Danish Rightist government award to shoah negationist

This video says about itself:

Chris Bowlby investigates how the far right is influencing mainstream European politics.

He travels to Scandinavia where anti-immigration parties are increasingly powerful.

The Danish People’s Party has cleverly used its hold on the balance of power to introduce harsh measures.

In another video, which used to be on YouTube, the

Leader of [the extreme Right] Danish Peoples Party, Pia Kjaersgaard, [is] caught in her own words. “Also Danes [do] crimes -but that is not the problem!” – Meaning that crimes by so called “wrong Danes” are more crimes than crimes made by “real Danes”? Orwell would have enjoyed this.

The present Rightist government in Denmark of Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen are staunch allies of George W. Bush, one of few governments to at first support Bush’s invasion of Iraq; even though even they later announced they would withdraw their occupation troops.

They depend for their majority on parliament on the votes of the lunatic fringe far Right party of Pia Kjaersgaard.

Quite some chickenhawk supporters of George W. Bush’s warmongering until recently did not know the difference between Denmark and Portugal, let alone between Denmark and Sweden.

That changed somewhat during the ‘Danish cartoon controversy’ in 2005-2006. That was started by the biggest corporate newspaper in Denmark, Jyllands-Posten. Jyllands-Posten had a tradition of supporting Mussolini since the 1920s and Hitler since the 1930s. It had refused to publish cartoons of Jesus Christ, offered to them by cartoonists; and had campaigned not for free speech, but for banning such cartoons in media which it did not control itself (the ‘worst’ one of these Danish Jesus cartoons showed him having an erection. According to Christian dogma, Jesus Christ is both fully divine and fully human. As fully human beings of the male sex usually have erections, that cartoon cannot be said to be really anti-Christian. At least certainly not to the same extent that the cartoons commissioned by Jyllands-Posten, depicting the prophet of Islam Muhammad as connected to bomb throwing terrorism, can be said to be anti-Muslim).

Contrary to the Danish Jesus cartoons, made by cartoonists on their own initiative, Jyllands-Posten sent messages to Danish cartoonists urging them to draw cartoons for them on Muhammad; implying that if they would not do so, it would name and shame them as cowards.

The political purpose of Jyllands-Posten and their supporters with this cartoon affair was to make the position of immigrants from Muslim countries worse, pushing them into a second class citizen position. And perhaps, to increase support for Bush’s wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. The damage to the Danish export economy, embassy buildings, etc. by sharp, sometimes violent, reactions in Muslim countries, surprised them.

Some of the supporters of <a href="http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/cart-f15.shtml&quot;>Jyllands-Posten in this affair depict Muslims as one monolithic evil block, guilty of all sins, including anti-Semitism; and, by implication, Jyllands-Posten‘s side as knights in shiny armour, free from such sins.

Already the 1920-1940s history of Jyllands-Posten with Mussolini and Hitler etc. should give pause here.

And now, from the Simon Wiesenthal Center in the USA, more news from Denmark which gives pause:

Wiesenthal Center To Danish PM: Withdraw State Award To Holocaust Denier

July 18, 2007
Paris

The Simon Wiesenthal has urged Denmark’s Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen to void a monetary award by the Ministry of Culture’s Art’s Council (Kunst Raadet) to Erik Haaest, dubbed the “Holocaust Sceptic” in the Danish media.

In his protest to PM Rasmussen, Dr. Shimon Samuels, the Wiesenthal Center’s Director for International Relations wrote in part: “Haaest reportedly received this prize for his work on “The Danish Friekorps on the Eastern Front 1941 – 1965” – hardly a symbol of Danish national pride, [part of Hitler’s SS]” adding, “Haaest’s citations in Holocaust denial literature go back to the 1959 volume of the Journal of Historical Review published by the institute of the same name, frequented by neo-Nazis worldwide.”

Dr. Samuels cited the Culture section of DR Nyheder, which, under a photo of the gas chamber states, “Erik Haaest questions existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz KZ in Poland.” Another publication reports Haaest as declaring Anne Frank’s diary “A swindle.”

The Wiesenthal Center protest declared “your government’s award to Haaest violates the commitments of Denmark to the European Commission and to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. This act legitimizes Holocaust denial, incitement to antisemitism and is an offense to Holocaust survivors and to the families of all victims of Nazism. Our Center urges you to immediately withdraw this outrageous award, to investigate its circumstances and publicly dismiss those responsible.”

“Silence would only be construed by hatemongers as a seal of approval,” Dr. Samuels concluded.

For more information, please contact Shimon Samuels on +336 09 77 0158.

Read Letter To Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Karen Armstrong on Islamophobia: here.