I hope our Danish readers will weigh in here, because I don’t know enough about Danish domestic politics to evaluate these responses. However, I’ll go out on a limb and assume this is fairly representative of mainstream opinion.
What I notice is that what HA says is being dismissed without directly addressing the issues raised by the outlaw bikers. Everything bad that’s said about Hells Angels could be true — they’re cynical, manipulative criminals just out to enhance their street cred and swell their membership.
But what about the main problem they raise? What about the fact that ordinary working-class Danes face increasing violence generated by immigrants?
The people who suffer most from the Muslim gang situation do not live in opulently peaceful neighborhoods like Hellerup. They can’t afford to hire bodyguards. What about them?
Anyway, here’s what The Copenhagen Post said:
Denmark: Hells Angels Take a Stand Against ‘Jackals’
Experts call the latest move by Hells Angels an attempt to recruit more members in the face of gang conflict
OK, so we begin by dismissing what HA said. They’re just recruiting. We can safely ignore them, right?
Police, politicians and experts have expressed concern about the escalating gang conflict after the Hells Angels biker club published a damning manifesto targeting Muslims and immigrants on its website.
[…]
The Hells Angels biker club and its support group AK81 have long been linked to an on-going battle for control of the criminal trade with criminal immigrant gangs.
I don’t think there’s any argument about this: Hells Angels are (at least in my part of the world) a criminal gang riding Harleys.
But is a turf war all there is to their current surge? Or is something else going on?
Experts said the manifesto, coupled with Nielsen’s recent appearance on a popular morning television show, were attempts to sway the popular mood towards Hells Angels by creating an ‘us versus them’ mentality.
The idea here is that there was no issue until the Hells Angels became “divisive” and provoked the immigrants, in an effort to attract attention and recruit more people.
So was there no problem with immigrant gangs before the bikers stirred them up?
And here comes more of the same, but with the imprimatur of a credentialed university professor:
- - - - - - - - -
Associate professor of sociology Michael Hviid Jacobsen of Aalborg University said that the move is part of a campaign to recruit young people to Hells Angels.
‘To that end, he makes himself, the other Hells Angels and the Danish public the victims when he talks about us having been subjected to violence by immigrants,’ said Jacobsen.
‘At the same time it’s very dangerous to play the ethnic card because it will act as a red flag to the immigrant groups. The risk of the conflict escalating is probable,’ explained the sociologist.
This is the important part to remember: From an elite perspective, the danger of “ethnic issues” didn’t exist until the Hells Angels created it.
That is, only the actions of white people can cause trouble. Whatever the immigrants do — rob, vandalize, assault, rape, murder — is not the problem.
Only when white people get fed up and take action is there a problem. The issue wasn’t around before. It had no prior existence.
According to the Powers That Be, Hell’s Angels are not a sign of desperate problems in need of urgent attention. They just demonstrate that ethnic Danes tend to be inherently evil racists, like Hitler, unless you watch them carefully and control their behavior.
Chief superintendent Per Larsen of the Copenhagen Police said Nielsen was not helping the situation.
‘Jønke is fanning the flame, but in our view at the moment this is not about an ethnic conflict,’ said Larsen. [emphasis added]
Notice that Superintendent Larsen left a little door open: there may be an issue of ethnic conflict sometime in the future.
His colleague Kim Kliver at the National Police’s National Centre of Investigation (NEC) concurred, but said that they would not try to reason with Nielsen.
‘There’s no value is entering into an open dialogue with him,’ said Kliver.
Justice spokespeople for the Danish People’s Party, the Social Democrats and the government’s Conservatives all wrote off the manifesto as rhetoric designed to divide the public.
So the politicians are unanimous: the Hells Angels are bad dudes. They’re divisive fellows who only seek to inflame and divide an otherwise placid populace. Their violent response is excessive, unnecessary, and uncalled for.
My intuition (not to mention our Danish correspondents) tell me that this is not true.
The media and the ruling class can form their cordon sanitaire around this sort of sentiment, but — just as with Geert Wilders and the PVV — the word gets out anyway.
I’ll bet that when the average Dane reads these news stories, he draws an entirely different conclusion from what’s expected of him.
Hat tip: TB.
8 comments:
Ruling elites are not bothered so much by regular street crime, as it does not directly affect them. The areas they live in are generally free of low-level crime.
Ruling elites are bothered by non-governmental actors who attempt to take the place of the government as the protector of the populace, since the existence of such tends to undermine the legitimacy of the government, and their status as the ruling elite. The ruling elite desire a situation where nobody can get justice or protection except via the good graces of the ruling elite, and such justice or protection is dependent upon the favor of the ruling elite.
I've been following the media dissing this manifesto as just an attempt to recruit on the basis of racism. That misses two vital points:
- The manifesto explicitly and strongly denounces racism, and makes it clear that it's neither about race nor about religion.
- The manifesto reads as a sincere statement based on experience. These people seem to speak their minds, and not without intelligence.
Dissing HA probably has an implicit purpose of not wanting to face up to the problems caused by the 'jackals'. That could be embarrassing, for the authorities have no clear response to this.
And we need to counter this current of ugly behaviour in our streets and our society. Our authorities need to devise a way to counter it, or we may end up seeing HA as our protectors rather than the police. That would not be good.
I have seen no hint, so far, of police or others trying to take the problems pointed out in the manifesto seriously. They should.
A little aside: The biased coverage seems to disreetly discourage people from reading it. No wonder...
Actually one person seems to take the problems mentioned seriously: Peter Skaarup of Dansk Folkeparti. He cautiously mentioned that HA does strike a note among ordinary Danes with this. He's chairman of the Committee of Justice in the Danish Parliament.
Your intuition is quite on the mark, if you read HA's Guestbook (in Danish) you will see massive support from Danes of all kinds for the Jackal Manifesto, and also gratefulness that somebody is willing to not only speak the truth but also to fight back.
Naturally there is a few voices that runs counter to this but they're scattered and far apart. Interesting is also that there are a few entries from people who purports to be immigrants of arabic descent that supports the Jackal Manifesto.
Another interesting thigs is that the daily Politiken (the Pravda of the Elite) had an article by a "researcher", Frank Hvilsom, who said: Even though HA is putting distance to racism, the manifesto describes that it is about resistance against those people, who by terror, threats and violence frightens innocent Danes.
So now we have a "researcher" telling us that if you offer resistance to those that uses terror, threats and violence against innocent Danes, you're a racist!
And naturally the "researcher" implicitly connects "arabs and muslims" to those that do those things to innocent Danes, however, to say it out loud would be an act of racism!
And Politiken just swallowed the whole thing without even noticing or tasting the poison...
I find this "manifesto as recruiting tool" a little dubious.
If Denmark is anything like here (USA) there is no shortage of men looking to join the HA. They are the Cadillac of Biker Clubs. To join the HA is not that easy. They dont just take ANYONE and the potential member known as a "Prospect" can go through as much as a year (sometimes longer) of grunt work before getting patched in. Thus AK81.
To help read the HA Guestbook Google Translate can help you -- unfortunately you cannout paste the URL of the Guestbook into the translator (as it redirects immediately to the original Danish text) so cut and paste the sections you want translated will do the trick.
Now most of the political parties in Denmark have played the 'racist' cards too, declaring that this is all about racism, and for that reason they won't bother to deal with the problems. OK, perhaps they didn't phrase it exactly that way :)
The exception, of course, is Dansk Folkeparti.
The Danes need a few chapters of the Guardian Angels
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