They’re at it Again in Nørrebro

I wasn’t going to report on Saturday night’s riot in Nørrebro, but so far three readers have written to us, perplexed that Gates of Vienna didn’t cover the story. It’s Danish, it involves violence and mayhem — how could we not cover it?

So here goes.

Yesterday morning I found the Breitbart story about the riot, but I couldn’t locate much additional information in English:

63 Arrested in Copenhagen Clashes

A protest by hundreds of youth activists turned violent early Sunday, with protesters setting fire to street barricades and cars and smashing shop windows, police said. Officers used tear gas to disperse the crowd.

Authorities said 63 people were arrested as riot police clashed with rock-throwing youth in the Noerrebro district of Copenhagen.

The unrest started after a demonstration late Saturday commemorating the Youth House, a makeshift cultural center for the city’s anarchists and disaffected youth that was demolished in March.

“It’s six months since we cleared the house there, and they want to show they’ve not forgotten,” police spokesman Mads Firlings said. “Almost immediately they started building barricades and throwing rocks through the windows of shops and banks.”

He said police used tear gas to disperse the crowds who set fires to barricades and cars, including a police vehicle that had been abandoned by officers fleeing the angry mob.

Notice that the “youth” in the photo doesn’t look very young, is fat, and has his pants falling down.

It was obvious from the news story that the autonomer of Ungdomshuset were flexing their muscles again. There was much more news about it in Danish, but it’s a lot of work for me to read all that.

So I emailed one of my Danish contacts, and asked him whether it was worth reporting on. Here’s what he replied:

No… The usual suspects. Squatters and “autonome”. Only this time the TV reported (gasp…) that local “immigrants” took part.

On this site you can click the fotoserie to see some pictures. The funny thing is that earlier today they included a photo of a woman serving hot coffee to the policemen at her window. That photo mysteriously disappeared.

Danish TV News this time (another jaw-dropping gasp) interviewed four or five local citizens who all furiously condemned the scumbags.

And the thugs are planning yet another “party” Thursday.

There are some videos here.

TV2, like most MSM TV sites, doesn’t seem to have any permalinks to their videos. I found the Nørrebro riot video by scrolling down and looking on the right sidebar; there’s a caption that reads Fredelig søndag nat på Nørrebro, “Peaceful Sunday night in Nørrebro.” As of this writing, it’s still there.

I’ve written about Nørrebro’s riots before, and the autonomer, although an entertaining bunch as Danish anarchists go, don’t merit that much attention. Like their “antifascist” comrades in other countries, they are prone to break windows, burn things, throw rocks at the pigs, and generally épater les bourgeois. But after a while each story is just another cut-and-paste repeat of all the previous ones: A bunch of spoiled brats take to the streets, burn some cars, bust things up, create general mayhem, and get arrested. Same story, different day.

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Nørrebro is a district of Copenhagen just west of the Peblinge Sø and the Sortedams Sø, over the Queen Louise Bridge from Frederiksborggade and downtown Copenhagen (click the map for a larger version). In the news photos you’ll see a damaged McDonald’s: that’s right in the heart of Nørrebro.
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It’s a mixed neighborhood. I took a walk down Nørrebrogade with Steen and Fjordman last spring, and parts of the area look like the rest of Copenhagen; that is, inhabited by Danes of various types who ride bikes, go shopping, like to drink beer in sidewalk cafés, etc.

But there are also many “youths”, of both the anarchist stripe and the ethnic stripe, in Nørrebro. We saw plenty of women wearing the chador, and lots of young people of Middle Eastern and African appearance.

Down a side street not far from Assistens Kirkegård is a district known as “Little Somalia”. Notice in the photo at right that all the visible lettering is in English, strangely enough. You can see the “Sultan Halal Pizza and Grill”: according to Steen, virtually every pizza joint in greater Copenhagen is owned by Muslims.

Some of the housing projects in the area are considered dangerous, even by the police. Others are just normal lower-to-middle class areas, but with a lot of immigrants in evidence.

And then there are the autonomer, the anarchist “youths” with all their fellow-travelers on the hard left. Nørrebro has a substantial seedy Bohemian component, the preferred environment for the autonomer, in which they swim like fish in the sea.

Last March the Copenhagen police successfully evicted the autonomer from Ungdomshuset, “the Youth House”, a building in Nørrebro in which they had been squatting for years. Since then the youths have neither forgotten nor forgiven the crimes that the racist imperialist lackey police perpetrated against the valiant defenders of the proletarian revolution.

Hence the riot last weekend. According to my Danish correspondent, another one is scheduled for Thursday. We’ll just have to wait and see.

The interesting thing about his report is that there was an “immigrant” component to last Saturday’s entertainment. That’s an innovation in Danish radical violence: up until now, the anarchist “youths” and the immigrant “youths” had been ideological fellow-travelers, but had yet to stand side-by-side on the barricades.

That situation now seems to be changing.