Social kontrol – Side 3 – Danish-American Eyes on Society

Nej, vi taler ikke for meget om indvandrere, flygtninge og integration – det gælder Danmarks fremtid

De små poder i klasselokalerne bliver afgørende for, hvad vi vil med vores samfund og demokrati.

We are not talking enough about immigrants, refugees and integration – the future of Denmark is at stake

Elementary school children are crucial when it comes to where we want to take our society and democracy.

The other day I listened to P1 Debate , where the Radical Left’s Samira Nawa Amini argued that “foreign policy and foreigner debate ” takes up too much space.

I disagree with that. The consequences of immigration affect all parts of society. Whether we relate to education policy, welfare policy, penal framework discussions, housing policy , etc. , etc. , the influence of Islam and immigration is crucial to how we want Denmark to develop in the future.

Furthermore, we should be able to agree that the challenges will not disappear if we make the ostrich Swede model, stick our heads in the sand and close our eyes to the problems.

Unfortunately, Denmark has become a society where strong forces are at stake, working hard to use the democratic rights that Danish law allows for non-democratic indoctrination.

Take e.g. the debate on independent schools. The first free school saw the light of day in 1852 as a reaction to the public peasant school’s strict principles of discipline and memorization of especially biblical texts. The founder Chresten Kold saw imagination and creativity as the driving force behind children’s professional development, his thoughts were inspired by NFS Grundtvig.

So far so good, it all sounds very healthy and completely in the Danish spirit.

Unfortunately, work is underway to set up indoctrination schools where children learn that the only true faith is Islam.

Danish legislation gives free schools the opportunity to determine their own student composition and build on their own values. When the legislation was passed, no one had foreseen how it could be abused.

The schools have no requirements for the teachers’ educational background, you can only shudder at the thought of who is being invited into the classroom fold.

The idea that one could bring in a potter, a writer or others of that caliber and teach the children was perhaps a good idea as a basic idea. It was then that Denmark consisted exclusively of a group of people who largely shared the same traditions, the same culture and the same basic Christian-based values.

But it is a pretty bad idea not to have requirements for teachers’ education when the principle is abused to erode the basis of Danish values and instead preach extremism – even paid for by Danish tax dollars.

The Denmark that works so hard to get a difficult-to- integrate group integrated thus pays to hatch parallel societies in the earliest childhood years – where it is important to get them into the Danish fold and show them what values Denmark based on.

In today’s Denmark, it is blatantly naive that Danish tax dollars in the form of state taxes have to be paid to indoctrinate the next generation of podcasts. In order for the Denmark we want to exist in the future with the Danish values and manners, it is important that children are introduced to the society of which they must be a part in the future. A society based on democracy and gender equality. A free society that has taken generations to build.

Schools that preach that students should keep their distance from non-Muslim Danes and, in general, promote an us-and-them with hatred for exactly that country’s values, we so diligently try to get them to be a part of, hear not at home in Denmark.

In a society like Denmark, it is crucial to have a common core and an understanding of the Danish culture and the Danish community, which everyone should want to contribute to. One may question whether it makes sense in this context to support schools that teach Islam and Arab culture as the desirable form of society.

Danish tax dollars should not go to promoting thoughts and ideologies that go directly against the democratic spirit. Time and time again, it has emerged that independent schools promote values that are far from the Danish and slow down integration.

That’s where we’re. So what do you do? Do you insist that Kold’s basic idea of free schools is beautiful and good and good for your pod’s creative learning? If you do, then you continue to provide the opportunity to rabid Islam preachers have free access to young students’ worldview.

In my view, we need to change our approach to society as it changes. Denmark needs to introduce laws that make it more difficult to set up schools that go directly against Danish values.

Opposition to the change of something as core Danish as free schools is as naive as the desire to stick to the good old days. They no longer exist, and if we do nothing to make it easier to intervene and influence the next generation of young people to have a democratic mindset with a love of Danish culture, then in a few years there will be no Danish culture to pass on.

(Google translate)

Selvfølgelig skal den 13-årige dreng i IS-fangelejren ikke til Danmark alene eller med sin familie

– han skal i afradikaliseringslejr hos kurderne på afstand af sin familie.

Læs hele bloggen her:

Of course, the 13-year-old boy in the IS prison camp should not go to Denmark alone or with his family

– he should go to a radicalization camp with the Kurds away from his family.

The association Repatriate The Children takes the Danish state to court. The association believes that Denmark is violating the European Convention on Human Rights when the government does not want to bring Danish children home in Syrian prison camps. That’s what lawyer Knud Foldschack says .

The case is specifically about a 13-year-old boy who lives in the al- Roj camp in northeastern Syria. The boy stands to be removed from his mother for being de-radicalized by the Kurds. The matter is not simple, as children always pay the price when parents make terrible decisions.

A total of 19 Danish children are in the Syrian prison camps. When the children turn 13, they end up in one of the Kurds’ radicalization camps , where they have no contact with parents or siblings. It is the association Repatriate The Children against.

According to their website, the association that fights to get the children to Denmark is also against separating the children from their parents. So if the association succeeds with their goals, the children’s mothers – and later probably also their IS fighter fathers, a child has the right to be with both his parents, – will be included in the package, where they can place themselves like ticking bombs around in the Danish country.

The boy in the al- Roj camp has nightmares, screams at night and is “crushed in health.” To my ears, it clearly sounds like a boy who is not feeling well in the family he lives in and should not be with them – neither in an IS prison camp nor in Denmark.

Maybe it’s just because he lives with his radicalized family that he has nightmares? If so, he must precisely removed from the family, protected and assisted to any of that dangerous nonsense, every day he gets fed with coming out of the system so he hopefully as an adult can see the idea of part of a community , where values such as freedom of expression, equality between the sexes and how important it is to be able to think independently.

I have no doubt that the Kurds have more experience and knowledge on how to deal with members of IS and potential terrorists. I am very grateful that they are willing to work with the young people and thus hopefully make us all more secure in the future – one less radicalized terrorist in this world is, in my opinion, a good thing.

As a former Jehovah’s Witness, I can attest that the family has a tremendous influence on how one acts and acts, what one says and does – especially outwardly. The power and manipulation is enormous, the possibility of having a free space to think independently is non-existent . I imagine it is the same in the radicalized IS societies.

Therefore, it makes sense to separate family members and, before the indoctrination is almost impossible to reverse, get the young people away from the influence they suffer from.

If the young boy, his mother and any other siblings came to Denmark and were installed in an apartment, I am not sure that the radicalization would be as effective.

On the other hand, I have greater confidence that the project will succeed if the boy is set free by his family – in the Kurds’ camp.

There is no doubt that the boy is feeling bad. Let us hope that the Kurds’ de-radicalization camp can help him get better – at a distance from his family and Denmark.

(Google translate)

ISIS-krigere og deres børn: har velfærdsdanmark spillet fallit?

At forlade trygge velfærdsdanmark for at tilslutte sig ISIS gør det svært at tro på, at selvsamme mennesker vil dele værdier med det velfærdssamfund, de vendte ryggen.

Læs hele bloggen her:

ISIS fighters and their children: has the welfare state in Denmark failed?

Leaving safe welfare Denmark to join ISIS makes it hard to believe that the same people will share values with the welfare society they turned their backs on.

Currently, especially the children of ISIS fighters and their mothers are again up for debate. The mothers are in the two camps of al-Hol and al- Roj , the conditions are terrible, the children are unhappy and have trauma.

Should Denmark bring the children home? Will they pose a threat when they get older if they come to Denmark? Do the mothers? What about the fathers’ right to be reunited with their families?

There is no doubt that the little pods pay a completely heartbreaking price for their parents’ completely and utterly irresponsible behavior.

If Mette Frederiksen is “the children’s minister”, as she proclaimed in her New Year’s speech, and if we as a society must dare to make difficult choices (forced removal) and avoid taboos (of a religious nature), as the Prime Minister spent a large part of his speaking time to plead, then I think it is natural to ask why the parents who have shown that they are completely unfit for the parental role are not deprived of custody so that the children can grow up in families that can give them a upbringing in a safe environment, far from acclaimed stone desert values?

Young children are not dangerous, but they can be – especially if they grow up with a radicalized mother or older siblings. If the parents truly loved their children, they set them free and allowed them to grow up in a safe environment, leaving them with the childhood that all children deserve. If they are not willing to do so, it shows precisely that they still believe they are the best parent for their children, something their life circumstances and choices should clearly show is blatantly unrealistic.

How can it be that Denmark per. per capita is the country in the world from which most Syrian fighters have left, when we are at the same time one of the absolute most developed welfare societies?

I once spoke to a person who worked at a torture center in Denmark. He said that a PhD study showed that one family in Aarhus had 13 employees attached. 13! That’s what a welfare state does – it’s good. I am sure that school psychologists, social workers, family psychologists, etc. helped the family, and it will ultimately benefit everyone if the welfare society helps the weakest, so that the children and the family generally thrive better and maybe even one day be able to contribute to society.

Do not say that Denmark does not spend endless resources on helping. But how can I believe that people who were born and raised in Denmark, and who have had the resources of the whole of welfare Denmark behind them and yet have been radicalized and taken down to fight for values far from those we boast of here country, can return and become tax-paying citizens and not pose a threat to the surrounding society?

When I was in the process of leaving Jehovah’s Witnesses at the time, yes, it takes time and does not go on from one day to the next, I knew very well that most people who leave the sect end up joining it again. Why do they do that? They do so because it is so difficult to build a life in a world that is so different from the one one has been indoctrinated to be able to navigate. Even though they have lived in a mental prison and been subject to a myriad of rules and restrictions, then it’s easier to fall back and continue that lifestyle – because it’s so familiar and the expectations are so clear. And because the world outside, which most Danes are in, is so foreign and difficult to decode and navigate.

If the children we see running around in the desert camp grow up with mothers who have made an active choice and supported a government that opposes equal rights for the sexes, homosexuality, education, free thought but for beheading, rape, the death penalty for infidels, etc., etc., then they become radicalized – whether they live in a tent camp in a windswept desert or in an apartment in rainy Aarhus.

Something tells me that it will also be infinitely difficult for the women and children who may one day be invited back to Denmark, or who simply one day stand on the border, to change and jump out as ordinary tax-paying rye bread dancers.

(Google translate)

Jo mere divers den danske befolkning bliver, jo mindre taler vi sammen

Med spørgsmål og udveksling skal demokratier bestå

Læs hele bloggen:

The more diverse the Danish population becomes, the less we talk to each other

With questions and exchanges, democracies must survive

When I was a teenager, I threw myself into as many discussions with my family as I could possibly get to. My mother often looked at me angrily as she said, “Not everything is a discussion, everything is not to be debated!” “This is how you say when you do not have enough arguments”, I thought and continued my questions and arguments.

My mother was and still is one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and so was I, as a teenager living at home. There was just the problem that the older I got, the more critical questions I started asking.

“Why not have an abortion if you have become pregnant after a rape?” “Why is it the husband who is the head of the family, if it is the wife who is the wisest?” “Why not have sex before marriage?” “Why is the only permissible cause of divorce that one party is unfaithful?” “Why not love the one you love if you share the same sex?” – yes, to my mother’s great despair I had many questions.

My mother gave up, called the congregation elder who came and tried to knock some scriptures into my head.

At school I was called Ask Jørgen. I was hugely curious and inquisitive, I still am.

Exchange of views enriches

I live in the United States, just outside Seattle in the state of Washington. Fortunately for me, the vast majority of Americans are open and accommodating and like to share their thoughts on most things.

Living in the United States is a paradise for a curious soul. Here live people from vastly different cultural, religious and ethnic backgrounds. There are many reasons why people think, believe and think the way they do – and I love hearing about them.

Today I had a conversation with a man about being the only Trump supporter for a baby show in Seattle, where the rest of the guests were Bident supporters.

I ask and ask. When I meet Trump supporters, I ask them what it is that appeals to them by him. When I meet African Americans, I ask how they experience the system in terms of race and equal opportunities. When I meet people who belong to LGBTQ, we talk about prejudice and acceptance.

We like to exchange views – just not when it comes to religion

But when it comes to religion, the situation is different. The only ones who bother to talk to me about that subject are the Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses who occasionally knock on my door.

Jehovah’s Witnesses like to talk about their religion – on their terms. They have rehearsed answers to most things. I know, because even as a big kid, I practiced with the adults before knocking on people’s doors.

But if you start asking Jehovah’s Witnesses questions that they have not practiced, then the ground is shaking under their feet. Maybe that’s why they operate in pairs?

In Denmark, Jehovah’s Witnesses have always been looked down upon when they came in their suits with their Watchtower and Awake! Some have felt sorry for the poor children who are being dragged around Saturday morning and have offered them a cup of coffee. Others have suggested that if one simply spoke reason to them, then perhaps they would change some of their archaic attitudes.

Diversity closes the conversation, it is not good for democracy

In school we learned that if you have an attitude, then you must be able to argue for it – with words or pen and paper. Not in the form of pants water or a blood spout in the recess. No one should be afraid to say their opinion – or whether it would be settled in cash after school if they said something the bully of the class did not like.

Talking together and listening to each other and being critical is one of the crucial pillars of democracy, it is socialized into our pods from day one. It is through questions that we get to know each other – and perhaps dots for seats and customs that need a post-check.

If one cannot answer questions but has to resort to scriptures or hand out a spout of blood, then one’s attitudes are not strong enough. Questions can be difficult, they can be strong and powerful – they can make even the toughest nut to crack when he can not answer for himself. That’s why we taught young people in Jehovah’s Witnesses not to ask too many questions;

Democracy is in danger when anxiety stops for questions

Because it is i.a. that a secularized Western democracy can. Ask questions, be critical, engage in dialogue without regard to God, King and Fatherland. Or so it has been in the past.

As Denmark’s population composition has become more diverse , we should be able to have more enriching, interesting, exchanging conversations.

But it seems to me that the more diverse the population group in Denmark, yes in Europe, becomes, the fewer exchanging conversations we have with those who do not think, believe and think the same as us – for fear of being exposed to what is worse than trouser water and a blood spout.

(Google translate)

DRs nye serie ”Ulven kommer” er smerteligt genkendelig

Dramaet sitrer ikke kun i serien men også i hukommelsen

Læs hele bloggen her

DR’s new series “Cry Woolf” is painfully recognizable

The drama vibrates not only in the series but also in the memory.

The nausea moved up through the throat. I sank and sank. Meanwhile, I got a stomach ache, looked away from the screen, got up, lit candles, considered whether to turn off the television. »Is it too much for you? Is it getting too close? ”My husband asked.

Old emotions, even in a new life in a safe environment far away from sudden blows and mood swings, lurked just below the surface.

One identifies with the concerned social worker and the school teacher

Yesterday, Danmarks Radio premiered the series “The wolf is coming”. In a Danish style, Holly accuses her stepfather of violence, and the Danish teacher involves the municipality, which takes custody of the mother and places Holly and her little brother with a foster family.

Holly is brave. At least as a 14-year-old I did not dare to tell anyone about what was going on at our house.

There were several things that made the hairs stand up in the nape of my neck. The actors play their roles excellently and convincingly. It is easy to imagine the social worker from the municipality who sees a child in need and wants to help. The teacher who reacts after reading a Danish style, which for him is a cry for help, is also sympathized with. Holly’s mother who is confronted with a reality she cannot or will not relate to is played convincingly.

And then there’s Holly. Holly is 14, and it is her Danish style, in which she describes a violent episode at home in the family’s villa in a suburban neighborhood in Central Jutland, that makes the social authorities in top gear and the family drama roll.

Holly is brave. At least as a 14-year-old I did not dare to tell anyone about what was going on at our house.

Biggest of all is the Failure

DR portrays the mother’s reaction absolutely fantastic, frighteningly well. I can hardly be the only viewer who has experience with a mother who refused to believe the evidence presented by both her daughter and by the public authorities but instead accused her daughter of needing attention, inventing stories – yes, to definitely lie.

Holly’s reaction to the failure, her quiet but desperate pleading on the phone in an attempt to get her mother to be there for her, is raw and painfully recognizable. Holly hopes that by revealing the family secret, she will now have a mother who is there for her, shielding her, giving her the faith and feeling that Holly means everything. That she as a mother will be there for her daughter. Those feelings are coldly and dismissively put to shame with the classic “What, though, have you done?”

The mother’s reaction is perhaps very human when one puts one’s own needs above those of one’s children and deliberately closes one’s eyes to dissatisfaction and failure. I do not know. One thing I do know, though: When you, as a child or young person, finally take courage and tell the world outside what is really going on behind the facade, you hope that someone, preferably your mother, listens and takes you seriously.

I wonder if my school at the time in the 1980s would have reacted if I had raised the tab for what everyday life looked like in my family far out in the country in V. Velling, where violence, humiliation, social control and mental illness were part of everyday life ? I hardly think so. The signs from 3 out of 5 school-going children must have been there, but no one responded. I hope they would today.

DR puts an important theme on children’s dissatisfaction and society’s responsibility under the microscope

DR plays on the fact that we as viewers do not really know if Holly is telling the truth. Is she just a hurt teenager with a budding young mind who has a hard time coming to terms with the fact that her mother has a boyfriend and a sexuality? Is she lying to get attention? Did the Danish style prevail, so that fantasy mixed with the characters in her everyday life?

I can not imagine that a public service channel like DR in a drama series that is broadcast in prime time, intends to run the situation so far that after the last episode we are sitting with a social worker who has overreacted and a young girl , we’ve found out we can not trust. It would be against the spirit of the times and all that the public debate, including Mette Frederiksen, has focused on since Frederiksen’s New Year’s speech, where she announced that she sided with the children and was “the children’s minister.”

Although I will probably get nausea and stomach ache again, I am grateful that DR dares to focus on the difficult topics. Surely it’s that I’m sitting ready in front of the screen next Sunday hoping Holly gets a smile on her face and that her little brother gets the shine off her broken arm.

(Google translate)

Jeg var skræmt. Jeg vidste, at hvis jeg insisterede på at uddanne mig, ville jeg blive valgt fra

(Essay trykt i Politiken 15 august 2020)

Jeg mistede veninder, omgangskreds og til sidst min familie, da jeg brød ud af den religiøse sekt, der havde fyldt det meste af min barndom. Men friheden var det hele værd.

Jeg var i gang med at lægge sidste hånd på 10. klasse, da jeg traf en beslutning, jeg vidste, ville ændre den verden, jeg til daglig færdedes i, fuldstændig.

Lavinen begyndte for alvor at rulle, da jeg stolt kom hjem med min karakterbog. Den indeholdt 10- og 11-taller, med undtagelse af en lavere karakter i matematik.

Reaktionen kom prompte: »Du skulle hellere samle dig værdier i himlen«, sagde min mor og hendes mand. Budskabet var klart: Det, jeg så som vigtigt, havde ingen betydning i vores univers og burde heller ikke have det for mig. Jeg var rasende og fortvivlet. Jeg så sort, ikke rødt.

Månederne inden havde jeg benyttet enhver lejlighed til at begynde en konflikt. Jeg råbte og skreg, jeg diskuterede og kværulerede. Jeg var som et desperat dyr, fanget i en familiesituation, hvis værdier, jeg hidtil havde været nødt til at underlægge mig. Langsomt var jeg begyndt at ane, at deres verden ikke var en, jeg kunne trives i

Min mor og hendes mand havde brug for forstærkning, deres argumenter var ikke nok til at få mig til at rette ind. Den højeste autoritet ligger i det univers hos de ældste, så de blev kontaktet, efter at måneders ophedede skænderier og diverse former for afstraffelse ikke virkede.

På mødet sad de over for mig i den gamle, mosgrønne sofa. Fjedrene var slidte, så de sad lavere, end jeg gjorde på kanten af den stol, de havde bedt mig tage plads på. Vi var ikke i øjenhøjde. En detalje, der gav en vis skadefro styrke.

Jeg var flankeret af min mor og min stedfar. Stemningen var formel og alvorlig. Jeg var nervøs, men trodsen boblede i kroppen. Mændene i rummet havde kendt mig, siden jeg var 9 år. Og i alle årene havde jeg lært, at mænd lytter man til og respekterer, de er den højeste autoritet på Jorden, børn og kvinder den laveste.

Siden 9. klasse havde jeg vidst, hvad jeg ville, men jeg havde haft brug for at købe mig et ekstra år og blive mere moden. Derfor gik jeg i 10. klasse. Jeg vidste, at den beslutning, jeg skulle træffe efter mødet med mændene i den grønne sofa, ville få store konsekvenser.

Mændene havde læderattachémapper med. Låsene klikkede på en måde, jeg kendte fra min brors og min stedfars. De klik var en del af uniformen: skjorte, slips, blazer, pressede bukser og klikkende attachémappe, der indeholdt Bibel, Vagttårnet og Vågn Op!

Jeg blev bedt om at læse op fra skriftsteder i Bibelen, der understreger, at verdslig visdom ikke er godt. At jeg skulle skabe mig værdier i himlen frem for på Jorden. Jeg kendte forventningerne. Jeg vidste, hvad det blev forventet, at jeg skulle svare på deres spørgsmål. Men jeg havde i lang tid haft flere spørgsmål, end de havde svar. Jeg ville ikke længere spille spillet.

Hvorfor var jeg endt i den forhørssituation? Svaret var enkelt: Jeg havde en drøm om at komme på gymnasiet.

Jeg var skræmt, for jeg vidste, at hvis jeg insisterede på at uddanne mig, ville jeg blive valgt fra. Dengang havde jeg endnu ikke forstået, at mændene fra Jehovas Vidner jo faktisk havde ret i deres grundargument: Viden bringer klarhed og kritisk sans. En uddannelse ville gøre det muligt for mig at se kritisk på dem og vores fælles trossamfund.

Alle omkring kaffebordet sagde, at de ville mig det bedste. At det var deres pligt at redde mit liv. Tidligere ville jeg have lyttet, jeg ville have bøjet hovedet, jeg ville have anerkendt, at de skriftsteder, de havde vist mig, gav mig svaret på, hvad jeg skulle gøre i mit liv. Men ikke nu. Jeg kunne og ville ikke forstå, hvordan det at blive klogere betød, at jeg gjorde noget forkert.

Jeg spurgte dem, hvorfor jeg ikke kunne bruge den tid, hvor vi venter på Guds indgriben, til at uddanne mig. Jeg vidste godt, der var interne koder for, hvordan jeg skulle svare for at sige det ’rigtige’. Jeg valgte alligevel bevidst at tale på en måde, der klart signalerede, at jeg stod udenfor. Jeg kunne se i deres blikke, skuffede dem med mit stivsind.

Samtalen ændrede mit liv. Den dag besluttede jeg mig for, at jeg ikke kunne være en del af gruppen længere, jeg kunne ganske simpelt ikke uden at øve vold på mig selv og den måde, jeg tænkte og var på. Jeg var omringet både fysisk og psykisk, jeg måtte bryde ud.

For mig handlede valget om frihed. Frihed til at tænke selvstændigt uden en manual, frihed til at udvikle mig til den person, jeg gerne ville være. Uddannelse stod i de skrøbelige teenageår som fuldstændig afgørende for min frihed. Jeg vidste, at prisen for frihed ville blive høj. Og den blev meget høj. Jeg mistede veninder, omgangskreds – og til sidst også min familie. Det var så svært. Jeg var ikke forberedt, havde ingen erfaring uden for den sekt, hvor jeg kendte de sociale koder. Jeg fik mange knubs, jeg snublede og var tæt på at falde.

Selv om jeg var ensom, selv om jeg var alene og måtte finde min egen vej, var der altid nye veninder, lærere og undervisere, der stod ved min side. På trods af min stædige insisteren på at få en uddannelse, er jeg ikke sikker på, jeg ville have klaret det uden dem. Når jeg var tæt på at give op, stod de klar og rakte en hånd frem, støttede mig, så min snublen aldrig blev til et fald.

Jeg fik min bordeauxrøde studenterhue, bagefter tog jeg den 1-årige hh, og så tog jeg på universitetet, hvor jeg blev cand.mag. Jeg har boet og arbejdet i fire forskellige lande, senest i USA, hvor jeg underviste på et universitet. Da jeg endelig fik en stemme, brugte jeg den til at sætte dagsordenen i diverse undervisningslokaler. Det er nok ingen tilfældighed.

Tænk, hvis jeg havde sagt ja den dag i sofaen. Sagt ’ja, jeg bøjer mig. Ja, jeg vælger jeres vej. Ja, jeg dropper ideen om uddannelse og at gå min egen vej’. Heldigvis brugte jeg min vrede og de karaktertræk, alle omkring kaffebordet mente arbejdede imod mig – min stædighed, min iver, min diskussionslyst og min integritet – til at gå efter den frihed, som rammerne i det kontrollerende samfund, jeg indtil da havde befundet mig i, ikke gav mulighed for.

Se flere essays fra Politikens sommer konkurrence her