Fighting for Danish Values

Our Danish correspondent TB has translated an article from Thursday’s Kristeligt Dagblad about a no-nonsense politician from the Danish People’s Party:

Thulesen Dahl wants to end Muslim immigration to Denmark

What would Danish immigration policy look like if the DPP’s most powerful man Kristian Thulesen Dahl could design it himself?

You will find a sharp fighter for values in Kristian Thulesen Dahl from the DPP.

Most people know him as the DPP’s powerful chairman and strategist who has managed to secure the heavy DPP influence on matters related to finance policy in recent years. On matters related to immigration, however, he has left the task for others. But make no mistake about it: If Kristian Thulesen Dahl could decide on his own, Denmark would demand a lot more of immigrants in this country. He thinks that all the talk about integration is superficial. If society is going to work, we need to talk assimilation. That people with an origin other than Danish should adapt fully to Danish traditions.

If Thulesen Dahl were to become prime minister, veils would be prohibited in the public sector, the 24-year-rule would be made into a 28-year-rule, Denmark would receive refugees primarily from the Western cultural sphere, many immigrants would be moved by force away from the ghettoes, and Muslims would refrain about asking questions about the sausages at the local city party.

If Denmark is to continue to be a society where the strongest shoulders bear the biggest burdens, there should also be a limit to how many Muslims it can contain, Thulesen Dahl thinks. According to official statistics there are around 210,000 Muslims in Denmark. And that is enough, if you ask Thulesen Dahl

“Well, it’s hard to regulate stuff like that. Of course, a Dane who wants to convert to Islam is allowed to do so. With me as prime minister you will have freedom of religion. Therefore we cannot regulate the number. But in my personal opinion, I do not feel that there is room for more people with a Muslim background,” says Thulesen Dahl.

That is why the 24-year-rule would be changed to 28 years if he were the prime minister. If it were up to Thulesen Dahl alone the rule would also be made country-specific, so that it would be primarily directed against family reunification of young people from the Middle East. Thereby making it easier for a Danish man who had been married to a Brazilian girl, for example, to gain family reunification.

With Thulesen Dahl as prime minister the Danish authorities will also have a higher degree of leeway to choose which refugees they want to come to Denmark. He wants Denmark to be able to say no to refugees from Muslim countries in the Middle East.

“I advocate a quota for refugees, so that as much as possible they come from countries with which we share a common culture. But then I would also be ready to take a larger share of the quota refugees,” he says.

Thus will the refugees and immigrants find it easier to adapt to Danish culture, Thulesen Dahl thinks.

“This way there will be fewer immigrants, but they will have an urgent desire to become part of Danish society for better or worse. In mid-Jutland we sometimes makes jokes about taking a domestic flight from Billund to Turkey. It is simply not acceptable. Then we get conflicts and confrontations between two cultures and two religions,” he says.

With assimilation come demands. If Thulesen Dahl had a majority in the parliament, the authorities would be allowed to intervene and dictate the rules of the game for immigrant families in Denmark. If the families do not comply, society should be authorized to withdraw public economic benefits. He thinks that the authorities are way too reluctant to “confront the culture”.

Social workers should be able to move families away from the ghettos by force. They must make sure that children go to Danish kindergartens. And they have to guarantee that the parents speak Danish to their kids. The social workers should start demanding that these families watch DR or TV2 instead of Arab TV channels, Thulesen Dahl says.

Would you forbid the Muslim veil all together?

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“Yes, if I could decide freely, then I would do that,” says Thulesen Dahl, and adds that he does not want to pass laws about how people dress at home.

While Thulesen Dahl wants to make laws about what people wear on their heads, he does not want to dictate what they should eat. He is happy when Muslims living in Denmark do not adhere to their religion too much to eat a pork sausage during the local city party in his hometown Thyregod, but he won’t make it a specific demand.

“I don’t want to decide what other people should eat. Some people are vegetarian. I am not. But I respect it. I also respect people who say that there is something which they are not going to eat. I do not eat monkey brains, if I can avoid it,” he says.

When you want to make specific demands on specific population groups who come to Denmark, doesn’t it undermine exactly that sense of unity which lies in the principle that we all have the same rights?

“No, on the contrary. What is happening right now is that many of the Danes who pay a high tax to finance the party have a feeling that the money is more or less wasted on people who come to Denmark but do not want to become part of Danish society,” Thulesen Dahl says.

The Danish People’s Party has had a huge influence on all changes in the Danish immigration law since 2001, and they constitute the parliamentary foundation of the government’s immigration policies.

TB adds this comment:

Exactly that fact: the last sentence in the above article, in addition to the cartoon crisis, will probably save us in the long run. DPP makes the difference. Along with a relatively well-informed Danish population in general.