An Interview With A Progressive From Denmark
What American Leftists Don't Get About Why Social Welfare Succeeds In Scandinavia
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I have a longtime friend in Denmark with whom I was pen pals when I was younger. Louisa, born Marie-Louisa Mertz in Copenhagen in 1984, and I started writing to each other when I was 15, and if not for the internet, we probably would’ve lost touch. But the arrival of AOL Instant Messenger in 1998 and Facebook in 2004 made communication much easier than asking my mom for a stamp and mailing letters.
Also, Louisa came to the United States to study public administration from 2003 to 2008, living in Virginia, Washington, D.C., and ultimately Atlanta, Georgia, before returning to Copenhagen, where she currently lives with her American-born husband and their three children. She lived in London and Brussels early in her career, working for NGOs and the European Union, before she married and settled in Copenhagen.
Today, she works for the Danish government1, and because her in-laws are Americans from Southern Virginia, she regularly follows news out of the United States. We often talk about American politics and culture. We had a conversation earlier this week about the government shutdown, healthcare, and how Danes are often referred to as the happiest people in the world. She wasn’t surprised by that, but she cautioned that Americans who think they can recreate the society in Denmark that makes Danes unhappy are “not being honest with themselves.” Her experience living in the United States, being married to an American, and being my friend for almost 30 years has given her insight.
Here is a transcript of my interview with her that I conducted on Tuesday, October 14th:
Nick: Thanks Lou for doing this. What is the most surprising thing you learned about the United States from when you lived here and through knowing and spending time in Virginia with your in-laws?
Louisa: The most surprising thing I learned about America from living in America and from being exposed to my husband’s family and community is how much Americans dislike each other, especially, not exclusively, along racial, ethnic, and regional lines. Even my in-laws have had experiences with their neighbors where they try to get them in trouble or want something bad to happen to them. It’s insane. I absolutely agree that it feels like way too many Americans take sadistic pleasure and pride in hurting their fellow countrymen. There is very little, what’s the word?
Nick: Comradery?
Louisa: Yes. We don’t really have that problem in Denmark. We like each other, and you don’t. Americans, it feels like you don’t want certain people to get benefits like healthcare, housing, or education, even if you might also benefit from it. You don’t think every American deserves it, which we think every Dane does. My husband says it isn’t racism, it’s just a sense of pride. That there is something righteous about denying yourself a benefit to avoid someone undeserving of it from getting it. Like a religious sacrifice. It’s a concept that is completely foreign to us.
Nick: Why is that? Is Denmark less racist?
Louisa: I don’t believe Denmark is less racist. Danes are often very racist. It’s been almost 20 years since I lived in the US, and perhaps things have changed like you suggest, but I was actually surprised by how defensive white kids I went to university with were toward fellow students who were Muslim, so soon after 9/11. In Denmark, Muslims are often treated horribly, even at university.
I did notice how different American society felt off campus compared to on campus. University definitely seals you in a bubble, and I think that’s probably why your left wing is so out of touch with people who live where [my husband] comes from.
I also think our history has a lot to do with it, too. Denmark, like much of Europe, was destroyed in World War II. The war hurt everyone, rich and poor. While that generation is dying out - and perhaps that’s why there’s a shift to the right - World War II and the feudal period before the 20th Century made collective spirit part of our culture. The United States has never, to my knowledge, had the type of national collective suffering Denmark had in World War II, and has no feudal past. You were created to be the opposite of Europe.
Nick: Right-wingers in America say universal healthcare and free education and all those things progressives want here can succeed in Denmark because the country is 86 percent Danish. If Denmark were as diverse as the US, it wouldn’t work. What do you say to that?
Louisa: Unfortunately, I think your right-wing is correct that is a major reason why we have the social benefits we have. As you’ve said before, white people in America are often not as angry about other white people abusing social benefits as they are non-whites or immigrants. That is also true in Denmark; it’s just that we have far fewer non-white people here than you do. You see how fast Danes sound like right-wing Americans when the topic is immigration and communities with changing demographics. The Great Replacement Theory is gaining support here and is leading to the type of racist rhetoric you see with Trump. Even [Prime Minister] Mette [Frederiksen]2 is far more anti-immigrant than your Democratic Party. Her immigration policies are very similar to Trump’s.
Nick: Right now, one of the arguments Republicans are making is that Democrats want to provide healthcare to undocumented immigrants. Some progressives support this and argue that single-payer systems elsewhere do this. Does Denmark’s single-payer healthcare system cover undocumented immigrants?
Louisa: We do not. Undocumented migrants are covered for emergency care in the hospital, but they are unable to access non-emergency care through our healthcare system unless they are here legally. Even some of the far-left parties support keeping it that way. We don’t have a huge undocumented population, however, due to our strict rules.
Nick: In America, Gen Z men are trending right and are quite right-wing compared to our generation. Is that true in Denmark as well?
Louisa: Yes. All over Europe. There is a growing right-wing movement among Young Danes that sounds more like your Libertarian Party—low taxes, smaller government, but also rights for the marginalized. A lot of younger Danes are unhappy, even with our social welfare system, because they feel like too many people are taking advantage of it. They are angry about changing communities because of legal immigration. They are propagandized by the same influencers online as American men, who tell them there is more abuse of the system than there is, and the system exists to take away their opportunity to give handouts to others. They tell them that Muslims will take over their communities. You hear it a lot with young Danes in their teens and 20s.
Nick: There are far-left parties in Denmark, too, that run on democratic socialism and left-wing parties, correct?
Louisa: Yes. The Green Left and Enhedslisten. They’re actually considered the opposition, but they do not have a lot of national support. The Green Left helped bring down our last left-wing government in 2014, and a lot of left-leaning voters never forgave them for that. Enhedslisten, my husband calls it the Bernie Sanders party, does well in Copenhagen, but they don’t have any real support outside of the highly educated and young urban liberals.
Nick: Sort of like DSA and Zohran Mamdani in New York City
Louisa: Yes, the similarities are certainly there.
Nick: Copenhagen, like many American cities, has a large social and economic left-wing voting bloc that doesn’t exist in rural Denmark, where the population is less diverse. Is that the case?
Louisa: Right, I think as we talked about before, this makes the idea of left-wing populism a bit more complicated. Even here, there is a lot of anti-Muslim and anti-migrant and even anti-Eastern European sentiment among many left-wingers outside Copenhagen, especially among men. In Copenhagen, where diversity has always existed, this isn’t a big problem, but migrants are moving to smaller towns in Jutland for example and changing the culture there and I guess it makes sense that its a lot scarier to see foreigners moving into your small towns where there are fewer of you than in a big city like Copenhagen.
Nick: You mentioned the far left parties, but who is the far right in Denmark and do they have any significant support?
Louisa: We have a far-right party, the People’s Party. They lost nearly all their seats in 2022. However, [People’s Party leader Morten] Messerschmidt has moved the party in a more left-wing direction economically, while embracing far-right ideas like Great Replacement Theory. He was popular in the early 2010s, but lost his momentum after Trump won the first time, and with global backlash to that. At least one recent poll had them close to second place. I think there is a real possibility with their momentum that they may be in a position to try to form a government after next year’s elections.3 Frederiksen embracing hardline immigration policies starved Messerschmidt of support, but the far right influencers propagandizing young voters is overcoming that now it seems. Also, they’re gaining because the center-left has been in power for a very long time.4 Interestingly, the far right is even seeing growth in support in Copenhagen, which is scary.
Nick: The biggest swings to Trump in the last election were in cities. Even my neighborhood in New York City swung from Biden +34 to Trump +1. Is that happening in Copenhagen?
Louisa: Appears to be. It’s happening in other cities in Europe too. I can understand why, even if I dont’t agree with it. When I lived in Brussels, I had colleagues who lived in an area of the city called Molenbeek. You’ve been there.
Nick: Yes, in 2015.
Louisa: Right. It’s always been a poor area, where a lot of artists and young people lived Bohemian lifestyles, but because it's a poor area, it’s become a haven for immigrants, specifically Muslim immigrants. When I worked in Brussels, my colleagues told me horror stories about men threatening to rape them for not wearing hijabs and I had trouble believing it but I went there and saw a Muslim man beating a Muslim woman with what looked like a walking stick in front of an apartment block and when others tried to intervene, we were told it was because she went outside without her husband’s permission, and this was just how that community was. I thought ‘This is Europe, they can do that to her, she has rights.” I definitely understand the fear that immigrants will come to your town, become the majority like they did in Molenbeek, and then start stripping Danes of their rights and instituting rules like that. I mean, I don’t believe it will happen, but the fear is there. And remember, Europe has a long history with Muslims. You just read about the Ottoman Empire, right?
Nick: Yes, but that was hundreds of years ago.
Louisa: You listen to some of these podcasts young men are listening to, and they tell you immigration is the backdoor way Muslims are trying to reinvade Europe because they were unsuccessful hundreds of years ago. In Austria, there’s a guy with a podcast who calls migrants “the third Siege of Vienna.5”
Nick: The internet, social media, probably exacerbates that by blowing it up and flooding people’s phones with that stuff.
Louisa: Yes, TikTok is just crazy with videos of people saying Sharia Law is now in effect in Brussels or Paris or Hamburg. And as much as I’d like to say it’s all lies, some videos show stuff like what I saw in Brussels. And that was almost, what? 15 years ago? Danes don’t want that in their towns, and it's hard to convince them that most Muslims aren’t like that when that is happening in places like Molenbeek. And the People’s Party is trying to capitalize on that. They’re having a hard time doing so because our main left-wing party has been validating those anti-migrant sentiments too and starving them of support. Democrats aren’t doing that in America and your left wing doesn’t want them to.
Nick: American progressives point to Denmark and Scandinavia as models for what we should do here. What do you say to that?
Louisa: I think American left-wing supporters take the wrong lesson from Scandinavia. They project on us a society that want to have that really doesn’t exist. There are tradeoffs we make in order to have healthcare, education, public transit and a robust social welfare state is that we have to embrace traditional values and nationalist sentiment and restrict immigration. Left-wing people in America just don’t do that or want to do that. Even the far left in Denmark love Denmark and Danish culture. As you’ve asked before, is that true of left-wing people in America? I don’t know. No.
Louisa knows Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen personally. She worked for her when she was Minister of Employment in 2012.
Prime Minister Frederiksen is the leader of the left-wing Social Democratic Party, which is part of a centrist coalition government with center-right parties.
The next Danish election must be held on or before October 31, 2026.
Frederiksen was elected prime minister in June 2019, ousting the center-right government of Lars Rasmussen.
Reference to the two Sieges of Vienna by the Ottoman Empire, in 1529 and 1683, where Ottoman Muslims tried to take the Austrian capital and ultimately conquer all of Europe.
The whole not liking each other thing... This is something I've noticed but my personal biases led me to assume that was right wingers. A lot of my right wing associates all talk shit about each other. None of them truly support nor encourage each other. It's like groups of frenemies.
And you can see it by how they talk to each other. People keep gaslighting each other pretending they're just joking and it's all in good humor, but it's not. You can feel the tension and resentment.
I actually think there's a lot more to it just based in this whole hating one's neighbors.
Dane here. I just fell like i have to correct some things.
1. Denmark was not destroyed after WW2. Denmark had a policy of co-operation with Nazi Germany after the occupation. The occupation was only fought by a small band of rebels in the danish army in southern Jutland, who had been told to lay down their arms. The occupation was sanctioned by the danish king to the public and it consisted of a small delegation of Germans that even just took the local ferry across the straights.
2. The co-operation with the Nazi's was done by a center party called Radicale Venstre (Radical Left. The party wasn't radical or left though, quit more like a conformist center party) and it was justified during and after the war with the fact that the Germans would have demolished Denmark, had we tried to resist the occupation.
3. Some buildings in Denmark was bombed by the British because they where thought as being held by the Nazi's. But the destruction that Denmark sustained during the war was minimal.
4. The aftermath of WW2 saw a persecution of the people that publicly supported the Nazi's or that gained power and influence from them. These people where called "Tyskervenlig" or in english German-Friendly. This part of our history certainly didn't contribute to the cohesion of our society. To this day people throw around word like Nazi and Fascist , though its mostly people on the left that do it.