
cleavage), and cleavage structures in the postindustrial period are informed
by the value dimension with immigration as the central sociocultural issue
(Andersen 2004; Bjørklund and Andersen 2002; Rydgren 2004, 2010, 2013).
And immigration became one of the central issues of our time; it became
politicized following the sudden increase in the numbers of refugees begin-
ning in 1984.
Although these scholars relate the centrality of immigration to the rise of
Crisis and Hegemonic Displacement 61
the populist Right, immigration is understood as the new dimension of the

center-periphery conflict, that is, the most visible representation of global-
ization that threatens the level of welfare services that workers enjoy (Ander-
sen 2002; Rydgren 2013) as well as the result of the decrease in the salience of
the socioeconomic cleavage dimension (Rydgren 2004: 495). This explains
the strong “working class” basis of the populist far-right parties and the shift
in ownership of the welfare issue from social democracy to the Far Right.
According to Rydgren (2004: 489), contemporary Western European
countries are characterized by two major conflict dimensions: economic
(i.e., workers against capital) and cultural (e.g., immigration, law and order,
abortion). Economic conflict dimension structured the political landscape
until the 1980s, after which cultural conflict became more important even
though welfare remained a salient issue. The Western European party sys-
tems that had been frozen within the structure of economic conflict began
to fracture, voter profiles of the parties started to change, and this led to the
parties redefining themselves in terms of the cultural/value dimension (An-
dersen 2004; Betz and Meret 2013). In Denmark, where the conflict between
labor and capital (i.e., class struggle) was predominant, the displacement of
this conflict dimension has meant the breakdown of the social democratic
hegemony, which was based on an openly redistributive welfare system fu-
eled by high taxes. The Social Democratic Party (SDP), although it never
gained an absolute majority in the Folketinget (the Danish Parliament), mo-
nopolized power between 1953 and 1968—a period of increasing prosperity
as well as the development of the welfare state. Even during a nonsocialist
coalition government (Social Liberal Party, Conservative Party, and Liberal
Party) between 1968 and 1971, taxes continued to increase and the extension
of the welfare state continued (Rydgren 2004).
In short, the issue of welfare and the nature of the welfare state had long
been situated in the framework of class struggle around questions of how
to redistribute wealth and how to reform the capitalist system. In the 1960s
and 1970s, working-class organizations, stripped of an earlier international-
ism, were well established as modern trade unions whose demands had been
incorporated into the hegemonic political system. Danish society was ar-
ticulated in terms of the welfare state; working-class demands were advanced
through negotiations rather than confrontations; and wage increases were
linked to increasing productivity even during the economic crisis that began
in the early 1970s.
This hegemony began to fall apart in the early 1980s after the new right-
wing coalition government4 took over in 1982 and immediately began to
implement neoliberal economic policies: although Denmark’s progressive
tax system has one of the highest rates in the world, social benefits and un-
employment payments were reduced, wages were frozen, and job security
was undermined through “restructuring” and “optimization” as a solution
to the economic crisis5 and as a response to globalization (i.e., making Den-
mark more competitive in an increasingly globalized world), yet tax rates
were lowered for businesses. These policies led to large-scale protests and
strikes by labor unions, but the government responded with an assault on
the unions’ negotiating powers.
There was also a general ideological push for a shift from social demo-
cratic/left positions (that unemployment and poverty were the result of an
unjust capitalist system that could not generate enough work for everybody)
to the neoliberal idea that unemployment was a question of incentives: the
high levels of unemployment and welfare payments did not provide suffi-
cient incentives for people to seek jobs.6
The Social Democrats responded to these developments by adopting
neoliberal positions on the economy and welfare under the guise of a “third
way” (Betz and Meret 2013: 110). The party seemed to accept the basic prop-
osition of the neoliberal paradigm: expansive welfare services are not sustain-
able in a globalized world. The gradual erasure of the classic left-right dis-
tinction increasingly frustrated the “working class,” whose “interests” were
supposed to be represented by the Social Democrats. These moves set in
motion a reconfiguration of the political landscape and opened up space for
populist forces to fill the political void and articulate new types of social and
political conflicts with an emphasis on cultural values.
Although there is a general agreement on the culturalization of dis-
course,7 explanations of the culturalization process depend on theoretical
and disciplinary approaches being used. Political analysts have a tendency to
see the disappearance of class identities as the result of the macrostructural
changes and the prominence of cultural cleavages as a “natural” consequence
of structural changes that, among other changes, led to the emergence of a
vast middle class and to the party system’s attempt to adapt to the new con-
stituencies that do not define themselves by class. In addition, the rise of the
populist Far Right has been explained as “an effect of the decreased salience
of the socio-economic cleavage dimension” (Rydgren 2004: 490).
This is, however, not a natural process: the emergence of political identi-
ties does not depend on a priori social rationality. On the contrary, politics
is central to the formation of political identities, which is contingent upon
the intervening forces’ successful articulations. As Mouffe (1995) explains,
“Politics aims at the creation of unity in a context of conflict and diversity;
it is concerned with the formation of a ‘we’ as opposed to a ‘them’” (502),

but who “we” and “they” are is not given a priori. More specifically, I argue
that the transformation of “we” and “they” of class ontology into “we” and
“they” of cultural ontology (e.g., the people vs. Muslim immigrants) is not
the result of an independent, objectively observable macrostructural trans-
formation but that of a hegemonic intervention by the populist Far Right,
whose articulations shaped the very sociopolitical landscape and identities
embedded therein.
In this sense, analyzing the populist Right’s ability to capitalize on popu-
lar anxieties about the erasure of the welfare state and its ability to turn
these popular sentiments into a crisis of representation is crucial for a more
operationalized understanding of the resulting hegemonic displacement.8 I
argue that the Far Right’s capitalization, management, and provocation of
crises around immigration have played a central role in this process. In other
words, immigration did not become an important issue because of the num-
ber of immigrants or the ensuing diversity but because its centrality benefits
the populist Far Right so that it was able to dominate the debate on immi-
gration. By managing and performing cycles of crises around immigration,
they were able to insert themselves as one of the primary protagonists in the
ensuing controversies. They succeeded in turning immigration from a labor
issue into a cultural issue and then pushing the debate to the center of the
discourse where the cultural antagonism shapes the social horizon.
Crisis and Political Intervention
Many scholars of populism emphasize the importance of a crisis for opening

up a space for the emergence of new discourses and political interventions.
Stavrakakis (2005: 247), for example, argues that “the emergence of new
discourses and new identities is always related to the dislocation or crisis of
previously hegemonic discursive orders. It is a certain failure of previous
identifications that forces subjects to seek refuge in a new discursive attach-
ment and investment.” In other words, “New relations of representation . . .
become possible because of dislocations of the existing political order” (Pan-
izza 2005: 3). For Laclau (2005), “The crisis of representation . . . is at the
root of any populist, anti-institutional outburst” (139) and “The institutional
system has to be (again, more or less) broken if the populist appeal is to be
effective” (177). Mouffe (2005: 80) argues that “populism arises as the result
of a crisis of representation, as a response to either the incapacity or the
refusal of elites to respond to people’s concerns. There is some evidence to

support this view. The populist right often exploits xenophobia to swell its
ranks and disqualify (other) professional politicians.”
Moffitt (2015: 191), on the other hand, notes that all these approaches see
a crisis as an external trigger of populism and argues that “populist actors
actively participate in the ‘spectacularization of failure’ that underlies crisis,
allowing them to pit ‘the people’ against a dangerous other, radically sim-
plify the terms and terrain of political debate.”
My analysis of the Danish case shows that the relationship between pop-
ulism and crisis goes in both directions: A crisis opens up the political ter-
rain for interventions by fringe forces such as populists, but once they have
gained access to the discourse and have become successful, their existence
depends on the perpetuation of crisis—which they continuously perform.
A crisis about a particular issue (e.g., a moral panic around immigration)
can, if successfully capitalized on by populists, be presented as an indication
of a deeper crisis in the hegemonic order. The populists’ success, on the other
hand, depends on the existence of an external threat to “the people”; the feel-
ing that there is a continuing external threat can only be upheld by a constant
focus on the external group and their actions; otherwise, the categories of
identification (e.g., the people, immigrants/Muslims) will fade away in the
messy waters of the discursive sea. A continuous series of public controversies
and moral panics of varying scope are necessary for producing the experience
of an ongoing crisis, and the far-right actors are often—though not always—
the initiators of these crises around the target group.
“Crisis” is a vague term that refers to a phenomena of differing scopes
and time spans. Laclau (2005), for example, speaks of “crisis of representa-
tion” in a Gramscian sense where social groups do not feel their interests are
represented within the system. “Crisis” is also used to describe moral panics,
political stalemates, and other intense public controversies.
I use the term “crisis” broadly to refer to a situation where there is a sense
that the issue at hand urgently needs to be addressed; in my use, the term
“crisis” includes “moral panic”—a term I use to refer to a more specific situa-
tion and period (short or long term) in which a well-defined group of people
(e.g., “folk devils”) are demonized and presented as a threat to society’s moral
values and interests (Cohen 1972). For analytical purposes, I use the term
“controversy” to refer to a heated public debate on an issue or topic (e.g.,
health-care reform). I also use the terms “crisis of representation” or “hege-
monic crisis” to describe a widespread public sentiment that the system as a
whole is broken.
Moral Panics
Krinsky (2013: 1) defines a moral panic “as an episode, often triggered by

alarming media stories and reinforced by reactive laws and public policy,
of exaggerated or misdirected public concern, anxiety, fear, or anger over a
perceived threat to social order.” However, there is a great deal of disagree-
ment among social scientists about how to define a moral panic, and even
the terms used to describe the phenomena vary significantly (e.g., moral
panic, rumor-panic, panic, menace, craze, scare, crisis). They also disagree
about the causes: some see moral panics as initiated by the public and spread
by the media, whereas others lean toward the elite-engineered model; the
most common approach is, though, an interest-group perspective, in which
“rule creators and moral entrepreneurs launch crusades, which occasionally
turn into panics, to make sure that certain rules take hold and are enforced”
(Goode and Ben-Yehuda 2009: 67).
There are different accounts of the origins of the concept of moral panic,
but Stanley Cohen’s Folk Devils and Moral Panic is considered to be the
first fully developed definition of the term. According to Cohen (1972: 1), a
moral panic begins when
a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become

defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is pre-
sented in a stylized and stereo-typical fashion by the mass media;
the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and
other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce
their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more
often) resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or dete-
riorates and becomes more visible.
In Cohen’s formulation, moral panics are discrete episodes with fairly well-
developed phases with a beginning, a middle, and an end that sometimes
leave fundamental social changes behind. In one of the earliest applications
of the concept, Hall and coauthors (1978) aligned Cohen’s model of moral
panics with a Gramscian notion of hegemony. They argued that the moral
panic over mugging (i.e., black youth criminality) in Britain during the early
1970s was a panic through which the state tapped into anxieties around so-
cial order and secured consent to the reconstruction of hegemony through
the discourse of “law and order.” The panic diverted attention away from
the real historical crisis of capitalism during economic recession. Although
they related the concept to a larger hegemonic crisis, they upheld Cohen’s
basic definition:
When the official reaction to a person, groups of persons or series of

events out of all proportion to the actual threat offered, when “experts”
in the form of police chiefs, the judiciary, politicians and editors per-
ceive the threat in all but identical terms, and appear to talk “with one
voice” of rates, diagnoses, prognoses and solutions, when the media
representations universally stress “sudden and dramatic” increases (in
numbers involved or event) and “novelty,” above and beyond that
which a sober, realistic appraisal could sustain, then we believe it is
appropriate to talk about beginnings of a moral panic. (Hall et al.
1978: 16)
A number of scholars have criticized different aspects of this model. Wad-

dington (1986), for example, criticizes the concept for not establishing any
criteria for comparing the scale of the problem to the scale of the response to
it. For Waddington, it is perfectly possible to panic about a genuine problem
(cited in Goode and Yehuda 2009: 75). Criticism against proportionality
comes also from the opposite camp: the notion of proportionality presumes
that reality and the descriptions of that reality are two distinct phenomena
and it is possible to judge discourse on reality by reality itself as if we have di-
rect access to reality, bypassing linguistic depictions of it. Hall and coauthors
have also been criticized for arguing that moral panics are actually about
matters other than the seeming focus (e.g., moral panics about crime mask-
ing economic crises), which gives their model the appearance of a top-down
conspiracy theory. In another critique, Noble (2012: 218) notes that “there
is tendency in uses of moral panic theory to collapse the complex process of
symbolization into a singular, dominant, ideological representation of folk
devil” and argues that “a moral panic always entails an ensemble of social
actors who compete in the definition of the ‘problem.’”
Furthermore, Goode and Yehuda (2009: 226) contend that it is often dif-
ficult to discern the stages of a moral panic, or assess it by its scope, location,
or time span. They also think that a moral panic may represent a limited
portion of a much more long-range concern. Thompson (1998) takes it a
step further and argues that as the result of the proliferation of moral pan-
ics in the 1990s, researchers started to consider moral panics as successive
episodes that indicate ongoing large-scale, social, economic, and cultural
changes rather than a series of unrelated episodes of public concern.
As this discussion indicates, the walls between the terms “crisis,” “moral
panic,” “controversy,” and “hegemonic crisis” are not impervious. Morgan

and Poynting (2012: 4), for example, ask if the concept of the moral panic
can be used to denote the global stock (i.e., moral turbulence) upon which
the individual outbursts of panics draw. They make a case for directing more
attention to the connection between discrete moral panics that have an on-
going and cumulative effect of producing global “folk devils” out of Mus-
lims. In their framework, the contemporary globalized moral panic around
Islam is not bound by time and space.
Although I use the different terms to denote different scales of crisis in
concrete cases, I use “crisis” as a general term that also covers moral panics
and heated controversies. From a perspective of poststructuralist hegemony
theory, however, there is no sense in engaging in a discussion of the “real-
ness” or proportionality of a crisis. As Moffitt (2015: 197) argues, “The at-
tempt to determine objectively what ‘is’ or ‘is not’ a crisis is . . . a relatively
fruitless exercise, as the concept relies on notions of normality and stability.”
These notions themselves are the products of crises performed by various
actors rather than being “objective” criteria by which the reality of a crisis
can be assessed. For example, the sudden increase in the numbers of refugees
between 1984 and 1986 was experienced as a deep crisis because of the moral
panic created around it, although a larger number of refugees came to Den-
mark in 1992 without a huge controversy because of the consensus among
the political parties (Østergaard 2007). Thus, my discussion of moral panics
will not focus on the proportionality of the perceived threat to the “real”
threat, but on how the threat has been produced through rhetorical moves
such as the inflation of numbers or the descriptions of the groups and actors
involved in the media. I also agree with Noble (2012) that even at the climax
of a moral panic there are several actors competing for the definition of the
problem as well as the solutions. However, it is my impression that during
a moral panic the various actors generally agree that there is a sudden and
dramatic development that needs to be addressed.
The Political Landscape and Immigration

Discourse Prior to and around 1984
The Danish political system is one of the most open electoral systems in Eu-
rope, with a threshold of only 2 percent9 and a public media system that allo-
cates equal time to all participating parties in an election. Because of the low
threshold and relative accessibility of public debate, the Folketing (the Dan-
ish parliament) usually consists of many small parties representing a broad
spectrum of interests. But the distribution of parties over a broad spectrum

also means that Denmark, unlike other Scandinavian countries, has never
had a one-party government with majority. Most of the governments since
the inception of parliamentary democracy have been coalition governments,
often with the small parties from the middle of the political spectrum, and
many have been minority governments (meaning that the government did
not have a parliamentary majority). Danish governments do not need ma-
jority support; they can be in power as long as a majority does not oppose
them. As a result, minority governments have to negotiate with small par-
ties or parties from the other side of the aisle over specific issues as well as
government programs. The socially liberal, economically conservative Social
Liberals have often either been coalition partners with the Social Democrats
on the left or the Conservatives and the Liberals on the right.
After the elections in 1981, the Folketing had the Social Democratic Party
(Socialdemokraterne), the Socialist People’s Party (Socialistisk Folkeparti), and
the Left Socialists (Venstresocialisterne) on the left, the Liberal Party (Ven-
stre) and the Conservative People’s Party on the right (Kristelig Folkeparti),
and the middle consisted of Center-Democrats (Centrum-demokraterne), the
Christian People’s Party, and the Social Liberals (Radikale Venstre). The xeno-
phobic, antitax Progress Party (Fremskridtspartiet) was considered to be on
the far right of the spectrum. Although the SDP formed a minority govern-
ment after the elections, Prime Minister Anker Jørgensen resigned after he
had problems with the labor unions over his economic program. The neolib-
eral government that took over in 1982 was a coalition government formed
by the Conservatives, Liberals, Center-Democrats, and Social Liberals.
Although xenophobic views were common in Denmark during the 1970s,
there was no openly xenophobic party until the late 1970s, when the antitax
populist Progress Party,10 led by Mogens Glistrup, began to express openly racist
views. The Progress Party’s pamphlet from 1973 did not mention immigration
at all. It was only after the mid-1980s that immigration replaced taxation as the
main rallying issue for the party (Andersen 2004; Rydgren 2004). Until then,
the party’s combination of extreme liberal ideology and explicitly racist rhetoric
(with biological references) did not entirely speak to the anxieties of workers,
who typically voted for Social Democrats. The novelty of the Progress Party
was wearing off, and when the Conservatives and Liberals launched a neoliberal
program similar to those of Reagan and Thatcher, the electoral support for the
Progress Party declined rapidly: from 15.9 percent in 1973 to 8.9 percent in 1981
to 3.6 percent in 1984. But support started to increase again after the party began
to emphasize xenophobic views in the mid-1980s. Until the mid-1980s, public
debate about welfare state had not been preoccupied with the ethnic homogene-
ity of the Danish nation, and the issue of immigration was subordinated into the
fundamental divide between labor and capital. The “immigrant worker” was just
one of the signifiers of the struggle between social classes.
Østergaard (2007) considers 1983 to be a turning point in the immigra-
tion discourse and sees the eighteen years between 1983 and 2001 as the
period that would shape the immigration debate for the years to come. The
year 1983 was a turning point, according to Østergaard, not so much because
of the passage of the liberal immigration law that year but because opposi-
tion to immigration has become a permanent fixture of the Danish political
landscape because of that debate.
The law’s central change was that it granted immigrants and refugees
legal rights. Until the new law, individual cases of refugees were mainly left
to the police and the justice minister. The expulsion of a Mexican refugee
in 1977 to Mexico without any legal procedures created a furor and led to
demands in the Folketing for an overhaul of the immigration law. The com-
mission that was set up could not reach a consensus and presented two dif-
ferent sets of recommendations. A minority group within the commission
recommended extending legal rights to immigrants and refugees. The gov-
ernment and the opposition reached a consensus based on minority recom-
mendations despite objections by the justice minister, Erik Ninn-Hansen,
from the Conservative Party. The law passed with a broad consensus in the
Folketing between the government and the opposition (the only exception
was the Progress Party). During the parliamentary debate prior to the pas-
sage of the law, Erik Ninn-Hansen opposed granting extended legal rights to
immigrants and refugees. He warned that the Danish welfare system would
be a magnet for people from poor countries and this could lead to racial
unrest. A more restrictive law, he argued, would help maintain Denmark as a
national state in the future. After the immigration law was adopted, with his
vote, Ninn-Hansen praised its humanitarian approach but only until 1984.
The Progress Party, however, argued that the parliamentary majority was in
conflict with the popular will—a populist argument that later became the
main ingredient in the populist Right’s forceful intervention in the discourse
and its main strategy in moving the political center to the right.
The new immigration law of 1983 granted legal rights to refugees11 and
immigrants, including the refugees’ right to stay in Denmark while asylum
applications were processed and the right to bring immediate family to Den-
mark once they were granted asylum. The new law also expanded the defini-
tion of refugee to include people who did not strictly fit the UN Convention
for Refugees but might be in danger if they were sent back to their home
country. Unlike “guest workers” of previous decades, who were absorbed
into the labor market, refugees were to go through a nine-month integration

process with instruction in language and Denmark’s social, cultural, and
political systems. Once given asylum, they could not be sent back. The job-
less were to be integrated into the Danish welfare system at the same level of
support as citizens.
The media generally were positive toward the humanitarian intentions of
the law both during the debate and after it took effect, except for some of the
letters to the editor, and despite Ninn-Hansen’s criticism and the Progress
Party’s protests. The positive atmosphere started to change when the num-
ber of refugees began to increase toward the end of 1984: 332 refugees asked
for asylum in 1983, whereas the number was 4,312 in 1984, and the number
increased to 6,637 in 1985 (Østergaard 2007: 367).12
When the first group of refugees started to arrive in the second half of
1984, Ninn-Hansen saw the increase as an opportunity and began campaign-
ing for restrictions to the new immigration law—a campaign that a couple
of years later turned into a major moral panic. He connected the sudden
increase to the new immigration law, although the number of refugees were
increasing all over Europe as the result of the war between Iran and Iraq, Is-
rael’s occupation of southern Lebanon in 1982, and the civil war in Sri Lanka.
Center parties, left-wing parties, and humanitarian organizations argued
that the numbers were not big enough to panic about and insisted on Den-
mark’s humanitarian responsibilities, but the sentiment that dominated the
media by the fall of 1984 was overwhelmingly negative and panicky. It is
paradoxical that the creation of the negative atmosphere was not the me-
dia’s intention: although they published benevolent editorial views across the
spectrum, their professional routines led to the extremely negative coverage
of the incoming refugees in the news. They responded to the “factual” and
“objective” information (e.g., numbers of refugees, apocalyptic projections,
and financial costs) fed to them by the police and the Danish Immigration
Service (Udlændingestyrelsen), both of which were under the Justice Ministry.
The discourse around immigration was, as a result, about Denmark’s hu-
manitarian responsibilities, and its capacity to receive and help refugees. The
moral character of 1984 discourse differentiated it from earlier debates on
guest/foreign workers. It also polarized the political positions: right-wing
parties that traditionally defended the free movement of the workforce be-
came increasingly negative toward refugees, whom they considered a burden
on the state. Left-wing parties were more generous toward refugees, whom
they considered victims of oppression and torture. Within a general agree-
ment about Denmark’s moral responsibility toward people in need, however,
the Right emphasized Denmark’s limited capacity to solve the world’s refu-
gee problems and the strain of foreigners on limited resources, whereas the
Left argued that Denmark was rich enough to take its share, the numbers of
refugees was relatively small, and refugees could be seen making an impor-
tant cultural contribution.
However, the negative coverage of incoming refugees turned, within
a couple of years, into a moral panic that not only prepared the ground
for severe restrictions, but created a fertile ground for a hegemonic inter-
vention by far-right forces, an intervention that threw mainstream po-
litical parties—particularly the Social Democrats—into a deep crisis. The
remainder of this chapter is an analysis of the major moral panic around
immigration in 1985 and 1986, which transformed immigration from a
labor issue to a cultural issue.
Beginnings of a Moral Panic: 1984
As indicated earlier, scholars point to the mid-1980s as a turning point in

immigration discourse. Although scholars generally consider the “dramatic
increase” in the numbers of refugees to be the trigger for the politicization of
the immigration issue (Andersen 2004; Gaasholt and Togeby 1995; Rydgren
2004; Østergaard 2007), there has been no examination of how immigration
became “politicized” in this period.13 The assumption is that the increase cre-
ated the intense debate about the issue. In my perspective, whether an issue
becomes a public concern depends on the ability of the political actors with
access to the media to set the agenda as well as how the issue is perceived in
the debate.
My analysis of the media coverage of the refugee “influx” in the period
between 1984 and 1986 shows that the Conservative justice minister Erik
Ninn-Hansen was a key figure in creating an urgent concern about refugees.
His purpose was clearly to force the parliamentary majority—including the
two small coalition partners—to introduce restrictions to the new immigra-
tion law of 1983, which he considered to be too liberal. Regardless of his
intentions, however, his campaign created a major moral panic that gradu-
ally convinced the major political actors that the immigration numbers were
too big for Denmark to handle and that restrictions had to be introduced.
While close-reading the newspaper clips from the years 1984 and 1986,
I recalled the feeling that there was an increasing sense of panic in the
coverage of the so-called refugee influx. To test this sense, I read and coded
a total of 978 stories from 1984 and 1986, including news, commentaries,
interviews, snippets, and letters to the editor. The first thing I noted was
that the amount of coverage more than tripled between the two periods:
although there were 113 news stories, almost all about refugees, in a four-
month period in 1984, the same newspapers published 455 news stories in
the same period in 1986. Because I was interested in how the moral panic
was created and the sources behind the panic, I created codes for sources in
the news and two categories for the news: panic-creating and panic-related
news. Panic-creating stories gave rise to a sense of panic in their framing
of the event through such titles as “Organized Gangs Help Refugees to
Come to Denmark” (BT, August 13, 1984), “Refugee Influx without End”
(Jyllands-Posten, September 24, 1984), or “MP: We Must Dam Up the Mass
Invasion of Refugees” (BT, August 7, 1984). As other scholars have noted,
the news media in this period conveyed a sense of emergency—a chaotic,
explosive situation out of control with floods of immigrants (Andreassen
2005; Østergaard 2007).
Panic-related stories, on the other hand, although less apocalyptic in
tone, nonetheless dealt with the effects of refugees on Denmark. Taken to-
gether with the panic-creating stories, they contributed to the sense that
refugees were creating huge problems for authorities, institutions, and so-
ciety in general. Stories such as “Denmark Will Receive More Refugees”
(Politiken, August 25, 1984) or “Refugees Erase All Traces behind Them”
(Politiken, September 18, 1984) do not have an apocalyptic tone but are still
concerned about the number of incoming refugees, financial costs, and ac-
commodation problems. The first story informs the readers that the justice
minister will ask the parliament for millions of Danish kroner for refugees,
whereas the second story is about refugees destroying their identification
papers before their arrival.
The coding followed a close reading of the material. I read all the stories
at least twice, once when I was trying to determine the codes, once again to
code the stories. Out of 113 news stories from fall 1984, 35 reflected a clear
sense of uncontrollable influx and chaos and 31 stories indirectly contributed
Table 2.1. Panic in News Stories

News stories 1984 1986
None 43 362
Panic-creating 35a 44
Panic-related 31 45
No reason for panic 4 4
Total 113 455
a
Twenty-one stories were solely based on Ninn-Hansen as a
source; 20 stories used the police as a primary source.
to that sense by emphasizing the burden that the refugees were putting on
Denmark. Together, about 60 percent of all news stories contributed to the
sense of panic around refugees, although in only four instances did the main
protagonist(s) explicitly argue that there was no reason for panic.
This public discourse of panic about uncontrolled immigration was the
result of a convergence of police and bureaucrats within the national admin-
istration, particularly Ninn-Hansen, whose purview included the police and
the Danish Immigration Service (Udlændingestyrelsen). Out of the 113 immi-
gration news stories in 1984, 49 were sourced primarily to Ninn-Hansen or
the police (25 and 24 respectively). All but 4 of the 25 Ninn-Hansen stories
were panic stories, as were 20 out of 24 mainly sourced to the police. Head-
lines for stories primarily from these two sources included “46 Iranians in
Copenhagen Yesterday” (Berlingske Tidende, September 23, 1984), “81 Asians
Applied for Asylum in Copenhagen Last Weekend” (Berlingske Tidende,
September 24, 1984), “Refugees Flow into Denmark” (Politiken, Septem-
ber 24, 1984), “New Refugee Influx over the Border” (Jyllands-Posten, Sep-
tember 24, 1984), “Refugees Cost the State 60 Million” (Berlingske Tidende,
October 5, 1984), “Authorities Are Powerless” (Berlingske Tidende, October
11, 1984), “Refugee Influx Cost 30 Million” (Berlingske Tidende, October 11,
1984), “300 Million More to Refugees” (Jyllands-Posten, October 12, 1984),
“Refugee Influx Is on Its Path to 6,000” (Jyllands-Posten, October 23, 1984),
“Refugees into the Country with Dangerous Diseases” (Jyllands-Posten, Oc-
tober 27, 1984), and “Refugees Housed with Mentally Retarded” (Politiken,
November 23, 1984).
The police fed the media with daily numbers of incoming refugees, and
Ninn-Hansen provided the framework for interpreting the numbers: in his
view, the increase was solely the result of the liberal immigration law of 1983,
although the increase was occurring throughout Europe and was not specific
to Denmark, something he admitted in his answer to a question from Social
Democratic MP Torben Lund (Jensen 2000: 465). Ninn-Hansen’s strategy
was to create the sense that immigration had become uncontrollable in order
to force the Folketing to introduce restrictions on access to seek asylum in
Denmark. His goal was to blame the political majority for the chaotic situa-
tion, but the chaos itself had to be strategically constructed. To create a sense
of chaos, he (and the police) fed the media with daily numbers of incoming
refugees (even if the number was miniscule), apocalyptic projections, prob-
lems with housing, and the financial burden refugees put on the state.
In October 1984, for instance, Ninn-Hansen projected that six thousand
refugees would come to Denmark that year (Jyllands-Posten, October 23, 1984).
A few weeks later, the number was seventy-five hundred (Jyllands-Posten, No-
vember 9, 1984). Two months later, in January 1985, he said, “If 30,000 refu-
gees come, we cannot integrate them as we want to” (Østergaard 2007: 368).
He also informed the Folketing that Denmark was unable to manage the
numbers of refugees, which at that point (November 1984) had reached 1,322
within the last three months, compared to 332 for the entire year in 1983. He
claimed, once again, that the new law was a magnet for refugees, leading to
an enormous increase in expenses from a budgeted 60 million DKK ($US10
million) to 401 (about $US65 million) a year. He asked the Folketing if it
had intended to create a law that made it impossible for Danish authorities
to act on the “flow” and added that if that were the case, then the Folket-
ing had to pay for the huge amount of funds that receiving refugees would
require (Politiken, October 11, 1984).
Apart from omitting the fact that the increase was not specific to Den-
mark and therefore not related to the new law in his almost daily briefings,
he fed to the media the numbers of incoming refugees, not those who re-
ceived asylum (which were much lower than the projections), and based his
enormous financial cost projections on an immediate trend in the numbers
of incoming refugees. The cost projections expressed in millions of Danish
kroner created a sense that a huge amount of resources was being chan-
neled to the refugees while Danes were being denied benefits. The fact was
that most of the funds actually were allocated to the Danish authorities: the
police, social workers, and institutions that dealt with refugees rather than
refugees themselves, but this distinction was deliberately lost in the way the
question of burden was presented.
My goal here is not to engage in an assessment of whether the numbers
really constituted a threat but to underline the rhetorical use of the numbers
to create a sense of uncontrollable immigration. One of the main arguments
from the opposition for resisting Ninn-Hansen’s push for a change in immi-
gration law was that Denmark needed time to assess the impact of the new
law. The numbers in themselves did not signify panic or burden: three years
earlier, Austria had received fifty thousand Polish refugees without much
public controversy.14 Sweden, with almost the same population as Denmark,
was receiving five to seven thousand refugees a year. Numbers, too, are rhe-
torical resources, signified by an articulating force, used to achieve a goal.
Constructing Refugees as a Threat to Social Cohesion
The involvement of the police led news stories to focus on the criminal as-
pects of asylum-seeking process, which not only contributed to the sense of
chaos but also to the representation of refugees as a threat to social cohesion.

In this period (1984), there was not a single news story about the human
right abuses in refugees’ home countries; news coverage was dominated by
themes such as incoming numbers, accommodation problems, economic
and social burdens, misuse of the asylum system, and criminal aspects of
the escape from the home country. I discussed some of them in the previous
section, for example, how numbers were inflated through projections based
on short-term trends. Four of the themes that increased the sense of threat
are worth mentioning because they originated solely from Ninn-Hansen
or the police: (1) the representation of refugees as a huge economic burden
for ordinary Danes; (2) the criminalization of refugees’ escape; (3) the rep-
resentation of refugees as carriers of infectious diseases; (4) the labeling of
refugees as “convenience refugees” by the police, politicians, and the Danish
Immigration Service.
Refugees as a Burden for Ordinary Danes
Above I pointed to two aspects of the burden theme. The first was the era-
sure of the distinction between incoming refugees and those who are granted
asylum, which inflated the financial costs; the second was the impression
that the money was used by the refugees when in fact it was allocated to
Danish authorities and institutions. This was also reflected in the letters to
the editor—there were only twenty-two in four months—which called for
a tightening of the immigration law and made arguments about Danes pay-
ing the costs for the refugees. The other side of the “burden aspect” was that
refugees were often called “refugees of convenience” by both the police and
politicians from the right.
Criminalization of Refugees’ Escape
The second theme that was prominent in this period was the misuse of the
asylum system by refugees—a theme that became even more prominent in
the next two years. “Misuse” can be a misleading term here: I coded as “mis-
use stories” those stories that described the actions of refugees as misuse
although the reported actions did not legally or morally misuse the asylum
system. Most of the stories that were coded as misuse were actually about
fake passports, bribery of officials in escape routes, payment to middlemen
to escape home countries, or helping other refugees to enter Denmark—all
of which are often the only way refugees can escape from their countries—as
the following few titles illustrate: “Organized Gangs Help Refugees to Den-
mark” (BT, August 17, 1984), “DDR [the former East Germany] Make a
Good Profit on Iran Refugees” (Jyllands-Posten, October 27, 1984), “Helped
His Fellow Countrymen to Illegally Enter” (Politiken, October 27, 1984),
“Illegal Immigration Is Exposed” (Berlingske Tidende, October 29, 1984),
and “Organized Asylum Swindle” (Politiken, January 11, 1984). In the four-
month period in 1984, there were seven stories with this theme, and five
of them had the police as the primary source, whereas two stories had the
reporter as source.
I will discuss one of these stories to illustrate how refugees’ escape from
home countries is criminalized through discursive techniques such as vague
descriptions of refugees’ actions. The story, entitled “Illegal Immigration Is
Exposed” (Berlingske Tidende, October 29, 1984), is about the arrest of an
Iranian refugee who had hidden the passports of four other Iranian refugees.
Upon arrival, they declared that they did not have passports. The whole en-
terprise of being a refugee is “illegal” in the sense that many refugees cannot
obtain legal documents and passports from regimes that prosecute them in
the first place. Any entry without passports or fake passports would, there-
fore, in principle, be illegal. Refugees from Iran often escaped with passports
made in other people’s names, and they did not wish to expose the identity
of the real passport holders or how the passports were produced. In many
cases, these passports were reused to help other refugees follow the same es-
cape routes. The criminal act here was more related to the act of lying about
the passports than “illegal immigration.” The story had two sources: a judge
and a police inspector. None of the sources explicitly described the act as ille-
gal immigration. The refugee was arrested for breaking the law. The reporter
merely referred to the law, whereas the actions of the police leading up to
the arrest were described in vivid detail. The police source was quoted to the
effect that the investigation would be continued and there would be more
arrests—a relatively neutral description of the investigation. At this point of
the text, there is a sudden change in the use of the subject that corresponds
to a change in the transitivity of the verb in English: “More documents are
waiting to be translated, and they are expected to show that there are clues
for an organization that gets refugees from Iran and Iraq to Scandinavia for
large sums of money.” The vagueness of the sentence allowed the journalist
to make sweeping generalizations without explicitly attributing the general-
izations to the police, although it is clear that there is no other way that the
reporter could obtain the information (that documents are being translated
and they will show the existence of an organization). The police clearly did
not—yet—have evidence that they were dealing with “an illegal organiza-
tion that helps getting foreigners to Denmark,” as it was explained by the
reporter. The defendant’s explanations are rendered irrelevant—as is the case
with most criminal cases—and he is only cited as claiming innocence, which
was denied by the judge and therefore by the reporter. Then, without any
evidence, the Iranian refugee is linked to an organization that is described
as a Mafia-like organization that does things for money. Iranian and Iraqi
refugees are collapsed into the same category of “illegal immigrants”—two
refugee groups who come from countries at war with each other. The com-
bination of vivid details and vague formulations create an aura of authen-
ticity in which sweeping generalizations that describe “illegal immigration”
gain truth-value. Thus, “illegal immigration” became the frame in which the
event was understood. And the notion of “illegal immigration” contributed
to the general image of “uncontrollable immigration.”
This story, similar to many others, illustrates how the police have been
active in putting a negative spotlight on incoming refugees. The police not
only provided the media with numbers but made the very act of seeking asy-
lum suspicious by criminalizing refugees’ attempts to escape from inhuman
conditions. The focus on the escape not only criminalized but also moved at-
tention from the reasons for seeking refuge, such as torture, persecution, and
war, to the negative consequences of the asylum system on the host society.
The focus slowly built the impression that refugees were people seeking
better economic conditions, thereby intensifying the anxieties among Danes
over the claim that the newcomers were draining the welfare funds designed
for needy Danes who had built up the welfare system through their taxes. In
particular, stories that emphasized the huge amounts of money that refugees
had to pay for false passports and visas helped create the image that these
were not needy people but “dream chasers.” These stories also described the
unrealistic expectation of refugees of receiving social help and getting a free
education, although refugees were not quoted for this kind of expectation.
Headlines such as “Escape to the Land of Happiness” (Jyllands-Posten, Oc-
tober 23, 1984) highlighted this image. The police were not always discreet
about their views of refugees; they did not put a negative spotlight on refu-
gees only by criminalizing their escape but in some cases by describing them
explicitly as “refugees of convenience who will become a great problem for
Denmark in a couple of years” (“Refugee Influx to Denmark,” Politiken,
November 26, 1984). Reporters rarely questioned police officers’ expertise to
describe refugees as “convenience refugees” or as “a great problem for Den-
mark.” The description of refugees as “convenience refugees” increasingly
connected anxieties about the erosion of the welfare system to the question
of ethnic access to the welfare system. This feeling of an unfair claim on wel-
fare goods helped, in the long term, to cement the idea that ethnic solidarity
(i.e., homogeneous Danish culture) is a precondition for the welfare system;
it displaced the original conception of the welfare system as the result of a
decades-long struggle by the working class. “Working class” includes immi-
grants; “Danes” does not.
Representation of Refugees as Carriers of Infectious Diseases
In late October 1984, there was a sudden panic around a typhoid case among
Iranian refugees. The police officers did not want to interrogate Iranian ref-
ugees unless they were quarantined first. The police officers’ demand and
anxieties were covered extensively by the media. One interesting observa-
tion is that almost all stories about the typhoid case included quotes from
medical experts who found that the risk for being infected was minimal.
No police officer was diagnosed with the disease, and the medical experts
also pointed to the fact that Denmark had several typhoid cases a year and
that the Iranian refugee might well have been infected during his stay in
Denmark. But the views of the medial experts were not included in the
headlines that emphasized the police perspective: “Typhoid Alarm: Refugee
Hospitalized and Quarantined” (BT, October 26, 1984), “Refugees Enter
the Country with Dangerous Diseases” (Jyllands-Posten, October 27, 1984),
“Police Officers Scared of Contagion from Refugees” (Politiken, October
29, 1984), “Typhoid Professor: Examine All Immigrants” (BT, October 27,
1984), “Police Officers Scared of Contagion from Sick Refugees” (Aktuelt,
October 29, 1984). Some stories even portrayed the disease as a threat to the
health of the nation in general (e.g., BT, October 26, 1984).
Refugees of Convenience
To counter the consensual humanitarian approach, Ninn-Hansen and the

institutions under his purview made a distinction between real refugees and
refugees of convenience. Berlingske Tidende, on September 30, 1984, quoted
an officer from the Danish Immigration Service who stated that there were
a number of people among the incoming refugees who traveled for comfort
(bekvemmelighed). Jyllands-Posten’s editorial on September 26, 1984, argued
that the authorities should make sure that people who come in are really in
danger rather than escaping poor living conditions. Any criticism of this dis-
tinction was countered with testimony from police officers or Ninn-Hansen.

A criminal inspector, for example, described in vivid details that a num-
ber of refugees voluntarily had left Denmark with reasons such as “it is too
cold here” or “cigarettes are too expensive” (Berlingske Tidende, January 12,
1985). They were, according to the inspector, refugees of convenience. Ninn-
Hansen supported this view a week after in the same paper: “It is time to tell
them that they can’t just come to Denmark to study.”
This rhetorical strategy of turning refugees into tourists who scan coun-
tries for more convenient living conditions would prove to be effective when
the first restrictions to the immigration law were introduced in May 1985.
The Media
The media’s response to the controversy was as expected: they relied on the
justice minister and the police as sources to describe and interpret the situa-
tion in the news. Out of a total of 113 news stories in the four-month period
in 1984, 25 (22.1 percent) were about numbers, most of them daily or weekly
statistics of incoming refugees. Seventeen stories (15 percent) described prob-
lems with finding accommodation for refugees, and thirty stories (16.5 per-
cent) were about the political debate on immigration laws and these stories
also often contained numbers. Although the police made up almost half of
the sources on numbers (44 percent), Ninn-Hansen dominated the debate:
he was the primary source in 46.7 percent of the news stories about the
political debate. Another dynamic that rendered these sources powerful in
their interpretation of events was the conspicuous silence of mainstream po-
litical party figures, with only occasional appeals for empathy and tolerance.
They did not explicitly challenge the logic that connected the increase in the
number of refugees to the immigration law and gave limited emphasis to hu-
manitarian principles, as opposed to the question of burdens on Denmark.
It may be that the consensual character of humanitarianism did not seem
to necessitate stronger response. Nonetheless, the silence left Ninn-Hansen
as the principal actor and the main authority for interpreting immigration.
The emphasis on the numbers and the sense of chaos and doom should
be understood in a media environment in which there was only one TV
channel (not included in my statistics), which dominated the airwaves, and
hundreds of local newspapers, which not only reproduced the numbers but
also “concretized” the problems in local contexts by “live” descriptions of the
tense reception of the refugees in local communities.
News stories in all newspapers adopted not only Ninn-Hansen’s defini-
tion of the situation as uncontrollable but also his language. In this period,
45 percent of all news items used, without any reservation, the term “influx
of refugees,” a phrase that had become so common by August 1984 that
journalists had to add adjectives to describe the “severity” of any further in-
crease, such as when a BT reporter wrote: “The refugee influx has exploded”
(“Organized Gangs Help Refugees to Come to Denmark,” BT, August 13,
1984). The line between sourced quotes and text written by the reporter
was often blurred, rendering specific and local renditions and evaluations of
the situation as generalized facts. This is particularly true for the right-wing
Jyllands-Posten, as when its “Refugee Influx Is Allowed to Continue” head-
lined a story on the parliament’s rejection of Ninn-Hansen’s proposal for
restrictions to the law. Berlingske Tidende quoted Ninn-Hansen saying that
“the parliament passed a refugee law that stripped the authorities of their
ability to react regardless of how many refugees come in,” and the reporter
continued by remarking, without quotation marks, that “Social Democrats
support [keeping] the refugee law as it is despite the multiplication of refu-
gee numbers (“Authorities Are Powerless,” August 11, 1984). All newspapers
resorted to this kind of reporting. In Politiken, for instance, “Iranians Are
Free to Enter to Denmark” (September 11, 1984) headlined a story based
on an interview with a police inspector who criticized the justice minis-
ter’s statement about easing the screening process for Iranian refugees. The
story cited the inspector’s direct criticism of the plan, but other information,
clearly from him, was written in objective, fact-like language without attri-
bution: “Iranians do not have to go beyond giving a very short statement to
ask for asylum, which is a temporary Danish citizenship” (emphasis added).
News reports tacitly adopted Ninn-Hansen’s connection between the
sudden rise in numbers and the liberal immigration law. Whereas counter-
arguments were presented in four stories with clear references to the source
(Danish Refugee Council), in nineteen news items, Ninn-Hansen’s opinion
was reported as if it were established fact. Yet Danish Refugee Council press
releases and commentaries argued that the numbers could not be explained
solely by the new immigration law because all other European countries had
experienced significant increases. Only Politiken’s editorial supported this
explicitly. The news coverage, inherently episodic and fragmented, included
stories that simultaneously pointed to the laxity of Danish laws as cause and
noted that other countries were experiencing similar or higher increases in
refugee numbers. Some stories attributed Denmark’s “influx” to the strict
policies of Sweden and Germany. Yet because of the journalistic routine of
event-centered news coverage (each reporter writes a single episode from the
perspectives of available sources), the stories on other European countries
experiencing the same increase were not linked to the increase in Denmark
and did not have an impact on the commonly used explanatory framework
linking the numbers to Danish immigration laws.
The Discrepancy between Editorials and News Coverage
Print media in 1984 did show a notable discrepancy between editorials and
news coverage. Four of five newspapers featured at least one editorial in this
period, all but one defending the immigration law of 1983 with reference to
Denmark’s humanitarian responsibilities to share the burden of the global
refugee problem. Even the right-wing Jyllands-Posten’s editorial (“Refugees
and Us, the Rich,” September 27, 1984) argued that “once we have made sure
that Denmark receives the persecuted [rather than economically needy], all
provincial pettiness should be set aside. Denmark is a part of the world,
and we can only benefit from knowing other people.” An earlier editorial in
the same paper (“Refugees and Freedom,” August 15, 1984) suggested that
Denmark was able to receive many more than the thousands of refugees
projected by the justice minister. The liberal Politiken agreed that regardless
of the causes of the increase, Denmark was beginning to fulfill its humani-
tarian responsibility and receiving its fair share of the refugees (September
26, 1984). The daily tabloid BT explicitly criticized Erik Ninn-Hansen in an
editorial, “Ideals That Disappeared” (October 8, 1984), for “blowing wind
into a smoldering fire” of xenophobia with his emphasis on immigrants as an
economic burden. The conservative Berlingske Tidende was the only news-
paper openly sympathetic to Ninn-Hansen’s position, asking how vast toler-
ance was to be in the “honeypot country” (October 14, 1984). The editorial
line in most papers was the opposite of the impression one would get by
reading the news coverage alone.
Features stories also tended to reflect a humanitarian approach to refu-
gees, relying less upon authorities and political figures than on interviews
with refugees’ and journalists’ firsthand reports from refugee camps and es-
cape routes, or writing about oppressive regimes (mainly Iran) and refugee
living conditions in Denmark. In seven out of a total of twelve feature stories
in 1984, refugees were described as victims of torture and oppression, as op-
posed to the news stories that focused on the arrival and accommodation of
refugees, which created a sense of chaos and panic.
The news/editorial discrepancy was confined to 1984; two years later,
more newspapers editorially aligned themselves with Ninn-Hansen and the
news coverage. A careful conclusion is that in 1984 the editorials reflected
the political consensus on the immigration law of 1983, whereas the news
reflected a typical journalistic orientation toward conflict and reliance on
conventional sources (mainly authorities) to describe the problem.
Although coding stories as “positive” or “negative” is beset with prob-
lems,15 the percentage of negative news stories in 1984 was much higher
than any other period included in this project. Even when only manifest
negativity16 is counted, 34.5 percent of all news stories were negative, versus
17.7 percent positive stories. “Neutral” stories made up one-third of the total
(35.4 percent).17
Letters to the editor18 of this period reflected the negative impression im-
plicated in news coverage: 81.8 percent of all letters to the editor in the fall of
1984 were negative (again, higher proportionally than in later periods). The
negative tone of readers’ letters was also reflected in opinion polls taken dur-
ing the same period: 46 percent of respondents found a proposed increase
of quota refugees from five hundred to one thousand unacceptable (“Every
Other Voter Says No to an Increase in the Number of Quota Refugees”
Jyllands-Posten, September 27, 1984).19
These numbers may be taken as an indication that it was the news agenda
that was reflected in the public agenda. According to agenda-setting re-
search, “The agenda-setting influence of the press results in large measure
from the repetition of the major issues in the news day after day. The public
learns about the issues on the press agenda with little effort on their part, and
considering the incidental nature of this learning, issues move rather quickly
from the press agenda to the public agenda” (McCombs 2005: 159). The me-
dia’s focus on problems linked to the arrival of refugees (as pushed onto the
agenda by the sources that the media traditionally deem authoritative and
reliable) created a widely negative sentiment in the news, as opposed to posi-
tive commentaries or statements by politicians and the intellectual elite. It is
interesting that the positive commentaries, although overwhelming in vol-
ume, did not echo among newspaper readers and poll respondents as much
as the negative tone of news coverage. Messages sent by Ninn-Hansen and
anti-immigration forces appealed, as intended, to existing anxieties among
Danes about the erosion of the welfare system and job security, which were
linked to vague but broad feelings of threat and insecurity in an increasingly
globalized world.
It is not possible to understand why the media was one of the main
agents of the creation of a panic around immigration all the while their
editorial lines emphasized the humanitarian responsibilities of Denmark
without considering the conventions of news journalism. The increase in
the number of refugees and the debate were covered by the media through
the normal journalistic routines.
Daniel Hallin (1989: 89) describes the conventions of American objec-
tive journalism as the use of official sources, a focus on the president, ab-
sence of interpretation or analysis, and a focus on immediate events—action
rather than ideas. Being objective, for American journalists, means being
“balanced” between the two sides, and there is a watertight distinction be-
tween news and views in the mind of journalists. Despite the fundamen-
tal differences between American and Danish political systems, all of these
“virtues”—save the focus on the president—are also valid for Danish jour-
nalism (Esmark and Kjær 1999). Although the Danish political system is not
a two-party system, when it comes to single issues, the public space is usually
divided between two sides, and this makes Hallin’s remarks on objectivity
relevant for Denmark.
According to Hall and coauthors (1978: 55‒69), news is shaped by a spe-
cific conception of society as a consensus based on a “central value system,”
and crime marks one of the major boundaries of that consensus. However,
not all news is shaped by consensus. Here Hallin’s (1989) distinction between
journalistic spheres of consensus, of legitimate controversy, and of deviance
is useful (116‒18). In Hallin’s model (which can be visualized as concentric
circles), the middle circle is the “sphere of legitimate controversy,” which is
the locus of journalistic objectivity. It is in this region that debates and con-
tests between the legitimate parties are reported and treated with the virtues
of objectivity and balance. The outer circle is “the Sphere of Deviance, the
realm of those political actors and views which journalists and the politi-
cal mainstream of the society reject as unworthy of being heard” (117). The
innermost circle is what Hallin calls the “sphere of consensus.” This is the
region where journalists do not feel compelled to be objective or disinter-
ested. On the contrary, the journalist’s role is to advocate or celebrate what
are conceived of as common values. In this region, objectivity and fairness
once again fade away, and journalists play the role of exposing, condemn-
ing, and excluding those who challenge social consensus. The limits of ac-
ceptable political conflict end here: human-interest stories or war coverage
(not the political debate on war) usually fall in this consensual space vacated
of potential controversies. Crime stories as well usually reflect the sphere
of consensus. The criminal is usually silent because journalists rely heavily
on official sources that monopolize legitimate violence, such as courts and
the police, whose perspectives infuse reporting. In most European socie
ties, the police are taken to be a disinterested institution without a special
stake in politics and a legitimate source to describe events disruptive of the

social order. Information from them, particularly when provided as a neutral
description of empirically graspable reality, is rarely questioned. Insofar as
criminals are heard, they may defend themselves against allegations, but in
general they are not allowed to question the nature of the crime or legiti-
macy of the authorities’ definition of the problem. Journalists do not feel
compelled to open up alternative definitions of an incident.20 The police’s
definition becomes the default definition of the problem. The police’s crimi-
nalization of refugees’ escape from their home country helped make sure
that these stories would be treated in the sphere of consensus.
It is the distinction between news and views combined with the notion
of objectivity that led to the media’s reliance on Ninn-Hansen and the po-
lice in the coverage of incoming refugees. While the editorials reflected the
political consensus (views), the news reflected the official sources’ definition
of the problem and was treated in the sphere of consensus because of the
legitimacy of the sources. This became the tacit definition in the absence of
a more pronounced political debate that would have been covered “objec-
tively” in the sphere of legitimate controversy.
Culture and Immigration in 1984
Culture was not a salient aspect of public discourse on immigration in 1984.

The humanitarian perspective was completely dominant in my sample, rep-
resenting 82.5 percent of all stories, as against 1.1 percent written from a cul-
tural perspective.21 About 81 percent of news stories and almost 95 percent
of commentaries took a humanitarian perspective, whereas almost no stories
with an explicit cultural perspective were found that year. Fewer than 1 per-
cent of stories in 1984 and 1986 named immigrants as Muslims.
However, culture was not entirely absent as a discursive resource. It was
part of the larger discursive repertoire and would be used for and against im-
migrants. In July 1984, for example, Svend Heiselberg, an MP for the Liberal
Party, was quoted: “We must dam up the mass invasion of Iranian refugees.
I am concerned about a situation where 25‒30,000 Iranians settle down in
Denmark and make an Islamic rebellion” (“MP: ‘We Must Dam Up the
Mass Invasion of Refugees,’” BT, August 7, 1984). The defenders of refugees
countered these arguments by pointing out that the Iranian refugees escaped
from an Islamic regime. Overall there were almost no cultural explanations
of behavior in this period.
The single feature story with a cultural focus in the 1984 sample was
positive toward refugees.22 Built on interviews with a cultural sociologist
and a social worker working with refugees (“Would You Like to Walk with
Me . . . !” Berlingske Tidende, October 7, 1984), the feature focused on cul-
tural difference to promote tolerance. The social worker explained that refu-
gees believed that the individual is responsible for looking after himself and
did not understand the Danish system, which was built on the principle of
solidarity and the sharing of burdens—an argument that later would be-
come the staple of the right-wing rhetoric for excluding Muslims from the
welfare system.
As always, the social and individual contexts of utterance are critical to
meaning. The social worker was actually responding to a consultant who had
criticized her for taking too much time with individual refugees: the kind of
humanitarian work she was doing could not be rationalized or maximized
for efficiency. The interview was part of a platform to defend her work at a
time of threatened job security: it was the time of the neoliberal mantra that
an overhaul of work processes was necessary in order to maximize output
and reduce the number of staff to become “competitive” in a globalizing
world. Changing deeply embedded cultural beliefs among refugees would
take time, she seemed to propose, if refugees were to be successfully inte-
grated into Danish society.
The cultural frame is a rhetorical tool through which the social worker
can justify her job by identifying herself as a bridge-builder between cultures
in a larger mission of integrating refugees into a tolerant Danish society.
As in any use of culture, it is not the positivity or negativity of the story
that is most important but how it relates to the general field of discursivity:
whether immigrants and immigration are seen primarily as situated in a field
of cultural difference and, if so, what valence is attached to the presumed
cultural difference.
The cultural content was also hinged to gender by the social worker.
Integration is the moral responsibility of Denmark, her argument went, and
a good example of integration was when refugee women, having learned
Danish and become engaged in society, become emancipated because they
can see that housework is shared between couples, that Danish men are not
macho. Such rhetoric elaborates an overall argument for Denmark’s moral
responsibility and the value of cultural integration, a project in which estab-
lished treatment systems require social workers as bridge-builders and aca-
demics who study immigrants’ cultures to provide knowledge and expertise
about how to build bridges. It is not surprising that the second interviewee
in the same article, a cultural sociologist, condemned Danish racism that re-
quired “immigrants to be just like us” because he promoted tolerance toward
cultural difference, which was transforming Denmark from an ethnically
homogenous society into a multicultural society.
Another 1984 feature story was about immigrant children not getting
enough help from the state (“Immigrants Are Treated Worse Than Refu-
gees,” Berlingske Tidende, November 14, 1984). The main point was that
immigrant women did not know how to provide a healthy diet for their
children. The social worker’s strategy here was again based on describing the
importance of her work in integrating immigrants into Danish living.
Although this kind of discourse culturalized immigrants and offered
essentialized versions of culture, cultural difference was not articulated
in mutually exclusive, antagonistic categories of Danes and immigrants.
Danishness and Danes were associated with humanitarian commitments,
and these descriptions served the rhetorical function of presenting Danes
as a culturally hospitable and kind people who cared about the sufferings
of other people. A Berlingske Tidende editorial, for example—published
a couple weeks after a poll showed that half of Danes did not want to
help refugees—described Danes as “by nature friendly and socially under-
standing people with a desire to help people in need” (October 14, 1984).
Such descriptions of Danish culture were rhetorical devices enlisted in
service of promoting a humanitarian approach rather than straightfor-
ward descriptions of an essence of Danishness. Many comments against
the growing xenophobia among Danes used these types of descriptions of
Danish culture, calling xenophobic utterances “Un-Danish” (Politiken,
editorial, November 1, 1987). Racism, according these comments, was
not a part of Danish culture, which essentially was tolerant. Rather, the
problem was lack of information about foreigners (e.g., Bent Østergaard,
Berlingske Tidende, November 11, 1984). Racism, nationalism, tolerance,
and a host of other attributes are all parts of the discursive repertoire
available for social action in any given society. Their mere existence or
use does not characterize a society as racist, nationalist, or tolerant. The
interesting point is not whether these attributes correspond to any given
essence but how cultural arguments come to be mobilized to do one or
another kind of social work. As I will demonstrate in the next chapter,
the descriptions of Danish society as tolerant and humanitarian had the
reverse effect: they provided ammunition to the populist Right’s claim
that the establishment suppressed the real concern of Danish people by
denouncing them as expressions of racism.
Intensification of the Moral Panic around Refugees
As Hall and coauthors (1978: 16) argued, a moral panic is “when the media
representations universally stress ‘sudden and dramatic’ increases (in numbers
involved or event) and ‘novelty,’ above and beyond that which a sober, realis-
tic appraisal could sustain,” and a moral panic usually results in stricter laws
against the group that constitutes the threat (Cohen 1972). However, as Noble
(2012: 218) also points out, “A moral panic always entails an ensemble of social
actors who compete in the definition of the ‘problem.’” My argument has
been that although the few editorials and feature stories generally insisted on a
humanitarian approach, the news coverage was marked by a characterization
of the situation as out of control for the reasons discussed above.
By the end of 1984, the debate on immigration had become so intense
that in her annual New Year speech on the last day of 1984, Queen Mar-
grethe felt obliged to scold Danes for being too negative about and unwel-
coming to immigrants. She asked Danes to show solidarity with foreigners
and help them adjust to Danish society. Despite an overwhelmingly positive
reception of her speech by the media, the speech itself initiated a new round
of debate.
The official descriptions of the situation as chaotic and out of control
soon bore fruit when the panic atmosphere in the news convinced all parties
(except the Progress Party) to introduce the first restrictions to the immigra-
tion law despite the rhetoric on Denmark’s humanitarian responsibilities.
The consistent distinction between “real refugees” and “convenience refu-
gees” was instrumental in the shaping of the law. Uffe Ellemann-Jensen, the
foreign minister from the Liberal Party, for example, emphasized Denmark’s
moral responsibility but simultaneously argued for a new law that clearly
distinguished between the “real refugees” and the “not real” (Berlingske Ti-
dende, January 15, 1984). While tightening the immigration law, the parties
strongly condemned the Progress Party’s explicit racism (Jensen 2000).
The first modification was made on the last day of May 1985 with the
introduction of the so-called manifestly unfounded procedure. This amend-
ment allowed a small committee of three members to view applications
quickly and deny asylum without the application being sent through normal
review process; moreover, those who were denied entry would not have ac-
cess to an appeal process (Andreassen 2005; Jensen 2000; Østergaard 2007).
The relatively strict modifications of the law did not stop the debate from
intensifying over the next year, although the picture became more complex.
News coverage overall became more positive, stories featured more argu-
ments for a humanitarian approach, and there was a corresponding increase

in positive letters to the editor, which indicates that the “progressive” forces
were becoming more and more concerned about the direction the debate
was taking and engaging in writing commentaries and letters to the editor.
On the other hand, there were attacks on refugees by Danish youth dur-
ing the summer of 1985. Although condemned across the political spectrum
(except for the Progress Party), the attacks provided ammunition for argu-
ments that “people’s concern” was growing. Furthermore, the number of
refugees knocking on the door did not drop; and Ninn-Hansen, his allies in
the police, and others, including the other Conservative and Liberal Party
MPs (the main coalition partners), began to press for more restrictions. To
that end, they started to feed the media more than the daily reports of num-
bers. To signal the degree to which the situation had become uncontrollable
and chaotic, the Danish Immigration Service set up a tent camp for a group
of refugees in September 1986 even though several other institutions had
offered accommodation for refugees (Østergaard 2007: 368). Despite the
fact that the camp was never used to house refugees, it provided dramatic
pictures of freezing refugees; military vehicles driving around; Red Cross
leaders speaking of chaos, rain, and mud; and right-wing politicians who
warned about mass migrations.
Although the picture had become more complex, the feeling of panic
had reached a climax by the fall of 1986. The idea that the “influx of refu-
gees” had to be reduced or stopped had almost become common sense, and
there were only a few dissenting voices to this commonsense solution, but
the calls for closing off the borders changed direction and became grounded
in humanitarian arguments. As in 1984, the main sources for stories coded
as “panic-creating stories” were politicians from the two government par-
ties (including Ninn-Hansen), the police, and other government agencies.
The Danish Red Cross, somewhat involved as a source of 1984 panic sto-
ries, however, became an important voice for the humanitarian argument of
closing off the borders, advanced through persistent descriptions of refugee
conditions as out of control. The leader of the Red Cross, Eigil Pedersen,
described the situation as chaotic and called the government’s proposal for
temporary border closing “timely” and necessary. According to Pedersen, the
existing open border laws were “beautiful but naive” (Jyllands-Posten, Sep-
tember 10, 1986), and the journalist’s description of the “open border laws”
reflected a new elite consensus that the refugee situation was out of control
and that something had to be done. Municipal authorities tasked with help-
ing the Red Cross find empty buildings to house refugees had also become a
source for stories about accommodation problems.
Another development was the polarization of the media. Three national

right-wing papers, Berlingske Tidende, Jyllands-Posten, and BT, became criti-
cal of the 1983 refugee laws, closing the gap between their news coverage and
editorial postures. These papers did not desert the humanitarian perspec-
tive but turned it around to call for restrictions. A Jyllands-Posten editorial
on September 16, 1986, entitled “Refugee Halt Is Urgent,” began with the
Association for Danish Refugee Friends’ criticism of the government for
“a degrading treatment of refugees that equals psychological torture,” then
used it as an argument for closing off the borders “in order to provide the
refugees already in the country with better and more humane conditions.”
Berlingske Tidende’s line was similar: like government spokespersons, it cited
a “mass migration” and asked for new restrictions (September 10, 1986). The
call was based on two arguments: (1) neighboring countries such as Sweden
and Germany had not followed Denmark’s example and liberalized their im-
migration laws, which rendered Denmark more attractive for refugees; and
(2) a restriction was in the interest of the refugees who had already managed
to come to Denmark. If situation got out of control, it would lead to con-
frontations between refugees and Danes, Berlingske argued. The very scope
of immigration made it difficult to treat refugees humanely.
These were the exact arguments of Ninn-Hansen, who called for a one-
year halt to immigration (Ekstra Bladet, September 8, 1986). Ninn-Hansen
argued that a moratorium would give the authorities time to find better
accommodations and process accumulated asylum applications. The same
arguments were advanced by Social Democrats to oppose Ninn-Hansen’s
moratorium proposal. Social Democratic spokesperson Ole Espersen cited
a need for restrictions, not border closure, arguing that “as the situation
has developed, we cannot just watch passively. [If we do that, we will end
up] . . . introducing a panic-like measure for a complete stop” (Jyllands-
Posten, October 11, 1986). Restrictions, in other words, would prevent ex-
treme action on the very same problem: too many refugees. The formulation
“as the situation has developed” indicated a tacit accept of the definition of
the situation as uncontrollable. Thus, elite political disagreement was about
the extent of the measures to be taken rather than the definition of the prob-
lem, although both sides now used humanitarian arguments. As will be seen
below, this consensual basis was not to be found among ordinary newspaper
readers who wrote letters to the editor.
It is easy to see how in the period between 1984 and 1986 the unavoid-
ability of reducing numbers had been made into common sense through the
repetition of panic stories. By the fall of 1986, the focus on the numbers of
incoming refugees remained intense, and apocalyptic prognoses continued.
Ninn-Hansen declared on September 9, 1986, that if the trend continued,

Denmark would be receiving 25,000 refugees a year (Jyllands-Posten, Sep-
tember 10, 1986), even though 10,318 refugees entered Denmark in all of
1984 and 1985, and not all of them were granted asylum (Ekstra Bladet, Sep-
tember 8, 1986).
The numbers argument was reinforced by stories about the impossibili-
ties of accommodating refugees, the net impression being that the scope
of the refugee “flow” was much larger than Denmark could manage. From
September through November 1986, 70 stories about these challenges ap-
peared in national newspapers. Almost half the sources for these stories were
mayors and the Red Cross.
The sheer volume of the news stories reflects the intensity of focus in
this period. Compared to the 30 news stories in September 1984 and 113
stories for August through November that year, in 1986, 236 news stories ap-
peared in September, with a total of 568 for September through November.
Story headlines still indicated “uncontrollable flow”: “Ninn Wants to Close
Off the Borders” (Ekstra Bladet, September 3, 1986), “Fear of Losing Con-
trol with Refugees” (Jyllands-Posten, September 4, 1986), “Refugee Export
Is Proven” (Jyllands-Posten, September 5, 1986), “Red Cross Threatens with
Leaving Refugee Chaos” (Jyllands-Posten, September 6, 1986), “Brakes on the
Influx of Refugees” (Berlingske Tidende, September 10, 1986), “Police: Refu-
gee Numbers Explode” (Berlingske Tidende, September 10, 1986), “[Police]
Guarding the Border” (Politiken, September 12, 1986), “Few Refugees Are
Rejected at the Border” (Jyllands-Posten, September 18, 1986), “The Govern-
ment Wants to Close Refugees’ Airport Route” (Jyllands-Posten, September
20, 1986), “Red Cross: Refugee Situation the Worst Ever” (BT, September
22, 1986), “Refugee Influx Breaks All Records” (Jyllands-Posten, September
23, 1986), and “Record Influx of Refugees in September” (Berlingske Tidende,
September 29, 1986).
These stories were from national newspapers.23 The local papers, of
course, relied on local sources and local police officers, who not only pro-
vided numbers but also a particular perspective, often characterizing refu-
gees as fakes and criminal elements. A story from Fyens Stiftstidende (Sep-
tember 6, 1986), for instance, was headlined: “The Magic Word Is ‘Asylum’
[asyl in Danish]: The Four Letters Are Better Than All Passes and Papers.” It
presented the perspective of an anonymous police officer who explained that
many Lebanese and Palestinian refugees had already applied for or received
asylum in Germany but came to Denmark to have “milk and honey” (i.e.,
the luxurious life). He said:
If a person can just pronounce the word “asylum,” we are whipped to

put the whole system at work. . . . Several times I had the experience
that refugees who could not explain what they wanted would come
back and say the word “asylum. . . .” Politicians will not talk about
this, and the police chiefs must not—or dare not. But the ordinary
police officers . . . do sometimes ask if there is not something com-
pletely wrong with the Danish refugee laws.
Refugees or their perspectives, on the other hand, were hardly ever heard: in
national press, I counted only 11 out of 903 stories in which the protagonist
was a refugee or immigrant. When they were quoted, they were allowed to
tell about their own experiences, but their story was usually framed by the
perspectives of the local or national sources.
Such local stories about “convenience refugees” used eyewitness accounts
to give concrete details describing what happened at the border—without
saying much about refugees’ actual reasons for entry into Denmark. In gen-
eral, these stories offered no concrete detail that supported the idea that
they had applied for or achieved asylum in Germany, or that they came to
Denmark for better economic conditions. In the story above, the reporter
saw passports showing the refugees had been in Germany prior to their ar-
rival, nothing more. The story relied on the ethos of the police officer, built
through rhetorical moves that placed him at the center of the events and
enabled him to draw conclusions.
This distinction between real and convenience refugees was consistently
made by police and government agencies, implying that many refugees did
not need protection (Jensen 2000). The distinction was used by the gov-
ernment to promote further restrictions while sustaining a humanitarian
rhetoric. Ninn-Hansen argued, for instance, that young Iranians were to be
prevented from entering just because they were denied access to the univer-
sity in Tehran (Berlingske Tidende, January 16, 1985).
This common sense that refugees had to be stopped from entering
Denmark was clearly reflected in almost all stories in the right-wing me-
dia. However, if one side of the 1986 story is the negative press on refugees,
the other side is the polarization among newspapers. Although there was
less separation between editorials and news in the right-wing Berlingske
Tidende and Jyllands-Posten, the situation was more complex for the liberal
Politiken and the tabloids BT and Ekstra Bladet. Among the big three daily
national newspapers (Politiken, Jyllands-Posten, and Berlingske Tidende),
panic stories make the polarization clear. The number of panic stories in
1984 in the three newspapers were almost identical. In 1986, there is a clear
difference (table 2.2).
Table 2.2. Changes in the Number of Panic Stories

Newspaper 1984 1986
Politiken 10 6
Berlingske T. 11 19
Jyllands-Posten 13 27
Ekstra Bladet 1 1
BT 4 4
These numbers indicate that the press had become more active in promot-
ing its own agendas and perspectives. Right-wing papers Berlingske Tidende
and Jyllands-Posten used the panic stories more deliberately. Politiken, on the
other hand, offered stories to balance the negative information about refu-
gees. Deportation stories, often about the tragic consequences of restrictive
laws and practices and therefore more open to “positive” perspectives, are
a good index of this. It is not surprising that Politiken had an overwhelm-
ingly larger share of these stories, most of them coded “positive,” whereas
the few Berlingske Tidende and Jyllands-Posten stories were mostly negative
(table 2.3).
Table 2.3. Positive Stories

Newspaper Total Positive
Politiken 29 25
Berlingske T. 6 2
Jyllands-Posten 12 4
Ekstra Bladet 4 4
BT 15 11
Although BT’s editorial line was closer to that of Berlingske Tidende and
Jyllands-Posten, its deportation stories were more positive regarding refu-
gees. In this aspect, BT was similar to Ekstra Bladet, whose editorial line
was the most critical of the government of all newspapers in the sample.
Ekstra Bladet, long positioning itself as the voice of “the little man” against
the elite, in the mid-1980s chose to be the voice of refugees, including them
within the definition of “the little man.” This choice, and the sensational-
ist character of the paper, produced news stories that took a clear stand for
refugees. The subtitle of the story “Ninn Wants to Close Off the Borders”
(Ekstra Bladet, September 3, 1986) reads, for instance, “Doors Closing for
Refugees even Though We Have Space Enough,” criticizing Ninn-Hansen’s
call for closing the border. The story listed the locations of empty build-
ings to which the state and municipal authorities had access and implied
that Ninn-Hansen and immigration authorities lied about not being able to
house the refugees. It also criticized the government’s attempt to represent
refugees as “convenience refugees” seeking better conditions by pointing out
that a refugee had to live on 2,300 DKK (less than US$400) a month.
The intensification of concern about immigration is also apparent in let-
ters to the editor. From September to November 1986, there were 213 letters
to the editor, compared to 22 letters in the four-month sample from 1984.
Again, there is a move toward the positive: 81.8 percent of writers were nega-
tive and only 13.1 percent positive toward refugees in 1984; 31.3 percent wrote
positively in 1986, against 59.8 percent negatively. The same trend appeared
in opinion polls showing that Danes’ attitudes toward immigrants had be-
come more positive in 1985. Bent Østergaard, a frequent commentator on
immigration, gave credit to the influence of the humanitarian position when
he attributed the attitude change to those media and political elites who
spoke with one voice against “petite racism” (“Danish Refugee Policy,” Ber-
lingske Tidende, September 12, 1986).
Letters to the Editor: Distance between the Elite and the “People”
Two important themes emerged in letters to the editor in 1986: refugees as

an economic burden and the insensitivity of the political elite to people’s
concerns. These themes came up in various concrete arguments that appear
incoherent at an analytical level but, in their local contexts, function to sup-
port the main argument. Arguments and ideas are not related to one another
through a universal logic but, once introduced into discourse, take on a life
of their own, connected through an articulatory logic within the heteroge-
neity of the social, where the constant battle for hegemony enlists the same
flexible elements of discourse for different, sometimes contradictory, ends.
For example, one letter might argue that refugees are an economic bur-
den in a society that cannot even provide housing to its own people, such
as Danish squatters (referred to as BZ youth), although in the context of
another letter squatters (BZs) would be described as a threat to the cohesive-
ness of Danish society. Some letters called for a stop to refugee immigration
by repeating Ninn-Hansen’s argument about failure to provide humanitar-
ian conditions, whereas others would accuse the government of discrimi-
nating against Danes in favor of refugees: “While we can be proud of our

refugee policy, can we also be proud of the way we treat our elderly, [who]
have through their work and taxes contributed to society and now when
they need help, we fail them?” (“Racists?” Kristeligt Dagblad, September 11,
1986). Arguments about the burden of providing for refugees were often
supported with facts from the media, such as how much refugees cost the
Danish state. The burden theme gained additional power when linked to
the distinction between real and convenience refugees presented in the press.
Letters describing refugees as an economic burden often also identified them
as “convenience refugees” who came to Denmark to share wealth that they
had not built. Several readers preferred, they wrote, to support real refugees
in Afghanistan or Africa instead of those who could afford to come to Eu-
rope. The idea that unlimited resources were channeled to refugees while
people who had contributed to the nation’s wealth suffered became a power-
ful discursive moment for voicing opposition to the political establishment
in an environment of profound anxiety about the reductions to welfare ben-
efits, a wage freeze, and job insecurity.
These attempts to qualify the priority of Danes indicate readers’ orienta-
tions toward a public political discourse that repeatedly emphasized Den-
mark’s moral responsibilities and humanitarian principles, as if the humani-
tarian perspective was a substantial part of Danish character. Rather than
directly challenging the moral responsibility perspective, letter writers often
mobilized a rhetoric that positioned refugees as people without a need for
the humanitarian protection they received in preference to native Danes.
Although such us/them (wealth creators / wealth stealers) distinctions in
1986 sometimes moved toward a signifying structure of Danes versus alien
immigrants, the distinction was uneven and not fundamentally culturalized.
Race, religion, and culture appeared in letters as rhetorical resources rather
than central categories that characterized the ontological structure of society.
Iranian refugees could be described as Muslims with fanatic ideas and as
secular people fleeing Islamic fundamentalism. In only 14 of 214 letters to
the editor in 1986 was culture the main explanatory frame. A year later, the
number was slightly higher, 29 out of 215 but still insignificant compared
to 2001’s total of 53 out of 149. Nonetheless, this discursive constellation of
aliens, Danes, and welfare had begun to open up space for a rearticulation of
social identities with reference to culture rather than class and to make imag-
inable a link between the Danish state’s welfare system and ethnic access.
It is not surprising, therefore, that letters to the editor included explicit
critiques of the political elite who channeled resources to refugees while be-
ing deaf to the voice of ordinary people. The criticism was mostly directed at
the centrist parties, the Social Democrats, the intelligentsia, and the Danish
Refugee Council, although it was frequently generalized to all politicians
and intellectuals under the umbrella of “upper Denmark.” For instance, let-
ters in Aktuelt—the only party-affiliated newspaper in Denmark published
by the labor unions—from workers, employed or unemployed,24 did not
agree with the paper’s obeisance to the Social Democrats’ humanitarian refu-
gee policy. One response to the queen scolding Danes for intolerance to
foreigners called her “a right-wing-oriented, high-class lady who patronized
people. I am an old working-class woman, and I see a lot of young Danes
who wander around without job, education, housing, or even a hope for
a future. Are they not a kind of refugee?” (January 6, 1985). Another let-
ter opined: “You hear that an Iranian refugee cost 100,000 kroner, that is,
more than the double the cost of a retiree whom nobody cares about, whose
teeth fall out of one’s mouth. The authorities are about to make us racists in
Schlüter’s [Conservative prime minister] Denmark” (January 8, 1985).
Such readers, however, also expressed dislike for right-wing parties and
positions that, coupled with the distance between Aktuelt’s editorial line and
readers’ sentiments, indexes a developing crisis of representation for work-
ing people who felt that they were no longer represented within the political
system as they had once been by the Social Democratic Party. The letters ex-
pressed anxiety and anger in a fragmented and episodic way, drawing on var-
ious arguments, but fell short of articulating a social vision that might fill the
representational void and restore order. In other words, there was a need for
a radical vision that could articulate these concerns into a new social forma-
tion with a promise to restore order. That vision came from the populist Far
Right, which disarticulated the traditional link between the “people” and the
“workers.” This dislocation destabilized the Social Democratic hegemony. If
social identities are constructed in an antagonistic manner, the identity of
what would come to be called the “Danish people” as a cultural unity was
here given resources for such an antagonistic articulation through a political
target: the cosmopolitan political and cultural elites25 that opened the path
to the destruction of the nation by letting Muslims overflow Denmark.
Moral panics can be useful for introducing more coercion into the equi-
librium (e.g., more restrictive laws), but like other social phenomena, they
cannot be controlled. Ninn-Hansen’s deliberate strategy of creating a sense
of chaos and despair by focusing on the numbers and the unsurmountable
financial costs of refugees and by targeting the political majority had much
greater implications for the political system than “merely” tightening the im-
migration law; his strategy helped create public animosity against the elites
indifferent to ordinary, working Danish people’s concerns and created a
sense that people’s interests were not represented by the political system. The
discursive environment was fertile for an intervention by far-right forces.
They successfully articulated the distance between the political/cultural es-
tablishment and the “people” as a political antagonism.
Populist Intervention
The populist Right’s intervention came in the form of two similar newspaper
ads in Jyllands-Posten, on September 21 and 28, 1984, paid for by a priest,
Søren Krarup, who was also a columnist in the paper. Both ads, similar in
content, called for boycotting a refugee donation campaign organized by the
Danish Refugee Council. He asked people to turn the donation campaign
into a referendum on the Danish refugee policy—a referendum that the
politicians were denying “us,” the Danish people.
What seemed to be as just another racist outburst by a right-wing ex-
tremist who was on the fringes of political discourse came at a such a fragile
moment that it turned the moral panic around the refugees into a major
crisis for the entire political, intellectual, and cultural establishment. His
intervention had both an immediate and long-term impact on the political
discourse.
However, Krarup never became the leader of a populist far-right party.
Rather, his intervention created a moment that within a decade led to the
formation of the Danish People’s Party—one of the biggest and most influ-
ential populist far-right parties in Europe. Before I move on to analyzing the
rhetorical strategies that turned Krarup’s intervention into a transformative
moment, I want to discuss what it means to represent the popular will and
clarify how I use terms such as “Far Right” and “populism.”
The first question to ask in this context is this: Can a single person have
such an impact on political discourse that he sets a hegemonic transforma-
tion in motion? This question is related to another question about the na-
ture of representation: Do “leaders” lead or represent the groups of people
(crowds, mobs, constituencies, social classes, or the “people”) and their “in-
terests?” In democratic theory, leaders are conceived as representatives of
various interests, and in a larger context, of the popular will. In Marxist
theory, leaders represent social classes even if the classes are not aware of
their own interests, which are determined by their place within the relations
of production. Both theories conceive the groups (e.g., classes) and their “in-
terests” as objectively measurable entities that exist prior to representation.
Krarup’s own answer to this question may give some clues about this re-
lationship. He wrote a book about the events around his boycott campaign
in a diary format that was published a year after the controversy:
We have a feeling that we are about to write a modest history of Den-

mark and mutter among ourselves about it. There is no reason to be
too excited about it, but the Danish popular manifestation will not
be without consequences. The present disastrous refugee law cannot
survive the storm, something that the politicians are about to un-
derstand. We also receive news from Christiansborg [the parliament
building]. Politicians pay attention to the commotion with anxiety.
“Will they form a party?” they ask in the corridors of Christiansborg.
We have a feeling that if we wanted, we could win several seats in the
parliament. The same feeling probably haunts the politicians—not
only the nonsocialists but also Social Democrats whose constituents
we mostly hear from. . . . I included my phone number and address
in the ad and now the storm has formed. We do not have time for
anything else than talking on the phone. . . . And it is . . . downright
liberated people we are speaking with. Some even cry on the phone.
(Quoted in Engelbreth Larsen 2001: 13; my translation)
In this excerpt, Krarup makes a distinction between “we” as the small group
of people who organized the boycott campaign and the manifestation of
Danish “popular will.” The distinction allows him to present himself as the
leader and founder of a popular movement, but simultaneously describes
the popular will as something already there, prior to his leadership, just si-
lenced (hence the term he came to use later: “the silent majority,” which has
a rich history in populist discourse, e.g., George Wallace and Richard Nixon
from the US, or Enoch Powell from the UK).
But as we have seen in the analysis of the letters to the editor, although
many readers expressed concern about the refugees, there was no consen-
sus about the nature of those concerns and the definition of the “political
elite.” Many readers simultaneously worried about the economic burden the
refugees were imposing on Danes and expressed concern about Denmark’s
humanitarian responsibilities. The concern for the nation’s future was not a
prominent theme. The letters also blamed different parties for the chaotic
situation. In other words, there was no single “popular will” readily acces-
sible prior to the boycott campaign; the diverse, and at times contradictory,
expressions of concern and anxiety were articulated into a coherent “popu-
lar will” by Krarup and company in the ads and the debate that followed.
The “popular will” came into existence in the process of representation that
retroactively articulated the interests of the “people” and the “leader” who
claimed to represent those interests. As Laclau (2005: 99) argues, “The popu-
lar subject position does not simply express a unity of demands constituted
outside and before itself, but is the decisive moment in establishing that
unity.”
This is a crucial point if we want to understand the hegemonic trans-
formation that has taken place in Denmark (and elsewhere). In classical
accounts of hegemony, classes—as defined by their role in economy—enter
into an alliance and form a “historical bloc” with other classes even if it
means modifying their own demands/interests. From a poststructuralist he-
gemony perspective, a hegemonic formation (i.e., historical bloc) does not
consist of predefined classes; the identity of these “classes” is transformed in
the process of the hegemonic displacement. In other words, it is not that
the “working class” entered into new alliances; the identity of the “working
class” has been transformed in the process that has reconfigured the onto-
logical structure of society from class to culture as the basis for social divi-
sion. In this sense, it is not that cultural cleavage dimension has come to the
forefront while the basic ontology of the social has remained intact (as many
scholars of the populist Right seem to assume).
Populism and the Far Right
What is remarkable in Krarup’s own account is his description of people’s

emotional reaction to the boycott campaign as one of being liberated. As
Mudde (2004: 546), one of the prominent scholars of populism, argues,
“Populists [claim to] speak in the name of the ‘oppressed people,’ and they
want to emancipate them by making them aware of their oppression.” An-
other populist notion clear in his account is the dichotomy between the
“people” and the politicians who are out of sync with the people’s demands.
Although there is no agreement on what populism is, most scholars agree
that populism is based on a dichotomy between some notion of people pure
and uncorrupt, and some elites that are alien, corrupt, or debased. Taggart
(2000) sees the dichotomy being between the “heartland” and the margins,
whereas Mudde (2004: 543) and Mudde and Kaltwasser (2013) define popu-
lism as an ideology that separates groups into two homogeneous and an-
tagonistic camps, “the pure people” versus “the corrupt elite,” and argues
that politics should be an expression of the collective will of the people.
Nonpopulist movements or leaders also talk about “people,” but the main
characteristic of populism is the antagonistic relationship (i.e., “us” versus
“them”) between the “people” and its “other.”
Although scholars agree on the centrality of dichotomous division in

social space, they have different conceptualizations of populism. Some
scholars consider populism to be an ideology (i.e., a bundle of loosely inter-
related ideas), whereas others see it as a political strategy focusing on forms
of mobilization and organization, and still others see it as a political style—
mode of articulation—that divides the political space into two antagonistic
camps while the specific content (i.e., the identities) of those camps “var-
ies in accordance with the different ways this antagonistic relationship is
defined” (Panizza 2005: 4). The ambiguity of the term “populism” is partly
related to the third definition—the variations of populism across geogra-
phies, historical periods, and political spectrum (left and right)—as well as
the fact that it is an analytical attribution (or just a negative label), not a
term that most political actors would use about themselves. What compli-
cates the use of the term further is the fact that in modern politics every
political speech appeals to the people or claims to speak for the people,
which makes it difficult to distinguish populist from nonpopulist discourse.
Moreover, as many scholars have noted, many mainstream parties in Eu-
rope have adopted populist rhetoric, which, in my case, indicates the hege-
mony of the populist vision.
There is a consensus that in Western Europe most of the populist parties
belong to the right wing of the traditional political spectrum; they all have
anti-Muslim immigration at the center of their focus and they generally
participate in the electoral process; except for some small extremist groups
that operate outside the parliamentary system. There are also disagreements
about whether they should be considered as part of the democratic system
or as a threat against democracy.
I use the term “populist Far Right” because the populist right-wing par-
ties and movements typically place themselves to the right of the main-
stream Right in terms of their nationalist, nativist, and racist views. Their
members are often recruited from extremist right-wing groups even if they
put a damper on extremist rhetoric. The Left is always at the top of their en-
emy list. But as with “populism,” populist right-wing parties do not use the
ideological template of a left-right division, which is in line with their own
understanding of the simplified division between the homogeneous “people”
and its antagonistic “other,” which, they argue, transcends politics as such
(Lowndes 2005: 146). If we accept that there is no ultimate meaning to the
notion of people, and that its meaning and homogeneity is determined by
its antagonistic relationship with the external other, then the characteriza-
tion of the threat retroactively determines the political character of the peo-
ple. Because Islam and Muslim immigrants are the “real” political target of
the most populist parties in Europe, in their mobilization against Islam and
Muslim immigration the far-right populist forces have increasingly become

defenders of not only the welfare state (albeit only for the ethnic majority)
but also gender equality, gay rights, animal rights, and secularism, which has
the effect of transforming their own political identity. This also complicates
where to place them on the traditional left-right continuum. Despite these
complications, there is almost no disagreement among scholars that they
belong to the right wing of the political spectrum.
The proposition that “the divide between the people and its ‘other’ defines
the political nature of populism” and “it is through antagonism that political
identities are constituted” (Panizza 2005: 28) does not sufficiently address
the question of who the antagonistic other is: there is a general agreement
on the centrality of Muslim immigration as the political target in populist
discourse (Meret 2011),26 and it is easily articulated with antiglobalization
and anti–European Union sentiments. But there is also an agreement that
populist parties and movements dichotomize the political space between the
“people” as underdogs and the corrupt political elites, as was the case with
Krarup’s ads (as I will show in the next chapter): he clearly targeted the po-
litical establishment even though the real threat was Muslim immigration.
Although there is a general tendency in the literature to identify the antago-
nistic relationship as between the “people” and the “elite,” this relationship
needs to be qualified. The real culprit for the European populist Right is
usually Islam; it is the presence of Muslim immigrants that prevents the peo-
ple from achieving plenitude. The corrupt cosmopolitan political elites are
treasonous collaborators with the enemy. They may be the antagonistic po-
litical targets, but the real antagonism is between the “people,” which equals
the nation as a harmonious cohesive force, and Muslims, who threaten the
harmony and unity of the nation. The politicians are evil insofar as they do
not prevent the Muslim invasion from happening or, at worst, because they
facilitate it. This is why the populist right-wing parties can justify joining
governing coalitions: to make sure that the evil is prevented from happening
and restore order and reinstate the system to its original unity.
It is within this framework that I will analyze Krarup’s political interven-
tion at the peak of a true moral panic about immigration. As Laclau (2014:
176) argues, “A true political intervention is never merely oppositional; it is
rather one that displaces the terms of the debate, that rearticulates the situ-
ation in a new configuration.” I will now demonstrate how Krarup’s inter-
vention displaced the terms of the debate and rearticulated the situation in
a new configuration.
Chapter 3
Rhetoric of the Hegemonic Intervention
Populist practices emerge out of the failure of the existing political institu-
tions to restore social order during the times of crises. The failure, however,
is not objectively given; populists intervene in political discourse by claim-
ing that the system has failed in handling a crisis and that there is a radical
alternative: ditching the extant political parties. Populists use a language of
politics in which politics as usual is no longer possible. And they offer a new
form of representation based on a new mode of identification that displaces
the social borders that previously structured society; their political appeal
seeks to redefine political frontiers (Panizza 2005).
The crisis of representation, which according to Laclau (2005: 137) is at
the root of any populist, anti-institutional outburst, was clearly in embry-
onic form in the demands of the letter writers discussed in the last chapter.
People’s concerns were often expressed in terms of access to welfare at a
time when the coalition government of the Conservatives and Liberals was
trying to dismantle the social welfare system and the mainstream Left (i.e.,
the Social Democrats) had joined the Right in the idea that the “rationaliza-
tion” of the economy was the solution (Mondon 2013; Betz and Meret 2013).
Popular resentments about refugee policy and the political system were often
articulated around the allocation of resources and access to welfare benefits.
Many letter writers expressed disgust with politicians who wasted tax money
on refugees rather than supporting Danish retirees, the unemployed, youth,
or health care—all of which Danes had worked hard for—but many let-
ter writers were nonetheless highly responsive to the humanitarian frame-
work in which the question of refugees had been debated. Thus, it is not a
straightforward task to conceptualize the resentment as the expression of a
collective will with a shared core demand.
The letter writers’ views of the immigration policy had a wide range: some
101
expressed a concern about cultural harmony or the survival of Danish iden-

tity, some invoked Danishness as a trait inherently associated with tolerance,
and some referred to those people whose taxes enabled the welfare system
that politicians were now wasting on refugees. The future of national iden-
tity was one among other concerns that did not have a necessary and logical
relationship with concerns about not getting a fair deal in the allocation of
resources or with resentment about the neoliberal economic policies of the
right-wing government. These various concerns were not always articulated
as the related parts of the same struggle; on the contrary, they were often
flexibly and creatively woven with arguments about the humane treatment
of refugees and with diverse solutions of the problems. Anti-institutional
resentment was also articulated in various directions: for some, it was the
politicians from left and center parties; for Social Democrats, it was the
right-wing coalition government; for others, it was the vague class of “poli-
ticians.” As such, popular discourse was responsive to elite discourse—as
conveyed by the preferred sources of the national press—rather than being
an expression of an organized movement manifesting the popular will. The
letters were certainly too heterogeneous to be an articulation of such a will
whether conceptualized as an aggregation of different opinions or as a con-
sensus formed through deliberative process.1 It had to be articulated into
existence by an intervening force that could inscribe the various demands in
some kind of radical discourse.
Ninn-Hansen and his collaborators in the police and immigration service
may not have intended to create a crisis of representation, but their attempts
to create a sense of chaos and despair caused by uncontrollable immigration
in order to force the political majority in the Folketing to intervene and
tighten the immigration law had created an increasingly severe moral panic
and destabilized an already fragile political environment by the fall 1986. The
intervention, however, came from a far-right pastor, Søren Krarup, who was
on the fringes of political discourse and outside the parliamentary system.
Krarup targeted not only immigration laws but the entire political and cul-
tural establishment, which he cast as cosmopolitan traitors “acting like a for-
eign occupation army” with no respect for the Danish people’s concerns. He
claimed that the political system no longer represented the popular will. His
intervention displaced the terms of the debate and transformed the debate
around refugees from being a question of economic burden or Denmark’s
humanitarian responsibilities into that of cultural threat. And it moved the
focus of the debate from the refugees to the political establishment, and
therefore the political representation.
The moral panic around refugees and Krarup’s intervention occurred in
Rhetoric of the Hegemonic Intervention 103
an environment where the Social Democrats, having largely accepted the

inevitability of a neoliberal agenda, had moved toward the center and were
no long in a position to articulate dissatisfactions into a popular movement
against neoliberalism. They were trapped between humanistic principles and
the expressions of the ethnocentric welfarism of their constituency, and they
were closely affiliated with the immigration laws that had become related to
dissatisfactions with the systematic erosion of the welfare society. The radical
Left was trapped between defending the principles of humanism and inter-
national solidarity and giving in to tangled strains of envy and indignation
among working people. The Left was not an alternative but increasingly
seemed to be part of the very system that had created the problems. If there
was an opening to articulate the popular will and channel protests around a
tangible social division, there was no political entity on the left to undertake
the task.
As I indicated in the previous chapter, the impact of Krarup’s interven-
tion was both immediate and long lasting. In this chapter, I will be analyzing
the rhetorical strategies that catapulted him into prominence and enabled
him to define the terms on which immigration was discussed (i.e., his im-
mediate impact) and the hegemonic articulation of the popular will around
the signifier, the Danish people as defined by their opposition to Muslims
and their enablers within the nation: the cultural and political elite—an
articulation that reached a relatively stable and normalized status (i.e., the
long-term impact).
September 21, 1986: A Rhetorical Intervention
The populist-style intervention came from a well-known right-wing colum-

nist. On September 21 and September 29, 1986, Krarup placed advertise-
ments in the right-wing newspaper Jyllands-Posten (where he was a regular
columnist), calling upon Danes to boycott Refugee 86, the donation cam-
paign organized by the Danish Refugee Council (DRC), and to effectively
turn the campaign into a referendum on Denmark’s immigration policy.2
The ad that ran on September 21, 1986, was a head-on confrontation
with the DRC and Danish refugee policy. He accused the DRC of ruining
the fatherland; of running the country like a dictatorial shadow govern-
ment by imposing its laws in the Folketing; of terrorizing public debate;
and of draining the treasury. He claimed that the DRC wanted to silence
the Danish people’s voice and stop them from expressing their concerns
about the uncontrolled and unconstrained immigration of Muslims, which
would destroy the nation and turn it into a Lebanon torn by wars between
minority groups. He compared the DRC to an occupation force in a for-
eign country that had taken a position against the Danes, who were rightly
concerned about the future of their country. In the footnotes to the ad, he
explained that he chose to insert the article as a paid ad (rather than in his
regular column) to have greater striking power. He hoped that people would
turn Refugee 86 into a referendum on the refugee policy by contributing to
another ad that he intended to run the following Sunday.
The next ad was similar in its essence: it claimed that the door to Den-
mark was wide open and the political and cultural elites that let the door
stay open were destroying the nation. This time his target was not only the
DRC but the entire political and cultural establishment. He also addressed
some of the responses to the first ad, including charges of racism. He turned
the accusation upside down and used the charges of racism as an indication
that the DRC did not respect the people. He once more called for a boycott
of the aid collection to turn it into a popular protest.
In the footnotes to the second ad, Krarup thanked people for the sup-
port and approval he received, which he said confirmed his assumption that
the people felt terrorized by the refugee policy’s powerful advocates. He also
announced the formation of a committee against refugee laws and named
the members (a small group consisting of his family members, friends, and
affiliates).
The effects of the ads were immediate. The ads and the following fulmi-
nation immediately catapulted him into the center of the debate on refugees
and consequently opened the channels of discourse to him. The media cov-
erage was extensive. The ads were covered in all newspapers; having sensed
a huge controversy, reporters began to collect reactions to the ad campaign
from all quarters.
The day the ad was published, an avalanche of complaints flowed into
various institutions: the Association for Danish Refugee Friends as well as
pastors and individuals complained to the church minister and to the bishop
as the head of the church. The next day, Krarup was reported to the police
for racism by a pastor.
The media’s coverage of the ads and reactions to them was so intense that
although only a few people had seen the ads, the entire population knew
Krarup’s arguments within a couple of days after the first ad ran. He received
an incredible amount of attention and space to promote his arguments, even
if mostly in a negative light. Although Ekstra Bladet headlined “Now Krarup
Runs Amuck” and called him “the right-wing extremist priest” (September
23, 1986), DR TV, the only TV channel at that time, invited him to a prime-
time debate with the chairman of the DRC three days after the first ad; the
debate was covered by the entire media the following day.
The crucial ideological element in Krarup’s intervention, I argue, was
articulating feelings of envy and indignation against refugees around the
empty cultural signifier “the Danish people.” “The people” were defined by
their concerns about the future of their being as a nation, and this articula-
tion changed the direction of the debate on immigration from economic
burden to national identity and its future survival.
As powerful as the change of rhetorical direction were the new links Kra-
rup forged among diverse and often contradictory arguments, concerns, and
demands as instances of a popular will. What bound all these fragmented
arguments, concerns, and demands into a unity was the articulation of a
singular popular will. The particular arguments, concerns, or demands did
not matter: they were all expressions of the concerns that “the people” had
about the future of their nation, concerns that were being ignored by the
treasonous political and cultural elite. The empty signifier “Danish people”
forged a link between all of the concerns and demands. The antagonism be-
tween the Danish people and their adversaries (i.e., the political/intellectual
elite and the alien intruders) operated as the key that made the disintegra-
tion of the nation—and the inevitability of national recovery—intelligible.
This articulation promised a solution to the major problems of “society” by
overcoming the chaos and reinstating order. For many working-class people,
it was no longer a question of getting rid of the right-wing government and
its neoliberal policies but reinstating the unity of the Danish nation, which
would prevent the wasting of resources on Muslim “aliens” who did not
belong. The intervention itself was the decisive moment in establishing that
unity. This is the significance of his intervention, which explains his impact
on the direction of “history.”
Søren Krarup was born in December 1937. His father, also a pastor, had
been involved in the resistance during the Nazi occupation of Denmark.
Krarup described his father’s involvement in the resistance against the Ger-
man occupation as formative for him and compared his father’s involvement
to his own 1986 campaign, which he described as the new resistance move-
ment against a political and intellectual elite who had become “a foreign
occupation power” (Engelbreth Larsen 2001).
His father’s influence also came from his position as an important fig-
ure in a religious movement represented by the journal Tidehverv (Epoch),
which argued against humanism in religion. Under the influence of his
father, Krarup studied theology and became a Lutheran pastor and the
coeditor of Tidehverv in 1965. For Tidehverv, the main enemy is human-
ism and all forms of idealism that take issue with injustice. According to
the journal, the idea of human rights is a substitute religion alien to the
basic Christian spirit of the Danish nation. Injustice, according to Krarup,
is God’s reality, which cannot be changed through political or social ac-
tion. Justice will be taken care of by God. The Christian commandment
“Love thy neighbor” is impossible and against human nature. Christianity
is not a sentimental religion, but humanism makes it look so (Engelbreth
Larsen 2001: 15). Because evangelism comes first as the defining element
of Danish culture, the task of state power and the democratic system is to
protect it. If there is a conflict between state power and evangelism, one
should stand against power. Krarup has always been critical of both what
he called the degeneration of national feeling and the power of political
parties because it has grown at the expense of the people. Treasonous im-
migration and European Union policies, he maintained, were the result of
the political parties’ dominion.
By the time his ads were published, he had already written eighteen
books following his first, Harald Nielsen og Hans Tid (Harald Nielsen and
His Time, 1960), including Begrebet Anstændighed (The Concept of Decency,
1985) and I Virkeligheden (In Reality, 1986). The year after the ads, he pub-
lished Det Tavse Flertal (The Silent Majority, 1987), which elaborated one
of the central terms of his populist intervention. His last book is a celebra-
tion of his life achievement: Systemskiftet (The System Change, 2006). He has
written regular columns (for the right-wing Jyllands-Posten and the tabloid
Ekstra Bladet) and countless commentaries in Danish newspapers. Krarup
had been a sharp voice, notorious for pointed and provocative language. He
was called a “discussion butcher” with whom it was spiritual “hara-kiri” to
engage (Berlingske Tidende, September 27, 1986). In his books, columns, and
commentaries, Krarup castigated the welfare system, women’s movements
(the “lady cause,” as he put it),3 democratism (sic!), the European Com-
mon Market, and European integration, and promoted the right to chastise
children, which he called self-defense. He raged against permissiveness and
in this regard considered his mortal enemies to be political parties, human
rights ideologists, psychologists, pedagogues, experts, and social workers (of-
ten mentioned as a general category of “managers”). Krarup was routinely
placed on the extreme right of the political spectrum by his opponents (Poli-
tiken, September 25, 1986; Berlingske Tidende, September 27, 1986), and his
appeal was seen as generally limited to religious audiences and right-wing
intellectuals. As can be seen, his populist style was informed by his ideologi-
cal background.
Right Time, “Wrong Target,” and Appropriate Rhetoric:

Gaining Access to Discourse
If similar ideas, even if in a fragmented and episodic manner, were already

expressed and “the popular will” was invoked in discourse prior to his ad
campaign, why did these particular ads gain ground at this juncture? In
other words, what catapulted him to prominence?
Part of the answer is the extent of the moral panic that was created
around refugees. Krarup’s timing was, therefore, crucial. His challenge came
at a time when there was an unvoiced consensus among politicians and in
the media that the refugee situation was out of control and opposition par-
ties were signaling their willingness to enforce measures to stop the continu-
ing “flow” of refugees despite the radical measures introduced in 1985.
Part of the answer was his choice of target. Krarup had been arguing
against the immigration laws in his Jyllands-Posten columns and was already
known for his uncompromising language against opponents. But his col-
umns were one voice in a sea of voices. It was his choice of medium (news-
paper ads that asked for donations) and the target of the boycott that made
him immediately notorious in 1986. He shockingly demonized what had
been a harmless, humanitarian donation campaign sponsored by the DRC.
The timing, the medium, and the choice of target gave him a visibility that
he had not had through his writings. In short, what catapulted him into
such prominence in public debate was the combination of the moral panic
and his rhetorical skills to cut through at the right time, at the right place,
with the right “speech.”
Berlingske Tidende’s portrait of Krarup (September 27, 1986) described the
situation immediately before his newspaper ads as one in which Danes “were
routinely about to delve into their wallets to buy some good conscience from
the Refugee 86 collectors. Until the infamous ad, the greatest concern was if the
collector would ring the doorbell in the middle of a Marilyn Monroe movie on
TV.” Suddenly, there was this man who claimed that the DRC was running
the country as a shadow government/terrorist organization, an occupying force
targeting the Danish people, that it was about to turn Denmark into Lebanon,
that the Danes were in danger of annihilation as a people, and that it was alto-
gether the fault of the politicians who let—or helped—it happen.
Rhetorical Strategies
Krarup’s strategy was simple but effective: creating the greatest possible con-
troversy, which gave him full access, even if negatively, to the debate on
immigration. His call for a boycott of Refugee 86 was an effective tool for
his showdown with the immigration laws and a head-on collision with the
political and cultural elite, which he called “upper Denmark.” He was the
voice of the “silent majority.”4 And as expected, the establishment reacted
furiously.
Krarup’s ads pursued four interrelated rhetorical strategies:5 (1) choosing
the right time; (2) creating a new controversy as a way of opening up the
discourse for himself as a central protagonist; (3) constructing a silent major-
ity (“the people”) through his claims about censorship and casting himself
in the role of an organic intellectual6 who speaks on their behalf, represents
their concerns, and tells the truth; and (4) in the opening made by the dis-
cursive destabilization, gaining broad acquiescence to his premises as the ba-
sis for future discussions through the role he assigned himself as the “spokes-
person” of the Danish people. Krarup articulated three main claims that
became the tacit premises for the following debate: the future of the nation
was the primary worry of the Danish “people”; alien Muslim immigrants
posed a real threat to the Danish nation; and there was a gap between “the
people” and their political representatives, who promoted the alien Muslims’
interests. All of these claims were based on a single premise: the existence of
a clearly identifiable popular will through the signifier “the Danish people.”
Once this basic premise and the three main claims were accepted, the path
to articulating a counterhegemonic social formation was wide open.
Timing
As I argued in chapter 2, Krarup’s timing was crucial: he intervened at the

peak of a moral panic that had already destabilized the political discourse. As
noted above, populist intervention emerges in a time of crisis during which
there is a widespread sentiment that the system has failed. Moreover, that
failure is not a given: populist actors often claim that the system has failed
and there is a radical alternative. Even before the ads appeared, there was
some unease that the popular resentment against refugees might harm the
fundraising campaign. The head of the Refugee 86 campaign, Finn Slum-
strup, acknowledged that resentment against refugees might have negative
effects on the campaign and felt it necessary to make clear that the refugee
policy and the fundraising campaign were not related (Politiken, September
21, 1986). Jyllands-Posten’s story the day before the Krarup’s ad expressed the
same sentiment: “Refugee Debate May Harm the Collection” (September
20, 1986).
Krarup’s intervention came at a fragile moment and used the moral panic
around refugees as evidence that the system did not work. His call for boy-
cott moved the focus of the debate from the refugees to political representa-
tion of the popular will.
The power of this kind of intervention in discourse lies as much in its
timing as its radical vision in answering some of the most pressing ques-
tions concerning political representation. Although the media’s response to
Krarup’s boycott campaign was fierce, they continued running daily stories
about the “inflow” of refugees. The day after the infamous ad, Jyllands-Posten
wrote: “The pressure on asylum centers has grown so alarming during the
last 24 hours that the Red Cross describes the situation as the worst ever”
(September 22, 1986). Berlingske Tidende again brought the panic onto the
front page: “Record: 1,700 Refugees This Month” (September 23, 1986). Ac-
cording to another story in the same newspaper, the Red Cross had lost
fifteen thousand members, who had resigned as a protest against refugees in
1986 (September 22, 1986). A meeting between Ninn-Hansen and the Dan-
ish Red Cross was reported with headline “Crisis Meeting: No More Place
for Refugees” (Jyllands-Posten, September 29, 1986). The government and
opposition were negotiating about introducing new restrictions to refugee
laws, even though the Social Democrats had reservations about imposing
serious restrictions on the right to access to apply for asylum. Krarup was,
in other words, the right man at the right time in the right place to use the
moral panic, not to just promote restrictions to immigration laws but to
articulate the panic and anxieties as expressions of the popular will.
Creating Controversy as a Way of Entering Discourse as a Central Figure
Refugee 86 was the right target if controversy was what Krarup intended.
Not only did he rage against an organization that was relatively nonpolitical
(its primary function was to help refugees to integrate into society after they
had achieved refugee status), the organization did not have anything to do
with the government’s refugee or immigration policies. Moreover, the DRC
was constituted by a number of humanitarian organizations and therefore
represented the consensual, nonpoliticized nature of the humanitarian view-
point. The Refugee 86 donation campaign raised funds for refugees abroad,
a purely humanitarian effort and was not connected to the refugee policy
in Denmark. Targeting Refugee 86 challenged the humanitarian image of
Denmark itself. It seemed inevitable that it would create a feeling of animos-
ity against Krarup.
The crucial difference between what Krarup articulated and what the
ordinary Dane he purported to represent in his ad might have said or writ-
ten was the articulation of the main problem. Most letters to the editor had
associated refugees with economic problems. Krarup mentioned economic
problems only as part of a bigger problem: that the establishment was not
listening to the concerns of the Danish people. He boldly redefined the po-
litical terrain by directing attention to what he represented as popular resis-
tance to a tyrannical hegemonic political center symbolized by Refugee 86.
The destabilizing effectiveness of this rhetorical strategy was evident im-
mediately. Media coverage was extensive although not favorable to Krarup.
He received an incredible amount of attention and space to disseminate his
arguments; most newspaper stories published excerpts from the ad and in-
terviewed him, allowing him to elaborate on his views while simultaneously
attacking him. The reaction by the media and the intellectual and politi-
cal elite was fierce and contemptuous: the tabloid Ekstra Bladet called him
“Black Søren” and “the apostle of hate”; an editorial in the paper described
its reactions to Krarup as “vomiting feelings”; BT’s headline was “Krarup Is
on a Crusade against Refugees.” The intellectual daily Information titled its
editorial in a similar manner “Krarup’s Crusade,” in which he was described
as being possessed by an evil spirit. Politiken’s portrait of him had the title
“The Dangerous Priest.” The mayor of Århus, the second largest city in Den-
mark, Thorkild Simonsen, described the campaign as “petite racism.” Paul
Hammerich, a well-known writer, described Krarup’s “silent majority” as a
“cartoon team.” In the following weeks, he was the man mentioned most
in the media.7 Thus, Krarup became the principal participant in a public
controversy he created.
Krarup’s ads suggested the simple, everyday act of answering the door and
saying a polite no could turn into an important political act of protesting the
refugee policy and the political establishment. This image terrified and gal-
vanized his opponents, who feared that people would actually do this. The
fear of this possibility brought together organizations and individuals from
across the political, economic, and social spectrum. The queen declared her
support for the campaign, whereas the foreign minister, Liberal Party leader,
and member of the governing coalition with the Conservative Party Uffe
Elleman-Jensen signed up as a Refugee 86 collector. The Confederation of
Labor Unions (LA) and Danish Employers Association (DA) supported
Refugee 86 with full-page ads in seven daily newspapers over three days. The
Industry Council and the Association for Municipalities also put counter-
ads in newspapers. Many churches (Lutheran, Catholic, Baptist, Methodist)
published alternative announcements in which they declared support for the
fundraising campaign. Three hundred and fifty well-known writers, artists,
and actors condemned Krarup’s call for a boycott and offered to perform in
support of Refugee 86. Every newspaper urged people to volunteer and to
donate. The government donated 7 million kroner. Never in Danish history
was there a mobilization of this magnitude for a single cause. Against them
stood a lone priest.
In short, the anti-Muslim, nationalist statements by Krarup “were in-
terpreted by majority parties, by the Left, by the press, and by much of
the Danish intelligentsia as manifestations of xenophobia and racism, if not
pure pathology. The laments of the Right about the ‘threat to Danishness’
were seen as incoherent articulations by individuals who were uninformed,
manipulated, ‘racist’ or simply ‘crazy’” (Sampson 1995: 59).
The attacks and accusations of racism did not scare Krarup; on the con-
trary, he turned these accusations around and used them in his counter-
attack. He specified that he was not against refugees but the DRC—the
organization that “terrorized” the Danish people. He sued the mayor of
Århus for calling his campaign “petite racism,” not because he was sensitive
or revengeful but because it was a principal case through which “I would,
once for all, like to have the loathsome and terrorist term of abuse ‘racism’
banished from public debate as a tool to bring to heel and to bully the other
side” (“Report from the Battleground,” Jyllands-Posten, October 4, 1986).
In both ads, a crucial thread is what cannot be said: “The Refugee Coun-
cil wants to forbid us Danes to speak”; “Thor A. Bak [leader of the DRC],
commented on [Mogens Glistrup, leader of the Progress Party], ‘Coop him
up!’” The suppression of ordinary people’s real concerns, whatever they may
be, is stated as fact. In the second ad, Krarup emphasized this point by
stating that the charge of racism is a way for those in power to ignore and
blame ordinary people for having unspeakable concerns for being “unrepre-
sentable.” In this way, the attacks and accusations of racism against Krarup
had the reverse effect: they not only put him into the role of martyr but also
proved his point that anybody who expressed dissent against the political
and cultural establishment would be bullied. In other words, racism was a
tool the authoritarian elite used to suppress people’s expression of dissent.
His intervention had also the effect of legitimizing racist utterances. It was
not shameful to express those concerns; on the contrary, suppressing the
discussion about those concerns was a shameful, dangerous, and treasonous
act. This was his rhetorical strategy in polarizing society—galvanizing re-

sentment against immigration policy and channeling it into a general dissent
against the political establishment.
The attacks helped Krarup establish himself as the daring spokesperson
for “the people” whose views were suppressed, but this was a double move
typical in populist rhetoric: Krarup constructed for himself a double iden-
tity as a member of that terrorized group of Danish citizens (“a dictatorial
Refugee Council that speaks to us as if we are dogs” and “snaps its fingers at
our concerns”) and a man apart from it, an intellectual with a clear diagnosis
and correct responsive action. This double positioning allowed him to echo
a sense of injury while distancing himself somewhat from the vernacular dis-
course of ordinary Danes in order to articulate on their behalf their silenced
“thoughts and concerns” in a coherent, action-oriented political position. He
therefore appeared rhetorically representing a silent Danish majority, speak-
ing on the same level as (but not to) other elites, those isolated from the
realities of ordinary people. He appeared simultaneously as a man both of
and above the people, equal to those he targeted—an “organic intellectual.”
Constructing a New Cultural Subject, the Danish People,

through the Metaphor of Silent Majority
As I have argued, Krarup’s intervention came at a fragile political moment,

when it was difficult to argue openly against the idea that Krarup was ex-
pressing what everybody else was suppressing. His definition of refugees
as a threat to the nation did not contradict widespread feelings expressed
through attacks on refugees, letters to the editor, or opinion polls that indi-
cated that people felt that refugees were taking resources from Danes. On
the contrary, it welded the two.
An interesting analytical observation is that Krarup focused on the si-
lencing of people’s concerns and did not engage in an argument about the
silent majority and the nature of its concerns but presented these as given
and therefore as a basis for further discussion. His avoidance, in fact, had a
greater rhetorical effect: any discourse about reality is at the same time an
attempt to undermine alternative claims about reality, or in Mercer’s words,
“The struggle for hegemony at the level of discourse begins with the struggle
to render ‘unthinkable’ the versions of reality put forward by one’s oppo-
nents” (Mercer 1990: 206). One of the most effective ways of dealing with
potential alternatives is to force one’s definition of the reality as the basis for
further discussion. In this case, not only did his opponents avoid challenging
Krarup about his definition of reality, they also seemed to tacitly accept the
claim that people were concerned about the invasion of their country. By
tacitly accepting it, they also confirmed that the people’s worries were not
being considered.
How could they challenge him? The government had already been press-
ing the debate in the same direction in order to create a moral panic with the
result that opinion polls were indicating the unpopularity of the immigra-
tion laws. Krarup’s intervention, which redirected these sentiments against
the entire establishment, caught them by surprise and pushed them into a
defensive position.
The controversy that Krarup created was crucial for enabling the con-
stitution of a “popular will” embodied in the Danish people, a category of
indeterminate meaning that, as shown in chapter 1, functions as an empty
signifier. In order to fix—however temporarily—the meaning of a social for-
mation such as the “Danish people,” it is necessary to think about society as
two irreducible camps structured around two incompatible sets of values. A
radical frontier implies a broken space, a gap in the harmonious continuity
of the social. “There is a fullness of the community which is missing. This is
decisive: the construction of the ‘people’ will be the attempt to give a name
to that absent fullness” (Laclau 2005: 85). What Laclau describes as “absent
fullness” was clearly articulated by Krarup in the first ad: “if an uncontrolled
and unconstrained mass migration of Mohammedan and Oriental refugees
comes through our borders, then we cannot be here ourselves—in any case
not in naturalness and peace. The Danish Refugee Council has tremen-
dously damaged our fatherland.”
Krarup used the fierce reaction to the ads by the political and cultural
elite as an evidence for this broken space between the popular will and its
oppressors represented by the DRC and its collaborators within the political
and cultural establishment. The unity of the Danish people could no longer
be sustained because of open borders, which allowed culturally alien immi-
grants to flood Denmark, putting its very existence as a nation in jeopardy.
Krarup actively fanned the antagonism through his rhetoric, invoking
“an occupation army in a foreign country” allowing “Mohammedan” refu-
gees to invade Denmark. He conjured up World War II, when “the entire
people united in a newly awakened but immemorial love that the Germans
were about to take from us” (Jyllands-Posten, October 4, 1986), a mythi-
cal predecessor resistance movement imagined during the postwar national
healing process.8 The identification helped construct the antagonistic rela-
tionship between good and evil, and between the people and the elite who
let evil happen. The reference to the resistance movement rendered political
differences more than mere differences that can be contained within the
differential system of one social formation. The reference alluded to an un-
bridgeable gap between the Danish people and its political representatives
who chose to ally themselves with the Muslim invaders. Krarup did not
focus on the invader and said nothing about “them.”
The alien invader is a powerful metaphor for constructing an “us” with-
out having to define with any precision what we are. “We” becomes fantasy,
an empty space. It signifies our incompatibility with the alien. The metaphor
also allows for the emptiness of the opposite camp; we do not need racist
designations to know what they are; we do not need to describe them as
inferior. On the contrary, their superiority/inferiority is ambiguous because
they could annihilate us. What is important is the incompatible nature: “we”
and “they.” This rhetorical move allowed Krarup to sidestep to some degree
the particular epithets that signal racism and xenophobia in the vernacular
discourse.
Gaining Acquiescence to His Premises
The fierce reaction to Krarup’s attack on Refugee 86 came not only as a

response to the derangement of his characterization of the fundraising cam-
paign but from an awareness that his call to action might affect the fund-
raising goals and that a failure could be interpreted as popular support for
his claim that the political system was out of sync with the people it was
supposed to represent. His opponents therefore made the success of Refugee
86 the immediate goal. Thus, Krarup’s first ad created more than a contro-
versy. It staged a battle. Krarup’s opponents did, for tactical reasons, what
they were trying to avoid: they accepted Refugee 86 as the battleground
over immigration. He was challenged not on his basic claims about people’s
concerns and their inaudibility but on what appeared to be the weak link in
his logic: the false equation between Refugee 86 and Danish refugee policy.
This equation had to be challenged.
The core response was simple: Refugee 86 donations would go to refugees
abroad, not to refugees entering Denmark. DRC chair Thor A. Bak stated
in an interview the day after Krarup’s first ad that “it is probably correct that
people are not happy about the refugee influx to Denmark, but then they
should be much more willing to contribute to refugee help whose task is to
help refugees out in the world” (Berlingske Tidende, September 22, 1986).
Gitte Wedersøe, secretary for Refugee 86, was even clearer: “We do not sup-
port people in Denmark. Danes who are fed up with refugees should be even
more motivated to support Refugee 86. For the better the conditions are for
refugees in their homeland, the fewer will have to come here” (BT, Septem-
ber 22, 1986). Mimi Stilling Jacobsen, leader of the Center Democrats, also
argued against the linkage between refugee laws and Refugee 86: “Those
who are in deep disagreement with Denmark’s existing refugee laws . . . can
therefore safely contribute” (Ekstra Bladet, September 26, 1986). Berlingske
Tidende assured its readers that money for refugees was not a referendum
on Danish immigration laws: “On the contrary, the government with its
proposal, which will probably be supported by Social Democrats, . . . has
already made it clear that the immigration law is going to be tightened.
The collection today will not have any influence on the . . . new law, which
is going to limit the number of refugees coming to Denmark” (October 5,
1986). Ekstra Bladet’s editorial explained: “It is a good trick to support the
collection because those who through voluntary Danish donations achieve
a reasonable existence at a faraway place will hardly come to Denmark!”
(September 30, 1986).
These positions were, like Krarup’s own, elaborated and supported with
humanitarian arguments subordinated to the main point. In addition to
helping refugees stay elsewhere, contributions were a humanitarian gesture
for people entitled to protection and care. Thus, humanitarianism remained
intact, but keeping refugees away became a powerful tactical move to stop
Krarup from making his call to action a referendum on Denmark’s refugee
policy and on the political representation of the popular will.
Thus, although Krarup’s opponents seemed to have the upper hand in
terms of mobilization, they were in fact pushed into a corner. The only vi-
able, short-term strategy for securing support for the collection seemed to
depend on the distinction between Refugee 86 and the Danish refugee laws.
The sentiment was that because Krarup made Refugee 86 into a referendum
on the legitimacy of political representation by claiming an unbridgeable
gap between the rulers and the ruled, the collection campaign had become
too important to fail. In this sense, it did not matter whether there was a
logical connection between Refugee 86 and refugee laws: Krarup made the
connection, and if the collection campaign failed, it would be understood as
a confirmation of what he had been claiming—the existence of an unbridge-
able gap between the Danish people and their political representatives. A
failure would deepen the hegemonic crisis, and Krarup’s opponents did not
seem to have many alternatives that could enable them to come out of this
situation with their authority intact. It was as if reaching the fundraising
goal could be taken as an implicit affirmation of the existing order, a denial
of any crisis of representation.
The government felt squeezed between the people’s demand for stopping
further immigration of refugees and Denmark’s international obligations,
and they were also taken aback by Krarup’s intervention, which turned the
moral panic that their own Ninn-Hansen had created into a hegemonic
crisis. The Social Democrats were in even worse shape and were squeezed
by their allegiance to the “working class,” whose resentment against refugees
was about to dissolve the traditional connection between humanitarian and
“liberal” values and Social Democratic welfarism. Thus, both the govern-
ment and the opposition responded by signaling that they were willing to
introduce severe restrictions on refugees’ access to Denmark.
Krarup’s opponents generally did not reflect on how their response was
leading them into a dead end. Only one commentary in my data sample
reflected on the distinction between Refugee 86 and refugee laws. An edito-
rial in Politiken pointed to the defensive nature of the distinction: “It [the
distinction] is a fact, but the horrifying afterthought is why is it so important
to emphasize this fact? Naturally to avoid hurting the collection. If this is
the answer, it is an alarming surrender to racism, an indirect acknowledg-
ment that it [racism] has a firmer grip on [the Danish population] than it is
comfortable to admit openly” (Politiken, October 3, 1986).
Krarup’s opponents went further than granting him Refugee 86 as the
battleground for his hegemonic struggle. To win the immediate battle, they
conceded and tacitly accepted his claims about the alien/Muslim threat to
Danish nation.
A counterad by priests, nuns, and members of the Lutheran, Catholic,
Methodist, and Baptist churches was a good example of this tacit acceptance.
The ad not only attacked Krarup for being indecent, demagogic, and incor-
rect, but also called for “contributions so that refugees can have a homestead
in countries and cultures they are familiar with. Let the fundraising become
the expression of our will that human rights are respected all over the world”
(Berlingske Tidende, September 28, 1986; emphasis added). A popular novel-
ist, Thorkild Hansen, went further: “They are not like us; they come from
another world where they have another culture, and maybe another skin
color than us, and their numbers increase and increase.” Hansen described
a new mass migration, noted that mass migrations were always followed by
wars and chaos, and concluded, “We do not need to help because we are so
good. We can content ourselves with helping because it is in our damn inter-
est” (Politiken, October 5, 1986).
The invocation of culture here was interwoven with a humanitarian per-
spective. The priests did not only say, “Let us help refugees to stay where
they culturally belong”; the contribution itself was presented as a humani-
tarian gesture and refugees as people who were entitled to protection and
care wherever they were. In this context, culture as a defining feature of
refugees provided a powerful resource against Krarup’s call for boycott and
in favor of making a humanitarian contribution. But when arguments are
organized hierarchically, some propositions are assigned subordinate places
in relation to others. In this case, humanitarian arguments were subordi-
nated to the overall cultural premise. In other words, the opponents tacitly
accepted Krarup’s definition of those concerns as being primarily cultural.
This concession had the effect of pushing the debate onto the terrain of
culture and ethnicity and turning refugees and immigrants into the cultural
category “alien,” and they therefore do not belong. In other words, this strat-
egy granted Krarup enormous influence on immigration discourse.
I suggest that agreeing to the battle on the terrain of culture had yet
another implication. The argument that it is better to help people where
they are was also a tacit acceptance of the proposition that they were “con-
venience refugees” who traveled to Europe only to escape poor living condi-
tions. Krarup’s intervention and the only “viable” reaction to it (as the op-
ponents saw it) forced them to accept many of the propositions that hitherto
were considered part of a racist discourse.
Après the Intervention: Culturalization and

the Political Mobilization of the Far Right
Refugee 86 appeared to be a huge success, as newspapers and other media

covered the collection day and the results extensively. Success was measured
by the number of Refugee 86 volunteers and funds collected and pledged.
Not just Foreign Minister Uffe Elleman-Jensen, but also mayors of several
cities and politicians from both sides of the political spectrum as well as
celebrities (e.g., artists, writers, journalists) volunteered as collectors. More
and more volunteers registered as October 5 drew close. Danish public tele-
vision aired a gala evening telethon with people calling in pledges. The press
and TV coverage enacted a campaign without political connotations.
The media declared the collected amount a blow to Krarup. According
to Berlingske Tidende, “Denmark’s big silent majority snapped their fingers
at Krarup” (“Søren Krarup Blown Down by 50 Million [Kroner],” Octo-
ber 6, 1986). Jyllands-Posten itself declared Refugee 86 to be a great success
(October 6, 1986). Refugee 86 campaign chef Finn Slumstrup said that the
boycott call actually had a positive effect on donations and that “Danes
really showed a willingness . . . to go against Søren Krarup” (“Success for
Collection,” Berlingske Tidende, October 6, 1986). A mixed sense of victory

and relief dominated the media: the battle was won, Krarup was defeated.9
However, it was also time to take the people’s concerns seriously. On
October 7, 1986, the day after Refugee 86 was declared a success, the gov-
ernment presented a new proposal that introduced severe restrictions to the
legal right to seek asylum in Denmark and closed many avenues through
which refugees had previously exercised this right in Denmark. According to
the proposal, which passed the Folketing ten days later with broad support
from almost all the political parties, refugees without a legitimate passport
or a visa could be denied entry and sent back to their country of departure
unless the country of departure was a country where they could be pros-
ecuted. It meant also that if the refugee changed planes or even if the plane
had landed in another country, refugees would be sent back to that country.
Denmark became the first country in Europe to introduce fines on airlines
that brought passengers without a legitimate passport or visa, effectively put-
ting asylum decisions into the hands of the airlines’ personnel. The other
European countries followed suit and copied the so-called Danish paragraph
(Østergaard 2007: 370). Further increases in incoming refugees were effec-
tively stopped by the new restrictions, which turned out to be more restric-
tive than the parties had expected: according to UN Human Rights Council,
only 770 refugees entered Denmark between October 1986 and September
1987 (“Nordic Kick to Refugees,” Politiken, September 17, 1987), whereas the
government had expected the restriction would bring down the numbers to
around 5,000 (“The Limit Is Reached,” Jyllands-Posten, October 18, 1987).
Krarup’s achievement with the boycott campaign was not the introduc-
tion of the new restrictions to the refugee law but his ability to turn the
moral panic into a crisis of representation and to galvanize and mobilize
far-right forces, which increased their influence on public discourse. His
committee against the refugee law became the first in the series of new far-
right organizations such as Danish Forum, the National Socialist Movement
(DNSB), Stop the Immigration, the Nationals, and the National Party Den-
mark. The most influential of these organizations was the Danish Associa-
tion (Den Danske Forening), which was founded in 1987 by a far-right circle
of intellectuals including Krarup (Karpantschof 2002; Rydgren 2004). The
Danish Association was the most articulate organization and became the
ideological center of the Far Right in Denmark. Its populist-nationalist ideas
became the ideological foundations of the Danish People’s Party (DPP),
which was founded in 1996 by a breakaway faction of the explicitly racist
Progress Party, and Søren Krarup and Jesper Langballe, two of the promi-
nent members of the Danish Association, who were elected as MPs in the
2001 elections. The DPP, one of the biggest and most influential populist
right-wing parties in Europe, adopted its master frame from the associa-
tion: “‘Ordinary Danes’ are fooled by the ‘establishment’, and . . . Danish
national identity is threatened by immigration and multiculturalization and
by the EU [European Union]” (Rydgren 2004: 483). The DPP’s success and
the making of its populist vision into the new common sense have mainly
been attributed to Krarup’s influence. Politiken’s celebratory portrait on his
seventy-fifth birthday in 2012 described him as the educated son of an aca-
demician who not only became part of the popular uprising against the elite
but put it into words (“Danish People’s Party’s Chief Ideologist Turns 75,”
Politiken, December 2, 2012; emphasis added). Krarup himself described the
DPP “as kind of my own child” (Jyllands-Posten, October 29, 2000).
Rydgren (2004; 2010) draws a direct ideological line between the Dan-
ish Association and the DPP. Central to both the Danish Association and
the DPP is the threat to the homogeneity of Danish culture and people by
Muslim immigrants who are associated with fanaticism, criminality, oppres-
sion of women, and breakdown of the welfare state. Both accuse the political
and cultural establishment, especially the Left and social democrats, which
Krarup calls “the goodness industry,” of being alien to their own people.
The Danish Association parlayed its management of the crisis into a huge
influence on public discourse. As I discussed in chapter 2, crises open up the
political terrain for interventions by fringe forces, and once they gain access
to the discourse, their existence depends on the perpetuation of the crisis.
The Association’s protest meetings provoked antiracist counteractions and
controversies, which attracted massive media coverage of the Association
and its messages just as Krarup had attracted attention during his boycott
campaign (Karpantschof 2002: 25). Indeed, Krarup and the DPP’s leader,
Pia Kjærsgaard, were some of the most quoted people on immigration mat-
ters and played a key role in making immigration the dominant topic in the
media (Rydgren 2010: 63).
In sum, Krarup became one of the key forces that pushed the entire
political spectrum to the right through the question of immigration. His
significance lies in his radically different vision of Danish society, which not
only answered but also transformed some of the most pressing questions
around political representation.
Krarup’s campaign also managed to turn the moral panic around refu-
gees into a larger hegemonic crisis. Through his construction of himself as
the daring spokesperson of the silenced majority, he convinced the estab-
lishment that it was time to take people’s concerns seriously if the system’s
legitimacy was to be protected. This, in turn, was premised upon the tacit
acceptance of an easily identifiable popular will that was at odds with the po-
litical system when it came to immigration. Once this premise was accepted,
Denmark reached the point of no return and Muslim immigration began
to move to the center of political discourse and was increasingly framed in
cultural terms.
Krarup’s intervention opened the path for the culturalization of the im-
migration debate by forcing opponents to challenge him on his premises.
Even those who argued against the claim that immigrants posed a cultural
threat confirmed the centrality of culture by accepting the battle on the
cultural ground. A group of students and a lecturer at the University of
Copenhagen published a commentary in Politiken immediately after the
Refugee 86 event (October 11, 1986) where they challenged the idea that
immigration was a threat to Danish culture. The writers commented that
“the refugee threat to Danish culture can hardly be taken seriously. This is
probably the reason why we Danish ethnographers did not make ourselves
conspicuous in what is considered to be a serious public debate on the issue.
What we have is not at all a threat but a meeting of difference.” According
to the writers, it was not Danish culture but Denmark’s borders that were
threatened. Culture was not a fragile thing that could easily be broken; it
was an ever-changing enterprise that constantly combined elements from
other cultures; it reflected Denmark’s integration in the world. Refugees did
not threaten “our culture” but “our self-image.” A closer look would reveal
a contradiction in the commentary: they admitted that this was a meeting
of difference as if difference was a new phenomenon (to fend off the threat
argument). Whatever the intentions of the writers, both their admissions
and their refutations confirmed the importance of culture in the debate. The
debate began to bend around the cultural ontological category.
Benson (2013) tells a similar story about the change in immigration dis-
course in France in the same period. The media, particularly Libération (a
French daily), focused mainly on the humanitarian suffering of immigrants
(wages, working conditions, and slum housing) during the 1970s; during the
1980s, however, “This focus on immigrant workers was quickly displaced by
a concern with the ‘second generation’ and their relationship with French
culture. . . . Libération’s framing of immigration in cultural terms was also
influential, at least in terms of setting up one of the intellectual poles against
which other actors were forced to contend” (112; emphasis added). Benson ar-
gues that the (positive) cultural framing enabled the far-right National Front’s
(FN) municipal election victory in Dreux in 1983. After the election victory,
FN turned multicultural antiracism on its head on behalf of “the French” and
thus “created a new reconfiguration of positions in the field” (113).
The Far-Right Symbiosis
Indeed, Rydgren (2004) argues that Krarup and the far-right forces in Den-
mark learned from the FN’s experiences and used the master frame devel-
oped by the FN to succeed. The master frame, according to Rydgren, consists
of ethnonationalist xenophobia and antiestablishment populism. However,
neither element is unique to the National Front. There are several exam-
ples of far-right populism that mixes ethnonationalism and racism—Enoch
Powell in Britain, George Wallace in the United States, Pauline Hanson in
Australia, Jörg Haider in Austria, and Geert Wilders (Pim Fortuyn before
him) in the Netherlands. Although they all draw on similar rhetorical re-
sources to articulate populist far-right views with their construction of “the
people” or “the silent majority,” Krarup’s intervention has many similarities
to Enoch Powell’s infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech on April 10, 1968, in
terms of immediate context, content, style, and effects.
According to Mercer (1990: 5), “In the drama of its form as an exem-
plary rhetorical performance in political discourse, Powell’s speech was a
major event in its own right.” The immediate context for Powell’s speech was
similar to Krarup’s ads. In 1967, the government in the newly independent
former colony Kenya passed a law that gave British passport holders two
years in which to choose between British and Kenyan citizenship as a part
of its Kenyanization policy, after which non-Kenyans—mostly Asians from
the Indian subcontinent—would not have the right to work and live in the
country. This presented the British Asians with a dilemma that soon became
a dilemma for the British government. By September the same year, 8,443
Asians had already entered Britain. In the beginning, the Labour govern-
ment chose to be silent, whereas the right-wing Conservatives started to
draw attention to potential mass immigration and demanded tighter restric-
tions. Even though the number of potential Kenyan Asian immigrants was
66,000, the number was blown up to millions in the media. Sir Cyril Os-
borne of the Conservative Party predicted that if it went on like this, there
would be more blacks than whites in seventy years’ time. In other words,
there was a moral panic brewing around immigration. In February 1968,
the bipartisan consensus collapsed. The Conservative shadow cabinet issued
a public declaration demanding restrictions. The Labour government did
more: it introduced a bill that limited the right of entry to “British passport
holders who had substantial connections with the UK by virtue of birth, or
their father’s or grandfather’s birth, in the UK” (Hiro 1992: 214).
However, Labour’s proposal also extended the rights of existing immi-
grants by strengthening antidiscrimination legislation. This set the stage for
Powell’s speech. The resentment against immigration laws created a gap be-
tween the working class and its political representatives in the Labour Party,
and a crisis of authority emerged. It was under these conditions that Powell
delivered his “Rivers of Blood” speech. His speech was designed and staged
to gain maximum media coverage. He succeeded in forcing both the Con-
servatives and Labour to conform to the “public opinion” he engineered.
When the Conservative government later passed restrictions that, according
Hiro (1992: 252), were unnecessary (the number of immigrants to Britain
could be reduced within already existing laws), the reason for them as stated
by Prime Minister Edward Heath was to still “the fears of our people.”
In his speech, Powell took up the projected immigration from Kenya and
amplified the demand for restrictions on Kenyan Asians’ entry to Britain.
But there were no major distinctions between what he and the other con-
servative politicians said. The distinctiveness of his speeches was his rhetori-
cal vision: he spoke as the representative of the people (the silent majority)
against the entire political elite, who held a monopoly on channels of com-
munication. Like Krarup, he spoke of the betrayal by the political elite, of
the prospect of racial confrontations ahead, and of the demise of the British
nation.
The speech had immediate impact. Chanting “the only white man in
there,” thousands of dockers marched to Parliament in protest of Heath’s
decision to sack Powell from his position in the shadow cabinet (Schwarz
1996). For the first time, people freely discussed immigration everywhere: in
buses, pubs, and work canteens. And the shift in public opinion made it easy
to pass the Race Relations Bill, which imposed severe restrictions on immi-
gration. The long-term effects of Powell’s intervention are long recognized in
Britain: working class’s detachment from the Labour Party and support for
Thatcher’s two-decade-long neoliberal government, which has been followed
by the successive Labour governments that adopted her neoliberal policies
(Hall 1988; Smith 1994). His articulation of white British concerns and rac-
ist resentments against the establishment was articulated by Thatcher in her
neoliberal project of dismantling of the welfare system. Popular support for
Thatcher’s project is generally explained by the fact that she succeeded in
mobilizing resistance to the bureaucratic character of the hegemonic consen-
sus. Thus, the antagonism was constructed between two poles: “the ‘people,’
which includes all those who defend the traditional values and freedom of
enterprise [which connoted the defense of inequalities of sex and race]; and
their adversaries: the state and all the subversives (feminists, blacks, young
people and permissives of every type)” (Laclau and Mouffe 2001: 170).
The Long-Term Effects of Krarup’s Intervention
Although Krarup seemed to lose, to use Gramsci’s terms, the “war of ma-
neuver,” he won the “war of position.”10 A “war of position” can be, in this
context, understood as a strategy of building up a broad bloc of social forces
(i.e., a historical bloc), unified by a common conception of the world. The
purpose of a war of position is to shape the social horizon, which in my
terminology means changing how the ontological structure of society is
imagined. His ability to turn Muslim immigration into a question of a
lethal threat to the cohesive force of society achieved just that. It does not
mean that culture or religion was not part of earlier discourse, but they
were not the defining elements of social division. The cultural antagonism
brought cultural arguments into focus (even if they were used to argue
against the antagonistic nature of the difference), whereas other arguments
were pushed to the background (but never erased). Once social division
is envisioned in cultural terms, public discourse focuses on cultural argu-
ments. Major social questions become oriented toward the dividing line,
which in turn reorganizes the argumentative web along the dividing line
into the two sides of the division.
As I discussed in chapter 2, there is a general agreement that a fundamen-
tal shift took place in immigration discourse in which the focus moved to
the immigrants’ problematic culture. Madsen (2000: 87) noted a remarkable
jump in polls of Danes’ views on “whether immigrants constitute a threat to
our national character”: 23 percent declared agreement with the statement
in 1985. That figure jumped to about 40 percent after 1987. He noted also
that the media coverage in 1987 was extremely concerned with “the Muslim
threat.” Madsen could not explain the change because he had not done a de-
tailed analysis of media coverage. The extensive media analysis in this study,
however, allows me to suggest what was going on. As discussed in chapter
2 (see table 2.1), newspaper stories written from a cultural perspective con-
stituted 1.1 percent of all stories in 1984 and 1.7 percent in 1986. There was
a significant jump to 13.1 percent in 1987. The jump in the percentages of
cultural frames in letters to the editor was not as significant over the four-
year period: 9.1 percent in 1984, 3.7 percent in 1986, and 12.6 percent in 1987,
which indicates that the cultural arguments were already in their embryo in
the concerns of letter writers.
Although there were many types of stories in 1984 that described immi-
grants as a threat, there were no significant fluctuations. In 1984, 4.8 percent
of all stories described an immigrant/refugee threat. That fell to 2.4 percent
and 2.2 percent in 1986 and 1987, respectively. More significant is the change
in describing refugees as victims. In 1984, 19.6 percent of stories described
refugees as victims of oppression and torture; that fell to 12.2 percent in
1986 and 7.5 percent in 1987. At the same time, refugees were less likely to
be described as economic and social burdens in 1986 (5 percent) and 1987
(6 percent) than in 1984, when 16.9 percent of all stories described them as
burdens (see table 3.1). Although not definitive, these numbers may indicate
an increasing tendency toward culturalized discourse.
Table 3.1. Description of Refugees in the Press

Description 1984 1986 1987 2001
Victims of oppression and torture 19.6% 12.2% 7.5% 3.9%
Economic and social burden 16.9% 5.0% 6.0% 3.6%
These numbers suggest that the media and the political and cultural es-
tablishment had moved in the direction of readers’ letters rather than the
other way around. Even so, the number of readers who thought of the refu-
gees in cultural terms was not overwhelming, and the arguments made in
letters to the editor tended to be fragmented. What was overwhelming in the
letters was the negative tone toward refugees. In 1984, 81.8 percent of all let-
ters had negative overtones and only 13.6 percent were positive. In 1986, the
negative letters decreased to 59.8 percent and positive letters increased to 31.3
percent, only to become more negative again in 1987: 67.9 percent versus 26
percent positive (table 3.2).
Table 3.2. Tone in Letters to the Editor

Tone 1984 1986 1987 2001
Positive 13.6% 31.3% 26.0% 27.5%
Negative 81.8% 59.8% 67.9% 61.1%
The relative increase in positive tone in 1986 has to do with the strong
response to Krarup in support of Refugee 86. That mobilization, however,
did not translate into a popular front against Krarup and his small circle of
friends because the tactical oppositional response tacitly conceded the un-
popularity of existing refugee laws.
The Focus Moves from Refugees (Victims) to

Immigrants (Cultural Aliens)
When the immediate battle was over, the political establishment had two
contradictory responses to the scare: a long period of silence and a political
consensus on not politicizing immigration—a consensus that was broken
by Social Democrats right before the elections in September 1987 and local
politicians’ pandering to the voters by taking up anti-immigration rhetoric.
Two important moments in the following months and through 1987 were
significant in not only keeping the focus on immigration but also further
affecting the shift onto the ground of culture. The first is the period be-
fore and through the September 1987 parliamentary elections, when Social
Democratic mayors began voicing their concerns about immigration with
spectacular statements about immigrants and their culture. The second was
a deliberate attempt by Ninn-Hansen to create a new moral panic around
immigration with the intention of winning further restrictions in immigra-
tion laws.
The period after the restrictions in October 1986 on refugee laws and the
controversy around Krarup’s boycott of Refugee 86 was characterized by a
long period of silence about immigration policies among mainstream political
forces until the next summer. This silence can partly be explained by a wait-
and-see attitude among political parties after the changes to immigration law.
Krarup’s intervention had certainly made the political mainstream wary about
appearing to go against the people’s wishes but, at the same time, also wary of
appearing racist if they indicated they were in agreement with him.
It is not surprising that Krarup’s intervention had the most destabilizing
implications for the Social Democrats, who were seen as most responsible
for the liberal immigration law, and a huge gap between the working class
and the Social Democratic Party’s humanitarian consensus was created. Kra-
rup, who gained almost unlimited access to the mainstream media, appealed
primarily to the working class, the Social Democratic constituency who
complained about their resources being wasted on foreigners and about not
being heard by the political establishment.11 The Social Democratic leader-
ship’s response to the situation in late 1986 and in 1987 was to pull back
quietly from engagement with the Far Right’s vision until, as will be seen,
local politicians within the party gave in.
The silence among mainstream politicians did not mean silence in the
immigration debate. On the contrary, the void was filled by now-mobilized
far-right actors. The Danish Association and other small far-right groups
initiated a persistent campaign against immigration with stories about im-
migrants’ abuse of Danish hospitality, about criminality, and about cultural

problems, especially religious difference. With refugee laws already tight-
ened, the next target was refugees’ right to bring their spouses to Denmark.
As a UN Human Rights Council official, Søren Jessen-Petersen, remarked,
“Silence or statements by politicians that can be interpreted as direct consent
[to xenophobic statements] run the risk of legitimizing attitudes toward for-
eigners, attitudes that a democracy neither wants nor can survive” (“Nordic
Kick to Refugees,” Politiken, September 17, 1987). One frequent commenta-
tor, Jacques Blum, a sociologist of culture, argued that racism was advancing
thanks to the silence by the established parties, who feared looking either too
“refugee friendly” or prejudiced (“Racism Sneaks In,” Politiken, September
27, 1987). By 1987, polls showed a significant increase in support for the
Progress Party, whose new leader, Pia Kjærsgaard, had shifted the party’s
focus from taxes to immigration (Rydgren 2004: 3).
A new wave of anti- immigrant sentiment surfaced in 1986. Many
working-class people lived in cities where housing projects accommodated
refugees and other immigrants. Social Democratic mayors of some of these
towns soon began complaining about bearing the refugee burden, as op-
posed to municipalities (mainly in richer, conservative areas) that bore no
such responsibility, having fewer or no housing projects. Mayor Per Madsen
of Ishøj—a working-class suburb of Copenhagen with many immigrants—
started a new controversy in August 1987 with a sharp criticism of Muslim
immigrants’ failure to adapt to Danish society, using the slogan “When in
Rome, do as Romans do” (Jensen 2001: 75). He accused Turkish immigrants
of misusing the welfare system, but the greatest problem, he emphasized,
was cultural: Turkish youth still preferred to marry women in Turkey and
therefore increase the number of subsequent immigrants. The rising popu-
lation was, in this sense, described as a cultural problem translated into an
economic burden. Madsen concretized his cultural views later in the Dan-
ish Association’s member journal, The Dane (Danskeren): “Muslims live at
a Middle Ages stage with their disrespect for women and women’s culture,
which is unheard of in this country. They trade with women as if they were
cattle stock, and women are beaten and mistreated” (Engelbreth Larsen 2001:
180). Only a decade later, Karen Jespersen, who would become the face of
the Social Democrats on immigration questions, would say that politicians
“should have listened to Per Madsen” (BT, October 22, 1999). The debate on
refugees turned into a debate on immigration in general and thereby into a
question of immigration’s cultural impact.
The snowball that Krarup had started was rolling. Although the SDP
leadership in general distanced itself from Madsen’s statements, newspapers
that had been critical of Krarup’s rhetoric gave Madsen sympathetic con-
sideration. Vestkysten, a local daily, wrote, for instance, that while it was im-
portant to denounce Pia Kjærsgaard for “her incredible pandering to cheap,
irresponsible views,” one had to “discuss seriously the problem that the Ishøj
mayor raised. . . . It is a given that if immigrants . . . with a completely differ-
ent cultural background constitute 14 percent of a municipality’s population,
it must create problems” (emphasis added). The editorial concluded that
immigrants had to stay home if “they felt dirtied by any contact with Danish
culture, Danish norms, and Danish tradition. . . . It is okay to tell them this.
Hospitality, too, has limits” (Jensen 2000: 481). Madsen’s statements also
received support from Ekstra Bladet, which had less than a year earlier called
Krarup “the apostle of hate” (“Ishøj split: Mohammed or Madsen [typical
Danish surname],” August 11, 1987). According to the editorial, Denmark
should receive a good number of refugees who were threatened by torture
or execution, but “we cannot take the steam off the Turkish unemployment
lines without it having profound political, economic and cultural conse-
quences.” When Torkil Sørensen of the DRC remarked the sharp change in
the editorial line of the paper, the editors responded with a reference to “the
limited capacity of people’s hospitality” (“On the Other Hand,” October 24,
1987). The media’s acquiescence to Krarup’s main claims—that “the people”
worried about the threat immigrants posed Danish cultural unity—was evi-
dent. Turning the gaze from refugees to immigrants already living in Den-
mark was also moving the focus from Denmark’s humanitarian responsibili-
ties to the problems that immigrants with alien cultures created for society.
Whether Mayor Madsen entered the debate to use increasingly legiti-
mized popular hostility to force the government to allocate more resources
to his municipality or to win back Social Democratic voters, or a combina-
tion of both, Krarup’s cultural framing of immigration and links to antago-
nism between the political elite and the Danish people provided an opening
and the resources for using cultural arguments in local contexts. Other local
politicians from the party soon joined the fray. On September 5, 1987, im-
mediately before the general election, Det fri Aktuelt published a front-page
article headlined “Social Democrats Bury Critical Report.” According to the
article, the party leadership had delayed the publication of a report prepared
by the party’s committee on refugees and immigration. The committee,
chaired by local politician Vibeke Storm Rasmussen, not only reproduced
Krarup’s attack on the DRC and the Danish Red Cross for acting with-
out public oversight but also criticized immigrants for having “attitudes,
practices and phenomena that are unacceptable for Social Democrats.” The
committee recommended making stricter demands that immigrants adopt
to Danish society and that the laws further restrict their right to bring their
spouses from their country of origin. The recommendations for restricting
access to family reunification were therefore supported with arguments that
emphasized the incompatibility of immigrants’ culture(s).
It is difficult to see much difference between the views of local Social
Democrats and those of Krarup except that the Social Democratic argu-
ments were not packaged in strong nationalist rhetoric. Local politicians’
statements signified a shift in focus to culture as the main problem. They
delivered what Krarup lacked: firsthand accounts of cultural problems.
Turks, for instance, kept marrying Turks, even in their second generation of
residence. Thus, the focus was neatly enlarged to include immigrants who
had long been living in Denmark. The alien threat was already present in
Denmark; the frontier was no longer located at the border around Denmark
but within it.
In short, by the fall of 1987, immigration discourse was already perme-
ated by arguments about immigrants’ culture. Krarup already seemed to be
winning the “war of position” even if he had been declared the loser of the
battle over Refugee 86. The controversy around Refugee 86 had turned him
into one of the principal actors in the debate on immigration and enabled
him to define the premises for the debate;12 his definition of the problem
as “uncontrolled alien immigration” was gaining ground and forcing the
debate about immigration onto the ground of culture. As I will show later,
it became progressively typical to speak of immigrants as a cultural cate-
gory opposed to a purportedly homogenous Danish culture. The content of
those cultures became progressively determined through repetitive crisis and
moral panics around immigrants’ “cultural practices,” which were deemed a
threat to Danish culture.
Although local Social Democrats joined the far-right groups and raised
their voices against immigration with cultural arguments, there was an un-
spoken consensus among mainstream political parties, including the Social
Democratic leadership, about not taking up immigration as a theme during
the election campaign out of fear of voter punishment. It came, therefore,
as a shock when the leader of the Social Democratic Party, Anker Jørgensen,
proclaimed the day before the election that “Denmark is a small country and
must not be overrun by foreigners. Too many refugees will damage Den-
mark economically and culturally. . . . We have to maintain our value basis”
(Jyllands-Posten, September 6, 1987).
The governing parties expressed their frustrations about Anker Jørgensen’s
statements. Conservative prime minister Poul Schlüter accused the Social
Democratic leader of breaching the consensus about not campaigning on
immigration (Berlingske Tidende, September 13, 1987). Uffe Elleman-Jensen,

leader of the right-wing Liberal Party, also criticized the Social Democrats
for “scoring points by playing on the insecurity that has been created by
developments in the last years,” but he also added that
we have to be careful not to destroy the popular support for the Dan-
ish refugee policy . . . we have to be very careful that our social secu-
rity systems are not used in a way that can offend—and concretely it
may be necessary to change the rules around the access refugees have
to bring their families and relatives. (Jyllands-Posten, October 7, 1987)
The political consensus about not making immigration into a political issue
collapsed.
The 1987 elections took place under these conditions. Parties with strong
anti-immigrant parties made gains: the Progress Party and a self-proclaimed
left-wing party, Shared Path,13 which ran an explicit anti-immigrant election
campaign. Shared Path representatives pushed the Socialist Left (VS), an ar-
dent supporter of liberal immigration laws, out of the Folketing.14 Although
the Progress Party attracted a number of protest votes, it was not enough to
change the political landscape. Anker Jørgensen’s last-minute statements had
secured many Social Democratic workers’ votes that might have gone to the
Progress Party. The Liberal and Conservative coalition parties were the big
losers in terms of voter support, though they managed to keep power with
the support of center parties.
The fact that Social Democrats prevented bigger voter flight by last-
minute statements against immigration convinced mainstream parties that
people wanted more restrictions. The leader of the Conservative Party’s par-
liamentary group expressed it this way: “We wanted to create a balance in
this case, but people obviously still think that the law is too liberal” (Jyllands-
Posten, September 13, 1987). Because the key support for this interpretation
was the success of anti-immigrant parties in the elections, Krarup’s articula-
tion of the concerns of the Danish people became the basis for a new heated
debate around family reunification laws.
A New Round of Crisis around Immigrants
The first important moment was, therefore, the elections in which the politi-
cal consensus broke down and local Social Democrats entered the political
discourse with anti-immigrant statements. The second important discursive
moment of 1987 came when conditions were ripe for Ninn-Hansen to begin
a new campaign to further curb immigration. Jørgensen’s statements before
the elections broke the last remnants of the temporary political consensus,
local Social Democratic politicians were complaining about immigrants and
asking for further restrictions, and there seemed to be a general renewed
anti-immigrant sentiment.
This time, Ninn-Hansen had both expected and unexpected allies across
the political spectrum for creating a new crisis around immigration. The
opening salvo came from Per Madsen, who published manipulated statistics
about Turkish immigrants’ family reunification rates. According to statistics
based on twenty-three immigrants who lived in Ishøj, one Turkish immi-
grant, who had come to Denmark in 1970, had increased into a family of 23
in 1987. Including birth in the country, 23 became 371 in the same period.
The problem, according to the mayor, was that immigrants did not adapt to
Danish culture. Asking for restrictions to family reunion rights, the mayor
sent the results to the justice minister, who immediately declared that he
would intervene with lightning speed to put brakes on mass immigration
(“Lightning Intervention against Mass Immigration,” Jyllands-Posten, Oc-
tober 27, 1987). Based on the report, Ishøj’s deputy mayor, Leif Grundsøe,
concluded that by the year 2000 there would be half a million Turkish im-
migrants in Denmark.
The statistics were covered extensively in the media. Most national news-
papers sampled for this study did not comment on the statistics in their edi-
torials but covered the debate around the Ishøj statistics among politicians,
pundits, and academics. Local papers took the numbers for granted and
reported that “Denmark’s very liberal rules for family reunion have led to a
tremendous growth of the number of immigrants” (Lolland-Falsters Folketi-
dende, October 29, 1987). There was also recognition that this was a part of
a deliberate attempt to benefit from general anti-immigration sentiment.
Politiken, for instance, called these gambits “tricks” to avoid the promise
that Denmark would continue to receive five thousand refugees a year—a
promise Ninn-Hansen made during the parliamentary debate in the fall of
1986, when refugee laws were being tightened. Politiken pointed out that the
numbers of family members that refugees were said to bring to Denmark
were inflated by collapsing the categories of refugees and immigrants and
called Madsen’s calculations “statistical manipulations meant to appeal to
the beast within people, which is beyond any standards of decency.” If the
numbers were correct, there would have been ninety-six thousand Turkish
immigrants in Denmark instead of twenty-two thousand at this point (edi-
torial, November 1, 1987).
The national Christian daily, Kristeligt Dagblad, called the inclusion of

immigrants in the family reunion debate “scare propaganda without foun-
dation in reality,” although it did not challenge the Ishøj statistics. Rather,
it blamed the cultural characteristic of immigrants for the increase in the
immigrant population: “the traditional, ethnic moral rules of marriage of
the Turkish immigrants that inflated the numbers” (editorial, October 21,
1987). The DRC and academics also challenged the numbers. However,
they had been so discredited during and after Krarup’s intervention that
they lost their authority as experts or objective sources and were now re-
garded as interested parties. For example, the DRC’s calculations, which
showed that one hundred refugees had brought only sixteen family mem-
bers to Denmark was not covered as part of the news but merely published
as a letter to the editor in BT (November 5, 1987). When the numbers
and projections were denounced by Statistics Denmark, the official statisti-
cal institute of Denmark (Politiken, “Numbers of Turks Were Completely
Wrong,” November 4, 1987), there was little other press coverage. Politiken’s
article also revealed, between the lines, that it was indeed Ninn-Hansen
who had commissioned Madsen’s statistical report, selecting a sociologist
of culture, Eyvind Vesselbo, known for anti-immigrant views, who later
became a Liberal Party politician. Criticism and corrections received little
coverage and did not stop Ninn-Hansen’s use of the report in his project to
restrict family reunification rights. The report provided firsthand testimony
to the local problems related to immigration.
Ishøj’s report was a deliberate strategic intervention to create a new crisis
that would enable the government to propose further restrictions on im-
migration, but the controversy the report generated did more than produce
ammunition for the government. It further ensconced immigrants’ culture,
in this instance the form of marriage practices, on the discursive map as
the most significant aspect of the issue. Debate was now spinning around
culture as the benchmark for assessing arguments. In 1987, humanitarian
comments were pushed into a defensive position. A letter in Jyllands-Posten,
for instance, responded to Krarup’s call for a defense of Danish culture,
and argued that the real threat was not Islam but rather the American cul-
ture that permeated Danish culture (October 15, 1987). Another letter in the
same paper found that “the claim that Danes risk becoming a minority and
that around the year 2000 10 percent of the population will be immigrants is
wildly exaggerated” (September 23, 1987). These readers clearly felt that they
had to respond to the increasingly negative claims about immigrants, and
they did so not by rejecting the premise that the issue was a cultural threat
to the Danish people and nation but by downplaying the numbers and the
threat Muslim immigrants might pose, as if to concede that they could be a

threat if their numbers increased.
Engaging in a discussion of Madsen’s numbers meant generally engaging
in cultural arguments about marriage and family norms. A feature story in
Politiken about the Ishøj report (“Immigrants’ Many Children Is a Myth,”
November 1, 1987) interviewed Christian Horst, a sociologist of culture
known for his antiracist views. He accused municipal authorities of grossly
manipulating the numbers to make it appear that Turkish immigrant fami-
lies had an average of six children, whereas only 11 percent of the Turkish
population had four or more children. Horst also explained that immigrant
birthrates slowly decreased the longer they lived in the new host country,
and this was true for Turkish birthrates. The implication was that Denmark
did not have to be nervous about the numbers of immigrants or their cul-
ture as the latter came to resemble Danish culture after a few years. Horst
also criticized municipal authorities for collapsing different family categories
into a single category and using the manipulated results to call for restric-
tions to family reunion rules.
Regardless of his intentions, Horst’s argument—typical of the antiracist
argument of the period—was responsive to the cultural framework used to
explain social phenomena. The focus shift to family reunification laws as
the new battleground centered the debate on immigrants’ culture. Once
immigrants’ “cultural practices” came into the focus, both anti-immigrant
and pro-immigrant (i.e., multiculturalist) arguments became oriented to-
ward culture both as the object of discourse (cultural traditions) and as an
explanatory framework (immigrants’ cultural mind-set).
Schierup (1993) traces the origins of the culturalization of immigration
debate to the “culturalist” focus of academic research, which, he argues, has
provided the foundation for both the notion of the “clash of cultures” and
the multiculturalist notion of the “meeting of cultures.”
Scholars have generally been critical of essentialist notions of culture,
but criticism in many critical works is limited to refraining from attribut-
ing ingrained cultural characteristics to ethnic, religious, or racial groups. A
nonessentialist approach usually emphasizes the ever-changing, hybrid, and
cosmopolitan character of culture and cultural identity by a web of influences
from other cultures. Thus, the disagreement between essentialist and nones-
sentialist approaches is about the degree to which culture determines indi-
vidual lives and the pace of its change. Yet culture is maintained as the basis
for understanding putative social identities and, as such, it opens up a field of
inquiry for researchers—essentialists and nonessentialists alike. To study an
entity one has to know what that entity is. That is, the first step when study-
ing culture is to delimit, describe, and construct the culture or the cultural
identity to be studied, which starts with labeling/naming. Here, both ap-
proaches are similar in their categorization of social groups in cultural terms:
they both identify and therefore objectify cultures regardless of how the cul-
ture is described—whether as something influenced by other “cultures” or
not. One of the “multiculturalist” arguments often used in the debate was
that Danes and Danish institutions did not know enough about immigrants’
cultural background to be tolerant and better able to deal with them.
However, studying and mapping out immigrants’ practices implies engi-
neering proper behavior according to “our norms.” But because immigrants,
like anyone else, behave in different ways in the same situations as well as
in similar ways in different situations, culture has to be constructed by the
researchers who are given grants to study and produce knowledge about
immigrants and their culture. Thus, academic “expertise” and “insider in-
formation” (provided by “native informants”) started to become a standard
for sourcing stories and participating in public discourse on immigration,
leading to the process of institutionalizing the cultural focus.
Once Islam and Muslim immigrants came into focus, the need for
knowledge about them to explain things to Danes gave rise to new kinds
of experts. One of them, frequently featured in the columns of Danish
newspapers, was Hussein Shahadeh, who told Danes that “the Koran is the
Muslims’ holy book; a guideline in everyday obligations, and even the basis
for the worldly laws. . . . Islam has a particularly firm hold on the ordinary
Muslim and determines his entire everyday life in a much more detailed
manner than religion does from a Western point of view” (“Muslims in Ex-
ile,” Jyllands-Posten, November 12, 1987).15
Not only do effective hegemonic articulations produce their own kinds
of experts, credible sources, and designers of polls, who reflect the ascendant
ontological understandings, but they also gradually render irrelevant experts
who may bring a different perspective to social phenomena, therefore gradu-
ally transforming the nature of the social phenomena themselves. In this
sense, the far-right hegemonic project initiated by Krarup’s ads became a
centripetal force redirecting and orienting arguments toward its own defini-
tions, which, in the Bakhtinian sense, had quickly become the already ut-
tered, the already known, the common opinion. Those on the far right were
joined by their antagonists in elaborating an ontology of the social based
on cultural differences. As I demonstrated in chapter 1, the tacit ontologi-
cal categories centralize language by imposing ontological limits to it: it is
through these limits that the antagonists are able to make arguments on the
same “object.” In other words, mutual understanding appears to be possible
only if we speak of the same objects and phenomena. In the period after
Krarup’s intervention, the immigrant as a cultural category became a central
object that fixed the meaning of concepts that were disarticulated from their
class-based contexts. The term “integration,” for example, was increasingly
used in the sense of integrating into Danish culture rather than into the
institutionalized “Danish society” (e.g., labor unions, employment or un-
employment institutions, the health-care system).
Whether others argued for or against the reality of an unbridgeable fron-
tier between Muslims and the Danish people, Krarup’s intervention brought
the cultural divide into the center of social imagination—the divide that
worked as a centripetal force that reoriented arguments along its own axis.
The power of the Far Right’s vision to bend public discourse toward its defi-
nitions was most evident in the radical reorientation of the DRC’s com-
ments, which used to describe the oppression and prosecution from which
refugees escaped prior to Refugee 86. By the fall of 1987, they too had shifted
focus in response to the changing discursive environment in which culture
and religion were emphasized as the locus of the problem. Public relations
officer Torkil Sørensen argued, for example, that Iranian refugees escaped
from Khomeini’s regime and therefore would not be interested in the “Kho-
meinization” (i.e., Islamization) of Denmark. He also noted that the DRC
in principle did not allocate housing to refugees in areas with many im-
migrants, to prevent concentrations enabling immigrants to maintain their
culture (“Escaped from Khomeini,” Berlingske Tidende, September 13, 1987).
The centripetal force of the new cultural ontology of the social could also
be seen in explicitly antiracist positions. According to a news story that ap-
peared in Berlingske Tidende, the teacher’s union wanted to participate more
actively in the immigration debate to stop “immigrants and refugees from
being made into scapegoats for all social problems” (November 13, 1987).
For the union, this meant that teachers had a responsibility to teach immi-
grant children to respect Danish culture and to school them on “what is al-
lowed in our country and how to navigate in the Danish system.” That is, to
stop racism one must change the objects that necessitate it: the immigrants
themselves. If immigrants learn to respect Danish culture—however vague
it appears—Danes’ resentment toward them may decrease. This has been
a main strategy in arguments against racism: that immigrants will change
and begin behaving just like Danes. A Politiken commentator exploring ear-
lier immigrations to Denmark explained that even though immigrants kept
their culture for a while, their cultural characteristics were erased over time.
He concluded that “integration takes time” and urged Danes to be patient
and tolerant despite the fact that “apparently when there are problems in
places such as Ishøj, it can have adverse consequences for both parts [Danes
and immigrants]—and the [Danes’] goodwill” (“Tolerance Is Not Dead in
Denmark, Well?” November 11, 1987). This argument has been repeated nu-
merous times over the last two decades of immigration debate.
While those considered to be in the antiracist camp were reorienting their
argumentative strategy toward the cultural framework, characterizations of
immigrants considered to be extreme and the property of the Progress Party
were becoming legitimate views in newspaper columns. Once Krarup was
taken as a legitimate interlocutor and, in fact, as representing one pole of
the debate, more extreme rhetoric became acceptable. A commentator in
Jyllands-Posten, for instance, could not accept that “Islamic foreign workers
refuse to take orders from their female supervisors” (“Poul Meyer’s Hodge-
podge,” September 21, 1987), although this had never been an issue in ear-
lier decades of immigration from Muslim countries. According to another
commentator in the same paper, “A Muslim neither can nor wants to adapt
to Danish conditions (with the exception of using the welfare office). For a
Muslim, religion is the law, and therefore he cannot be integrated into Dan-
ish society” (“Professor Is on the Wrong Path,” September 21, 1987). These
kinds of statements, which would have been seen as racist only a couple
years previously, were now articulated as justifiable concerns for the future
of the cohesion in Danish society.
It is possible that, as a result, readers’ letters began to make more co-
herent references to and linkages among economic burden, the representa-
tional gap, Danish culture, and national threat. For instance, a letter to the
editor in Berlingske Tidende commented that immigration policy should be
adjusted to the people, not people to immigration policy, and continued:
“Ethnic [folkelige] unity has been the foundation for the wealth, peace, and
stability in Danish society” (“Arrogant Attitude,” September 13, 1987).
In news and feature stories, both sides of a controversy invoked cultural
arguments to advance their agendas. One Social Democratic municipality
wanted to close down a special kindergarten where immigrant children were
placed while their mothers received Danish language instruction. According
to the deputy mayor, “We bring together immigrant children and they do
not learn Danish. We want them to come out among Danish children to
learn Danish and get integrated in ordinary kindergartens.” Kindergarten
teachers protested but did not challenge the assumption about what integra-
tion meant: “This is not Little Turkey or Pakistan. We function according
to Danish norms and traditions” (“Immigrant children Have to Learn Dan-
ish,” Politiken, September 13, 1987). The Left Socialist (VS) council repre-
sentative also opposed the closing, for “the result will be that women have
to stay at home and not learn Danish.” No one actually bothered to define
what Danish norms and traditions were and how kindergartens functioned
according to them. Danish norms and traditions, in this sense, function
as empty signifiers pointing to the cultural divide. The statements indicate
what the teachers believed would constitute the strongest argument against
the mayor’s desire to close down the project.
The “already known,” the common opinion that the arguments were
oriented toward, was, in this sense, the assumption that something called
“Danish culture” was the benchmark for successful integration. Disagree-
ment concerned whether the project helped or hindered the integration of
immigrants, although both sides agreed that Danish culture was to be pro-
tected as an absolute yardstick of social conduct. The statements by the Left
Socialists’ representative in the municipal council has strong feminist un-
dertones defending immigrant women, but her argument, oriented toward
the cultural dichotomy, because of its location within the argumentative
web, was tainted by the Orientalist view of “Muslim culture” often associ-
ated with keeping women at home. Madsen used the same argument to
support restricting family reunions. In the Danish discursive context, Ori-
entalist views could be enlisted as rhetorical resources to defend any project
deemed good for immigrants or to criticize any project deemed bad for them
or Danish culture. By the late 1987, culture had taken a central role in ex-
plaining any phenomena in relation to immigrants, who were slowly being
recast from being immigrant workers to Muslim immigrants, collapsing the
ethnonational categories that had so far designated the immigrant groups
under a single ontological category: Muslims.
Thus, arguments and descriptions of social reality that were recognized
in the mid-1980s as far-right or racist articulations became commonplace
among all politicians, including leading Social Democrats, within ten years.
Some of the people who used sharpest language against Krarup in the fall
of 1986 aligned themselves with him just a few years later. By 1990, Krarup
was a columnist in Ekstra Bladet, which he had designated as “the royal
voice of goodness industry” and which in turn had called him an “Apostle
of Hate.” And in 1993, Thorkild Simonsen, who in 1986 had called Krarup’s
campaign “petite racism,” had come to realize that “if one wants to live in
Denmark, one should live under the Danish conditions. We have Turkish
families who . . . have no desire to become part of Danish society. The time
is ripe to say things as they are. There are immigrants who exploit our lib-
eral laws” (Engelbreth Larsen 2001: 167). In 1997, he was appointed interior
minister by the Social Democrats to carry out severe restrictions on immi-
gration. SDP leader and prime minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen declared
in 1997 that it was unacceptable for Muslim immigrants to have breaks to

pray at workplaces even though the practice had never been problematized
by Danish employers or coworkers. Karen Jespersen said it clearly: “To live
in Denmark, you have to be Danish” (Berlingske Tidende, July 14, 1997).
When the Liberal Party won the 2001 elections and formed the government
with the support of the DPP, the leader of the Liberal Party, Anders Fogh
Rasmussen, used the same language of “system change” against “arbiters of
taste,” “opinion tyranny,” and the “elite” as Krarup (Lykkeberg 2008: 53).
Clearly, ethnicity, culture, race, and immigration have long been a part
of public discourse in Denmark and Europe, but the meaning of these con-
cepts is not fixed: they are, to repeat the much-appropriated idea, subject
to ongoing struggles over meaning—struggles that color these abstract con-
cepts with particular signification in political discourse. The main argument
in the next chapter is that these concepts have now coalesced to construct
a new kind of hegemonic antagonism between the Danish “people” and
“Muslim immigrants.” A “diagnostic and prognostic” frame presuming that
social problems largely should be interpreted in ethnic terms and/or

as being the result of moral lassitude (and not in terms of social class
and economic marginalisation); and that they should be resolved by
implementing stricter immigration policies and more law and or-
der . . . has become hegemonic in the political as well as mass media
discourse. (Rydgren 2004: 491)
Chapter 4
Culture, Ethnicity, and New Hegemony
In her annual New Year speech on December 31, 1985, Queen Margrethe
scolded Danes for their negative attitudes toward immigrants, calling their
utterances “dumb-smart.” In a humanitarian tone she criticized the hostile
immigration debate and asked Danes to be tolerant and help new guests to
adjust to Danish society. Since then, the immigration debate has become
increasingly hostile; yet in an interview in June 2002, the queen only had
praise for the debate and said, “It is not so dumb to talk about it” (Politiken,
June 30, 2002). In an official biography published in 2005, the queen “con-
fessed” that she had been “crazily naive” because she had come to realize that
Islam constitutes a great challenge for Danes, who had not met the challenge
because “we were tolerant and lazy.” She found that there was “something
frightening about such a totality, which also is a feature of Islam” and argued
that “a counterbalance has to be found, and one has to, at times, run the
risk of having unflattering labels placed on you. For there are some things
for which one should display no tolerance. And when we are tolerant, we
must know whether it is because of convenience or conviction” (Telegraph,
April 15, 2005).
I concluded the last chapter with the observation that by late 1987,
culture had already taken a key role in explaining phenomena related to
immigrants, recasting them as Muslim immigrants rather than immigrant
workers. The main argument in this chapter is that by 2001, culture had
become the key not only to immigration but to the social imaginary in
general through the signifier “Muslim immigrant”—a change of focus that
displaced social struggle from class to culture. In this process, the figure of
Muslim immigrant has become indispensable; it structures the social imagi-
nary in fundamental ways in both political and everyday discourse. It has
become difficult to think about the future of the welfare state or the future
138
Culture, Ethnicity, and New Hegemony 139
of your child without the culturalized category of immigrants being cen-

tral to that thinking. In this chapter, I will first demonstrate the centrality
of culture to immigration discourse, then discuss how immigration shapes
the ontology of the social, that is, how the figure of the Muslim immigrant
structures the social horizon (imagining the past, present, and future) fol-
lowed by a discussion of the centrality of culture and immigration in politi-
cal and everyday discourse.
The transformation was the result of a hegemonic intervention that rear
ticulated uncertainties about the welfare system as the result of immigration
rather than the neoliberal policy of shrinking the state’s role in the economy.
The Conservative/Liberal governments in the 1980s were trying to dismantle
the welfare system incrementally, and that role was taken over by the Social
Democrats in the 1990s under the guise of the “third way” (Betz and Meret
2013). The move toward the neoliberal position on economic policy, includ-
ing privatization, capping unemployment, and social aid payments, was in
process in the 1990s, and the consensus on such policies made it difficult for
voters to see significant differences between the mainstream parties in terms
of economic policy. That blurring enabled issues such as immigration—and
its role in eroding social rights—to become important in distinguishing the
parties’ appeals to voters.
As the Social Democrats gave in to the “no alternative dogma” that “the
tight fiscal constraints faced by governments are the only realistic possibility
in a world where global markets would not permit any deviation from the
neo-liberal orthodoxy” (Laclau and Mouffe 2001: xvi), “working class” vot-
ers started to move to the anti-immigrant Progress Party and, subsequently,
to the populist Danish People’s Party, which adopted a “nativist conception
of welfare state” and criticized the Social Democrats for having “repudiated
their role as protectors of welfare values and principles in the name of lib-
ertarian stances—on immigration, for instance—undermining the welfare
state present and future” (Betz and Meret 2013: 118). The populist Right
argued that political and cultural elites’ multicultural agenda was “a Trojan
horse of globalization since it must invariably lead to the destruction of
national communities and identities. . . . This line of reasoning could effec-
tively appeal to those workers feeling that levels of welfare were threatened
by an increasingly globalized world, where growing immigration is among
the consequences” (Betz and Meret 2013: 118). The Social Democrats re-
sponded to this voter flight by adopting an anti-immigration rhetoric in-
creasingly focusing on “their culture,” “their religion,” “their criminality,”
and “their misuse of the welfare system.” Between 1993 and 2001, the suc-
cessive governments led by the Social Democrats tightened the immigration
laws thirty-six times (“Ali and the 36 Restrictions,” Politiken, July 8, 2001). In
the same period, the Social Democratic prime minister replaced the minister
for internal affairs—the minister responsible for immigration-related issues
in that period—three times, each time with a political figure whose rhetoric
on immigrants was harsher than the previous one; but none of these “mea-
sures” helped them recapture voter support that they had lost to the DPP
and the Right.
This displacement of the traditional structures of identification (i.e.,
social classes or the corresponding division between left and right) oc-
curred through a gradual but relatively rapid shift from humanitarian and
compassion-based approaches (to the question of asylum and refugees) to
culture-based approaches (to the question of immigration in general). The
questions asked in the first phase, “How can we help them?” or “Can we
afford it?” were gradually replaced with “Can we sustain our national iden-
tity?” “Can the welfare system survive immigration?” “Do immigrants chal-
lenge our ‘common’ achievements?” (i.e., gender equality, tolerance for gays,
and freedom of speech). In the 1990s, answers to such questions, from politi-
cal actors, media pundits, and ordinary citizens, became increasingly nega-
tive or skeptical. These questions forced even those who were critical of the
racist tone of the debate to think of the central social and political questions
in relation to immigration. As Gullestad (2002: 45) explains, the notion of
equality, for example, has increasingly become connected to an “imagined
[cultural] sameness” that “underpins a growing ethnification of national
identity” (see also McIntosh 2015).The assumption in the new discursive
environment is that the welfare state and other “common” achievements
are grounded in solidarity and trust, which, in turn, have been built upon
shared cultural values. As I have argued, these achievements, which were the
result of decades of “internal” struggles, came to be imagined as common
in the face of an external force that threatened the validity of these “values.”
Hegemony is not a given state of affairs once it is achieved: social life is
too heterogeneous to be neatly articulated in antagonistic categories. Ev-
ery articulation leaves out surplus meaning that threatens the stability of
the hegemonic articulation. In other words, hegemony has to be continu-
ously fought for; the antagonisms have to be continuously reproduced. The
reproduction of an antagonistic relationship requires an ongoing focus on
the antagonistic force. Frequent controversies and crises (e.g., moral panics)
around the antagonizing force do just that: crises are strategic moments of
discourse that keep the focus on immigration and reproduce immigrants as
a threat to the cohesion of society. Crises help turn single acts of deviance
(e.g., murder, rape, or other crimes of violence) into symptoms of a larger

cultural pattern. Thus, a murder becomes more than a murder: it becomes
an example of the general threat immigrants pose to “our values,” which un-
derpin social peace and cohesion. An “honor killing” becomes, for example,
a threat to “our core value of gender equality.” The threat not only converts
“gender equality” from an aspiration into an already established “common
value” but also culturalizes it. This is achieved in a circular manner: murder
is equated with the immigrants’ culture because it is committed by an im-
migrant; the immigrant as a cultural-ontological category turns murder into
an instance of “immigrant culture”; and “immigrant culture” in turn is used
to explain murder as a cultural act as if the uniqueness of the murder is given
a priori. The tautological reasoning also contributes to the construction of
antagonism: murder as “immigrant criminality” draws the boundaries of
society and simultaneously keeps immigrants outside those boundaries as if
boundaries were already there.
I want to discuss how the culturalization of an issue tautologically pro-
duces the antagonistic categories. In November 1996, the doorman of a
dance club was killed by a Palestinian teenager who had been denied entry.
This murder was discussed exclusively as a matter of culture—as if murder
would be natural in Muslim cultures. Ekstra Bladet chose to interview an
ordinary Dane, who said, “I cannot tolerate their violence. Vikings do not
carry guns and knives. It is not part of our culture” (November 25, 1996).
The absurdity of such a statement—that murder is a natural part of “the”
Muslim culture and Vikings did not carry guns and knives—gets lost once
a murder is explained culturally. Murder understood as a cultural act repro-
duces the Muslim immigrant while simultaneously the Muslim immigrant
(i.e., Islam) explains murder as a cultural act. The normalized absurdity of
cultural explanations becomes more clear when two identical acts are com-
pared. About a week after the murder by the Palestinian teenager, another
murder in a dance club was committed by a Dane who fired into the crowd,
also because he was denied entry. This time, no reference was made to his
cultural background or ethnicity. He was a “madman,” and it was an indi-
vidual act of deviance (Diken 1998: 60).
Incessant crises and controversies around issues such as immigrant crimi-
nality, immigrants’ misuse of the social system, honor killings, forced mar-
riages, immigrants’ birthrates, headscarves, and gang rapes—all of which are
explained with reference to immigrants’ cultural and religious norms—help
cement the boundaries of society in the social imaginary and keep alive the
sense that immigrants pose a threat to “our” common interests. In other
words, the sustained focus via perpetual crises around immigrants draws at-
tention to cultural differences as the defining moments of social division and
ontologizes the Muslim immigrant vis-à-vis the nation.
Crises around Muslims, 1987–2001
The period between 1987 and 2001 was characterized by a series of crises
around Muslim immigrants provoked by various actors1 or deliberate me-
dia campaigns that pushed the progressive parties, movements, and orga-
nizations into a defensive position where they were continuously forced to
respond to criticism for being too tolerant and for letting society fall into
decay through their “misplaced” multiculturalist ideals.
The year 1991 began, for example, with a campaign by the Progress Party
against plans to build a mosque in Copenhagen. The Progress Party por-
trayed Islam as a threat to Danish society. Although other parties did not
join the fray, they defended the plans merely on the grounds that the state
had already entered into an agreement to rent the lot without challenging
the premise that Islam was a threat (Jacobsen 2009: 24). The 1990s were the
decade during which phenomena such as “honor killings” and “forced mar-
riages” were introduced and took up a significant portion of the coverage,
especially in the second half of the 1990s (Andreassen 2005: 163). Crime,
violence, gang rapes, private religious schools, ritual (Muslim) slaughter tra-
ditions, child brides, ghettos, and immigrants’ misuse of the welfare system
were the topics that dominated the media’s coverage of immigrants (Andre-
assen 2005; Gaasholt and Togeby 1995; Madsen 2000).
Toward the end of the decade, the tabloid Ekstra Bladet ran a two-and-a-
half-month campaign in a series called “The Foreigners.” One of the stories,
about a Somalian refugee named Ali, created a controversy that quickly de-
veloped into a moral panic. The story, headlined “Receives 631,724 Kr. in So-
cial Welfare” (June 23, 1997) (about US$104,000 as of January 2015), painted
a picture of Ali “as a foreigner who was exploiting the Danish welfare system
and posed a threat to Danish majority values and interest” (Hervik 2011:
60). The article was accompanied by a color image of a smiling Ali and his
family next to a black-and-white image of a Danish woman and her mother
who were not smiling because, according to the story, they were not receiv-
ing the help they needed. The story, as expected, was a manipulation of the
numbers: it added up the payments to his ex-wife and his children, as if it
was a single amount paid to Ali (62).
As customary for this kind of campaign journalism, once the story was
published, the paper asked for comments from politicians, experts, and ordi-
nary people. Karen Jespersen, the Social Democratic minister for social affairs
opined that the family clearly belonged to Africa, not to Denmark, whereas
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the vice chair of the right-wing Liberal Party—
who became prime minister following the 2001 elections—was outraged that
“non-Danish citizens have access to precisely the same welfare benefits as
Danish citizens, who one may assume contribute to the system of taxation”
(Hervik 2011: 61). Politicians and experts from all quarters weighed in, blow-
ing up the case; Ali became the symptom of Muslim immigrants who mis-
used the welfare system, whereas Danes who had built up the system were left
behind. An editorial in Ekstra Bladet called for lower welfare payments for the
newly arrived immigrants, and the controversy ended with the new Integra-
tion Act of 1999, which introduced a lower “integration payment.”
This was the newspaper that only a decade earlier had criticized Krarup
for being racist and called him “the Black Priest.” The tabloid’s traditionally
populist motto—on the side of the ordinary man on the street against the
system that oppressed him—had turned the “ordinary man” into the “ordi-
nary Dane,” as opposed to a system that protected undeserving Muslims.
The Social Democrats hoped that the Integration Act of 1999 and the
replacement of Thorkild Simonsen (who was already a hardliner) with Karen
Jespersen—whose rhetoric against Muslims was indistinguishable from that
of the DPP—as the minister of internal affairs would end criticism that
the party was too soft on immigration. But as the 2001 elections showed, it
only contributed to the success of the DPP and accelerated the hegemonic
imaginary based on the antagonism between “ordinary Danes” and Muslim
immigrants.
Centrality of Culture in Immigration Discourse
By 2001, many people inside and outside Denmark testified to the preoccu-
pation with Danish national identity, immigrants, and their culture. Sasha
Polakow-Suransky (2002), for instance, wrote that
it came as a surprise to nearly everyone when this icon of northern

European welfare-state progressivism, and the erstwhile poster child
of liberal immigration policy, descended into an inflammatory elec-
tion campaign last November [2001]. The issues of immigration and
refugees took center stage, despite Denmark’s record-low unemploy-

ment and the fact that less than 8 percent of its population is of for-
eign origin.
Likewise, Stephen Smith (2002), cofounder of the UK-based Beth Shalom

Holocaust Centre, reported that
what we are witnessing in Denmark is nothing less than the return of

rightwing extremism to respectability—not through the acceptance
of a controversial Haider [at the time the leader of the Far Right in
Austria] or Le Pen [the leader of the far-right FN in France], but
through the quiet adoption of their stance by mainstream political
parties. . . . Denmark’s government is now taking steps which will
turn one of the world’s most liberal countries into a bastion of intro-
verted nationalism.
Many scholars note that Muslims have become the ultimate “other”
since 2001 and attribute this development to the events of September 11,
2001, or the Danish parliamentary elections the same year (Hervik 2004;
Jensen 2008; Mudde and Kaltwasser 2013; Meret 2011). However, by 2001,
immigration had already become the most important issue (Andersen 2004;
Bjørklund and Andersen 2002; Rydgren 2004), and culture and religion had
already become central to immigration discourse (Madsen 2000; Gaasholt
and Togeby 1995; Horsti 2008; Togeby 2003). The election campaign of
2001, in which immigration and Muslim immigrants became the most im-
portant election issue, was the culmination of what had already been taking
place: the right-wing Liberal-Conservative coalition government came to
power with an election campaign that almost solely focused on immigration,
and the main figures behind the 1986 campaign against the Refugee Coun-
cil, Søren Krarup and his cousin Jesper Langballe, were elected as members
of the Folketing for the DPP. Furthermore, the coalition government was
formed with the parliamentary support of the DPP, which became the key
to keeping the government in power, which in turn gave the party enor-
mous influence on the political decisions, especially immigration policy. As
Polakow-Suransky (2002) observed, by 2001, “Nowhere [was] the contrast
between the old political discourse and the new more dramatic than in Den-
mark.”
My data confirm these observations. There is a substantial body of work
that shows that a clear dichotomy of “us” and “them” was established in the
immigration debate in the 1990s (Gaasholt and Togeby 1995; Hervik 1999,
2002, 2011; Hussain, Yılmaz, and O’Connor 1997; Meret 2011; Meret and
Siim 2013), and the data of this study show that these categories had become
highly culturalized by 2000.
As I explained in chapter 2, the coding comes out of a close reading of the
newspaper clips. I coded 2,152 newspaper articles from 1984, 1986, 1987, and
2001 in terms of their perspectives: humanitarian, cultural, economic/social
burden, or rights. My codes for humanitarian and cultural perspectives were
constructed after a qualitative analysis of some stories typical of the genre,
and the coding process itself was a semiqualitative analysis of each story (I
determined their perspective qualitatively rather than defining some words
as indicators of a particular perspective and counting them). “Humanitar-
ian perspective” indicates stories where the issue of immigration is discussed
(by the author or by the agents in the story) in terms of helping people
in need. Unless it is explicitly discussed through other perspectives, stories
about problems with providing housing for refugees or the process of receiv-
ing them are coded as stories with a humanitarian perspective. “Cultural
perspective” indicates either that the issue is explained by the immigrants’
background or in relation to what it does to Danish culture/identity. Neither
perspective is inscribed with a particular tone: a story or commentary coded
for humanitarian perspective may argue that Denmark cannot afford to help
all of the refugees in the world (a typical argument in letters to the editor
in 1984); a story coded for cultural perspective may argue that immigrants’
culture is not a threat to Danishness (a typical argument in 1987).
One of the most striking findings was the complete dominance of the
humanitarian perspective in 1984 (82.5 percent of all stories vs. 1.1 percent
cultural perspective) and the dominance of the cultural perspective in 2001
(32.2 percent cultural vs. 26.6 percent humanitarian; see table 4.1). Consid-
ering that the sample included all kinds of stories, from sports activities to
short reports of crime or violence (which could not be coded as cultural),
one-third of the sample is an impressive proportion.
In news stories in particular, the humanitarian perspective decreased
from 81.4 percent in 1984 to 34.0 percent in 2001, whereas the cultural per-
Table 4.1. Perspective in All Stories

Perspectives/all 1984 1986 1987 2001
Humanitarian 82.5% 87.3% 47.2% 26.6%
Cultural 1.1% 1.7% 13.1% 32.2%
Mixed 0.5% 1.0% 4.9% 8.5%
Not clear 9.5% 4.7% 22.6% 17.6%
Other 6.4% 5.3% 12.2% 5.1%
spective increased from 0 percent in 1984 to 21.5 percent in 2001 (see table
4.2). Commentaries also presented a striking picture (see table 4.3). While
94.7 percent of 1984 commentaries were humanitarian, only 16.0 percent
were in 2001. No commentaries from 1984 were coded as cultural, but 50.6
percent were in 2001. In addition, a review of how immigrants were defined
(or named) over time reveals that fewer than 1 percent of stories in 1984 and
1986 named immigrants as Muslims. In 2001, 19.2 percent did so.
The higher percentage of the cultural perspective in the commentaries
than in the news in 2001 is indicative of the methodological constraints
of content analysis. Content analysis focuses solely on manifest content. If
the numbers in news stories do not seem to reflect the obsession with im-
migrants’ (i.e., Muslim) culture in 2001, it is because many news stories in
2001 were about problems with finding decent housing for refugees, most
of which I coded as having a humanitarian perspective in order to have con-
sistent coding across time. This is where we see the limitations of content
analysis: the stories may be coded in a particular way to be consistent, but
how they are actually understood depends on the discursive environment
in which they are embedded, but that is not manifest in the story itself.
For example, a debate on housing in 1984 may have been motivated by the
problems of finding decent housing for refugees, whereas the same debate
may be motivated by the desire to disperse refugees to prevent the formation
of Muslim “ghettos.” But this background will not necessarily be reflected in
the news stories. I coded many stories as “not clear” (15 percent in 1984; 17.2
percent in 2001). All of the “unclear” stories from 1984 were initially coded
Table 4.2. Perspective in News Stories

Perspectives/news 1984 1986 1987 2001
Humanitarian 81.4% 86.8% 57.4% 34.0%
Cultural 0% 0.9% 7.4% 21.5%
Mixed 0% 0% 2.8% 5.7%
Not clear 15.0% 6.2% 20.4% 17.2%
Other 3.6% 6.1% 12.0% 21.6%
Table 4.3. Perspective in Commentaries

Perspectives/comments 1984 1986 1987 2001
Humanitarian 94.7% 90.9% 44.8% 16.0%
Cultural 0% 4.5% 29.3% 50.6%
Mixed 0% 4.5% 3.4% 11.1%
Not clear 0% 0% 15.5% 12.3%
Other 5.3% 0.1% 7.0% 10.0%
as humanitarian (because there were almost no other perspectives available

at that time), but I recoded them after finding similar stories in 2001 that
could, despite the similarities, be interpreted as being written from a cultural
perspective if the context was included in my considerations.
To make this point clear, I want to discuss the same type of stories from
different periods. The first story is from Jyllands-Posten (October 22, 1986),
“Convicted for Murder Attempt,” which is about an Iranian refugee who
had stabbed his wife. The reporter explains that the incident probably had
to do with the divorce proceedings between the couple, implying that the
attack was motivated by jealousy. There is no word of culture, tradition, or
religion to explain his conduct; the story is treated the same way as a story
about Danes.
A decade later, by the mid-1990s, it had become common on both sides
of the political spectrum to talk about cultural differences in connection
with violence or a murder committed by an immigrant. On September 1,
1996, for example, a teenager from an immigrant family beat a young Dane
to death after pulling him out of a taxi in Aarhus. The homicide led to
a protest demonstration against violence led by Minister for Social Affairs
Karen Jespersen (Social Democrat) with the participation of Danes and im-
migrants. When interviewed by TV2 News, Jespersen said “They have to
learn to get on with the Danish culture and learn to behave like Danes.
They are going to live here, but the problem is that there is a long distance
between them and us” (TV2 News, September 15, 1996). It is ironic that, two
weeks later, an immigrant youth was pulled out of a taxi and beaten into
coma by three young Danes without any prior argument (“19-Year-Old Gets
His Face Smashed,” BT, September 18, 1996). I read the newspaper clips
from the rest of the month and did not see much coverage of this attack; the
police admitted that the attack was racially motived, yet there were no pro-
test demonstrations against racist violence or any condemnations of racism
by any officials. Nor was there any mention of culture as the background for
the attack. Around the same date, the newspapers were full of stories about a
law proposal by the Social Democratic minister of internal affairs that would
make it easier to deport immigrants convicted of drug crimes.
By the beginning of the new millennium, culture had become the pivotal
category for explaining any kind of phenomenon related to immigrants,
even in cases that normally would defy cultural explanations, as illustrated
by the following example: According to a statistics, immigrant women had
a higher abortion rate than Danes (Jyllands-Posten, June 17, 2001). If we as-
sume that most religious traditions do not condone abortion, the statistics
could be read as an indication that culture or religion falls short of explain-
ing immigrants’ behavior. Yet culture had become so indispensable to un-

derstanding immigrants that the reporter chose to interview a Danish social
worker as an expert on immigrants’ cultural background, who explained that
“Muslim women do not demand that their men use protection”—an expla-
nation that turned abortion into an example of the unequal gender relations
in “Muslim culture.” In short, it was almost impossible to not use “culture”
as the defining characteristic of the category of immigrant by 2001.
As these examples illustrate, the numbers alone cannot illustrate the de-
gree to which immigration discourse had been culturalized in fewer than
two decades; it is difficult to capture in numbers the fundamentally different
discursive environments in which seemingly similar stories are “encoded/
decoded” by the media and audiences (Hall 1980). Some of the stories in the
later periods may “only” recount what happened and consequently are not
coded as “cultural” because they do not have an explicitly manifest cultural
perspective, but these “factual” stories would still be understood within the
social horizon, whose contours are shaped by the new cultural ontology of
the social.
Researchers often try to understand changes in discourse in terms of
changes in opinions or attitudes as expressed through opinion polls (Ander-
sen 2002; Blum 1986; Gaasholt and Togeby 1995; Körmendi 1986; Madsen
2000; Togeby 1997, 2003). The changing nature of the categories, however,
is also an often unacknowledged problem in public opinion polls. Despite
the fact that both scholarly and vernacular observations repeatedly point
to the immense preoccupation with national and cultural identity in dis-
course, public opinion polls about immigrants nevertheless show a remark-
able stability (Togeby 2004). The problem with trying to understand change
in terms of public opinion is the assumption that people express the same
opinion about the same object (e.g., immigrants) each time they are asked
over time. The transformation of the meaning of “immigrants” as a cat-
egory is rarely acknowledged: The category of immigrants people expressed
opinions about in the early 1980s was fundamentally different from the im-
migrants they were asked about in the early 2000s: the first was essentially
a labor category associated with the “class struggle,” whereas the latter is as-
sociated with “cultural struggle.” It does not mean that the difference in the
ontological character of “immigrant” necessarily corresponds to an increase
in negative opinions about immigrants. Immigrant as a labor category can
still have a “negative” association depending on the debate in the polling
period: if immigrants are primarily discussed in terms of being cheap labor
force that will undermine working-class solidarity, opinions expressed about
immigrants may be negative, whereas immigrants as Muslims can awake
sympathy if they are portrayed as victims of oppression in their home coun-

tries or of racism.
There is also another sense in which opinion measurement is problem-
atic. What exactly constitutes a “positive” or “negative” evaluation? My sam-
ple from five daily newspapers shows that the number of news stories about
immigrants coded as positive increased from 17.7 percent in 1984 to 40.4
percent in 1986 and 48.1 percent in 1987 even though the category of im-
migrants was increasingly culturalized in the same period, where I recorded
a corresponding decrease in negative stories. The “discrepancy” was due to
the changing nature of the same topics. When the focus in news coverage in
1984 was on incoming refugees, and the right-wing government attempted
to introduce restrictions to immigration, I coded stories that promoted re-
strictions as “negative” and resistance against restrictions as “positive.” Once
the laws were tightened in 1986, both the parliamentary opposition and the
government defended the already restrictive laws, but their rhetoric became
“positive” because the government and the parliamentary opposition mo-
bilized humanitarian arguments against the Far Right’s push for further re-
strictions. In other words, what was negative in previous phase of coding
was now coded positive because the new status quo was now being defended
against the demands for further restrictions. As a result of this change in
rhetoric, opinion polls recorded a positive change in attitudes in the same
period (Körmendi 1986; Blum 1986; Gaasholt and Togeby 1995).
The same observation can be made about surveys around 2000. An
analysis of the Eurobarometer 2000 survey concluded that Danish attitudes
toward immigrants became increasingly positive in the period between 1997
and 2000 (Thalhammer et al. 2001). The authors explain the positive ten-
dency with decreasing unemployment rates (which might have reduced
Danes’ concerns about immigration). The analysis raises more questions
than it answers: How (and why) was the Social Democratic / Radical Party
coalition ousted in 2001 by the Liberal/Conservative coalition despite the
positive attitudes toward immigrants and Denmark’s record low unemploy-
ment rates?
The answer may be more in the preoccupation with the question of im-
migration and cultural identity than in just the numbers. Regardless of the
negativity or positivity of stories or opinions, immigrants as a labor category
do not have the same sociopolitical significance as immigrants as a cultural/
religious category, and numbers cannot account for this qualitative change
in terms of its significance: immigrant workers can still be considered to be
a part of working-class solidarity, but immigrants who are interpellated via
religion are situated in a new network of discursive associations that relegates
them outside the national collectivity that is now considered the basis for
solidarity. It is in this context that the numbers in tables 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3
should be read: by 2001, the cultural perspective was so pervasive that even
stories with a humanitarian perspective would be understood in relation to
a culturalized ontological structure of society. Cultural identity problems,
unsuccessful integration, religion, blood revenge, traditions, and honor were
all conceptual resources used to understand the immigrants’ behavior. And
it was the intense focus on Muslim immigrants and their “culture” during
the election campaign in the fall of 2001 that culminated in the change of
power to the right and the DPP’s unprecedented election victory. As Ulf
Hedetoft (2003), the director of Academy for Migration Studies in Den-
mark, testified, “The issue of immigration . . . dominated the general elec-
tion campaign. The general tone of the debate was acrimonious, bordering
on vengeful; immigration was projected as the most imminent and serious
threat to the history, culture, identity and homogeneity of ‘little Denmark.’”
Thus, 2001 became the turning point in the sense that the hegemonic trans-
formation that had been taking place since the mid-1980s finally crystal-
lized in a political outcome: a new government that immediately initiated
institutional changes, a process Krarup described as “system change 2001,”
which, he wrote, was the culmination of what had started in the mid-1980s
(“Krarup: Denmark Has Become a Pioneering Country in Europe,” Poli-
tiken, November 10, 2009).
Centrality of Immigration and Cultural Identity to Social Imaginary
That Muslims have come to signify immigration and that immigration has
become one of the most important issues is common knowledge among
scholars of immigration and the Far Right. I argue that immigration is not
only one of the most important issues with a “priming effect” on how people
vote (Iyengar, Peters, and Kinder 1982), but that immigration is central to
the hegemonic structure of society within which fundamental social and po-
litical questions are thought and discussed. As Garbi Schmidt explains, “We
speak a great deal of immigration in Denmark. We speak of what immigra-
tion does to Danishness, to our welfare state, to so-called Danish values. We
debate Islam, cohesion, ghettoization, radicalization. Some even speak of
Danes as a tribe and as historically homogenous” (qtd. in Brink 2014).
As Laclau and Mouffe (2001: xv) argue, “The establishment of a new
hegemony . . . requires the creation of new political frontiers.” What is dif-
ferent from how Gramsci envisioned hegemonic change, however, is that

the new political frontiers are not, as I discussed in earlier chapters, drawn
between already existing social groups; the creation of new political frontiers
also produces its own ontological categories even if the names of those onto-
logical categories remain the same (i.e., the immigrant of the 1970s is not the
immigrant of the new millennium; the category has been transformed in the
hegemonic transformation process). In this sense, “society” is a hegemonic
construct that can only be represented by its limits, which prevent it from
being harmonious and coherent. During the decades following World War
II, with the hegemony of the Social Democratic vision, it was the capitalist
class that prevented the working class and its allies from achieving equality
and prosperity, and all other emancipatory projects were configured within
a vision of class society characterized by its external limits: capitalism that
was “tamed” through social democratic reforms intended to achieve a better
distribution of resources. The social democratic political program articulated
the indignation over inequality as a matter of class struggle, which had a
mobilizing function.
This is where the hegemonic displacement has taken place: the cultural-
ized immigration debate has moved to the center of political discourse and
has restructured the notion of who “we” and “them” are. The fundamental
social antagonism is now imagined to be between “us” (the “Danish peo-
ple”) and “them” (the Muslim immigrants): “confronted” with the “alien”
element, a sense of “belonging together” prior to the arrival of the alien
force must be created, and this sense is produced through an emphasis on
the “core common values.” However, neither the existence nor the nature
of these values is given a priori; they are produced by reference to the an-
tagonizing force whose presence prevents “us” from functioning in harmony
through the “core” values that are imagined to characterize “us.” In other
words, it is the “nature” of the alien element that determines who “we” are.
This antagonizing force is now considered to be “the Muslim immigrant,”
and subsequently the “core values” are characterized as those that “the Mus-
lim immigrants” challenge, such as democracy, gender equality, freedom of
speech, and the separation of politics and religion. The presence of Muslim
immigrants prevents us from having the cohesive force built on mutual trust
necessary for social and political solidarity, which in turn is the precondition
for sustaining the welfare society. Thus, it is the welfare state that is threat-
ened by the presence of Muslim immigrants. It is in this context that debates
such as the so-called meatball wars fit. “Democracy,” as Lykkeberg (2008:
254‒60) argues, “is [now] identified with ‘core values’ that secure the politi-
cal collectivity. . . . One debate book after another by researchers, editors,

and journalists insists that welfare democracy implies a ‘value community,’ a
religion, or even ethnic homogeneity in order to function” (my translation).
This is not to say that everybody agrees with the particulars of this he-
gemonic vision. Hegemony is not entirely a question of a particular set of
policy proposals becoming commonly accepted. Indeed, a recent survey
shows that half of the population in Denmark is ashamed of the way immi-
gration is debated (Baumann and Schefte 2014). Rather, a hegemonic politi-
cal project operates as a social imaginary that establishes a single horizon of
intelligibility; the imaginary constrains what is “thinkable” or feasible within
the ontological boundaries of society. As Smith (1994: 36–37) explains, “A
hegemonic project does not . . . require [the political subjects’] . . . unequiv-
ocal support for its specific demands. It pursues, instead, a far more subtle
goal, namely the naturalization of its specific vision of the social order as the
social order itself ” and renders alternative representations unintelligible. In
the new social imaginary, the figure of the Muslim immigrant has become
indispensable to thinking about the past, present, and future of society.
I will start with the past. One of the basic arguments of the populist Far
Right is that there is a gap in the harmonious continuity of society caused by
the presence of Muslim immigrants and that society can be restored to its orig-
inal unity if certain steps are taken to keep the nation culturally homogeneous.
The clearest articulation of the gap is a controversial book published by
the DPP in 2001. The cover of the book, Denmark’s Future: Your Country—
Your Choice . . . , pictures a crowd with a fierce-looking Muslim immigrant
with a gun in the foreground, who was photographed at a demonstration in
the main square of Copenhagen. The book is organized in two main parts:
the first is about immigration and what it means for Denmark; the second
is about DPP policies addressing Denmark’s future. The first part contains a
section with a brief history of immigration, a section called “The Impossible
Combination of Islam and Democracy,” a section with statistics on immi-
gration and immigrants’ criminality (e.g., murder, violence, and rape), and
a section that compares Denmark’s problems with immigration with those
of Germany (to connect the problems to immigrants’ religion and culture).
The first part of the book draws a picture of Denmark drowning in problems
brought by Muslim immigrants, which is in stark contrast to the second
part, “Denmark’s Future,” which draws a picture of an idyllic country that
Denmark will again become when and if the DPP’s immigration policies are
implemented.
The visual organization of the book is striking. The first part is filled
with photographs of immigrants in everyday situations that could be found
in any mainstream newspaper, but the sheer number of the photos with
dark-skinned immigrants in every corner of Denmark and in every aspect
of everyday life, and the combination of pictures and the text, create an im-
age of Denmark being invaded by these alien intruders. For example, the
caption of a picture of some Somalian teenagers at a suburban train station
punching their tickets reads: “Stabbing, assault on train staff, vandalism,
and trouble have been driven out of suburban stations on the Køge line”
(p. 71). Most women in the pictures wear headscarves. This image is in stark
contrast to the visual organization of the second part, which begins with the
section titled “Denmark’s Future” and an uncaptioned, full-page picture of
the Danish landscape with meadows and blue skies. This is not an arbitrary
choice of picture; landscape paintings were an important part of the Danish
nation-making process (Hvenegård-Lassen 1996). The rest of the chapter is
full of idyllic pictures of Danish landscapes, peaceful blond Danes in every-
day activities, and children with blond hair. Pictures of the Danish flag—the
most important signifier of the Danish nation and omnipresent not only in
formal but also in everyday situations like birthday parties—are scattered
throughout the second part. In short, the cultural antagonism between the
Danish nation and the Muslim aliens is represented by these two sections:
one describes the grim realities of Denmark; the other describes the desire
for a cohesive Danish nation characterized by cultural/ethnic sameness.
The second part of the book portrays a future that implicitly refers back
to the past: a future Denmark that can be restored to its original state with
cultural unity before the arrival of Muslim immigrants by implementing the
DPP’s immigration policy. The implicit premise for the argument is that
there was an original culturally (i.e., ethnically and racially) cohesive Den-
mark before Muslim immigration. It is this past cultural unity (based on
sameness) that is now broken but can be restored.
Reimagining the Past
If this vision of past unity/sameness were confined to the populist Far Right,
I would not call it hegemonic. What makes the far-right vision hegemonic is
the commonsense status of the assumption in both vernacular and academic
discourse that the past was characterized by ethnic and cultural homogeneity
and that welfare democracy requires social cohesion based on a “value com-
munity” (Lykkeberg 2008). The various viewpoints coalesce around the issue
of how to deal with the new situation in which the cultural homogeneity is
presumed to be broken.
For instance, Gaasholt and Togeby (1995) argue that anti-immigrant

forces “have won the struggle both for access to the media and for the way
the issue is presented in the media” (163). Nevertheless, they begin their
book with the much-repeated view that “the Scandinavian countries have
long had some of the most uniform—or homogenous—populations in the
world. . . . It is hardly wrong to describe postwar Scandinavian countries as
relatively free of ethnic dividing lines” (9). “Denmark is transformed from
being an ethnically homogeneous society to a country with a big dominant
majority and a plurality of small ethnic minorities. . . . [O]ne has to make
an effort not to see immigrants as a burden for Danish society” (27; my
translation).
Ümit Necef (2000: 134) likewise argues that the question of immigration
changed from being an economic and labor issue to a cultural one in the
mid-1970s, but he identifies immigration as a problem that challenges two
fundamental constructs of the modern democratic, and wealthy countries in
the West: the nation-state and the welfare state (31).
This is the common way of talking about the shift in the immigration
debate: the sheer numbers of immigrants from “other cultures” challenge
the homogeneity of Danish society, which is the basis of the welfare system.
The first problem with this view is the positive distinction between re-
ality and discourse. Social reality is treated as a preexisting entity prior to
articulation and discourse as its symbolic reflection. In such a distinction,
reality (i.e., a social category) is privileged over the symbolic realm; the ac-
tions of the ontological category (e.g., Muslim immigrants) come first and
determine the symbolic realm (i.e., discourse on immigration). The discur-
sive shift, however, is not about well-defined new groups entering the scene
and changing the way we conduct our social and political business; it is
about the production of new groups even if the names remain the same.
Once the articulation of the new frontiers becomes hegemonic, the social
practices they structure can appear so natural that members of a society can
fail to see that the ontological structure is the result of political processes.
Phillips and Jørgensen (2002) explain it with the example of childhood.
Modern Western societies view the treatment and understanding of chil-
dren as a group with distinctive characteristics as a matter of common sense.
However, just a few hundred years ago, children were regarded as “small
adults” and were treated accordingly. The category of children is now treated
as if it has always existed and constitutes an ontological entity on which a
wide spectrum of research is conducted.
The second problem with this common wisdom is the temporal space
from which it speaks. Although it presents itself as a universal wisdom, it
speaks of the past through a contemporary perspective. When researchers

(and others) discuss today’s immigration as a challenge to Denmark’s ethnic
homogeneity, they look to the past from today’s hegemonic perspective. In
other words, the narrative of the past reflects the focus on cultural difference
as the main signifier of social antagonisms in contemporary Denmark rather
than being a neutral descriptive statement about how the country was in the
past. It is not that immigration and debate on immigration is new: Denmark
has received immigrants throughout history (e.g., Jews, Swedes, Germans,
Poles, and Hungarians), but it is assumed that these immigrants were “suc-
cessfully” assimilated without great problems because they were culturally
similar, as opposed to the culturally alien Muslim immigrants.
It is not my purpose here to completely discard the idea that there may
be a relationship between demographic changes and immigration discourse.
Rather, I want to question the deterministic assumptions behind these his-
torical narratives: our understanding of this relationship is shaped through
political struggles, not dictated by “objective” criteria such as numbers or
“cultural sameness/difference.”
First, Lucassen (2005) and Lucassen, Feldman, and Oltmer (2006) show
us that in the period 1850‒1940 intra-European immigrants (especially Ital-
ians, Irish, and Poles) were perceived as culturally and “racially” different in
some host countries, and they were detested mostly because they were Catho-
lics. In other words, the perception that intra-European immigrants were
similar to the populations of the host countries is a projection of contempo-
rary perceptions into a past that is retrospectively reproduced as ethnically
more homogeneous—a state of cohesiveness to which society can be restored.
Second, cultural difference/sameness was not always the criterion by
which the immigrant groups were treated. Niels Finn Christiansen explains,
for example, that Danish “workmen” did not have nationalist orientations in
the first half of the nineteenth century (cited in Jensen 2000: 60). Only af-
ter confrontations between Denmark and Germany in 1848 and Denmark’s
defeat by Germany in 1864 did Danish “workmen” begin demanding that
Germans not be allowed to work in Denmark. There were several newspaper
stories in 1865 and 1866 about groups of Danes attacking German workers.
Jensen notes that in both cases there were no characterizations or descrip-
tions of the German workers in the media. The incidents were treated as an
instance of Danish internal political controversies rather than as problems
caused by the Germans and their background (Jensen 2000).
Swedish immigrants, however, were described as “stupid,” “lazy,” “loose,”
and “unreliable” by the progressive, urban Politiken (which at the time had
an arrogant attitude toward peasants and immigrants), and their presence
created the potential for confrontations with Danish workers because Swed-
ish workers were seen as wage suppressors by the emerging Danish working
class. In this context, the coverage by the working-class press is interest-
ing. The Social Democratic Party’s official newspaper, Social-Demokraten,
described the problems with Swedish immigration in terms of wage sup-
pression and strikebreaking, but the internationalist orientation of the party
also meant that its strategy was to co-opt the Swedes into the working-class
struggle for socialism. Social Democrats were relatively subdued in their crit-
icism of Swedish immigrant workers as long as they agreed to be organized
in labor unions. On the other hand, right-wing political parties, although
generally favoring “mobility of the workforce,” were simultaneously restric-
tive about granting residency permits and citizenship, which would have
allowed immigrants to use public resources and curb foreign workers’ desire
to break strikes.
As noted above, this was a period when the working-class movement was
trying to establish itself with a distinct internationalist notion of socialism.
Immigration entered the discourse as—to use Laclau’s language—a “hetero-
geneous element,” and the struggle was about articulating this new element
into existing social formations. The working-class movement articulated the
immigrants as yet another group of workers to be included in the popu-
lar struggle, whereas, for the capitalists, they were just another resource for
production similar to other types of resources and goods. Positive and nega-
tive descriptions of immigrants seem to be used flexibly to fit the rhetorical
demands of these struggles. In short, in the late nineteenth century, when
political discourse was dominated by class struggles and when society consti-
tuted itself around these antagonisms, “immigrant,” it seems, was articulated
within the framework of class struggles rather than ethnicity and culture.
In the 1960s and 1970s, immigration occurred in a social context in
which working-class organizations, stripped of internationalism, were well
established as modern trade unions, but their demands were incorporated in
the hegemonic system characterized by a social democratic consensus. Dan-
ish society was articulated in terms of the welfare state; working-class de-
mands were advanced through negotiations rather than confrontations, and
wage increases were linked to increased productivity. The dividing line in
the debate on immigration was similar to earlier debates: on the one hand,
between labor unions and their political organizations, who were tradition-
ally skeptical about the imported workforce on the one hand and employers,
and, on the other hand, right-wing political parties who traditionally were
open to the controlled importation of foreign labor. The labor unions were
inclined to accept foreign workers if they were employed according to exist-
ing labor agreements and regulations, including automatic membership in

labor unions. When culture and religion entered the debate, these aspects
of immigration were mostly configured within the general framework of the
class struggle. According to Jensen (2000), there was a consensus among
political parties and the news media concerning the importance of decent
treatment of foreign workers (who were called “immigrants” toward the end
of the decade).
As discussed in previous chapters, it was only after mid-1980s that culture
came into focus as the defining feature of immigrants’ presence. Rod Benson
(2000: 224) describes a similar situation in France:
The rise of a negative cultural framing of immigration in France is dif-

ficult to “see” in the sense that it has become so widely accepted today
as the essence of a distinctive French model of immigration and in-
tegration. Many journalists, activists and even academics have come
to accept a distinctive approach to cultural difference as not only the
French reality but the French “way.” They thus deny or can no longer
even remember that a cultural framing of immigration was only one
among many ways that immigration was understood in France dur-
ing the 1960s and 1970s and that its taken-for-granted status of the
1980s had in fact to be won in the political and media arenas.
When researchers and politicians discuss immigration as a challenge to

Denmark’s ethnic/cultural homogeneity, they look at the past from today’s
hegemonic perspective, where homogeneity or the lack thereof is the main
criterion for assessing the impact of immigration. In this view, Muslim im-
migration becomes the breaking point from the continuity of the harmoni-
ous past.
Pia Kjærsgaard, the former leader of the DPP, once said that the pop-
ularity of old Danish TV series was an indication of people’s longing for
the peaceful, idyllic, good, old days when Denmark was ethnically homog-
enous. At first glance, her argument makes perfect sense: the movies and
TV series do reflect a more homogenous Danish society. Longing for the
“golden days” is a feeling that has probably always been expressed in reaction
to change, for example, in reaction to modernization and industrialization
at the beginning of the last century; the work of intellectuals, writers, and
artists since the beginning of the twentieth century often reflects the same
kind of longing after the good old days in which society is imagined to be
a cohesive unity broken by industrialization. In this sense, “good old days”
signify the “purity” or “absent unity of society” (Laclau and Mouffe 2001)
caused by the antagonisms in society. Because ethnicity and culture today

are divisive issues in Denmark (and throughout Europe), the longing is ar-
ticulated in terms of ethnic (or cultural) homogeneity.
Although the popularity of old movies may reflect a longing after the
good old days, the question is whether these old movies actually reflect an
ethnically homogeneous, frictionless society. We have become so used to
thinking of society in terms of ethnicity and culture that we do not see
cultural differences in the past; we are automatically cued into thinking that
what we had in the past was an ethnically and culturally homogeneous so-
ciety. It is through the contemporary preoccupation with ethnic homogene-
ity that movies are interpreted as reflections of an ethnically homogenous,
frictionless, innocent past.
Was society really frictionless, complete, and unified, even if we accept
the suggestion that there was ethnic sameness? On the contrary, these mov-
ies reflect the social upheavals and conflicts of their own times; they deal
with the problems of the postwar economic boom and the struggles of the
1960s and 1970s, which brought feminism, gays, and environmentalists to
the forefront. Some films are concerned with the erasure of old, “authentic”
Danish culture and of the social cohesion that belonged to the idyllic past
(prior to their time). As Lucassen (2005: 18) explains, in this sense every so-
ciety and nation-state is and has been automatically multicultural. The old
movies that are ironically interpreted today as representing an ideal past (by
today’s standards) represent a fantasy; not about the past but about the fu-
ture of Denmark that, according to populist forces, can be brought back to
its original state by eliminating the thing (Muslim immigrant) that subverts
the authenticity and unity of Denmark.
This is how the populist Right’s vision has become hegemonic. Histori-
cal accounts do not merely describe historical facts. They (re)write history
through significant elements of the contemporary discourse. If culture is one
of the defining elements of contemporary discourse, then contemporary ac-
counts will look at history through the lens of culture as if culture were also
the defining feature of social divisions in the past. This seems to be a generic
strategy for all narratives that attempt to articulate a vision for the future:
if society is explained by class struggles, then “the history of hitherto exist-
ing society . . . [becomes] the history of class struggles” (Marx and Engels
1978: 1). If religious narratives are the focus, then the history of the society
becomes a phantasmatic tale of divine creation. Any of these interpreta-
tions would indicate a past constructed from the particular perspective of a
contemporary struggle on a given discursive terrain. Thus, the narrative that
Denmark (or Europe) is becoming multiethnic and multicultural implicates
a particular understanding of the past, that is, what was there before the
change. My point is that it is the narrative on the nature of the change that
constructs—in a reverse direction of causality—the past as if its ontology
was imagined through the same categories. This narrative suggests that the
popular reaction against foreigners is the “natural” result of the demographic
changes. In other words, it is the presence of culturally alien immigrants that
causes reactions among Danish people rather than the particular political
mobilizations that shape the very nature of the reactions.
In conclusion, hegemonic projects universalize their particular political
imaginary by projecting their vision of the ontological order back into the
past as if that order had always constituted the social/political horizon. Once
the new antagonistic identity categories become the “common sense” of the
social structure, even those who argue against the policies of the populist
(and now mainstream) Right draw upon the same epistemology of the so-
cial. In this sense, an epistemological collusion occurs between Right and
Left. It is this shared epistemology of the social that is the basis for the new
hegemony. Even criticism becomes straitjacketed by the vision of the cultur-
alized ontology of the social.
The Present: The Populist Right’s Vision

Is the New Common Sense
The argument that Muslim immigrants pose a threat to the cohesiveness of

the Danish people was recognized as a far-right argument in the mid-1980s.
Although the most xenophobic expressions of this argument are still con-
sidered to be the property of the DPP, the more savvy articulations of the
Muslim challenge to Danish culture are common to both sides of the po-
litical spectrum. What is more significant is that the ontological vision that
originally belonged to the populist Right now informs even the arguments
the oppose far-right positions. In this sense, the culturalized ontology of the
social is the basic premise for the argumentative texture of discourse.
Denmark—Your Country, Your Choice . . . , for example, created an im-
mediate controversy upon its release in 2001. The controversy, however, was
not about its antagonistic picture of Muslim immigrants. The critics focused
on the writer’s dishonesty when interviewing people for the book rather than
the vision it promoted. The basic premise of the book was never questioned.
Rather, the focus of the debate was the different strategies for fending off
that threat. The basic positions can be summarized as (a) a complete halt to
further immigration from Muslim countries and a further marginalization
of the present immigrants (the DPP line); (b) a more strict policy of tighten-
ing the borders; or (c) an assimilationist policy with the goal of transform-
ing present and incoming immigrants from culture-bound peasants into
modern subjects through a heavy-handed integration policy. There were, of
course, also critics of the racist implications of the book.
What makes the antagonistic picture painted by the DPP hegemonic
is the taken-for-granted status of its vision that characterizes mainstream
discourse, institutions, and legal provisions about immigration. In August
of the same year, a think tank released a report with the title Immigration,
Integration and Economy (Danish Interior Ministry 2001). The report, com-
missioned by Karen Jespersen, set up a number of “core Danish norms and
values” that foreigners should be expected to “endorse and live in accordance
with.” These norms and values included freedom of religion, freedom of
speech, equality between men and women, and staying out of criminal activ-
ity (“Core Norms and Values in Denmark,” Politiken, August 7, 2001). The
authors of the report said that they would not consider the degree to which
Danes endorsed or lived in accordance with these norms and values, but
nevertheless concluded that in terms of these norms and values the integra-
tion of immigrants had failed.
The report illustrated the fact that immigration had come to be under-
stood in terms of cultural values, and that Muslim immigrants were seen as
a substantial challenge to the “core values of Danish society,” which in turn
were defined as values Muslim immigrants did not respect.
Politiken covered the report extensively and published a series of articles
under the heading “Integration.” Although many of the stories were critical
of the report, the heading was illustrated with a logo picturing three young
immigrant women with headscarves walking by a shop window in which
there are three mannequins wearing lingerie and decorated with Danish
flags. In other words, the newspaper approached the question of immigra-
tion and integration using the same epistemological perspective on the huge
gap between Muslim and Danish culture(s).
Almost all the newspapers illustrated their coverage of immigration with
similar images. For example, Kristeligt Dagblad (a Christian daily known for
its immigrant-friendly stance) illustrated a commentary on freedom of reli-
gion with an image that contrasts a woman with headscarf with a billboard
ad that pictured a modern young woman with sleeveless blouse (“Equality
of Religion and Cultural Degradation,” August 8, 2001). When the right-
wing Jyllands-Posten published a prognosis about the future of the Danish
population, forecasting an explosion in the number of Muslims a century
hence,2 the article was also illustrated with a picture of a Muslim woman
with headscarf (“The New Denmark,” July 15, 2001).
Jyllands-Posten’s article deserves a bit more attention here because it did
not merely reproduce the dichotomy between Muslim headscarves and
Western nudity. The article was the main story of the paper that day and
was based on a demographic prognosis that the newspaper commissioned
from a well-known anti-immigrant demographer in order to provoke a new
crisis around Muslim immigration. The article quoted Ole Feldbæk, who
warned that “[the new] immigration will change the Danish national iden-
tity because it is fundamentally different from earlier immigration. Many
people arrive here with a different culture and religion.” As part of the typi-
cal journalistic strategy to create controversy, the paper asked politicians
from both sides of the political spectrum to respond to the prognosis (“The
Right-Wing Parties [de borgerlige] Are Scared by the New Prognosis,” July
16, 2001). As expected, Birte Rønn Hornbech, a spokesperson for the Liberal
Party, warned that “if the tendency continues, we will destroy our country.”
Lene Espersen from the Conservative Party also expressed concern over the
development: “We are going to keep Denmark as a national state and the
values that bind us together.” Jytte Andersen from the SDP did not see the
number of immigrants as a problem, but added that “no Islamic doctrine is
going to define what Denmark is going to look like.”
There were many commentaries explicitly arguing that immigration
posed a threat to Danish culture. Even commentators who apparently op-
posed this view wrote assuming that Danish national identity was indeed at
stake. A commentary in the left-wing intellectual daily Information argued,
for example, that “the US is a bigger threat for Danish identity than im-
migrants” (August 17, 2001). In a Politiken commentary (August 14, 2005)
entitled “The Threat to Danishness,” a high school teacher proposed calming
down about the threat and recommended that readers “let immigrants and
their descendants keep their culture, as long as it lasts” because “they will de-
velop a modern consciousness about a convenient, escapist life style similar
to Danishness,” that is, their traditional culture will eventually evaporate in
the face of Danish modernity.
As these examples illustrate, the image of Muslim immigrants as a com-
pletely alien cultural category (either as a threat or, put more mildly, a chal-
lenge) to Danish national unity was already well anchored both in political
discourse and in the general social imaginary, as reflected in the commen-
taries and in the newspapers’ illustrations of their coverage before the 2001
elections. In Dyrberg’s (2000) words, “The welfare state is largely legitimized
by reference to this unity of nation, culture, and people. Both the political
establishment and those who claim to challenge or resist it draw on this
ideological figure” (2).
2001: The Populist Vision Moves into the

Center of Political Discourse
As Laclau (2005) reminds us, the social imaginary is not something that
takes place only at the level of words and images: it is also embedded in
material practices that become institutionalized. In other words, “Any hege-
monic displacement should be conceived as a change in the configuration of
the state provided that the latter is conceived . . . in an enlarged, Gramscian
sense, as the ethico-political moment of the community” (106‒7).
What makes 2001 a turning point was not that the immigration debate
descended into an inflammatory election campaign in the fall of that year
during which almost all parties competed to appear tough on immigration.
It was the beginning of the institutionalization of the new hegemonic sys-
tem, or a “change of system,” as Krarup called it (“Krarup: Denmark Has
Become a Pioneering Country in Europe,” Politiken, November 13, 2009).
According to Krarup, the resistance against a self-righteous system based on
“totalitarian humanism” had finally turned into a victory against the Left
and “cultural radicalism,”3 which had “forced Denmark to become an immi-
gration country and subsequently cease to be a cohesive nation.” Denmark
was now a divided and conflict-ridden country and “it was a bullied Danish
people who eventually enforced a system change that seeks to secure a co-
hesive force in Denmark” (“Politicians React to Objection [against blatant
racism by twelve writers],” Politiken, December 15, 2005). In other words,
the system change was about reinstating the idyllic past in the future.
It was the right-wing parties’ election victory on November 20, 2001,
that enabled the “system change.” The elections in November 2001 were the
first time since 1926 that right-wing parties had gained a pure majority in
Danish parliament without the need for support from the “middle” parties.
The DPP won a historic 12 percent of the votes and became the third largest
party in the Folketing. For the first time since 1920, the Liberal Party had
more seats than the Social Democratic Party.
The Liberal Party went into the elections with a rhetoric similar to that of
the DPP, making the Muslim threat the focus of its campaign and election
slogan, “Time for Change.” For instance, one poster featured a well-known
photograph of Muslim immigrant youths leaving court after being convicted
of the gang rape of a white Danish girl. The only words on the poster were
“Time for Change.” As Hedetoft (2003) explained, “The opposition astutely
capitalized on a debate climate pervaded by diffuse fears, moral panics and
unspecified enemy images. They created the expectation that not only could
they put a virtual stop to any further inflow of undesirable aliens, but also re-
instate Denmark to its former status as a peaceful, ethnically homogeneous
and politically sovereign welfare state.” The coalition government led by the
SDP was pushed into the defensive in spite of tightening immigration laws
and provisions since it came to power in 1993.
The new hegemony—that society was no longer divided by class politics
but united around common values—found its clearest expression in new
prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s inaugural speech on the opening
day of the new parliament on December 4, 2001, in which he declared that
Danes had been set free and that it had become old-fashioned to think in
terms of class and social division:
The elections on November 20 were historic. . . . First and foremost

because the constituents sent a clear signal about the renewal of Dan-
ish society. The elections were a break with the old-fashioned political
split between right and left. It was a break with the old-fashioned di-
vision of people according to their belonging to an occupational, edu-
cational, or social group. It was a break with the split between “them”
and “us.” It was a break with the class struggle. By their choice, the
constituents voiced a demand for a new goal for Danish society, a so-
ciety where the community is built upon solidarity around particular
values and attitudes. (Rasmussen 2001; my translation)
But, as noted above, hegemony is not a question of the ideological domina-

tion of one group over others: it is the limits of the social imaginary that
form the basis for further political debate. The SDP had tacitly accepted
the centrality of immigration to political discourse in the mid-1990s (and
for local politicians, this acceptance dates back to 1987; see chapter 3), but
the SDP explicitly “admitted” that “class society” was over when new party
leader Helle Thorning-Schmidt declared class struggle to be an anachronism
in 2005:
Let me say it straight: this is not about class struggle. It is not about
somebody being forced to sell their labor to others who own the
means of production. We can also put away the Marxist slogans be-
cause they mask the new inequalities our society. (“Helle Thorning-
Schmidt’s Congress Speech,” Berlingske Tidende, March 15, 2005; my

translation)
What drives society forward in the new social imaginary is cultural cohe-
sion. Whereas class solidarity is formed in a struggle against the other classes
within the nation, the struggle for cultural cohesion brings together those
who share core values against those who are seen to be threatening these
values and therefore the cohesive force of society. Rasmussen explained in
an interview that “it is the outcome of the cultural struggle that determines
Denmark’s future, not the economic policy. If you want to steer a society
in a different direction, you have to take on the debate on values. The vital
point is who is going to set the agenda in the value debate” (Weekendavisen,
January 17, 2003). Putting cultural struggle at the center means a showdown
with the cultural elite, who with their humanitarian ideas are responsible for
continuing immigration that threatens the harmonious continuity of the
nation. In his New Year speech right after elections, Rasmussen lashed out at
“experts and taste arbiters” (i.e., the official councils, boards, commissions,
and institutions) who told the public what is good and right and made deci-
sions on behalf of the people. “People are not going to put up with raised
fingers from the so-called experts who think they know the best” (Politiken,
January 2, 2002). The “elite’s tyranny” over its people was indeed Krarup’s
core message in his controversial newspaper ads in 1986. Less than two de-
cades later, the leader of the Liberal Party was repeating this argument as one
of the primary goals of the new government.
Moreover, the new government understood that the showdown with the
cultural elite and their arrogant pedagogy had to center on immigration.
Rasmussen articulated his vision of “a Danish society with a strong competi-
tive ability and with a strong cohesive force” (Rasmussen’s opening speech in
the Folketing, February 24, 2005). The cohesive force of Danish society was
under threat from “an aggressive practice of Islam as the greatest challenge”
and the source of the problem was “some isolated groups of immigrants who
challenged democratic values” (Jyllands-Posten, November 28, 2005). The
Liberal Party had finally aligned its vision for the future of Denmark with
that of Krarup and the DPP, whose support was vital for his government.
The first targets for the new government’s showdown with the cultural
elite were the Board for Ethnic Equality and the Danish Center for Hu-
man Rights, whose leaders were known for their antiracist remarks. The first
was shut down, whereas the latter was restructured and the post of director
removed. The government grant to the Documentation and Advice Center
on Racial Discrimination was cut off, but the new government did not stop
here. Its first legislative act was to prepare a new law that turned Denmark
into the country with the strictest immigration laws in Europe: it removed
de facto refugee status, leaving the door open only for those who fit the UN’s
Refugee Conventions and other human rights conventions. The new law
also removed the immigrants’ legal right to live together with their spouses
in Denmark through a number of limitations: it created the twenty-four-
year rule (nobody would be able to bring a spouse to Denmark before reach-
ing the age of twenty-four; this rule was later softened for Danish citizens
but stiffened for people with an immigrant background, even if they were
citizens) and set a new requirement that those who wanted to bring their
spouses into the country have at least about US$10,000 in savings. Becom-
ing a citizen was also made much more difficult by the new law.
The sharp criticism of the new immigration law by European Union
commissioner for human rights Alvaro Gil-Robles was dismissed, as were
all criticisms by other international institutions. Bertel Haarder, the min-
ister for refugees, immigrants, and integration called the new law “women
progressive” because it was an effective tool against “arranged marriages.” He
accused Gil-Robles of not understanding cultural differences because Gil-
Robles himself was a Spaniard from a similar culture of arranged marriages
(Politiken, March 1, 2005).
The most significant act of the new government that placed immi-
gration at the center of political discourse and value debate was the re-
placement of the Ministry of Interior4 with a new Ministry for Refugees,
Immigrants, and Integration, which was to be the originator of policy
initiatives to revitalize the cohesive force of society, policies a Politiken edi-
torial criticized for focusing on “ethnic purity” and “protecting the Dan-
ish tribe” (“Ethnic Purity,” January 18, 2002). Within eighteen months
of its establishment, the ministry published a vision and strategy paper
for integration that called for “cultural transformation” as a precondition
for social harmony. The main points in the paper were that the newcom-
ers should not be “clientalized” (i.e., be dependent on welfare payments);
they had to learn and respect “our values”; and their oppressive family
traditions would not be tolerated just because they are “their culture.” The
linkages among “culture,” “cohesion,” “social functionality,” and welfare,
which until the mid-1990s were still mostly the property of the populist
Right—despite the regular outbursts of similar statements by politicians
from both sides of the political mainstream—became the official policy
principle for the future of Denmark.
The revised integration law of 2006 is a revealing example of these link-
ages. According to the law (still in effect), all immigrants seeking a work and
residence permit in Denmark have to sign a declaration5 that sets up detailed

but elusive criteria for earning the right to stay. The declaration makes ex-
plicit all of the points that I have been making about the articulation of an
incommensurable gap between two fundamentally different cultures, one of
which threatens the other. According to the law, a foreigner seeking a resi-
dency permit must declare allegiance to Danish laws, values, and democratic
principles, promise not to beat his wife or children, become self-providing,
pay taxes, respect gender equality and sexual orientation, not discriminate
on the basis of gender or skin color, and, finally, not participate in terror-
ist activities. The penalty for not fulfilling the declaration ranges from a
reduction in welfare payments (if one receives any), to diminished hopes for
permanent residence (citizenship becoming almost impossible), to losing a
residency permit altogether.
Gender and Sexuality as Core Danish Values
The interesting aspect of the declaration the new immigrants are forced to
sign is the central position gender and sexuality in the so-called Danish core
values.6 Six of the sixteen norms and values listed in the declaration are di-
rectly related to gender equality:
1. I acknowledge that men and women have equal responsibilities and

rights in Denmark and that both men and women are expected to
contribute to society.
2. I know that it is illegal in Denmark to exert violence or force on one’s
spouse and others, including children.
3. I acknowledge that in Denmark there shall be equal respect and op-
portunities for development for all children, both girls and boys.
4. I respect every person’s freedom and personal integrity, equality of the
genders, freedom of religion, and freedom of expression, which are
foundational in Denmark.
5. I know that female circumcision and forced marriages are illegal prac-
tices in Denmark.
6. I know that discrimination on the basis of gender or skin color, and
threats or disdain toward groups on the grounds of faith or sexual
orientation, are illegal in Denmark.
As these requirements show, gender, sexuality, and family relations have

come to play a central role in defining the “core Danish values” that define
“us” as opposed to the Muslim immigrants. As Christensen and Siim (2010)

explain, “The official perception of gender equality has since the 1990s in-
creasingly been associated with Danish values and constructed as some-
thing . . . which has already been achieved for the white majority” (13) and
is now under threat. Petersen (2013) argues that homosexuality functions in
the same way; sympathy for gays has become a symbol of Danish values. Its
meaning has changed from being a threat to the nation’s reputation to being
part of the normal; it is now central to imagining Danishness.
The Liberal Party’s equality spokesperson, Troels Lund Poulsen, declared
in 2004 that the party would shift the focus in equality debate from the
Danish women’s problems to the (cultural) problems of immigrant women:
female circumcision, forced marriages, and sharia laws (“Show-Down on
Equality,” Politiken, January 5, 2004).7 He criticized women’s movements
for focusing too much on equal pay for women, which was but one issue,
and could not be compared to the sufferings of Muslim women. The DPP
has also increasingly adopted equality themes: “We must demand that the
immigrants follow Danish laws, rules, and basic Danish values like gender
equality, democracy, and freedom of expression—only by doing that . . . can
we ensure that we also have a good Danish society in the future” (quoted
in Andreassen 2012: 15). Never mind that according to a European Union
report, 52 percent of Danish women experience sexual assault or harassment
at workplace or home (“Report: Danish Men Are the Most Misogynist in
EU,” Politiken, March 5, 2014).
The cultural antagonism between a liberated Danish people and the op-
pressive practices of Muslim immigrants is echoed in the political discourse
of the progressive parties and groups. For example, the SPP’s leader, Villy
Søvndal, “admitted” that the left had to acknowledge that the culture immi-
grants bring with them, often from Muslim countries, is a problem (“Villy
Søvndal Settles with Immigration Politics,” Politiken, March 6, 2008). In this
sense, Denmark is a notable example of how sections of the Left have ad-
opted approaches to immigration similar to those of the populist Right (Ak-
kerman and Hagelund 2007: 212). As a result, “Traditional gender equality
politics has waned from public agendas, to be replaced by a highly selective
minority gender equality politics primarily targeting immigrant communi-
ties” (Siim and Skjeie 2008: 339). There is considerable academic research
about the centrality of gender and sexuality not only in Denmark (e.g., Ak-
kerman and Hagelund, 2007; Andreassen 2005, 2012; Borchorst and Teigen
2012; Christiensen and Siim 2010; Hervik 2011; Meret and Siim 2013; Siim
and Skjeie 2008), but also in Europe (and in the West) in general (Bangstad
2011; Bracke 2012; Bredström 2003; Butler 2008; El-Tayeb 2012; De Leeuw
and van Wichelen 2012; Göle 2011; Haritaworn 2012; Henkel 2012; Keskinen
2012, 2013; Lentin and Titley 2011; Kundnani 2012; Massad 2007; Petzen
2012; Pitcher 2009; Puar 2007; Siapera 2010; Stehle 2012).
It is important to emphasize the political and social implications of the
articulation of gender equality and homosexuality as the core symbols of
Danish culture. What happens when an achievement made possible by the
struggle of progressive movements is appropriated by their opponents and
presented as part of the “national core values” that bind us?
Gender equality has been one of the basic aspirations of women’s move-
ments regardless of the particular demands of specific historical periods. In
addition, for left-wing movements, antisexism and antiracism have long
been articulated as parts of the same struggle, and the extent to which gen-
der equality is accomplished has been considered an important social and
political achievement. However, the culturalized discursive environment in
which immigrants, via their Muslim culture, are repeatedly described as op-
pressive to women creates tensions that are difficult to resolve within the
given parameters of the progressive political identities. What happens here
is that the old antagonistic frontier between traditional power structures and
emancipatory movements is blurred by the hegemonic power incorporating
some of the latter’s demands into the system. Once immigrants are defined
as a cultural category distinct from the nation rather than a part of the “op-
pressed classes,” it becomes difficult to incorporate this culturalized social
category into the traditional progressive paradigm. At the same time, the
mobilization around traditional antiracist, antisexist, antihomophobic, and
internationalist themes renders these progressive movements irrelevant to
large sections of workers and others whose interests are now represented in
nationalist terms by the populist Right, which has also adopted feminist and
gay-friendly themes.
In the summer of 2001, the liberal daily Politiken initiated a fierce de-
bate on feminism and immigrant women with a commentary that criticized
the feminist movement for letting down oppressed immigrant women. The
commentaries were illustrated with pictures of Muslim women in burkas as
opposed to naked Danish women. The debate quickly spilled over into other
newspapers. In a chronicle in Jyllands-Posten, Lone Nørgaard accused the
feminist movement of being silent about the fact that some women live un-
der the oppressive patriarchal norms from seventh-century Arabia and asked
in the context of the debate on the headscarf if women’s basic rights are
not threatened by the religious dogmas permeated by patriarchal ideologies
(July 25, 2001). Many of the commentaries followed this train of thought,
but there were critical voices, too. In a commentary in Politiken, Annemette
Bach criticized feminists for being intolerant toward Muslim women by in-
terpreting the headscarf as a sign of oppression without asking their Muslim
sisters why they wear it. Her answer was that they wear it because of their
religion, not because they are told so by their men. She argued that this was
a contradiction for those feminists who would prefer that Muslim women
conform to the oppressive ideals (of the West) that force women to dress
in certain ways in order to please men (June 19, 2001). This was basically a
debate on how to reconfigure the identity of the feminist movement in the
face of the culturalized ontology of the social.
This tension creates factions within the feminist movement whose iden-
tity is shaped around the concept of emancipation. Emancipation in this
context becomes what Laclau calls a “floating signifier.”8 Emancipation in
this sense both signifies the feminist movement vis-à-vis the oppressive sexist
system and Danishness vis-à-vis the Muslim immigrant with an oppressive
culture. This kind of organic crisis often leads to radical conversions among
feminists or left-wing radicals. Former interior minister Karen Jespersen
(Social Democrat) is a good example: She was a member of the left-wing
radical Left Socialist Party in the 1970s and describes herself as a feminist.
In the 1980s, she joined the SDP and a decade later the right-wing Liberal
Party. After joining the SDP, she gradually became one of the most vocal op-
ponents of immigration within the party. In her meeting with Muslim im-
migrant women in August 2001, she called upon the women to riot against
their husbands, who, according to Jespersen, confine them to the home.
She also wanted to discuss issues such as “forced marriages” and “violence
against immigrant women by their men” (BT, August 9, 2001). The women,
on the other hand, would rather have talked about discrimination in the
job market: they gave many concrete examples of discrimination against
well-educated women. Yet, according to the BT reporter, who did not ac-
knowledge these complaints or the women as agents of their own lives, the
women shied away from talking about emancipation from their husbands
because these issues were too difficult for them to discuss. Alas, the cultural
category of “immigrant” predefines both the subject roles and the relevance
of the issues to be discussed: “In other words, binaries delimit the outcome
of proximity, if not prevent proximity itself, by predefining the reality before
practice” (Diken 1998: 40).
The shared epistemology of the social has resulted in new alliances forged
across the political spectrum around what are now (and usually tacitly)
taken as core values such as democracy, gender equality, gay rights, free-
dom of speech, or even animal rights. The focus on such culturally coded
signs (rather than, for example, rights) has unsettled traditional divides and
realigned actors from across the political spectrum, forming what Gramsci
(1971) called a new “historical bloc.” The shift to culture led to the blurring
of traditional structures of identification (e.g., left and right) and the dis-
placement of well-established political identities based on class, gender, and
other types of antagonisms that have had to be rearticulated onto the new
ontology of the social.
“Cohesive Force of Society” and Democracy
One important signifier of the new hegemony is the concept of “cohesion”

as the basis for the new welfare system, which itself has become a cultural
construct, appearing as the product of national values, rather than as an
outcome of class struggles and social democratic policies. The “cohesive
force of society,” interpreted as the force that is anchored in a cultural “value
community,” has replaced “solidarity,” which traditionally refers to class. As
Lykkeberg (2008: 260) argues, “While solidarity is connected with active
engagement where the symmetry between rights and responsibilities is won
in an ongoing struggle, the cohesive force is typically talked about as some-
thing handed down with fragility that is threatened.”
The concern with social cohesion—which was originally put on the po-
litical agenda by Krarup’s 1986 ad campaign (although he did not use the
exact words: he “warned” against the destruction of the harmonious be-
ing of the nation) and was rejected as a racist idea—is not exclusive to the
populist Right or the Liberal Party, which adopted a similar rhetoric in the
second half of the 1990s;9 it is a common concern for parties on both sides
of the political spectrum. The concept was indeed used the first time by
Karen Jespersen, when she was minister for social affairs in the 1990s, and
Karen Hækkerup, the Social Democratic justice minister (2013‒14), said
at her inauguration, “It is important for Denmark’s cohesiveness that we
have a tough policy on immigration. The numbers matter for a small nation
[if we want] to integrate the foreigners so they become Danes and part of
Denmark” (“New Justice Minister to Continue Tough Immigration Line,”
Copenhagen Post, December 13, 2013). The Conservative Party’s slogan is
“Courage to make cohesion” (Mod til at skabe sammenhæng) and even Villy
Søvndal did not refrain from presenting Muslim immigrants’ culture as a
problem for democracy (Politiken, March 7, 2008).10
Democracy, in the new parlance, is no longer a system of active participa-
tion, but a “value” to which one declares his or her allegiance, as is evident in
Fogh Rasmussen’s speech at his party’s annual congress:
We do not demand that everybody should be just like us or think

the same way as us. But we do demand that if you want to live in
Danish society, you must respect and acknowledge the core values.
Freedom of speech. Equal rights for women and men. The separation
of politics and religion. Can we do anything about it? It is not easy to
make laws for. It is first and foremost a question of attitudes. It is our
collective responsibility to say no, to set a limit. (Berlingske Tidende,
November 24, 2004; my translation)
This chapter is not devoted to a detailed analysis of discourse, but this quote
requires a brief comment. First, Rasmussen speaks about “us” as if “we” are
a homogenous group of people who share the same ideas and values. “We”
should demand from immigrants that they respect and obey these values as
if “we” all share these values and as if the meaning of these values is given a
priori. Implicit in its rhetoric is that those (i.e., Muslims) who do not share
these values can be forced to respect them.
Clearly, not everybody believes in or shares these values, and not every-
body agrees about what the “shared values” are and about the relationship
between Islam and these values. The interesting aspect of the quote is the
way the immigration debate structures the political discourse. As Lykkeberg
(2008: 254) explains, when confronted by an alien force, “core values” need
to be marked and defined; the existence of an external force requires a con-
sciousness about an internal “belonging together.” In a paradoxical way, the
immigration debate produces the very “cohesion” claimed to be challenged
by immigrants. The debate on democracy becomes a debate on the extent
to which the alien immigrant can be integrated/assimilated into the welfare
system. Democracy becomes identified with “core values,” which secures the
stability of the political community.
This understanding of democracy as a matter of the relationship between
Danes and immigrants was mirrored in the commission that was tasked to
write a canon of democracy by the second Rasmussen government in 2007.
The government appointed no writers or artists but did include an integra-
tion counsel and a school inspector known for his dealings with immigrant
children (Lykkeberg 2008: 254).
The centrality of culture and immigration and the articulation of the
linkages among culture, cohesion, and welfare did not change when the
right-wing government was replaced by a coalition led by the SDP in Oc-
tober 2011, as is evident in Hækkerup’s statement about the necessity of a
tough immigration policy to keep Denmark cohesive and the example of
“meatball wars.”11 The debate about whether public institutions should serve
halal meat was so heated that Yıldız Akdoğan, an “immigrant” member of

the SDP, wrote: “Rhetorically, it feels as if Denmark’s survival as a nation is
at stake and the pork is the most essential cohesive force of society” (Ber-
lingske Tidende, August 15, 2013). A few months after the debate in February
2014, Dan Jørgensen, the SDP minister of agriculture, fisheries, and food,
banned so-called halal slaughtering (i.e., without numbing the animal).
It does not seem likely that the focus on immigration as a challenge to
social cohesion will be vanishing from political discourse anytime soon. The
elections on June 18, 2015, were once again all about immigration and re-
sulted in a huge victory for the DPP, which is now the second biggest party
and closely behind the SDP. The DPP needs to have the issue of immigration
in focus to keep its popularity, and its growing popularity, in turn, incites
even more discourse on immigration, and the other parties keep sharpening
their rhetoric in an effort to match up in the toughness game. This is pre-
cisely what happened during the elections in June 2015. The DPP leadership
knows that no party can match it when it comes to a harsh political rhetoric
about immigration and it proposed a total end to Muslim immigration to
Denmark, which set the bar higher for the other parties (“The DPP after
the New Numbers: Immigration Itself Has to be Debated,” Ekstra Bladet,
January 5, 2015). SDP leaders matched this proposal with a new campaign
promising even harsher policies on immigration with posters declaring that
“immigrants who come to Denmark have to work and contribute to society”
and “tighter asylum laws and more demands to immigrants.”
The DPP received 21.1 percent of the votes following the SDP’s 26.3 per-
cent, while the Liberal Party lost 7.2 percent of its voters mostly to the DPP
despite its wholehearted participation in the toughness game. It is ironic that
a poll just before the 2015 elections showed that 13 percent of Danish voters
(and 20 percent of right-wing voters) wish for a new right-wing party that is
more anti-immigrant than the DPP. Ergo, Muslim immigration will remain
at the center of political discourse for the foreseeable future.
The Transformation of the Political Parties
The incorporation of the populist demand for excluding immigrants from

the welfare state is a sign of Denmark’s transformed political landscape. The
neoliberal approach demanding that immigrants become self-reliant, there-
fore ridding themselves of dependence on government aid,12 is not untypical
of the neoliberal, market-based approach to social issues. However, resent-
ment against immigrants has never really been translated into support for
dismantling the welfare state precisely because the immigration debate kept
the focus on the question of access to welfare. The populist demand for mak-
ing access to welfare conditional upon ethnicity implied that many welfare
provisions need to be kept intact for Danes. To understand contemporary
neoliberal anti-immigration discourse, one needs to understand the trans-
formation of the main political actors.
In this sense, the transformation of the Liberal Party is interesting be-
cause it is intimately connected to the central role immigration has come
to play in creating visions for the future of Denmark. A single example will
illustrate this transformation. The leader of the party, Prime Minister An-
ders Fogh Rasmussen, forced one of his ministers, Eva Kjær, to renounce
her statement that “inequality is the motivating power of society; it cre-
ates a dynamic” (Jyllands-Posten, September 18, 2005). According to Ras-
mussen, creating inequality could not be a goal itself; it would not create
a more dynamic society. The goal was to create incentives to be employed
and make the weakest in society do well enough (Jyllands-Posten, Septem-
ber 21, 2005). A decade earlier, however, the same Rasmussen wrote that
inequality was a motivating power for society (1993). Making Muslim im-
migration the central political issue brought concepts such as community,
cohesion, and state to the center of the Liberals’ symbolic universe. In other
words, Rasmussen’s—and subsequently the Liberal Party’s—transformation
is about bringing community back into their political program and rearticu-
lating the role of the individual as one who contributes to the community
rather than being dependent on it.
Indeed, support for the welfare state had never been as great as under the
Liberal-Conservative neoliberal government that came to power in 2001,
although welfare now means something different. In its initial form, the
welfare state was a state that took care of its citizens. Under the neoliberal
governance, a welfare state means a state that maintains competitive abilities
in a globalized world; it is by optimizing the competitive abilities that the
state is said to secure the welfare of its citizens (Lykkeberg 2008). Because
the class struggle is over, the oppressors are no longer the capitalist class—on
the contrary, they provide jobs and consolidate wealth—but the cultural
elite (i.e., leftist intellectuals, journalists, and human rights defenders) that
conceive of themselves as superior to the ordinary Dane (cf. “the arbiters
of taste”). The Liberal Party no longer sees “minimal state” as a possibil-
ity; rather, the social state creates the conditions for economic growth and
flexibility. The conflict of interest between workers and employers is now
replaced by common interests between them in a globalized world (hence
the new right-wing hegemony). The antagonistic force is no longer the other
end of the negotiation table but the global forces that attract capital and the
immigrants, with their unorganized labor and low wages, who undermine
the welfare system.
The transformation of the Liberal Party cannot be understood with-
out understanding the transformation of the populist Right. The far-right
populist movement has been transformed from the Progress Party’s extreme
economic liberalism (centered on an antitax struggle)13 and Krarup’s mi-
sogynistic and homophobic positions into a party that put the maintenance
of the welfare system at the center of its political program (albeit as some-
thing threatened by Muslim immigration and Europeanization, i.e., the EU)
while also defending women’s rights and homosexuals (once again as values
threatened by Muslims). Betz and Meret (2013: 118) explain that the DPP
presented itself as the real inheritor of traditional social democratic values as
opposed to “the Social Democrats, who were considered to have repudiated
their role as protectors of welfare values and principles in the name of lib-
ertarian stances—on immigration, for instance—undermining the welfare
state present and future.”
The Crisis of the Center-Left
The culturalization of the entire political discourse, as evident in the so-

called value debate, has paralyzed the center-left, which has not been able to
produce an alternative vision. What paralyzes the Left is the hegemonic dis-
placement that has changed the way the ontology of the social is imagined.
In a new context, where the main threat is globalization and its incarnation
in the form of culturally alien immigrants (rather than national and inter-
national capitalism), the Left has immense difficulty in finding its footing.
The success of the center-left, particularly of the SDP, was based on an al-
liance between the “working class” and the progressive movements and the
intelligentsia. The “working class,” which no longer conceives itself and its
struggle in class terms, has left the party for the populist DPP, which is now
the biggest “workers’ party”; the progressive intellectuals became tired of the
SDP’s (and the Socialist People’s Party’s [SPP]) explicit right turn and have
left as well. The exodus of working-class voters resulted in the termination of
reciprocal representation of the LO (the confederation of labor unions) and
the SDP in each other’s executive committees in 1996.
A Politiken editorial called it a historically exceptional situation that the
party is backed by neither the working class nor the intelligentsia (“Thorn-
ing [SDP prime minister since 2011] Government Has No Friends,” Febru-
ary 5, 2014). The editorial argued that the party had wasted the chance to
mobilize popular frustration with perverted financial capitalism’s greed. Ac-
cording to the editorial, the working class tilts to the right when it comes to
the “value politics” and to the left when it comes to economic politics; when
the SDP follows a right-wing economic policy, it pushes the working class
to the ranks of the DPP while simultaneously pushing away the left-wing
intelligentsia.14
The crisis of the SDP is mirrored in falling popular support for the party.
The party has steadily been losing voters since the elections in 1990 where
the party’s support was at 37.5 percent (except a slight gain in the 2015 elec-
tions: a 1.5 percent increase to 26.3 percent). What is more interesting is
that the SDP is no longer the biggest party among the “workers,” a title the
SDP lost to the DPP in recent years. The DPP was the biggest party with
26.6 percent of all votes in the European Parliament elections in May 2014,
trailed by the SDP with 19.1 percent and the Liberals, who received only
16.7 percent.
The tacit acceptance of the neoliberal perspective in the 1980s (through-
out Europe) had already blurred the line between left and right and led to
a crisis of representation in which workers did not feel that their interests
were being defended by the party that traditionally stood up for them. The
hegemonic crisis opened up the political terrain for fringe forces who were
able to articulate the workers’ anxieties into a populist program.
What had been tacit acceptance in the 1980s became the main economic
policy of the SDP leadership at the beginning of the 1990s (Mørch 2005;
Betz and Meret 2013; Hemerijck 2013). Brian Croydon, the SDP minister
of finance, expressed the party’s abandonment of its original ideals about
the welfare state by announcing that the social democratic goal was to cre-
ate a “competitive state”15 (“Corydon: Competitive State Is the New Wel-
fare State,” Politiken, August 23, 2013). Privatization and putting a cap on
unemployment and social aid payments are central to this new neoliberal
consensus, which makes it difficult for voters to see significant differences
between mainstream parties in terms of economic policies. Once that differ-
ence is blurred, issues such as the role of immigration in sustaining/eroding
social rights become central in the parties’ appeals to voters, and here the
SDP seems to have lost out to the populist DPP and the hardliners of the
Liberal Party. After the party lost the elections again in 2005, Mogens Lyk-
ketoft resigned as the chairman of the SDP and admitted that it was difficult
to detect ideological differences between the mainstream parties.
The “neoliberal” path, combined with a cultural focus, creates tension in
SDP circles. Whereas parts of the Social Democratic movement criticize the
party’s right turn in economic and political (value) matters, others think that
the party should focus even more on value politics. For example, the con-
tributors to the book Right-Wing Populism: The Left’s Achilles’ Heel (Steen,
Villermoes, and Jespersen 2013), published by the center-left think tank Ce-
vea, argue that the path to renewal will entail an offensive built around a
value-political response. The book argues that the Left must dissociate itself
from “multiculturalism” (which, according to the authors, subverts social
solidarity) and instead demand the liquidation of ghettos.
Others, however, argue that SDP cannot match the anti-Muslim rhetoric
of the DPP, for whom immigration policy is the key issue. Every time the
center-left agrees with the DPP’s line, the DPP turns up the heat, putting
the center-left into a defensive position (i.e., Brian Esbensen: “The DPP’s
New Restrictions Show That the SP and SPP’s Course Is Completely In-
sane,” Politiken, January 26, 2014).
The SPP, which is to the left of SDP, is no different in this regard. Villy
Søvndal pulled the party to the right over the question of immigration with
the argument that has become a cliché: we need to listen to people’s concerns
and stop the voter flight to the right. Søvndal drastically changed the party’s
course by turning the focus on the so-called value debate. He declared in
2008 that the integration efforts should focus on the “cultural struggle with
the immigrants about our democratic values” (“Villy Søvndal Settles with
Immigration Politics,” Politiken, March 6, 2008). According to the same
Politiken story, Søvndal and SDP leader Thorning-Schmidt entered into
an agreement that meant that Social Democrats could sharpen their anti-
immigration rhetoric to attract voters from the right without being criticized
by the SPP. The right turn of the SPP seems to be closely connected to its
acceptance of the SDP’s neoliberal economic policy: once a party seems to
accept neoliberal orthodoxy, the only path to appeal to the voters seems go
through the debate on culture, cohesion, and immigration. The new path,
however, has not helped the party that lost more than half of its voters (5
percent) in the 2015 elections down to 4.2 percent.
The crisis of the center-left is rooted in its inability to navigate in the new
sociopolitical terrain, where social division is envisioned in cultural terms.
The Left’s humanitarian and internationalist traditions have been success-
fully presented by the populist Right as the main reason for the erosion of
the welfare system. The Left is not equipped to fight on this new cultural
terrain, a fight that would be necessary to regain strength and form a new
“historical bloc.”
The progressive parties and groups who have not accepted neoliberal
dogma or populist-nationalist currents have been trying to rearticulate their
identity around antiracist struggles. Without a new vision, however, they

find themselves in an essentialist paradigm simultaneously promoting mi-
nority rights for immigrants while fighting the perceived traditional cul-
tures of this group. Once immigrants are defined as cultural/ethnic groups
rather than a part of the working class, it becomes difficult to incorporate
this social identity into the classic paradigm of the Left. At the same time,
their mobilization around traditional antiracist and internationalist themes
renders them irrelevant to many workers and others whose interests are now
represented by the populist Right. The culturalization of political discourse
demands novel articulations between welfare commitments, gender equality,
sexual freedom, and freedom of speech with new ontological entities.
As a Politiken editorial after the elections in 2005 predicted, the DPP’s
success has not been limited to making bloc politics (based on a left-right
division) impossible by rendering the polarization between left and right
irrelevant or to checkmating the SDP by splitting the old workers’ party.
“It seems as if the populism that has taken hold here will make it impos-
sible to transform Denmark in the near future, regardless of which side of
the Danish parliament, left or right, we are talking about” (“Ander Fogh’s
Big Victory—and Problem,” Politiken, February 9, 2005). Whatever the dif-
ferences, the basic antagonism, which produces its own culturally defined
social division, makes it impossible to articulate alternative visions under the
given political conditions. Nevertheless, both the political establishment and
those who hope to challenge the Far Right’s vision of Danishness draw on
this epistemology. Unless a radical rearticulation of the political imaginary
takes place, the movements of an oppositional party will be “limited by the
straightjacket of the hegemonic formations whose parameters remain sub-
stantially unchanged” (Laclau 2005: 138).
The Transformation of Immigrant Organizations:

From Worker to Muslim
In the introduction, I told a story about being interviewed by a journalist

colleague from the Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR). An older Turk-
ish immigrant had killed his grandchild and injured his daughter-in-law
with a cooking pan, and I was asked to comment on the background of the
story. I said I could not comment on a case I did not know anything about
and also remarked on the racist implications of being invited to talk about
the case not because I had any expertise on crime or immigration, but be-
cause I was a journalist who had a “shared culture” with the murderer, which
put me into a position to know his mind-set. It would be unimaginable to

ask a Dane to explain a criminal act by another Dane merely because they
share a culture (even though in the new discursive environment “shared cul-
ture” is what binds Danes into a community).
I was never again invited to give this type of interview: I was deemed
irrelevant to the discussion. The media needed experts on immigrant (i.e.,
Muslim) culture and soon there were many of these, mostly with immigrant
backgrounds, and they are widely used to explain every single phenomenon
that could be associated with immigrants: criminality, murder, rape, misuse
of the welfare system, even unemployment (i.e., they don’t have the same
modern work ethic as Danes).
Various Muslim religious figures and organizations now receive unprece-
dented attention in public discourse as expert speakers about the culture. This
is a sign of the hegemonic change. When culture was not of primary concern
in immigration matters, the people who were interviewed on immigration
matters were representatives of immigrant organizations who denoted them-
selves in class and ethnic terms (e.g., the Turkish—or Moroccan—Workers’
Association). Once immigrant workers became recast as Muslim immigrants
whose culture (rather than their relationship to the labor market) came into
focus, it created a need for “knowledge” about Islam and immigrants, and
soon there was a proliferation of experts to explain Islam and Muslim im-
migrants to Danes (as discussed earlier).
If one effect of the need for cultural explanations is the production of ex-
perts with immigrant backgrounds (who often lacked any formal education
in the topics on which they readily opined), the other effect was the relabel-
ing of old representatives. İrfan Kurtulmuş, vice chair of the Turkish Reli-
gious Community, is a good example. He is a journalist who, since the early
1970s, had never presented himself as a religious person or been affiliated
with any religious organization. In 2008, he entered the debate denouncing
the authority of the Islamic Religious Community—a self-proclaimed um-
brella organization for Muslims in Denmark—to represent Turkish Muslims
(Ekstra Bladet, February 21, 2008).
Kurtulmuş’s story is a good example of the more fundamental transfor-
mation of immigrants from workers to Muslims. Immigrant organizations
were often associated with the host countries’ political parties and labor
unions. Parallel to the change in immigration discourse, which increas-
ingly focused on immigrants’ culture, immigrants’ mobilization began to
occur through ethnic and religious associations, and they began to articulate
their political demands along religious lines. Yurdakul (2009: 66) describes
a similar process in the German context: “As modes of production are trans-
formed, neoliberal policies are strengthened, and the unions become weaker,
the class struggle, indeed, the very notion of class, has become marginal to
immigrant political representation.”
In short, the transformation of immigrant worker to Muslim immigrant
in mainstream political discourse dissolved the old workers associations,
which were often affiliated with left-wing parties, and forced immigrants’
political mobilization into the domain of religious organizations that have
proliferated over the last two decades.
The Social Democratic MP Yıldız Akdoğan was a founder of Democratic
Muslims, an organization formed after the Danish cartoon crisis in 2005
to represent so-called moderate Muslims (i.e., those not offended by the
Mohammad cartoons), yet she does not normally define herself by religion.
When she was new to the political scene in the early 2000s, Ekstra Bladet
interviewed her but did not publish the story because the journalist found
her to be “too much like us.” The journalist had imagined the story would be
about a young Muslim girl’s emancipation from a backward Islamic culture
into Danish modernity and the possibilities this created for her, but her story
did not fit this narrative.16 It is likely that she quickly learned that access to
public discourse would be easier if she identified herself as a cultural subject
and one who would be able to provide a counterweight of positive images
of Muslims. In her role as a founder of Democratic Muslims, she complied
with the narrative about cultural differences, not necessarily by confirm-
ing the insurmountability of the divide but by conforming to the basic on-
tological divide. One interesting feature of Democratic Muslims was the
range of political affiliations among the members. The association brought
together “Muslims” from opposite corners of the political spectrum—from
the Red-Green Alliance on the radical left to members of the Conservative
and Liberal Party—in the same way as the fear of an imminent Muslim
threat leads to the convergence of Left and Right around “core values” (e.g.,
the huge demonstrations to support “freedom of speech” after the Charlie
Hebdo murders in Paris).
The Hegemonic Effect: Imagining the Future
The main argument in this chapter has been that culture has become the
key to the social imaginary in fundamental ways in political and everyday
discourse through the figure of Muslim immigrant. I have demonstrated that
not only has the category of Muslim immigrant become culturalized, the
culturalized immigration debate has taken a central role in political discourse.
However, as already indicated, hegemony is not only a question of par-

ticular ideas becoming the dominant political discourse or the “dominant”
ideology. Hegemony is also about how the ontological distinctions enable
and constrain people in their dealings with social and political life.
“My Daughter Is Not Going to Pay the Price” was the title of an inter-
view with a left-wing resident of an inner-city neighborhood in Copenha-
gen in Politiken Weekly (December 20, 2000). The interview illustrates the
fine points of the hegemonic order from the perspective of an individual.
The interview begins with a description of the interviewee: “She has all the
immigrant-friendly views: Denmark is multicultural and Danish children
should go to the same schools with [immigrant children] from other cul-
tures.” However, when it comes to sending her daughter to her local school
where 80 percent of the children have an immigrant background, the inter-
viewee has second thoughts. She does not think it is a good idea to have her
daughter attend a school with too many immigrant children: “When [my
daughter] asks why she is not going to attend the [local] school, I say that
it is not a good school. I cannot tell her that there are too many immigrant
children. . . . I am afraid that her education and her social life will suffer
from it. How is it going to be with camping situations and birthday parties?”
She expresses concern that there are too many cultures in the school:
I don’t know if it is a smart idea. I am not sure that the school can
handle it. Besides, I expect more social problems in that school. Many
immigrant families also choose not to send their children to local
schools. On top of it, there are language problems, too. . . . I know
my fear is not based on facts, but on what I hear from my friends and
from the media. I don’t know how the school really is. . . . I think
it is totally necessary to meet other cultures in school in order to be
able to manage in Danish society in the future. If the number of im-
migrant children in [the local] school equaled the percentage of the
immigrants in local community, which is almost 50 percent, it would
be okay.
Many discourse analysts would interpret the discrepancy between the

speaker’s ideals and her actual attitudes as a typical conflict between impres-
sion management techniques and sincere thinking, and the latter would be
interpreted as the reflection of her prejudice toward immigrants (cf. van
Dijk 1984, 1987, 1993).
The speaker’s dilemma is real. She situates herself as belonging to the
immigrant-friendly, multiculturalist left wing of the political spectrum. At
no time does she utter a negative view about immigrants or their cultures,
and she does not oppose a multiculturalist vision of Denmark. In this sense,
her political standpoint can be described as opposed to the hegemonic ar-
ticulation of ethnicity and culture in Denmark. On the other hand, she in-
tuitively knows that “Danish culture” is an asset, an investment in a system
that is now allocating resources along ethnic/cultural lines. She does not
want her daughter “to pay the price” for her mother’s political views because
she knows the limits of her political vision. She assumes that in a school
with 80 percent immigrant children, not only the literary and scientific skills
necessary for further education but also the knowledge, rituals, and myths
through which “Danish culture” is created may not be acquired properly,
placing her daughter at a disadvantage later in life. The standards for a good
education are defined according to the cultural resources one builds up. Not
knowing or learning the rituals becomes nonproficiency—an obstacle to
getting jobs, for instance.17 The future of Denmark is produced in confor-
mity with the current hegemonic articulations through her projections of
what the future will bring. By sending her daughter to a private school where
Danish children are in the majority and where she will become a culturally
Danish subject, she reimposes the ethnic/cultural boundaries between im-
migrants and Danes. The politico-moral dilemma constrains her movements
as a political subject and leads her to conform to the hegemonic vision of
society even if she does not believe in it or agree with it.
The interview shows the limits that a hegemonic formation imposes on
political subjects even if they oppose its ideological propositions. In Laclau
and Mouffe’s (2001) words, “A hegemonic formation also embraces what
opposes it, insofar as the opposing force accepts the system of basic articula-
tions of that formation as something it negates, but the place of the negation
is defined by the internal parameters of the formation itself ” (139).18 The
interviewee’s opposition is formulated within the internal parameters of the
hegemonic formation because the boundaries between cultures are her social
reality. The irony is that she conforms to the basic premises of the hegemonic
vision of society even as she negates the vision of Denmark’s future as ethni-
cally homogeneous. She sees a multicultural future in which her daughter is
going to manage if she learns about the other cultures by attending the same
schools as immigrant children. The interviewee contributes to the reproduc-
tion of the hegemonic order not because she believes in it but because her
options are constrained by a hegemonic formation that defines social an-
tagonisms in cultural terms and renders its definitions as the starting point
for everyday practices and institutions.
It is easy for a scholar who analyzes other people’s utterances to point to
the discursive constraints a hegemonic articulation imposes upon subjects,

as if the scholar himself is able to see beyond the hegemonic formation and
able to articulate alternative visions. Nothing could be less accurate. In fact,
I chose this example because I have many friends who have expressed simi-
lar concerns about their own children’s education and future. They live in
the same areas as immigrants but do not want to “sacrifice” their children’s
future for their political views. Could I give them any useful advice? Ab-
solutely not. What constrains them constrains me, too. In a conversation
about this issue, I was put into the same dilemma as the interviewee. I un-
derstood their dilemma because we all orient ourselves to public discourse
in its broad sense, including spaces such as schools and housing projects in
which subject positions are interpellated in particular ways. As the interview
indicates, Danish schools and neighborhoods are slowly becoming ethni-
cally segregated. In a different discursive environment where ethnicity and
culture are not emphasized as constitutive of society, this might not be prob-
lematic. Here, however, the hegemonic mapping of subject positions is in-
tensified by immigrant parents who send their children to Islamic-oriented
schools and increasingly emphasize their “Muslim identity.”
In short, the basic antagonism makes it difficult to articulate alternative
visions under given conditions. It is impossible to think of society without
thinking Muslim immigrants; they are indispensable, both politically and
in general, whether one talks about big issues such as democracy, gender
equality, and freedom of speech or everyday topics such as chocolate candy,
pork, or choice of schools. The hegemonic ontological categories limit our
horizon; even critique becomes imprisoned by the normalcy of these catego-
ries (Mahmud 2005: 940).
Conclusion
“I Can’t Breathe”
If you come to Denmark, you must work.
Refugees and Immigrants on welfare must work.
I want a community where everybody contributes.
—Helle Thorning-Schmidt, the leader of the
Social Democratic Party and the prime minister (March 2015)
If you come to Denmark, you have to pay taxes.

Many multinational corporations operate in Denmark without
paying a dime in taxes.
I want a community where the richest also contribute.
—Stine Brix, the leader of the Red-Green Alliance (March 2015)
The epigraphs above are a good illustration of this book’s main argument.
Both quotes are from the election posters produced during the election cam-
paign in 2015. The first poster by the SDP leader appeals to the popular anxi-
eties about immigration as the threat to the welfare system and the second is
a response by the Red-Green Alliance that attempts to shift the focus back
to the “capitalist class” as the real problem.
The SDP’s focus on immigration is a clear indication of the new right-
wing hegemony that is formed through the debate on immigration which
has been turned into a cultural threat. The recasting of immigrant worker as
Muslim immigrant shifted the terrain for political struggle from economy
(i.e., class struggle) to culture (i.e., cultural struggle), which has pushed the
political discourse to the right during the last three decades. The populist Far
Right successfully articulated immigration as the main threat to the nation.
183
In this articulation, the unity of the nation is the precondition for the wel-
fare system whereas cultural diversity is seen to impede it. The mainstream
Right and Left keep sharpening their anti-immigrant rhetoric to match up
the Danish People’s Party’s popularity.
This has created a vicious circle that erases the differences between Right
and Left. As a DPP convert explains it: “When I was at school, politics was
divided into Left and Right: the Left—the social democrats—were for the
poor and vulnerable, and the Right were for the big businessmen. But it’s
not that simple any more. Basically, our welfare state has created a beautiful
society but we need to keep it that way” (quoted in Coman 2015). Despite
the SDP’s sharpened rhetoric against immigration, it becomes increasingly
difficult for working people to vote for the SDP that talks about creating a
“competitive state” to compete in the global era whereas the DPP’s simple
solution of isolating the nation from the ill effects of globalization and “pro-
tecting the Denmark we know” has a stronger appeal.
The rise of populist right-wing parties testifies to this conclusion. Their
victory is wider and deeper than their electoral success might indicate. They
have successfully transformed immigration into a cultural threat and pushed
the culturalized immigration discourse to the center of political discourse
which has brought mainstream Left and Right together around “core values.”
The move to the right has been facilitated by endless chains of moral
panics and controversies around Islam and Muslim immigrants’ cultural
and religious practices, which have been depicted as a threat to “common
achievements” in such a way that political parties were forced to respond
continually to ever fresh scandals and intentional provocations.
The reactions to the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in France on January 7,
2015, and to the attack on the public event “Art, Blasphemy and the Freedom
of Expression” in Copenhagen a few weeks later illustrate the main thread of
this book: the repeated crises around Muslims (i.e., “their” so-called cultur-
ally and religiously motivated practices and actions) are used to rally people
from different political and social groups around some “core values” that
“unite us.” It is clear that these “core values” are defined by the nature of
the imagined threat. Thus, a number of achievements and demands such as
gender equality, gay rights, tolerance, nonviolence, and freedom of speech
are turned into “shared cultural values” through moral panics and controver-
sies around particular events. The events in Paris and Copenhagen are good
examples of this culturalization process.
The day after the massacre in Paris, the headline of Le Figaro was “La
liberté assassinée.” Le Parisien and L’Humanité also used the word liberté
in their headlines. French president François Hollande called the attacks
“exceptional barbarism” against freedom of speech and added: “We have

known we were threatened, like other freedom-loving countries, and it is for
precisely this reason we are targets. We must all stand together at this dif-
ficult time. We must show we are a united country” (Hollande 2015; emphasis
added). The reactions to Copenhagen attacks were similar. Prime Minister
Helle Thorning-Schmidt said, “Nobody is going to get away with attacking
the open, free and democratic Danish society” and “We know that there are
forces in the world who think the darkness is stronger than the light” (Petersen
2015; emphasis added). In Paris, interior ministers from eleven European
Union countries including France, Britain, and Germany issued the follow-
ing statement:
We reaffirm our unfailing attachment to the freedom of expression,

to human rights, to pluralism, to democracy, to tolerance and to the
rule of law: They are the foundation of our democracies and are at the
heart of the European Union. By attacking Charlie Hebdo, police of-
ficers and Jewish community, the terrorists set out to tear down these
universal values. They will not succeed. . . . In the face of a multiform
terrorist threat directly targeted against our values, we reaffirm our un-
failing solidarity and our determination to fight together against terror-
ism. (Joint Statement by Ministers of Interior 2015, emphasis added)
The irony that the statement by the EU interior ministers also proposed In-
ternet censorship of online content “that aims to incite hatred and violence”
and surveillance, including monitoring and storing information on air trav-
elers’ itineraries, was noted in a New York Times editorial (January 15, 2015).
By the same token, the contradiction between what the French government
says and does did not go unnoticed either: fifty-four people, including a
stand-up comedian, were arrested for apologizing for terrorism while declar-
ing “freedom of speech” and “the right to blaspheme” sacred. France was the
first country to ban a pro-Palestinian rally; “attacks on the national anthem
and flag” are punished with heavy fines or even imprisonment; even Charlie
Hebdo fired one of its writers for refusing to apologize for making an anti-
Semitic joke about President Sarkozy’s son. People have been arrested for
making antimilitary or antipolice comments on social media in the UK.
“Hate speech” or “whistle blowers” about illegal programs are prosecuted in
many countries.
The point, however, is not the hypocrisy of governments or political lead-
ers. In the largest public rally since World War II, 3.7 million people joined
demonstrations nationwide in France, and tens of thousands participated in
commemorations of the victims of the Copenhagen attacks. In both cases,

demonstrations in both countries included people from all corners of soci-
ety, including many Muslims. The common perception for the participants
was that democracy itself was under threat. This perception and the indig-
nation over the attacks are understandable given the perverse nature of the
attacks. How does one react to and act upon such unjustifiable atrocities?
What gets lost in the heat of indignation is the distinction between sup-
porting the right to free speech—regardless of the content—and supporting
the content of a particular speech. As Lordon (2015) explains, “‘Je suis Char-
lie’ was an injunction to identify ourselves with the paper Charlie Hebdo.”
When the French daily Libération put this slogan into the first-person plural,
“We are all Charlie,” it became a celebration of free speech by suppressing
all dissent “surreptitiously confusing the emotion of the tragedy with an
implied political agreement with an editorial line . . . this unanimity-under-
injunction was so perfect that all sorts of people jumped on it in order to
recuperate it.”
What is important here is that the slogan “Je suis Charlie” has come to
signify a cultural commonality that would not otherwise be founded on a
common cultural ground. In other words, freedom of speech would not be
thought of as a shared cultural value if it was not considered to be under an
“external” threat. Freedom of speech exists, like any other principle, pre-
cisely because of its limits; it cannot have an absolute existence. The limits to
freedom of speech are generally set by the state within the nation; it cannot
be equated to the nation. The principle would mean different things to dif-
ferent groups; what one group may consider the expression of freedom of
speech would be “hate speech”—and therefore outside the limits of freedom
of speech—for another group. To signify an entire nation’s common value,
it needs to be emptied of content and become an empty signifier. Only in
this way does the principle of freedom of speech cease to signify a particular
freedom (i.e., press freedom structured by legal rules) and becomes a “way
of life” (culture) for an entire nation (or a larger entity such as “Western
culture”). But a “way of life” cannot be a transparent state of being; or to use
Laclau’s (1996: 38) words, “It cannot signify itself in terms of any positive
signified,” that is, in terms of any positive content.
But what we are trying to signify is not just any way of life; it is “our way
of life,” and we can only know “our way of life” by its limits. What limits our
way of life is the presence of a radically different way of life that excludes the
values that define “our way of life.” Freedom of speech is one value that no
longer signifies particular practices, but is part of “our way of life,” anchored
in “shared values,” because it is threatened by “the forces of darkness,” as
the Danish prime minister expressed it. The discourse on national unity
excludes precisely those deemed to be Muslims and justifies not only harsh
measures against “incitement to terrorism” but all kinds of dissent.
This is how the new populist right-wing hegemony is constituted. As my
discussion of empty signifiers indicates, hegemony is not a question of pro-
ducing shared meanings but of producing a new social vision characterized
by a new ontological structure of society and reflected in legal provisions and
institutions (e.g., there are ministries for Children Gender Equality, Integra-
tion and Social Affairs in Denmark, for Integration and Gender Equality
in Sweden, for Immigration, Integration, National Identity, and Codevel-
opment in France—the latter was created by President Sarkozy to restore
“national pride”). The new ontology enables certain ways of talking about
and acting on the social and political problems while constraining how we
navigate the new social landscape.
The new antagonism between the alien Muslims and the nation is pro-
duced through successive series of controversies and moral panics that were
created around single acts of deviance described as instances of Muslim cul-
ture, for example, a murder categorized as “honor killing,” an instance of
gang violence, a report on female circumcision, an “investigative report” that
“reveals” welfare fraud by an immigrant family, assassinations of journalists;
a court case on gang rape; or an attack on a gay parade. It is obvious that
none of these acts is specific to Islam but via cultural explanations and the
tautological pairing of the act with an ontological category, a welfare fraud
becomes the indication of the incompatibility of Muslim ethics with “our
ethics.” The ongoing sense of crisis around Islam produces “Muslims” as
an antagonizing ontological category, which retrospectively produces our
commonality in the face of the imminent threat. As Bhattacharyya (2008:
9) explains, “This grouping is linked tenuously through an appeal to shared
values, through that most nebulous of ties, culture. And as with all cultural
alliances, it can exist only through constant reaffirmation of key myths and
narratives. Ideas about gender identity, sexuality and affective relations play
a central role in this process.” The new collectivity, however, is not a mere
alliance of forces but a new hegemonic formation—a new historical bloc—
anchored in the perception of common core values that bring us together.
The new social horizon, structured by the new cultural antagonism, origi-
nates with the populist Far Right but has become the new common sense
of the social order. The hegemonic force produces a moral, cultural, and
symbolic order that forces social and political players to respond to the issues
pressed onto the political agenda and therefore redefine their positions be-
tween the two poles of the culturalized ontological order. The new common
sense is difficult to challenge except from a position of exteriority, which

would be condemned to irrelevance.
Once this new vision becomes the new common sense, even the past is
imagined in terms of the new order. The new vision of society is projected
back into the past as if society has always been imagined as an organic en-
tity united by common cultural values. The unity—the cohesive force—of
society is said to be broken by the arrival of the alien Muslims, and a gap
emerges in the harmonious continuity of the social. This vision was recog-
nized as the far-right position in the mid-1980s, but has slowly become the
new common sense in political, vernacular, and academic discourse, and is
often expressed in terms of “challenges to the cultural homogeneity of Eu-
ropean societies.”
Hegemony, however, is a contingent, incomplete relation. A principle
such as freedom of speech or gender equality cannot continuously be emp-
tied of content because of the heterogeneity of discourse. In the cacophony
of public discourse, these principles will have particular meanings in con-
crete contexts, stripping them of the universality that signifies a collective
identity. This is why a general sense of anxiety about an antagonistic force
must be in constant production. The ongoing sense of crisis ontologizes
differences, which in turn organizes discourse along the antagonistic divide.
The continuing crisis also sustains the sense of unity around what seems to
be challenged or under threat, suspending internal frictions until the crisis
is over. The threat, therefore, must be constantly reproduced through crises.
The attacks on Charlie Hebdo or in Copenhagen will normally recede into
the background when new events, debates, and controversies take over. The
attacks will cease to signify the “dark forces” as a constant threat to “our way
of life.” It is in this context that the provocation of continuous controversies
and moral panics has been a main right-wing populist strategy. As Bail (2015:
11) also notes, “Such events provide fringe voices with the opportunity to
exploit the emotional bias of the media” that amplifies the significance of
fringe voices even if covered in a negative light. Populist actors on the fringe
become the main protagonists in the debates because of their controversial
utterances, and the media’s disproportionate coverage of populist messages
bestows legitimacy on them and pushes them into the mainstream debate
(Ellinas 2010; Mondon 2013). The mainstream parties’ angry denunciations
of the populists contribute to their profile. Ostracizing far-right populists
makes them appear as a potent alternative with clean hands compared to
corrupt politicians (Benson 2013; Mondon 2013).
The successive controversies produce a general sense of crisis—a crisis of
representation, which allows the populist Far Right to successfully articulate

popular anxieties about globalization, immigration, and the erasure of wel-
fare systems as “concerns about the future of the nation.” These articulations
rhetorically move populist forces into the role of the daring representatives
of the “people” (described as silent majority), as opposed to oppressive polit-
ical and cultural elites. Once the idea that the “people” are worried about the
future of their nation in the face of a culturally alien immigration becomes,
through repeated crises, established as the tacit depiction of the popular sen-
timent,1 mainstream forces generally respond by adopting populist rhetoric
about the alien threat with the argument that “we have to listen to people’s
concerns” while attacking right-wing populists. Once the populist articula-
tion becomes the commonsense definition of people’s concerns, populist
actors become the “natural” representatives of these concerns because they
are the main protagonists.
The articulation of these concerns in terms of an alien cultural threat has
slowly displaced the old class structure of society, undermining the voter
basis of traditional parties. This is not a simple case of the working class
changing its allegiance from the left to the right (as many political scientists
would argue). Rather, what we have been experiencing is the transformation
of the very ontology of the social in which the old working class no longer
conceptualizes the main antagonism in society in class terms, thereby trans-
forming itself into a new entity: a populist “people” who are free of class
frictions, but whose cohesive force is challenged by the presence of people
from incompatible cultures. Coupled with the Left’s failure to articulate an
alternative vision, “the people” has become a construction not based on class
or shared political principles but that of common cultural values; as a result,
the understanding of politics has shifted from class struggle to a cultural
struggle (Mondon 2013: 159). This is why it is no surprise that even the
mainstream Left speaks of cultural cohesion and shared values regardless of
whom they include in these collectivities (e.g., including “good” Muslims
while excluding “bad Muslims”). The culturalization of political discourse
through the immigration debate has paralyzed the mainstream Left, which
has been in a deep crisis the last two decades.
This transformation did not occur in a vacuum. The mainstream Left’s
tacit acceptance of neoliberal orthodoxies, coupled with its inability to firmly
address the Far Right’s jeremiads about the Muslim threat created a hege-
monic crises in which large segments of the populace increasingly lost faith
in the traditional system of representation. The populist Right’s Manichaean
claims and simplifications of the problems with the neoliberal order stifled
the possibility of the mainstream Right to appear as an alternative without

being branded unpatriotic or elitist. As Mondon (2013: 161) notes, in the
context of France, “It became increasingly common to see the mainstream
left support the right, and even at times push further into populist territory.
As a consequence, right-wing populism and the necessity to construct an
exclusionary people to retain a semblance of ‘common sense’ became in-
creasingly hegemonic in mainstream politics, both on the left and the right.”
The Hegemonic Displacement Is a Pan-European Phenomenon
Although this book is based on an analysis of data from Denmark, the pro-
cess of the hegemonic displacement in which political discourse is cultural-
ized and pushed to the right can be found throughout Europe, as the rapid
rise of populist right-wing parties testifies. Even though one may note dif-
ferent trajectories, actors, and terminologies across the continent, debates on
national identity coalesce around events similar to those I have described.
Thus, many of my conclusions can be generalized to other European coun-
tries, as my discussion of the reactions to the attacks in Paris and Copen-
hagen indicates: the association of critical social and political issues such as
democracy, the welfare system, national security, freedom of speech, gender
equality, and gay rights with the impact of Muslim immigration and Islam;
and the focus on social cohesion, core values, and national unity; the wide-
spread concerns about the Muslim threat—be it terrorism, parallel societies
(e.g., ghettos), misogyny, homophobia, intolerance, violence/criminality, or
numbers/birthrates. Fekete (2009: 2) notes,
In the Netherlands, the theme of the national debate has been “stan-
dards and values”; in Sweden and Norway, cultural barriers to in-
clusion; in the UK, “community cohesion”; in France, the principle
of laïcité (state secularism); in Germany, the primacy of “Leitkultur”
(leading culture) . . . in Spain, public safety and crime. But even
though the terms through which the debate is entered differ, it is
always linked back to immigrant communities and cultures and the
threat that multicultural policies pose to core values, cultural homo-
geneity and social cohesion.
Benson (2013) observes a similar shift in the French immigration debate

from humanitarian concerns with wages, working conditions, and slum
housing to cultural issues in the early 1980s when the “focus on immigrant
workers was quickly being displaced by a concern with the ‘second genera-
tion’ and their relationship to French culture” (112). This focus shift led to a
preoccupation with a national cohesion frame, “which portrays immigrant
cultural differences (customs, religion, language) as a threat to national unity
and social harmony,” beginning in the early 1980s and intensifying in the
1990s (7, 112). As in Denmark, the entire media were allied against the rise
of the far-right National Front in the 1970s and early 1980s, but when the
political winds turned against diversity politics in favor of national cohesion,
the media’s coverage also shifted. Benson also notes “the ways that typical
categories of left and right are scrambled in immigration politics, producing
a number of ‘strange bedfellows’ alliances” (7).
Other scholars who have been following the French debates also note
that there has been an increasing emphasis on the idea of the unity of the na-
tion since the 1980s (Scott 2007: 117). Olivier Roy (2007) points to the blur-
ring of traditional divisions (e.g., between left and right, between secularists
and religious sectors) in the face of the intense focus on Islam and Muslim
immigrants as a category incompatible with Frenchness. It is the intense fo-
cus on Muslims and Islam that unites political, journalistic, and intellectual
opinion in an apparent confirmation of France’s universal values, because, as
Roy (2007: 1), explains, “Islam seems to call into question the very identity
of the country, or at least the nature of its institutions. People mobilize for
the defense of ‘republican values’ and ‘laïcité.’” National unity is threatened
by “the stubborn refusal of Muslims to integrate, on the inherent ‘foreign-
ness’ of their ‘culture’” (Scott 2007: 120).
Mondon (2013) argues that the National Front’s rhetoric, which was con-
sidered extreme and undemocratic, has become hegemonic as mainstream
politicians on the left and right responded to its popularity by legitimizing
“ethno-exclusivist and neo-racist ideas,” rendering these ideas as “common
sense” (157). Coupled with the Left’s failure to articulate alternatives, the
new hegemony shifted “the understanding of politics in the minds of the
classes populaires from a class struggle, in the Marxist sense of the term, to a
struggle of race and ‘civilization’” (159).
The trajectory of the culturalization of discourse has been slightly dif-
ferent in Britain, the only country in Europe that had an official policy of
multiculturalism, albeit coupled with tight immigration control after the
formation of Commission for Racial Equality. Nevertheless, the focus on so-
called parallel societies as evidence of the failure of multiculturalism pushed
British immigration discourse into the terrain of culture where (especially
Muslim) immigrants are considered to be a threat to national culture and so-
cial cohesion (Fekete 2009; Kundnani 2007; Lentin and Titley 2011; Siapera
2010; Pitcher 2009). Stolcke (1995), for example, explains that the contro-
versy over immigration was, until the late 1970s, predominantly phrased in
racist terms, but “when the Tory government took up the banner of curbing
immigration it began to rationalize it, invoking, by contrast with earlier
racist arguments, national-cum-cultural unity and calling for the cultural as-
similation of immigrant communities ‘in our midst’ to safeguard the British
‘nation’ with its shared values and lifestyle” (11). Since 2001, multicultural-
ism has been attacked by the Right and the Left for threatening “community
cohesion” (Pitcher 2009; Kundnani 2007; Fekete 2009). As in other Euro-
pean countries, “fundamental values of Britishness” are “thought to coalesce
[around] sexual equality, tolerance, freedom of speech and the rule of the
law” (Kundnani 2007: 126).
Although Germany, for historical reasons, never really had a huge far-
right party since World War II, the discourse on immigration in Germany is
similar to the rest of Europe: anxieties about “ethnic ghettos” and “parallel
societies” are taken to be indicators of a failed experiment with multicultur-
alism. Partly to keep the Far Right at bay and partly to justify their attempts
to dismantle welfare system, successive center-right governments made im-
migration and immigrants’ culture the centerpiece of their politics. In the
early 1980s, German chancellor (and CDU politician) Helmut Kohl was
already claiming that cultural differences between foreigners and Germans
were unbridgeable (Lucassen 2005: 156). Since, then the term Leitkultur has
been popularized and employed by Chancellor Angela Merkel in the de-
bate on national identity, which is invariably connected to immigration.
Stehle (2012: 167) demonstrates that in the German imagination, “‘Europe’
functions simultaneously as an example for the failures of multiculturalism
and as a bastion of western values in need of protection.” Likewise, sexual
tolerance and gender equality have become central to the debate on immi-
grants, who since the mid-1980s were transformed from “foreign workers”
to “Muslim immigrants” (Lucassen 2005; Petzen 2012; Spielhaus 2010; Yıldız
2009, 2011; Yurdakul 2009). Ewing (2008) examines the role of moral panics
around gender issues in the construction of Turkish immigrants as a threat
in the German national imaginary. Ireland (2004: 51) notes that the Left and
the Right unite in expressing concerns about women’s rights under Islam.
In the Netherlands, new applicants for immigration are forced to watch
a video in which women are topless and men are kissing one another and
asked whether they are offended by the images. They are also asked whether
they are willing to live in a democracy and respect the Dutch values à la
the Danish integration contract (Butler 2008: 3). These exams, often only
required from immigrants of non-Western origin, have spread throughout

Europe (e.g., Britain, Germany). In many ways, Dutch discourse on Muslim
immigration is similar to Scandinavian discourse (Andreassen 2012; Bang-
stad 2011; Bracke 2012; De Leeuw and van Wichelen 2012; El-Tayeb 2012).
In almost every case, a debate about national values and social cohesion
is opened up through a specific event taken up first by populist far-right
actors and then by mainstream politicians and the media, whose dispropor-
tionate coverage of the populists render them central figures in the debate.
The event often quickly turns into a moral panic about Islamic values or
Muslim cultural practices because the preceding moral panics had already
established the framework. The debate generally results in the institutional-
ization of discriminatory practices toward Muslim immigrants (e.g., the ban
on headscarves in France and Germany; integration contracts, civics tests,
and loyalty oaths in Austria, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany,
and the UK). Mainstream parties across the European political spectrum
have incorporated national identity themes into their programs and “issues
such as immigration, citizenship, asylum, and historical memory have be-
come a constant source of partisan rivalry” (Ellinas 2010: 2).
The controversies often focus on sexuality, particularly Muslims’ view of
gender equality, so much so that most integration contracts or civics tests
seek to measure immigrants’ beliefs on issues of sexuality. Articulation of
gender equality or sexual tolerance as “core national values”—as opposed
to Muslim immigrants’ “cultural practices”—brings together people from
across the political spectrum and therefore unsettles the traditional divide
between left and right.
In this process, the Far Right, too, is transformed: far-right parties pre
sent themselves as true representatives of working class, albeit in classless
terms; they defend feminist causes albeit only in cases where Muslims are
thought to subvert them; the neo-Nazi English Defense League has even a
gay section because, as they explain, Muslims do not tolerate homosexuality.
Many far-right parties have dropped their previous pure neoliberal views
(e.g., their stand against taxes) and adopted welfare-friendly stances, albeit
only for those who belong to the nation.
The centrality of cultural values to political discourse and the presen-
tation of Muslims and Islam as a threat to the “core values of the West,”
moral panics, and controversies around Muslims and Islam are not unique
to Europe. Especially since 9/11, these phenomena seem to spread in the
Western world through the discourse on the “war on terror” and the Muslim
threat (Bail 2015; Ellinas 2010; Kundnani 2014; Massad 2015; Mondon 2013;
Morgan and Poynting 2012; Puar 2007). As Massad (2015) argues, popular
anxieties about violence, autocracy, intolerance, misogyny, and homopho-

bia are projected onto Islam, and the West emerges as democratic, tolerant,
feminist, and pro-LGBT rights—in short, Islam-free. This image, as Bhat-
tacharyya (2008) elaborates, is used to create an alliance through an appeal
to shared values and culture that can only exist though constant reaffirma-
tion of key myths and narratives about gender identity and sexuality.
Populism, Neoliberalism, and Democracy
“I can’t breathe” became a common slogan for protests in the fall of 2014
against the killing of unarmed African Americans in the United States, but
it has since taken a larger meaning, challenging a discriminatory system and
calling for greater equality. The inability to breathe is a global sentiment that
transcends the United States or the West; it describes a widespread dissatis-
faction with an increasingly authoritarian global neoliberal political and eco-
nomic system with high levels of inequality. As Badiou (2013) noted, while
most of these protests have been sporadic, disorganized, and largely unsuc-
cessful because of the lack of a unifying language for “situated discussion of
the future of emancipatory actions . . . the forces of fascism . . . against the
illusory backdrop of a xenophobic and racist nationalism, now claim to lead
the opposition” to the system (44).
In other words, “I can’t breathe” represents the driving force behind the
rise of populist forces globally: left populism in Latin America (and lately in
Greece and Spain), right-wing populism in Europe, and Islamist populism
in Turkey and Malaysia. The difference is the way they articulate the frontier:
they establish who the enemies of the “people” are in different ways, which
also determines the identity of the popular formation. In other words, the
content of a given populist appeal depends on how the antagonistic relation-
ship is defined. In one conjuncture, the defense of “the little guy” may be
articulated against the corrupt economic and political power elites and their
supporters in the form of imperialist or global capital, which causes poverty
and oppression; in another conjunction, the ordinary Dane (or Frenchman,
Dutchman, etc.) may be posed against the corrupt, treasonous political and
cultural elites who let alien Muslim immigrants or deviant minorities de-
stroy “our way of life” from within. In the Turkish case, the Islamist populist
response has been articulated against the old secularist guard of the republic
and their cosmopolitan (i.e., urban, educated) supporters with a deviant life-
style, all of whom are said to be in the service of Western powers that intend
to destroy the Muslim way of life. Populism, in this sense,
is the language of politics when there can be no politics as usual: a

mode of identification characteristic of times of unsettlement and
de-alignment, involving the radical redrawing of social borders along
lines other than those that had previously structured society. It is a
political appeal that seeks to change the terms of political discourse,
articulate new social relations, redefine political frontiers and consti-
tute new identities. (Panizza 2005: 9)
In general, scholars agree that populist rhetoric typically gains audibility

when the existing order loses its ability to absorb discontent and economic
transformations dislocate the established political and social divisions (i.e.,
the established way of life; Laclau 2005; Mondon 2013; Mouffe 1995; Mudde
2004; Panizza 2005).
If we accept the premise that populist voices break through when there
is a sense that existing social and political institutions fail to confine and
regulate the discontent within the existing system, we may also say that
there is a huge democratic deficit and the populist attraction is a clear in-
dication of this deficit. The established parties throughout Europe seem to
have accepted the neoliberal dogma that the old politics of left-right rheto-
ric is an obstacle to the modernization of economic and political systems
and that politics is now about managing the resources in the most efficient
way. European political systems have been “transformed into ‘depoliticized
democracies’ in which administration has replaced politics (in modern par-
lance: governance instead of government). Not surprisingly, it is here that
the populist call for the ‘repoliticization of the public realm’ and their role
as taboo breaker have found the most receptive audience” (Mudde 2004:
555). As Mouffe (1995) warned two decades ago, when popular discontent
with the way things are done cannot find channels of expression within
the traditional political system, a crisis of representation occurs and popular
discontent becomes susceptible to the simplistic solutions that populist far-
right parties provide.
I started this project to understand the dynamics of social change: how
certain political forces gain access to mainstream discourse and change the
basic premises. My goal was to understand how progressive and democratic
movements could intervene and challenge far-right populism. My analysis
of the Danish case illuminates the way hegemonic displacement has taken
place through controversies and moral panics about Muslim immigration.
These ongoing controversies and panics (1) present Muslim immigrants as
the “folk devils” of our time; (2) ontologize Muslim immigrants as an an-
tagonistic force by keeping a constant focus on them; (3) create the impres-
sion that the future of the nation is under imminent threat from Muslim
immigration; (4) push populist voices from the fringes into the center of
mainstream discourse; (5) enable populists to present popular discontent
with the breakdown of an established way of life as a protest against the
“corrupt political and cultural elite” and their treasonous immigration poli-
cies; (6) allow populists to claim that they represent the oppressed “silent
majority” because their “concerns” (as articulated by the populists) are dis-
missed as nationalistic, racist, and primitive; (7) convince the mainstream
parties, through the media’s amplification of controversial populist claims,
that people are concerned with the future of the nation in the face of Mus-
lim immigration; (8) and thus make the populist vision the new common
sense; and (9) through this new “common sense” create a new unity among
groups from the left and the right in defense of threatened “shared values.”
The unity around “shared values” implies that important achievements (e.g.,
such as a better distribution of wealth or a better level of gender equality) are
embedded in, and reflective of, cultures. The cultural view of these achieve-
ments is based on a denial of a past that was characterized by major conflicts
over these demands. The populist imagination presents the current state of
crisis as a break from the culturally homogeneous past that was a precondi-
tion for social cohesion. This is how the new populist right-wing hegemony
is formed by the premises of the populist Far Right.
So, what have we learned?
First, that it is the result of a political intervention by far-right populist
forces that draws the contours of the new hegemony; it is not a necessary
endpoint of a structural development. If, however, we accept the premise
that populist far-right forces were able to articulate the general discontent-
ment with the neoliberal framework by presenting immigration as the main
problem and by advocating the closing of borders so that we can return to
the idyllic, harmonious past where life was simpler as the solution (in the
absence of an alternative articulation—because of the presumed collusion
between the mainstream Left and Right), the question is, therefore, how
to rearticulate the discontent with the neoliberal framework in new and
creative ways without blaming the weakest for all the problems. The second
question is, If support for the populist Right can be read as an indication
of democratic deficit, can the populist logic that creates popular identity
around sameness be made compatible with democratic thought with space
for diversity and plurality?
Laclau (2005) answers this question positively. He is interested in re-
vindicating populism as a politics par excellence where large segments of
the populace are mobilized to participate in politics at a time when the
distinction between left and right is blurred and politics has been reduced
to the administration of austerity policies. Populism is about dichotomizing

the political space and drawing a new border across the political battlefield.
Populist politics creates a new “them” against which a popular identity is
produced. The identities of the antagonistic camps are not given a priori but
defined in the process of constituting the antagonism. If this is the case, the
ideological significance of populism depends on how this border is drawn,
and an inclusionary leftist populism would aim at drawing the border dif-
ferently than exclusionary right-wing populism. The main difficulty for the
Left, according to Laclau, is that they rarely engage in the hegemonic strug-
gle by producing a new kind of political imaginary but rely on a rationalist
discourse about rights. Thus, they look down at any populist imaginary as a
simplistic appeal to basic instincts, hitting the lowest common denominator
in the name of short-term success.
Laclau seemed to believe that the heterogeneity of the popular demands
(i.e., difference) that are articulated as parts of the same struggle against
political power would secure the democratic potential of populism, which
would only be exclusionary toward the parasitic minority that clings to
power. The democratic potential of populism is embedded in the fact that
the logic of difference always subverts the logic of equivalence (sameness)
and vice versa. In other words, the differences among the demands of various
groups brought together in a popular identity would keep the identity open
and contestable. The new populist political movements on the left (e.g.,
Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain) can be seen as democratic left-wing ex-
periments in the creation of a new political mobilization against the increas-
ingly oppressive neoliberal capitalist elites that have created unprecedented
levels of inequality. These populist movements have envisioned a popular
identity that is not ethnonationalist and exclusionary in the same way as the
far-right populists of Europe.
Laclau would argue that a popular identity consists of fragmented groups
with neglected demands but their demands have no logical connection to
one another except the articulatory logic. The demands are brought together
through their shared antagonism to “the enemy” who prevents the fulfill-
ment of the particular demands. But because the demands are not neces-
sarily connected to one another, the totality of the demands cannot be rep-
resented positively by a single slogan that can stand for all of the neglected
demands, there has to be a synecdochic operation whereby a single slogan
stands for the whole. This could be a demand such as “equality,” which
would mean different things for different groups in the opposition (e.g.,
racial equality, gender equality, economic equality, religious equality). The
term “equality” needs, therefore, to be emptied of content so much that it is
no longer attached to a particular demand (e.g., gender equality); it becomes
an empty signifier that signifies the totality of the demands that make up the
opposition. In other words, it would signify the identity of the opposition.
However, alongside the metonymic logic, there is another logic in opera-
tion in populism: the idea that constituting the popular identity “necessi-
tates the political defeat of ‘the other’ that is deemed to oppress or exploit the
people and impede its full presence” (Panizza 2005: 3). Populism externalizes
the enemy into a “positive” ontological entity whose annihilation (it claims)
would restore balance and cohesion. If antagonism, and annihilation of the
enemy, is the necessary logic of populism, it needs to keep the external threat
alive. In the absence of such a threat, those who claim to represent the popu-
lar will have the potential of turning their gaze inward in order to clean up
the remnants of the threat—in the form of any kind of dissent. This would
mean that the heterogeneity of the popular identity cannot guarantee its
democratic potential; rather, the heterogeneous elements that do not align
with the power can be quickly relegated to the exterior, therefore presenting
them as new threats (or a continuation of the old threat), which are often
depicted as the henchmen of external global powers. This is path the Islamist
populists in Turkey chose after consolidating their grip on power, although
they were, in their early days, praised for democratizing the political arena
by including the disenfranchised sectors of the population in the political
process and breaking down the influence of the military in politics. A similar
criticism has been leveled against the populist left-wing government of Ven-
ezuela, which perceives any criticism or expression of dissatisfaction as an
intrinsic threat organized by external, imperialist powers against the survival
of the popular will (which may have some validity considering the United
States’ involvement in the coup against Hugo Chávez in the early days of
his government). These examples of populists in power indicate that the het-
erogeneity of the social is far from being a guarantee for plurality. In short,
populism has the potential of becoming fascism. Was Nazism not a populist
movement that took the logic of antagonism to its extreme?
It seems to fall on left-wing European populist movements such as Syriza
and Podemos (and in Latin American countries such as Uruguay) to demon-
strate the democratic potential of left-wing populism.
A p pe n di x 1
Declaration of Integration and Active

Residency in Danish Society
I hereby declare that I will actively work to secure my own and my resi-
dent children’s and spouse’s or partner’s integration and active citizenship in
Danish society.
I therefore declare the following:
1. Under all circumstances, I will uphold Danish law and protect Danish
democratic principles.
2. I acknowledge that the Danish language and familiarity with Danish
society are the key to a good and active existence in Denmark. I will
therefore learn Danish and build knowledge about Danish society as
quickly as possible. I know that I can learn Danish in Danish courses
offered by the municipal ministry.
3. I acknowledge that individual citizens and families are responsible for
providing for themselves. I will therefore work toward becoming self-
sufficient as quickly as possible. I know that to become self-sufficient
it helps to participate in activities that are described in my integration
contract with the municipality.
4. I know that if I am seeking a job and participating in the Danish edu-
cational system and in activities that are described in my integration
contract with the municipality, I am entitled to temporary economic
help until I can provide for myself.
5. I acknowledge that men and women have equal responsibilities and
rights in Denmark and that men and women should contribute to
society through education, employment, payment of taxes, and par-
199
200 Appendixes
ticipation in the democratic process and to take care of parental re-

sponsibilities toward their own children.
6. I know that in Denmark it is forbidden to exert violence or apply il-
legal duress on one’s spouse.
7. I acknowledge that in Denmark there shall be equal respect and oppor-
tunities for development of all children, both girls and boys, so they
can grow up to become active and responsible citizens who are capable
of making their own decisions. I will ensure that my children receive
the best possible upbringing, attend school, and become integrated
into Denmark. I will also make sure that my children learn Danish as
early as possible and complete their homework through their school
term, and I will actively participate with my children’s institution or
school.
8. I know that, in Denmark, it is illegal to strike your children.
9. I know that circumcision of girls as well forced marriages are illegal
activities in Denmark.
10. I respect every person’s freedom and personal integrity, equality of the
genders, freedom of religion, and freedom of expression, which are
foundational in Denmark.
11. I know that discrimination on the basis of gender or skin color, and
threats or disdain toward groups on the grounds of faith or sexual ori-
entation, are illegal activities in Denmark.
12. I acknowledge that Danish society has a strict policy against terrorism
and that each citizen has a duty to fight terrorism, including assistance
to the authorities in preventative and follow-up work.
13. I acknowledge that active engagement in Danish society is a require-
ment for a good existence in Denmark, regardless of how long that
may be.
14. I know that extension of my residency permit depends on meeting the
requirements of my residency permit.
15. I know that the requirements to receive permanent residency include
that I have fulfilled my integration contract by participating in ongo-
ing activities, preferably by being involved in education or employ-
ment early in my residency; that I have passed the Danish language
exam; and that I do not owe a debt to the public sector. I know that
criminal activities could delay or hinder receiving a permanent resi-
dency permit.
Appendixes 201
16. I know that if I am a refugee, I no longer have asylum if the situa-

tion in my home country changes so I can return home. I know that
refugees and their families can receive economic support for traveling
home to their country of origin or previous residency if they need it.
Date: Signature:
A p pe n di x 2
Krarup’s First Advertisement,

Jyllands-Posten, September 21, 1986
No, not a single dime! 1
On Sunday, October 5, my doorbell will ring. The bell will also ring
at your door. That Sunday the bells will ring at all Danish doors, for
it is a national donation day under the motto “Refugee 86.”
If I am at home, I will answer the door myself. And I will kindly greet
the nice collector who rang the bell, and I will do my best to make
my tone lovely and my actions polite, because I do not want to an-
noy the collector. The collectors are without doubt driven by the best
intentions and motivations. The collectors should be received with
friendliness. But I will tell them: No, not a dime!
It is not because I cannot afford to help. Neither is it because I am

against helping refugees, who are, in my opinion, in one of the worst
situations a human being can face. Rather, it is simply and solely be-
cause “Refugee 86” benefits the Danish Refugee Council.
And I will not support this organization with so much as a dime.

On the contrary, I consider each dime given to the Refugee Council
a dime given to the ruin of the fatherland. This so-called aid work
has in recent years established itself as a state within the state, which
imposes its law in the parliament, terrorizes public debate, drains the
Treasury for millions, and acts as a bailiff among the farmers [fæste-
bønder: tenant farmer]. Do you remember the case in Øster Højst?2
202
Appendixes 203
Do you remember how the chairman of the Refugee Council ordered

around the anxious villagers? And do you remember when Mogens
Glistrup3 allowed himself to express his opinion, and the same chair-
man, Thor A. Bak, commented on it: “Coop him up!” he hissed in
the press. And do you remember in Ho? And in Blokhus? Each time
it is the same scene: a dictatorial Refugee Council, which speaks to us
as if we were dogs, demands our tax money, constantly requests more
staff members, and brushes off our concerns.
For there is a real problem that the Refugee Council wants to forbid us
Danes to speak about and utter publicly: if an uncontrolled and un-
constrained mass migration of Mohammedan and Oriental refugees
comes through our borders, then we cannot be here ourselves—in any
case not in naturalness and peace. The disaster the Danish Refugee
Council has caused to Denmark’s future is immeasurable and will not
be forgotten. Is Copenhagen going to be a Danish city in 50 years?
Can Danes continue to be a people when there is no longer a com-
mon language, history, and religion? Or is it a fate such as Lebanon’s
that awaits us—torn apart by wars between incompatible minority
groups? The Danish Refugee Council has tremendously damaged our
fatherland with its proud and self-righteous pharisaism and its—by
virtue of its “noble” purpose—unconstrained power over lawmak-
ing and social life, and that politicians such as Bernhard Baunsgaard,
Preben Wilhjelm, and Ole Espersen4 have contributed does not lessen
the Refugee Council’s guilt. They have acted as an occupying power
in a foreign country. They have deliberately taken a position against
Danes who are concerned with good reason.
And now they beg for money in order to continue terrorizing us. . . .
No, not a dime!
That I will not support the Danish Refugee Council with so much
as a dime does not mean that I will not help refugees, and the day
after, on Monday, October 6, when the post office is open, I will send
100 kroner to the Danish Afghanistan Committee [account number].
There the helpful work is done by people who do not trample on their
own to demonstrate their great goodness toward aliens. Here we can
open both our doors and wallets. The Danish Refugee Council is not
going to be endowed but to be put on its place.
It can happen on Sunday, October 5.
Say no to the Refugee Council and thereby to refugee policy!
P.S.: I chose to insert the article above as an ad to give it greater im-

pact. The ad is unfortunately not free, and since I am the only one
who is paying for it, I am asking for help from those who share my
views. If there is an economic possibility, I will insert a similar appeal
in the same place next Sunday. It will emphasize that “Refugee 86”
in reality gives us a chance for a referendum on the present refugee
policy that the politicians have denied us.
A possible surplus will be used toward other actions to change the

present refugee law—I am considering a national petition (signature
collection). The rest of the surplus will be paid to the Danish Afghani-
stan Committee.
A p pe n di x 3
Krarup’s Second Advertisement,

Jyllands-Posten, September 28, 1986
We have chance now!
When your doorbell rings next Sunday and you get up to open the
door, you have the chance.
What chance?
The chance to set bounds. The chance to say no to the way the Dan-
ish Refugee Council has treated Danes each time we have expressed
doubts about the uncontrolled invasion of the country. The chance
to tell the politicians that we are not going to put up with the refugee
policy they force upon us.
It is a collector from the Danish Refugee Council who will ring the
doorbell next Sunday, and the collector will ask for donation to “Ref-
ugee 86.” And we have no reason to be anything but friendly toward
the collector. We have also a reason to help refugees in distress.
But by saying no to “Refugee 86” we have at last the chance that we

have been missing so long, to express our opinion with all our heart.
Because it is not about helping. The Danish Refugee Council is no

longer a humanitarian and neutral aid organization. It has become a
politicizing and power-conscious state within a state that has ordered
us around and bullied us to have its own way in the last few years.
205
206 Appendixes
When people grouched, they were put on the rack. If it were about
showing consideration for Danes who live in the country, the Refugee
Council shouted with indignation and called it “racism.” Just look at
Chairman Thor A. Bak’s comment on the government’s latest plans
to put the brakes on: “It is an outright step back for democracy” (Ber-
lingske Tidende, October 9, 1986).
Now we have the chance to tell the Danish Refugee Council that in a
democracy there must be respect for people whose lives and country
are at stake.
We have also the chance to tell our politicians the simple truth. In
1983, they enacted alien legislation has abolished our borders. The
door to Denmark is wide open. And in the years after 1983, we have
seen the result. In 1985, 10,000 asylum-seekers came. Will 50,000
come in 1986?
Under these circumstances, Danes asked for permission to express

their opinion through a referendum. It was refused to us. Flatly. The
politicians did not want to lose face, and their face is more important
than Denmark’s future.
By boycotting “Refugee 86,” we can express our opinion about both

the Danish Refugee Council and refugee policy. A no to the Refugee
Council’s aid collection will be a popular protest that can set things
and bounds in their place. Use the chance!
Boycott “Refugee 86!”
P.S.: I am thankful for the overwhelming support and approval that

has flowed to me during the week and made it possible to insert this
announcement. It is, as I had assumed: the public feels terrorized by
the refugee policy’s powerful advocates in the press and the public
domain and is looking for a chance to demonstrate a No to the cata-
strophic developments in our country.
On this occasion, the following independent Danes formed a commit-

tee for changing the refugee law: Dr. Phil. Sune Dalgård, Copenha-
gen; parish priest Søren Krarup, Seem; parish priest Jesper Langballe,
Thorning; parish priest Olval Lilleør, Virum; teacher Steen Steensen,
Appendixes 207
Ranum; and [. . . ] Jens Toldstrup, Malling. The purpose is to start a

nationwide signature collection for a petition against the refugee law
and refugee policy. If we do not obtain the economic means to this
end, the incoming contributions will be used toward other activities
for the same purpose, primarily in the form of publications.
We are asking for help! Without economic help, we will not have
capability.
Boycott Refugee 86!

Notes
Introduction
1. For Saussure, language was a closed system of a structural space, and it was
only within that system that the meaning of a sign could be fixed. He subsequently
distinguished between langue and parole—the latter being the individual speech act or
utterance. For Saussure, it was langue, the underlying structure of rules and codes, that
could be studied scientifically because of its closed nature. Parole lacked those struc-
tural properties and was therefore difficult to study. This notion of a closed system of
rules and codes that produce meaning is clearly in conflict with my approach, accord-
ing to which there is no meaning unless there is actual speech act, and as Saussure
recognized, it is a terrain that does not obey scientific rules and codes, which is why it
is easier to “fix” the meaning of a sign at an abstract level.
2. In other words, an articulation of different demands as parts of a coherent politi-
cal movement.
3. Laclau and Mouffe (2001) draw heavily on Foucault’s notion of discourse but
reject Foucault’s distinction between the discursive and the nondiscursive as a form of
mentalism.
4. It does not mean “culture” has not previously been associated with immigrants.
Immigrants have been presented as threats to the nation since the nineteenth century
(see, e.g., Lucassen 2005). Immigrants were, however, even as a cultural category, con-
figured within a different ontology of the social. This book investigates the broader
process of the culturalization of the entire social and political life that has displaced the
ontological distinctions.
5. Except for the distinction between discourse and reality that Foucault main-
tains.
6. The Royal Library has microfilms of all newspapers, but they are categorized
chronologically, so one would have to look at all the newspapers to find the relevant
articles. Photocopying from microfilms was also a practical problem.
7. According to Denmark’s official website (www.denmark.dk), “With the Consti-
tution of 1849, Denmark gained a free press, which quickly became an opinion-shaping
press in close consonance with the major political and social conflicts following in the
209
210 Notes to Pages 24–36
wake of the change from an agrarian to an industrial society. The opinion-shaping

press took the form of party-political organs, the so-called ‘four-paper system.’ Each
of the four major political parties, The Right (Højre), from 1915 The Conservative
Party (Det Konservative Folkeparti), The Social Liberal Party (Det Radikale Venstre), The
Social Democratic Party (Socialdemokratiet), and The Liberal Party (Venstre), estab-
lished a nationwide network of newspapers that mobilized the various social groups
they represented.” Jyllands-Posten was associated with the Liberals, Berlingske Tidende
with the Conservatives, and Politiken with the Social Liberals (the Radicals), while the
Social Democratic Party had its own party newspapers with different names, the last
being Aktuelt (not included in my sample as it was closed down in the mid-1990s and
therefore did not exist during the period of my research).
8. Circulation numbers are from 2005. There has been a considerable decline in the
readership of all of the papers since the mid-1980s.
9. The publishers of Politiken and Jyllands-Posten joined forces economically in the
first half of the 2000s but this merger has not (so far) influenced the political leanings
of the newspapers.
Chapter 1
1. The “silly season,” as it is called in some other countries, is the summer months
when the media are filled with frivolous news stories.
2. Examples include Bangstad 2011; Bracke 2012; El-Tayeb 2012; Fekete 2009; Göle
2011; Haritaworn 2012; Henkel 2012; Hervik 2012; Horsti 2008; Jacobsen et al. 2012;
Jensen 2009; Kundnani 2012; Lentin and Titley 2011; Petzen 2012; Pitcher 2009; Sia-
pera 2010; Stehle 2012; and Wren 2001.
3. This is the general definition of “class”; “working class” may be defined by its cul-
tural characteristics in actual discourse depending on the context in which it is used.
4. See Edwards (2003) for an intriguing analysis of commonsense discourse in race
talk.
5. It is not that both sides articulated Germany as a clear-cut threat that had to
be kept at a distance. Some argued that a “yes” vote involving Germany in a tighter
European community would prevent Germany from returning to its bad old ways.
6. It is clear that cultural homogeneity itself is a myth. A mere two decades ago,
homosexuality was not part of the allegedly homogenous Danish culture, but it is now
included in the cultural narrative (Andreassen 2012; Keskinen 2012; Petersen 2013).
Such examples show that the idea of cultural homogeneity has been a persistent part of
the discourse on a Danish national identity always under threat by some other group.
7. Discursive psychology is not a single approach to discourse analysis but includes
a number of methods. For examples, Michael Billig’s (1991) analysis of ideology implies
looking at larger structures of discourse, whereas Derek Edwards and Jonathan Pot-
ter’s (1992) approach is closer to Schegloff’s notion of conversation analysis focused on
talk-in-interaction and how people use categories in concrete settings rather than how
those categories function across settings in a more stable manner.
8. A growing number of studies across disciplines demonstrate that the dichotomy
between “us” (the “nation” or the “people”) and “them” (immigrants, Muslims) has
Notes to Pages 38–47 211
become a pervasive feature of European political discourse (e.g., Delanty, Wodak, and
Jones 2008; Fekete 2009; Krzyżanowski and Wodak 2009; Kundnani 2007; Lentin
and Titley 2011; Pitcher 2009; Reisigl and Wodak 2001; Scott 2007; Triandafyllidou
2001). The Danish context has been studied by Andreassen 2005, 2012; Betz and Meret
2009; Diken 1998; Hervik 2004, 2011, 2012; Hussain, Yılmaz, and O’Connor 1997;
Jacobsen et al. 2012; Jensen 2008; Keskinen 2012; Meret 2011; Sampson 1995; Schierup
1993; Siim and Mokre 2013; and Wren 2001.
9. The introduction discusses data and analytical methods. Also, Potter and Weth-
erell (1987) produce a similar table, showing that attributes have wide variations across
their own interviews with white New Zealanders about Maoris.
10. The noticeable pauses are marked with a dot in parentheses: (.); longer pauses are
stated as such. Interruptions or restarts (self-repair) are indicated with a dash (—).
11. The second statement about immigrants calling themselves with Danish names
to avoid discrimination indicates that they speak without an accent, so that only their
names give them away.
12. I leave “prejudice” in quotations marks to deny a direct access to reality without
the intermediation of language, against which a “prejudiced” version could be assessed.
In my theoretical universe, where language constructs versions of reality relative to
rhetorical function, the distinction between discourse and reality does not make sense.
I use the term “prejudice” as understood in its vernacular sense: adverse judgment
formed beforehand or without knowledge of the facts, people, or culture.
13. See Khosravinik 2010; Blommaert and Bulcaen 2000; and Phillips and Jør-
gensen 2002 for a more critical treatment of this point. For an interesting discussion
about whether larger constructs can be analyzed in discourse, see Billig 1999; Schegloff
1997, 1999; and Wetherell 1998.
14. This designation is routinely applied even to those born and raised in Denmark.
15. The respondents in my sample never use the terms “racism” or “racist,” confirm-
ing the common observation among scholars of race and immigration discourse in
Denmark.
16. Although Khader, in this utterance, is treated as an uncontroversial figure, he is,
in fact, quite controversial and has often been criticized for focusing on immigrants
and their culture as the root of the problem, not unlike the Turkish-German sociolo-
gist Necla Kelek or the Somalian-Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was contro-
versial before she left politics for a job in the United States in May 2006. Treating
Khader as uncontroversial helps Birgitte construct him as an authority who can testify
to the nature of the reality she describes. I am sure she knows he is controversial and
that her argument only works if it is not challenged by the interviewer (me). But this
is how it works: if each premise is challenged in each case, no conversation or interview
would be possible. Some definitions have to be treated as tacit facts if the participants
are going to be able to interact and talk about things. Without this, communication
would be even more interrupted and disjointed than it already is and would lack com-
mon ground on which people could communicate.
17. I am not sure that this issue could be solved with a more precise transcription
that shows intonation since intonation is often lost in translation or can be misunder-
stood by speakers of another language.
18. There is an inherent tension in this kind of analysis in that I may sound critical
of Birgitte for doing what she is doing in her context of speech. First, these are generic
rhetorical strategies common in all kinds of discourse and available to all kinds of
people. Attributing them to her in this context may seem to identify them as strategies
to justify racist discourse. A deeper moral and ethical tension arises around my posi-
tion as an analyst, which situates me as an expert who appears to know more about
the person than she does herself. Most discourse analyses are open to this criticism.
It is a difficult tension to resolve. Some analysts (i.e., conversation analysts) attempt
to counter it by rejecting the use of any category not used by respondents, therefore
avoiding imposing ideas, categories, intentions, or ideologies onto speakers.
19. According to the dictionary in my Lotus program, a mammal is “any of various
warm-blooded vertebrate animals, including human beings, marked by a covering of
hair on the skin and in the female, milk-producing glands.” One can argue that whales
do not exactly fit into this taxonomy of mammals.
20. Since this is an argument analysis, I have not numbered the lines.
21. As long as it is possible to reconstruct a proposition from its linguistic context,
that proposition can be considered to have been communicated (Quasthoff 1978: 25).
22. For Laclau (2014), the relationship between ontic content and ontological signi-
fication is not related to the relationship between actual statements and the category
they describe but the relationship between a privileged signifier—a particularity—and
a universality whereby the name of that particularity stands for an absent universal-
ity. It is, he proposes, a “movement from metonymy to metaphor, from contingent
articulation to essential belonging,” as when trade unions engage in antiracist struggle
for a long period and antiracism “becomes a part of the central meaning of the term
‘trade-union’” (63). For Laclau, the statements about “us,” although contingent, are
articulated in a chain of equivalences opposed to the antagonistic chain of equiva-
lences linked to “them.” I use the ontic/ontological distinction in a more flexible way. I
argue that it is not the particular content of what is attributed to a category that comes
to signify the category but the act of articulating these inherently contingent (and at
times contradictory) statements as if they signify antagonistic ontological categories.
23. As Andreassen (2012) and Jensen (2008) note, immigrants and Muslims have
come to be used synonymously even though there are any number of non-Muslim
immigrant groups.
24. “Perceived” here refers to the rhetorical treatment of difference as if difference
is given prior to discourse. It is difficult to know how people actually perceive things
because expressions of perceptions vary according to context.
25. Discriminatory practices that rely on justifications other than race (e.g., reli-
gious, biological, and cultural categories of difference) have been conceptualized as
neoracism (Balibar 1991), differential racism (Taguieff 2001), and cultural racism
(Blaut 1992; Stolcke 1995). Because my focus in this chapter is not on racism as such
but how a culturalized ontology of the social can be analyzed in discourse that is inher-
ently fragmented and disjointed, I use the term heuristically to refer to discriminatory
practices in general.
26. See Edwards 2003; Gotsbachner 2001; Khosravinik 2010; Reisigl and Wodak
2001; Wetherell and Potter 1992; van Dijk 1984, 1987.
Chapter 2
1. Akkerman and Hagelund 2007; Andersen 2002, 2004; Andreasen 2005; Larsen
1997; Borchorst and Teigen 2012; Diken 1998; Hjarnø and Jensen 1996; Schierup 1993;
Gaasholt and Togeby 1995; Hervik 1999, 2002, 2004; Hussain, Yılmaz, and O’Connor
1997; Madsen 2000; Necef 2000; Rydgren 2004; Togeby 2004; Wren 2001; Østergaard
2007.
2. “Indvandring og Islam splitter danskerne,” Jyllands-Posten, August 16, 2010.
3. These scholars are usually political scientists who study the far/radical/extreme/
populist Right and therefore describe the political world using political science termi-
nology. Their terminology does not always correspond to my terminology informed by
discourse theory.
4. The coalition government consisted of the two major mainstream right parties,
the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party, and the two small middle-right parties, the
Centrum Democrats and the Christian People’s Party. The prime minister was Poul
Schlüter from the Conservative Party.
5. These austerity politics were branded the “potato cure.”
6. This argument has also been transformed from a neoliberal argument to an argu-
ment for an ethnicized politics: since 2001, the Liberal/Conservative government has
used this argument to cut immigrants from the welfare system with the argument that
they need an incentive to find work and “integrate,” completely ignoring the fact that
discrimination is one of the reasons that immigrants are three and one-half times as
unemployed as Danes. The incentive argument is now rarely used regarding the unem-
ployed.
7. “Culturalization of discourse” is my phrase.
8. Or whatever various scholars call it: dislocation of political identities; the preva-
lence of sociocultural cleavages; transformation of the social structures. There is a gen-
eral agreement that a tectonic shift has occurred in Denmark (and in other Western
European societies) since the mid-1980s.
9. An election threshold is a rule that requires that, to elect representatives, for
example to the national parliament, a party must receive a specified minimum per-
centage of votes.
10. The Progress Party’s rhetoric was populist; it tried to mobilize “the people”
against “the corrupt elites” and demanded more referenda.
11. The technically correct term is “asylum seekers”; a substantial number of asylum
seekers never receive asylum and technically become refugees. However, I use the term
“refugee” for both categories.
12. In the twenty-five years before the surge, ten thousand refugees were accepted to
Denmark.
13. The term “politicization” does not do justice to the more fundamental trans-
formation of foreign/immigrant workers into Muslim immigrants, a process I call
“culturalization.”
14. One may point to the cultural “similarities” between Poland and the rest of
Europe as the reason for the relative absence of the controversy. However, the prospect
of receiving Polish workers was used as an argument against the European Union in
Denmark in 1990s.
15. For instance, stories that merely described the incoming number of immigrants
or governments’ allocation of extra resources were coded as neutral even though they
effectively contributed to the creation of a moral panic.
16. Manifest positivity or negativity: explicit arguments for or against immigrants,
immigration, or immigration law.
17. Again, repeating the news/editorial divide, only four out of nineteen commen-
taries (21.1 percent) were negative (against the immigration law), whereas fourteen
(73.7 percent) of them were very positive (up to arguing for Denmark’s ability to
receive even more refugees than the actual numbers coming in).
18. Letters to the editor and commentaries were the two genres where it was easy to
determine the tone of the single story.
19. “Quota refugees” are refugees who come to Denmark through the United
Nations Commission on Human Rights according to an annual quota. Ninn-Hansen
had proposed an increase in the annual quota as a way of closing off the border for
other refugees who came to Denmark on their own.
20. Of course, controversy also exists around crime, but the counterarguments
would usually be represented by reform groups who share with the authorities basic
definitions of the problem (e.g., pedophilia). Alternative views are repressed within
this consensual view. The discussion of crime would then be pushed onto the terrain
of the pragmatic: Given that there is a problem about crime, what can we do about it?
21. I admit that numbers alone do not say much. Each instance is grounded in
concrete stories and events, each enlisting a particular set of explanations, arguments,
and rhetorical and generic devices that are difficult to express in numbers. My conclu-
sions about the dominance of cultural perspective in later periods involves more than
quantitative content analysis.
22. No news story in this period (1984) focused on refugees’ culture, and there were
only two letters to the editor emphasizing cultural difference as a problem.
23. As noted above, I did not include local papers in content analysis, although there
were more stories from local papers in my data sample than from national newspapers.
They may have had a more direct influence on public perceptions of the issues because
they often illustrated general information about numbers and problems with local
details. Many Danes read at least one local paper besides a national one.
24. “Unemployed” is not a general category of people without employment but a
particular category of people who are considered as being temporarily out of work.
They are entitled to maintain their membership in labor unions and receive so-called
unemployment insurance during the unemployment period.
25. The cultural elite was also included because they were the main promoters of the
humanitarian approach to refugees.
26. Berezin (2009), for example, is one of the few scholars who argues that immigra-
tion is not a sufficient condition for the contemporary Right. She argues that Europe-
anization is the driving force for the right-wing populist parties.
Chapter 3
1. Public opinion research shows us that there are a number of problems associated
with the aggregation of “individual opinions” as an expression of public opinion or
will. For conceptual problems, see Blumer (1948), Bourdieu (1979), and Potter and
Wetherell (1987); for measurement problems, Glynn et al. (1999), Herbst (1993, 2011),
and Goidel (2011); for an overall view, see Moore (2008) and Lewis (2001). It has never
been clear to me what Habermas’s (1971) notion of deliberative rationality would look
like in actual discourse.
2. I translated the text of both ads. See appendixes 2 and 3.
3. It is ironic that his ideas about the threat to Danish culture by alien cultures are
now adopted by some members of the feminist movement against whom he raged.
4. He did not use the terms “silent majority” or “Upper Denmark” in his ads, but
the terms were a key part of his rhetoric in the entire controversy.
5. I do not read rhetorical effects out of a particular text, insofar as the effect of
a text is not so much embedded in the text itself as meaning, but in its interaction
with other texts and utterances. It is possible to analyze rhetorical moves that present
a particular version of reality as the reality itself, but any rendering of reality is fragile
once put forward, and it does not necessarily have an influence outside the boundaries
of the text. As noted in the introductory discussion of Bakhtin’s ideas about language,
I take discourse to be inherently responsive to other utterances in text or speech. The
effects of Krarup’s rhetorical strategies can therefore be read in the reactions to his
intervention.
6. The positioning has some rhetorical resonance with what Gramsci (1971) called
an “organic intellectual,” one distinguished by the ability to direct the ideas and aspi-
rations of the working class to which he structurally belongs (3). Krarup, of course, is
no Marxist. He occupies a position of privilege relative to most Danes, but creates for
himself a kind of organic identity emerging from the naturally Christian, antagonism-
free, and culturally exclusive nation of Danish people constructed in the ad.
7. Content analysis is a limited tool for making sense of his access to the discourse.
The numbers, as coded, do not do his influence justice. According to my statistics, he
was the main source for 12.7 percent of the stories on Refugee 86. The problem is that
the stories on Refugee 86 were not only about Krarup’s call for boycott but included
many other topics, such as how many volunteers had registered as collectors. These
stories do not have Krarup as the source or the subject of the story, but even a story
about the number of volunteers would implicitly be about Krarup’s boycott campaign
in the sense that the number of volunteers was taken to be indicative of the success of
the boycott. Content analysis cannot register this kind of contextual information.
8. It was well known that the official line of the Danish government was to col-
laborate with Nazis during the occupation and that the authorities sent Danish com-
munists and Jews to Nazi concentration camps. The number of “resistance fighters”
was relatively small; and after the war ended, there were instances of people beating
up Danes who had worked for Germans or had slept with German soldiers, which
indicates that Danish people were not united against German occupiers. It is only after
the war that this small number of resistance fighters was made to signify the “entire”
Danish people.
9. As is often the case with fundraising, it later became clear that contributions had
not reached the pledged amount, despite the intense campaign. There were also several
comments and letters to the editor from collectors who described people’s reception of
them as hostile or at best cold.
10. A “war of maneuver” is a frontal attack on one’s enemies, whereas “war of
position” refers to a slow process of preparing for a “system change,” which Krarup
declared had been achieved by the mid-2000s. Thus, “war of position” involves a long-
term “ideological” struggle for setting the agenda and changing the perceptions.
11. Krarup characterized leftists as people who cared more about their image than
about knowing what was going on. The evil character of the political Left and the
mainstream had more to do with their ignorance and self-obsession than any desire to
destroy the country. Arrogant in their “noble” naïveté, they think evil can be prevented
by silence. He offers typical right-wing discourse applied to immigration, race, and
ethnicity: the tolerant liberals are naive; their arguments may sound noble but do not
address reality, so their naïveté makes them dangerous (van Dijk 1991, 1993).
12. For example, in live debate in TV, he represented the “negative” side together
with Ole Hasselbach, the chairman of the Danish Association, Pia Kjærsgaard of the
DPP, and Per Madsen against the “positive” side, Jacques Blum, Ebba Strange, MP for
the Socialist People’s Party, Thorkild Høyer, a lawyer for refugees, and Ann Pedersen
from Friends of Refugees. Even this constellation indicates the hegemonic position
Krarup’s claims were acquiring: the contenders were continuously being forced to con-
tend with his claims.
13. Shared Path (Fælles Kurs) was a small party formed in 1986 by breakaway mem-
bers of the Communist Party. The party’s election campaign was also based on populist
rhetoric, the main elements of which were limiting immigration and withdrawal from
the European Community (later the European Union).
14. The Left Socialists later formed an alliance with other small left-wing groups
call the “Unity List,” and entered the Folketing again in 1990s. Having learned their
lesson, this time their election campaign was purely anti–European Union, speaking
to the nationalist sentiments that had always been strong among Danes.
15. A decade later, another immigrant/Muslim expert, Naser Khader, who enlight-
ened Danes about the importance of religion in Muslims’ lives in his book Honor and
Shame (1996), became one of the most influential politicians in Denmark and was an
MP for the most “immigrant friendly” party, the Social Liberal Party (Det Radikale)
until his right-wing leanings became clear; he left the party in 2007 to form a new
party, New Alliance (now Liberal Alliance). He left that party in early 2009 and joined
the Conservative Party a couple of months later. It is not surprising that he became a
senior fellow at American right-wing think tank, the Hudson Institute. He followed
a path similar to that of the Dutch politician Ayaan Ali Hirsi, who was an MP for
an “immigrant friendly” party in the Dutch parliament only to end as a fellow at the
American Enterprise Institute.
Chapter 4
1. A systematic analysis would show that many of the crises were provoked by the
same actors. Kåre Bluitgen, who provoked the Danish cartoon crises by postulating
that he could not find a caricaturist who dared to draw an illustration of the prophet
Mohammed, provoked several controversies and crises around Muslim immigrants in
collaboration with the daily Jyllands-Posten.
2. The prognosis was challenged by scholars who argued that a prognosis that spans
more than a century could not be made in any rational way and that this was a deliber-
ate act on the part of the right-wing Jyllands-Posten in its ongoing efforts to create cri-
ses around Muslim immigration. The paper asked some economists from the Danish
Statistical Institute to produce a population prognosis for the newspaper for the next
century. They published it in the midst of a slow news period when the debate would
not be drowned out by other news, and the story was published immediately before
the publication of an official report that discussed the values upon which the future of
Denmark should be built (and an assessment of the actual state of immigrants’ integra-
tion into these values).
3. “Cultural radicalism” is a specific Danish phenomenon that describes the pro-
gressive cultural elite’s criticism of the old cultural norms. They were critical of reli-
gious thought and Victorian sexual morality; they were known for their humanism,
internationalism, and antimilitarism. They were considered to belong to the Left.
4. Some of the responsibilities of the old minister for internal affairs were moved
over to the health minister.
5. See appendix 1.
6. See appendix 1 for a full list of the values and norms to which immigrants must
declare allegiance.
7. The party’s spokespeople had criticized Muslims several times for their gender
practices in the early 1990s. Liberal Party MP Inge Dahl Sørensen: “It is a huge prob-
lem that there are some Muslims in Denmark who go for selling of brides, forcing
young girls into marriage, female circumcision, polygamy and other forms of women
subjugation, child abuse, child rearing and punishment traditions that belong to the
Middle Ages, and much more that is in conflict with Danish laws and current moral
values” (Politiken, February 23, 1994).
8. A floating signifier is a demand that receives “structural pressure of rival hege-
monic projects”: positioned between two equivalential articulations, its meaning
remains indeterminate. The “floating dimension becomes most visible in periods of
organic crisis, when the symbolic system needs to be radically recast” (Laclau 2005:
131‒2).
9. Claus Hjort Frederiksen, the minister for employment from the Liberal Party,
admitted that the Liberals and the DPP share core values: “We are all concerned with
the cohesive force of Danish society. We are concerned with what it means to be Dan-
ish and the core values such as freedom of speech and democracy. We were in the same
struggle against the experts who in fact spoke with political motivations” (“The Liber-
als and the DPP Share Values,” Politiken, September 22, 2006).
10. See http://www.humanisme.dk/hate-speech/ for a list of people who have made
xenophobic statements.
11. See chapter 1.
12. The operative word here is “clientalization,” which is used by Rasmussen and in
official government documents, not only about immigrants but in general.
13. The leader of the party, Kristian Thulesen Dahl, who replaced Pia Kjærsgaard
in 2012, was himself an “ultraliberal” who defended open borders and zero public
spending while he was the chair of the youth section of the Progress Party in the 1980.
His resistance against the European Community (EC) was more about the “socialist
bureaucracy” of the EC.
14. The editorial was specifically referring to the government’s sale of the public
energy company DONG to Goldman Sachs, tax relief for corporations, and the gov-
ernment’s tribute to the “competitive state” (see below).
15. The political goal for a competitive state is to enable the nation to powerfully
compete in the global economic competition; a politics based on the neoliberal dogma
that the optimization of the private sector’s competitive position in the global markets
is the only way to sustain the welfare state (Hemerijck 2013).
16. Personal conversation with Yıldız Akdoğan.
17. Andreassen reports on similar interviews in the television news in which parents
complain that public schools do not teach Danish children about Danish culture any
more (Andreasen 2005, chapter 7).
18. This notion is usually misinterpreted as if hegemony is a system that incor-
porates its opponents in its differential system in an ever-expanding manner. This is
a misunderstanding of hegemony theory: a hegemonic project needs some kind of
constitutive antagonism that leaves out certain social groups outside its boundaries.
Conclusion
1. I remember the feeling in mid-1980s Denmark, where repeated crises around

immigrants had created the feeling that the actions of the alien immigrants had
become indefensible. One must also note that the left was repeatedly criticized for
being naive and ignorant of the real problems, which were constantly on the agenda in
cycle after cycle of moral panic concerning immigrants’ deviant behavior.
Appendix
1. “Nej, ikke en krone!” translates literally as “No, not one krone!”

2. Øjster Højst, Ho, and Blokhus are small towns where the inhabitants did not
want Iranian refugees to be housed and were criticized by the chairman of the Danish
Refugee Council.
3. Gilstrup was the leader of the only anti-immigrant party at the time, the Prog-
ress Party.
4. All three prominent defenders of refugee rights: Baunsgaard was an MP for the
social-liberal Det Radikale Venstre, Wilhjelm for the Left Socialists, and Espersen for
the Social Democrats.
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Index
“absent fullness,” 113 political, 6, 7, 8, 9, 12–13, 21, 58

Academy for Migration Studies in Den- racist, 136
mark, 150 populist, 189
Akdoğan, Yıldız, 172, 179, 218n16 Association for Danish Refugee Friends,
Aktuelt, 95, 127, 210n7 89, 104
Andersen, Jytte, 161 Association for Municipalities, 111
antagonism, 30, 105, 127, 141, 143, 177, asylum, 69–70
182 in Denmark, 73–75, 89–91, 109–18
antagonistic categories, 49, 86, 140–41 asylum seekers, 29, 206, 213n11
antagonistic relationship, 22, 33, 34, Australia, 121
98–100, 113, 140, 194 Austria, 74, 121, 144, 193
cultural, 58, 63, 123, 153, 167, 187
hegemonic, 137 Bak, Thor A., 111, 114, 203
logic of, 198 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 11, 133, 215n5
political, 96 Berlingske Tidende, 24, 25, 81, 89, 91–92,
social, 22, 28, 151, 155, 181 107, 109, 210n7
anti-European Union, 100, 216n14 Billig, Michael, 27, 54, 210n7, 211n13
anti-immigration, 82, 125, 130, 139, 173, Birgitte, 39–41, 44–47, 57, 211n16,
176 212n18
anti-immigrant parties, 129 Board for Ethnic Equality (Denmark),
anti-Muslim, 6, 7, 30, 99, 111, 176 164
antiracist, 5, 25, 26, 57, 135, Brix, Stine, 183
anti-Semitic, 2, 185 BT, 24, 25, 81, 89, 91–92, 169
“Art, Blasphemy and Freedom of Expres-
sion,” viii, 1, 184 capitalism, 22, 65, 151, 174, 175
articulation cartoon crisis (Denmark), 24, 179, 216n1
antagonistic, 95 censorship, 108, 185
articulatory logic, 93, 197 Center Democrats (Denmark), 68, 115
hegemonic, 21–22, 28, 36, 103, 133, chain of equivalence, 21, 212n22
140, 181–82 Charlie Hebdo, ix, 1–2, 179, 184–86, 188.
of differences, 12 See also France
231
232 Index
Christian People’s Party (Denmark), 68, and essentialism, 55, 132, 177
213n4 Muslim culture, 2, 17, 56, 136, 141,
churches (Denmark), 116 148, 168, 187
class struggle, 7, 61, 151, 157–58, 170, 173, Western culture, 8, 56, 186
179, 191 See also class struggle; elites, ontology
(vs.) cultural struggle, 148, 163–64,
183, 189 DA. See Danish Employer’s Association
coalition governments (Denmark), 49, (DA)
61, 68, 101–2, 144, 163, 213n4 The Dane (Danskeren, journal), 126
Commission for Racial Equality (UK), Danishness, 26, 33–35, 86, 102, 150, 167,
191 169, 177
“common interests,” 12, 19, 141, threat to, 111, 145, 161
173 Danish Association (Den Danske
Confederation of Labor Unions (LO) Forening), 26, 118–19, 125–26,
(Denmark), 110, 174 216n12. See also Far-right organiza-
Communist Party (Denmark), 216n13, 4 tions
Conservative People’s Party (Denmark), Danish Broadcasting Corporation (DR),
59, 61, 68–69, 88, 129, 110, 121, 161, 15, 105, 117, 177
170, 210n7, 213n4, 215n15 Danish Center for Human Rights, 164.
content analysis, 25, 27, 146, 214n21, See also human rights
214n23, 215n7 Danish Employer’s Association (DA),
corporations, 183, 218n14 110
crisis of representation, 7, 29, 63–64, 95, Danish identity, 35, 39–40, 102, 161
101–2, 115, 118, 175, 188–89, 195 cultural, 35
Croydon, Brian, 175 national, 119, 143, 161
culturalization See also identity
culturalized ontology of the social, 29, Danish Immigration Service
36, 55, 159, 169, 212n25 (Udlændingestyrelsen), 70, 73, 75,
of discourse, 5, 17–19, 57, 62, 191, 78, 88
213n7 Danish Ministry of Interior, 30, 160,
of immigrants, 27 165
of immigration debate, 29, 120, 132 Danish Parliament (Folketinget), 9, 25,
of political discourse, 174, 177, 189 61, 67–68, 69, 72–74, 102–3, 118,
culture 129, 144, 162, 164, 216n14
“clash of cultures,” 132 Danish People’s Party (DPP), 6, 31, 49,
cultural cohesion, 8, 164, 189 96, 118, 119, 137. See also Far-Right
cultural difference, 16, 18, 29, 37–38, parties
41, 46, 49, 57, 85–86, 133, 142, 147, Danish political system, 67, 83
155, 157–58, 165, 179, 191–92, 214n22 Danish Red Cross, 88, 90, 109, 127
cultural elite, 164, 173, 214n25 Danish Refugee Council (DRC), 24, 80,
“cultural racism,” 18, 19 95, 96, 103–5, 107, 109, 111, 113–14,
cultural struggle, 148, 163–64, 183, 189 127, 131, 134, 202–6, 218n2
cultural threat, 9, 23, 102, 120, 131, Democratic Muslims (Denmark), 179
183–184, 189 Denmark
cultural values, 19, 28, 30, 43, 62, 140, cartoon crisis, 24, 179, 216n1
160, 188–89, 193 churches, 116
Index 233
coalition governments, 49, 61, 68, November 20, 2001: 24, 119, 137, 143–
101–2, 144, 163, 213n4 44, 150, 161, 162, 163
far-right organizations, 118 June 18, 2015: 172, 175, 176, 177, 183
left-wing parties, 70, 129, 169 elites, 95, 104, 139, 164, 173, 189, 194,
political system, 67, 83 214n25
right-wing newspapers, 89, 91–92 Ellemann-Jensen, Uffe, 87, 110, 117, 129
right-wing parties, 162 emancipation, 8, 39, 169, 179
See also asylum; elections in empty signifier, 10, 12, 28, 32, 34, 105,
Denmark 113, 136, 186–87, 198
Det Fri Aktuelt. See Aktuelt English Defense League (UK), 193
dichotomy, 36, 45, 56, 98, 136, 144, 161, epistemology, 159, 169, 177
210n8 Espersen, Lene, 161
discourse Espersen, Ole, 89, 203
analysis, 27, 212n18 Eurobarometer 2000 survey, 149
analysts, 180 European Union (EU), 34, 106, 119, 165,
analytical approaches, 35–36 167, 185, 213n14, 216n13
culturalized, 27, 29, 36, 124 European populist right, 100
discursive psychology, 27–28, 35–36, Europeanization, 7, 49, 60, 174, 214n26
52, 210n7 Extra Bladet, xi, 10, 24, 25, 91–92, 104,
discursive repertoire, 33, 36, 84, 86 110, 127, 136, 141–42, 179
discursive resources, 15–16, 28–29, 32– extreme right, 6, 106
34, 36, 41, 47, 50, 84
dominant, 41 Fadel, Ulla, 37–38, 40
field of discursivity and, 21, 33, 85 false consciousness, 12
heterogeneity of, 32, 188 family reunion/reunification, 9, 29,
racist, 117, 212n18 128–32, 136
variations in, 23, 36 Far Right
discrimination, viii, ix, 5, 18, 31, 42, 46, organizations, 118
50, 57, 166, 169, 211n11, 213n6 parties, 6–7, 25, 61, 96, 193, 195
discriminatory practices, 193, 212n25 populism, 121, 195
discriminatory system, 194 Feldbæk, Ole, 161
racial, 18, 38 female circumcision, 3, 166, 167, 187,
dislocation, 63, 95, 213n8 217n7. See also gender equality
Documentation and Advisory Center on feminism, 158, 168–69, 215n3
Racial Discrimination (Denmark), feminists, 8, 122, 169
xi, 164 West as feminist, 194
DPP. See Danish People’s Party (DPP) See also gender equality
DRC. See Danish Refugee Council floating signifier, 21, 169, 217n8
(DRC) FN. See National Front (FN)
DR. See Danish Broadcasting Corpora- “folk devils,” 23, 64, 67, 195
tion (DR) Folketinget. See Danish Parliament
forced marriages, 3, 4, 141, 142, 166, 167,
elections in Denmark 169. See also gender equality
December 8, 1981: 68 foreign workers, 9, 13, 70, 135, 156–57,
September 8, 1987: 125, 129–30 192. See also “guest workers”
December 12, 1990: 175 Fortuyn, Pim, 121
234 Index
Foucault, Michel, 21, 209n3, 209n5 headscarf, 22, 37, 38, 160–61, 168–69
France, ix, 1–2, 9, 120, 144, 157, 184–85, Heath, Edward, 122
187, 190–91, 193. See also Charlie Hedetoft, Ulf, 150, 163
Hebdo hegemony
freedom of religion, 2, 160, 166 hegemonic crisis, 23, 29, 64, 66–67,
freedom of speech, 17, 22, 186 116, 119, 175, 189
and democracy, 2, 217n9 hegemonic discursive order, 63–64
See also Charlie Hebdo hegemonic formation, 28, 30, 36, 41,
Freedom Party (Netherlands), 6 58, 98, 181–82, 187
Fyens Stiftstidende, 90 hegemonic order, 57, 58, 180, 181
hegemonic projects, 21, 58, 133, 152,
gang rape, 3, 22, 141, 142, 163, 187 159, 217n8
gender equality, 22, 30, 141, 166–69, 187 hegemonic struggle, 34, 116, 197
arranged marriages, 165 Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, 5
female circumcision, 3, 166, 167, 187, populist 8, 99
217n7 right-wing, 173, 183, 187, 196
forced marriages, 3, 4, 141, 142, 166, social democratic, 61, 95
167, 169 theory, xiii, 32, 67, 218n18
gay rights, 8, 100, 169, 184, 190 See also Laclau, Ernesto; Laclau,
See also homosexuality Ernesto, and Chantal Mouffe
Germany, vii, ix, 1–2, 9, 76, 80, 89, 90, Heiselberg, Svend, 84
91, 152, 155, 185, 190, 192, 193, 210n5. heteroglossia, 11
See also Nazism “historical bloc,” 8, 19, 20, 23, 30, 58, 98,
Gil-Robles, Alvaro, 165 123, 170, 176, 187
Glistrup, Mogens, 68, 111, 203 Hollande, François, ix, 184–85
globalization, 6, 7, 49, 60, 61, 62, 139, homogeneity
174, 184, 189 cultural, 34, 35, 49, 153, 157–58, 188,
Goffman, Erving, 14 190, 210n6
Gramsci, Antonio, 8, 20–21, 23, 58, 64– ethnic, 68, 152, 155, 158
65, 123, 151, 162, 170, 215n6 homosexuality, 35, 57, 167, 168, 193,
Greece, 194, 197 210n6
Grundsøe, Leif, 130 honor, 52–54, 150
“guest workers,” 9, 69. See also foreign crime, 2
workers killing, 141–42, 187
Hornbech, Birte Ronn, 161
Haarder, Bertel, 165 Horst, Christian, 132
Haider, Jörg, 144, 121 human rights, 3, 8, 75, 106, 116, 165, 173,
Hakkerup, Karen, 170, 171 185
halal Danish Center for Human Rights,
chocolate candy, 10 164
hippies, 42, 43, 45, 46 United Nations Human Rights Coun-
meat, 31, 172 cil (UNHRC), 118, 126, 214n19
Hall, Stuart, 16, 20, 65, 83, 87, 148
Hammerich, Paul, 110 “identity,” 3, 17
Hansen, Thorkild, 116 cultural identity, 22, 132–33, 149–50
Hanson, Pauline, 121 Muslim, 182
Index 235
ideology, 16, 20–21, 210n7 Kenyan Asians, 121, 122. See also United
dominant, 180 Kingdom
“immigrant,” 9, 16, 19, 32–33, 49, 60, Khader, Naser, 42–43, 216n15
148, 169 Kipketer, Wilson, 36–37
alien immigrants, 94, 171, 218n1 Kjærsgaard, Pia, 119, 126, 127, 157,
immigrants’ culture, 16, 18, 85, 128, 216n12, 217n13
131–32, 141, 178, 192 Krarup, Søren, 96
immigrant youth, 46, 53, 147, 162 boycott campaign, 97–98, 109, 118–19,
immigrant worker, 69, 120, 136, 138, 215n7
149, 178–79, 183, 213n13 intervention by, 102–7
non-Western immigrants, 8, 9, 193 rhetorical strategies of, 25, 108–17
immigration See also Refugee 86
“illegal immigration,” 76–77 Kristeligt Dagblad, 131, 160
policies, 7, 125, 137, 152, 196 Kurtulmuş, İrfan, 178
immigration law(s), 79, 81, 89, 107, 115,
125, 163, 165 labor unions, 3, 12, 62, 68, 95, 134, 156–
of 1983: 24, 69, 71, 73, 81, 82 57, 178, 214n24. See also Confedera-
restrictions to, 79, 87, 125 tion of Labor Unions (LO)
and Søren Krarup, 102–3, 107, 108, Laclau, Ernesto, xiii, 13, 35, 56, 63–64,
109 98, 100–101, 113, 162, 169, 177, 196–
unpopularity of, 113 97, 212n22, 217n8
Industry Council, 111 and Chantal Mouffe, 5–6, 11–13, 20–
Information, 110, 161 22, 34–36, 49, 122, 139, 150, 157, 181,
institutionalization, 58, 162, 193 209n3
Independence Party (UKIP) (UK), 6 Langballe, Jesper, 118, 144, 206
integration, 5, 85, 135–36, 143, 160, 165, langue and parole, 11, 209n1
171 Larsen, Engelbreth, 25, 97, 105, 106, 126,
contract, 192, 193, 199, 200 136
institutions, 187 Left, the
Ministry for Refugees, Immigrants left-wing parties (Denmark), 70, 129,
and Integration (Denmark), 30, 169
165 mainstream, 7, 30, 101, 189–90
Islamophobia, vii, 3, 18–19, 50 Left Socialists (VS), 68, 135, 136, 169,
216n14, 218n4
Jacobsen, Mimi Stilling, 115 Le Pen, Jean-Marie, 144
Jenkins, Richard, 34–35 Liberal Alliance (Denmark), 216n15
Jespersen, Karen, 126, 137, 143, 147, 160, Liberal Party (Venstre), 30, 32, 84, 87, 88,
169–70 110, 129, 131, 137, 143, 161–62, 164,
Jessen-Petersen, Søren, 126 167, 169–70, 172–74, 175, 217n7,
Jews, vii–ix, 1, 8, 155, 185, 215n8 217n9
Jorgensen, Anker, 68, 128–29 libertarian, 7, 139, 174
Jørgensen, Dan, 172 Ljørring, Latifa, 31
Jyllands-Posten, xi, 24–25, 80–81, 89, 91– LO. See Confederation of Labor Unions
92, 160–61 (LO)
and Krarup, 96, 103, 107, 109, 131 Lund, Torben, 73
and Refugee 86, 117 Lykketoft, Mogens, 175
236 Index
Madsen, Per, 126–27, 130–32, 136 19, 21, 35, 41, 59, 94, 98, 123, 150,
Margrethe, Queen, 87, 95, 110, 138 187
Marxist, 8, 96, 163, 191, 215n6 ontologies of the social, 13–14, 17
“meatball wars,” 31, 151, 171 opinion polls, 60, 82, 93, 112, 113, 148–
metonym, 13, 16, 198, 212n22 49. See also public opinion
Ministry for Refugees, Immigrants and “organic intellectual,” 108, 112, 215n6
Integration (Denmark), 30, 165 Orientalist, 136
Ministry of Interior (Denmark), 30, 160, Østergaard, Bent, 8–9, 24, 69, 86, 93, 118
165
Mouffe, Chantal. See under Laclau, panic stories, 73, 88, 89, 91–92
Ernesto parallel societies, 3, 190, 191, 192
multiculturalism, 158, 176, 132–33, 191–92 Pedersen, Eigil, 88
Muslim culture, 2, 17, 56, 136, 141, 148, Pelle the Conqueror, 8
168, 187 Politiken, ix, 24–25, 80, 81, 91–92, 110,
Muslim immigrant, 30, 137–38 119, 130, 160, 168, 210n7
alien, 29, 108, 116, 153, 155, 187–88, 194 polysemy, 10, 33–34
figure of, 8, 22, 138, 179 “popular will,” 97, 113
“Muslim threat,” 59, 60, 116, 123, 162, “populism,” 96, 99
179, 189–90, 193 Islamist, 194, 198
Muslim women, 38–40, 148, 167–69. See Latin American, 198
also headscarf; gender equality neopopulism, 7
populist hegemony, 8, 99
National Front (FN) (France), 6, 120, populist parties, 6, 99–100, 214n26
121, 191 populist rhetoric, 30, 99, 112, 189, 195,
Nazism, vii, ix, 105, 198, 215n8 216n13
neoliberalism, 194–98 Poulsen, Troels Lund, 167
neoliberal consensus, 175 Powell, Enoch, 97, 121, 122
neoliberal government, 68, 122, 173 prejudice, 40–42, 44–46, 48, 53, 57, 126,
neoliberal policies, 49, 61, 105, 139, 180, 211n12
179 privatization, 139, 175
Netherlands, 6, 121, 190, 192, 193 Progress Party (Fremskridtspartiet), 68–
9/11 attacks. See September 11, 2001 70, 87–88, 111, 118, 126, 129, 135,
Ninn-Hansen, Erik, 69–75, 78–84, 88– 139, 142, 174, 213n10, 217n13, 218n3
91, 93, 95, 102, 109, 116, 125, 130–31, progressive politics, 5, 8
214n19 public opinion, 122, 148–49, 214n1
Norway, 190
Queen Margrethe, 87, 95, 110, 138
objectivity, 83–84
ontology Race Relations Bill (UK), 122
cultural ontology, 28, 47, 52, 54, 57, “racism,” 57, 86, 111, 211n15
63, 134, 148 “cultural racism,” 18, 19
new ontology of the social, 30, 170 “petite racism,” 93, 110, 111, 136
ontic content, 12, 13, 56, 212n22 Rasmussen, Anders Fogh, 137, 143, 163–
ontological categories, 12, 34, 36, 38, 64, 170–71, 173, 217n12
133, 151, 182, 212n22 Rasmussen, Poul Nyrup, 136
ontological structure of society, 12, 13, Rasmussen, Vibeke Storm, 127
Index 237
Reagan, Ronald, 68 Socialist People’s Party (SPP), 19, 68,

Red Cross (Denmark), 88, 90, 109, 127 174, 216n12
Red-Green Alliance (Denmark), 179, solidarity, 150
183 class, 49, 148–49, 164
Refugee 86 campaign, 103–4, 107–11, ethnic, 49, 78
114–18, 124–25, 128, 134, 202, 215n7 international, 103
rhetoric Sørensen, Torkil, 127, 134
rhetorical analysis, 27 Søvndal, Villy, 19, 167, 170, 176
rhetorical devices, 53, 86 Spain, 1, 9, 190, 194, 197
rhetorical resources, 74, 94, 121, 136 SPP. See Socialist People’s Party
rhetorical situation, 14, 22, 56 (SPP)
rhetorical tool, 56, 85 squatters, 93
Right, the Statistics Denmark, 9, 131, 217n2
mainstream, 99, 159, 184, 190, 213n4 subject positions, 182
right-wing papers (Denmark), 89, Sweden, 2, 74, 80, 89, 187, 190
91–92 Sweden Democrats, 6
Royal, Segolene, 6 Swedish immigrants in Denmark, 8,
10, 155–56
Sarkozy, Nicolas, 6, 185, 187
Saussure, Ferdinand, 10–11, 209n1 terrorism, ix, 2, 185, 187, 190, 200
Schlüter, Poul, 95, 128, 213n4 Thatcher, Margaret, 68, 122
SDP. See Social Democratic Party (SDP) Thorning-Schmidt, Helle, viii, 31, 163,
September 11, 2001 (World Trade Center 183, 185
attack), 6, 144, 193 threat
Shahadeh, Hussein, 133 cultural, 9, 23, 102, 120, 131, 183–184,
Shared Path (Folles Kurs), 129, 216n13 189
signification, 4, 11, 32, 56, 58, 137, 212n22 to Danishness, 111, 145, 161
signifier, 10, 69, 103, 153, 212n22 immigrants as, 191
empty signifier, 10, 12, 28, 32, 34, 105, “Muslim threat,” 59, 60, 116, 123, 162,
113, 136, 186–87, 198 179, 189–90, 193
floating signifier, 21, 169, 217n8 to welfare system, 49, 183
silent majority, 97, 108, 110, 112, 121–22, Tidehverv (Epoch), 105–6
189, 196, 215n4 Toulmin, Stephen, 28, 50, 52
Simonsen, Thorkild, 110, 136, 143 trade unions, 61, 156, 212n22
Slumstrup, Finn, 108, 117
social democracy, 61 UKIP. See Independence Party (UKIP)
Social Democratic Party (SDP), 61, 68, United Kingdom (UK), 1, 65, 121–22,
95, 125, 126, 128, 156, 162, 183, 210n7 185, 190, 191, 193
Social-Demokraten (newspaper), 156 United Nations Convention for Refu-
social harmony, 22, 28, 165, 191 gees (1951), 69, 165
social horizon, 19, 27, 47, 59, 63, 123, 139, United Nations Human Rights Council
148, 187 (UNHRC), 118, 126, 214n19. See
Social Liberal Party (Radikale Venstre), also human rights
25, 55, 61, 68, 210n7, 216n15 United States of America (USA), 51, 97,
“socialism,” 22, 156 121, 161, 194, 198, 211n16
Socialist Left (VS), 129 University of Copenhagen, 120
238 Index
values welfare system, 49, 69–70, 77–78, 122,

common, 8, 83, 151, 163 142–43, 170–71, 192, 213n6
cultural, 19, 28, 30, 43, 62, 140, 160, Western culture, 8, 56, 186
188–89, 193 Western Europe, 99, 213n8
shared, 16, 19, 171, 186–87, 189, 192, Western European party systems, 7,
194, 196 61
value politics, 175, 176 Western liberal democracies, 9
universal, 8, 185, 191 Wetherell, Margaret, 14, 28, 50, 211n9
Vang, Anne, 31 Wilders, Geert, 16, 121
Vesselbo, Eyvind, 131 women’s movements, 106, 167–68
Vestkysten, 127 oppression of women, 22, 119
VS. See Left Socialists (VS) women’s rights, 174, 192
See also feminism; gender equality
Wallace, George, 97, 121 World War II, 113, 151, 185, 192
“war of maneuver,” 123, 215n10 workers associations, 30, 178–79
“war of position,” 123, 128, 216n10 “working class,” 12, 26, 33, 61, 78, 98,
“war on terror,” 193 174, 210n3
warrant, 50–52, 54–55 working class organizations, 61, 156
Wedersøe, Gitte, 114 working-class voters, 7, 139, 174
welfare
welfare benefits, 49, 94, 101, 143 xenophobia, 64, 68, 81, 86, 111, 114, 121
welfare democracy, 152, 153
welfare fraud, 187 youth
welfare state, 60–61, 63, 68, 100, 138– Danish, 47, 88
140, 150–51, 154, 156, 161, 172–75, immigrant, 46, 53, 147, 162
184, 218n15 Turkish, 126

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How the Workers Became Muslims

How the Workers Became Muslims

University of Michigan Press

This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations,

Published in the United States of America by the

2019 2018 2017 2016 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data

In early 2015, I went to a lecture by a European scholar about Islamophobia

I have never been in favor of banning racist or hate speech. First, it is a

rie Krag, Marius Sylverstersen, Rikke Kamstrup, and Camilla Rasmussen.

the Governmentalization of Islam in Europe conference in Frankfurt an der

New Orleans, May 2015

An earlier version of chapter 1 was published in Journal of Language and

Chapter 3. Rhetoric of the Hegemonic Intervention 101

My grandparents came of age in France in the 1930s. Then as now, disquiet

They faced discrimination as Turks, “Pakis,” or Arabs. The second genera-

lim immigration has become commonplace, even in mainstream media. The

A Short History of Immigration to Denmark

To realize that neither immigration nor negative attitudes toward immigrants

Western liberal democracies. Both Østergaard (2007) and Lucassen (2005)

The first two decades (1964–­84) of debate on the latest immigration

Theoretical Framework: Heterogeneity of the

A unitary language is not something given . . . but is always in essence

Thus, “Every extra-­artistic prose discourse . . . cannot fail to be oriented

which any systematic language is an attempt to suppress heterogeneity by

Rhetorical Texture of Society: Discourse and Heterogeneity

the course of an ongoing interpretative process, how do we account for the

Culturalization, Culture, and Identity

Race, Racism, and Islamophobia

norms, and values, is used to ontologize immigrants—­an ontologization that

The obvious methodological challenge in examining the culturalization of

that the welfare system (or democracy) is now presented as anchored in a

Ideology provides the “cement” in a social formation, “preserving the

Reality is framed, in my words, within the ontological horizon of society.

way in medical discourse, where it becomes a “nodal point,” as opposed to

Moral Panics and Crises

If discourse is full of variations, inconsistencies, and contradictions, how can

Data and Analysis

There is a consensus among scholars that Denmark experienced a swift right-­

most consistent “immigrant-­friendly” line throughout the project period.

ganizations particularly engaged with immigration, such as the racist and

This book is concerned with social change. I am interested in how, in fewer

Right—­resulted in publicity that created a moral panic concerning refugees

Discourse and Hegemony

A heated public debate about Danish culture and Muslim immigrants

Empty Signifier: Common Sense

stances of an entity, they can be overdetermined by a limited number of fea-

tagonistic divide. What the empty signifier—­“Dane,” “Danishness,” “Dan-

totally myself, as it cannot achieve a full presence: “Its objective being is a

Heterogeneity and Culturalized Discourse

An analysis that is attuned to Laclau and Mouffe’s framework, and that is

Kenya-­born, black track-­and-­field athlete who won the 800-­meter world

Table 1.1. Danish and Non-­Danish Attributes

to avoid a sweeping generalization about immigrants by a respondent in-

Table 1.2. Statements about Immigrants and Danes

prejudiced on a dichotomous list—­in its larger context, providing a deeper

right? One of them, it was we simply shouldn’t touch this at all—­

what I mean them—­if you have immigrant background, you are

My first observation is that the interview moves in a circular and contra-

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The first two decades (1964–84) of debate on the latest immigration

Thus, “Every extra-artistic prose discourse . . . cannot fail to be oriented

norms, and values, is used to ontologize immigrants—an ontologization that

There is a consensus among scholars that Denmark experienced a swift right-

most consistent “immigrant-friendly” line throughout the project period.

Right—resulted in publicity that created a moral panic concerning refugees

tagonistic divide. What the empty signifier—“Dane,” “Danishness,” “Dan-

Kenya-born, black track-and-field athlete who won the 800-meter world

Table 1.1. Danish and Non-Danish Attributes

prejudiced on a dichotomous list—in its larger context, providing a deeper

right? One of them, it was we simply shouldn’t touch this at all—

what I mean them—if you have immigrant background, you are

The argument can be set up in a following T-schema (fig. 1.1).

Fig. 1.1. T-schema (Whales = mammals)

In three-line argument above, the warrant has a scientific authority about it

Mikkel describes immigrants as violent people—a characterization that

Fig. 1.2. T-schema (honor)

We do not need the T-schema in order to analyze this feature of discourse,

The Mid-1980s: A Turning Point

into the labor market, refugees were to go through a nine-month integration

As indicated earlier, scholars point to the mid-1980s as a turning point in

To counter the consensual humanitarian approach, Ninn-Hansen and the

tinction was countered with testimony from police officers or Ninn-Hansen.

Ninn-Hansen declared on September 9, 1986, that if the trend continued,

Muslim immigration the far-right populist forces have increasingly become

The populist-style intervention came from a well-known right-wing colum-