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Danish far-right party accused of antisemitism over elderly care remarks

Far-right Danish party Nye Borgerlige (New Right) was criticised on Monday after one of its lawmakers suggested it is acceptable to refuse help from home carers if they are Jewish or gay. The party denied it supports discrimination in the care sector.

Published: 18 October 2022 11:45 CEST
Danish far-right party accused of antisemitism over elderly care remarks
Member of parliament with the Nye Borgerligeparty, Mette Thiesen. Photo: Liselotte Sabroe/Ritzau Scanpix

One of Nye Borgerlige’s (“New Right” in English) four MPs, Mette Thiesen, responded to a question on a radio programme by saying it was okay for an elderly person to refuse care from anyone they did not want in their home, even if the refusal was based on that person being Jewish or gay.

Speaking to DR’s P1 Morgen programme, Thiesen was asked whether it would be acceptable to for people who receive home care to refuse a carer if that person was, for example, Jewish or gay.

In response, she said that “very generally, as an elderly person you must have the option to say ‘no’ to people who are entering your home”.

Pelle Dragsted, a former member of parliament with the left wing Red Green Alliance (Enhedslisten) party, tweeted the radio clip, writing “it is very, very concerning that there is a party that thinks antisemitic views should be a legitimate reason to refuse carers”.

In a Facebook post, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen wrote that “Nye Borgelige apparently think that you should be able to refuse elderly care staff – including based on homosexuality, or if they are Jewish”.

“That is a proposal which is destructive for all societies, including the Danish one,” she wrote, adding that staff should be “judged on their qualifications. Nothing else.”

Nye Borgerlige leader Pernille Vermund subsequently said the far-right party “has not proposed Jewish and homosexual people should be kept out of home social care”, but that elderly people should always be able to decide who they allow into their home.

“The rules today are already such that it’s the elderly person alone who decides who they want to let into their home”, she added.

“We think that Jews, Muslims and homosexuals can be just as good carers as anyone else and there is no objective reason to reject a carer because of religion or sexual orientation alone,” she wrote in a blog post.

She added that elderly persons should be allowed to decide who they allow into their homes but that they cannot expect local authorities to provide an alternative carer should they turn someone away.

The Nye Borgerlige party wants to tighten Denmark’s immigration laws and hold a referendum on EU membership. It entered the Danish parliament at the 2019 election, establishing itself as part of the ‘blue bloc’ of allied parties on the right of Danish politics.

The party is projected to gain around four seats at the election according to current polling.

READ ALSO: ‘Bloc politics’: A guide to understanding parliamentary elections in Denmark

Thiesen’s comment is linked to an earlier discussion during Denmark’s election build-up, in which a similar question was posed in relation to carers who wear the Muslim head scarf, hijab.

After another far-right party, the Danish People’s Party, said it would support new rules allowing elderly people to refuse care from staff who wear the hijab, other conservative parties said they did not share that stance.

At the time, Vermund said that her party did not want a change in the rules, as existing rules already allowed for free choice in the area.

“There’s nothing new in this. The rules are already such that it’s the free choice of the individual, firstly whether they want home care, and secondly who they want to provide that care,” party leader Pernille Vermund said.

“This isn’t something we’re proposing,” Vermund said, calling the issue a “strange discussion” and “something that came up based on a question from a journalist”.

READ ALSO: Do Danish conservative parties support refusal of carers who wear the hijab?

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POLITICS

EXPLAINED: How AI deep fakes are bringing new tensions to Danish politics

Denmark's culture minister said on Monday he hoped to use copyright law to bring an end to the controversial new trend of using deep fake videos in politics. Here's the background.

Published: 13 May 2024 15:13 CEST
EXPLAINED: How AI deep fakes are bringing new tensions to Danish politics

Jakob Engel-Schmidt, who represents the Moderate Party, warned that the technique, used in recent videos by the far-right Danish People’s Party and libertarian Liberal Alliance were the “top level of  a slippery slope that could end up undermining our trust in one another and making every political message, newspaper article and artistic publication a potential battleground for whether it is true or false”. 

Which parties have used deepfake video in campaigning? 

The Danish People’s Party at the end of last month issued an AI-generated deepfake video showing a spoof speech in which Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen appeared to announce that Ascension Day, Easter and Christmas would no longer be public holidays, and that they would all be replaced by the Muslim festival of Eid as the country’s only holiday. 

This was a satirical reference to the government’s unpopular decision to abolish Store bededag, or “Great Prayer Day” as a public holiday. 

The video was clearly labelled as AI-generated, and ends with the Danish People’s Party’s leader, Morten Messeschmidt, awakening from a nightmare. 

The Liberal Alliance also released a video for Great Prayer Day, in which it used AI to turn Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen (S), Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen (V) and Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen (M) into eccentric-looking characters similar to those in the film’s of the US director Wes Anderson.

What kind of a stir have the videos caused in Denmark? 

Denmark’s Minister for Digitization, Marie Bjerre, who represents the centre-right Liberal Party, was sharply critical of the Danish People’s Party’s move. 

“I think it is way over the line for the Danish People’s Party to make a deepfake of a political opponent. I don’t think it’s proper either, and they shouldn’t do it,” she said. “It is also a problem for our democracy and society. Because with deepfakes, you can create material that looks extremely credible, which means that you can really spread misinformation. That is why it is also very serious that the Danish People’s Party is using deepfake for this kind of thing.” 

She said that such videos should only be allowed if the organisation making or distributing them have received consent from the person depicted. 

“If you want to make deepfakes of people, you must ask for permission. That will be the proper way to do it,” she said. 

Messerschmidt defended the video as light-hearted satire that at the same time educated Danish people about the new technology. 

“What we can do is show Danes how to use the new technologies and how to use them in a good way, like here in an entertaining and satirical way,” he said. 

Although Engel-Schmidt said he was concerned about the use of deepfake videos in politics, he acknowledged that the light-hearted videos released by the two parties were in themselves unlikely to deceive anyone.  

How does Engel-Schmidt hope to regulate such deepfake videos? 

He said he aimed to see whether copyright law could be used to regulate such videos.

Presumably this would mean seeing whether, under law, people have a right to the use of the own image, personality or voice, and can therefore forbid them from being used without permission. 

What do the experts say? 

Christiane Vejlø, one of Denmark’s leading experts on the relationship between people and technology, welcomed the government’s moves towards regulating deepfake videos, pointing to the impact they were already having on politics in other countries such as India and the US.

“There is no doubt that we will have to deal with this phenomenon. It has an impact on something that is most important to us in a democracy – namely trust and faith in other people,” she told Denmark’s public broadcaster DR.

In the current Indian election campaign, she said that deepfakes of popular Bollywood actors had been used to criticise the current government and encourage voters to vote for the opposition.

“In India and the USA we see politicians saying things they could never think of saying. We are getting an erosion of the truth,” she said. 

She said that even if the videos were clearly labelled as AI-generated, it did not necessarily make them unproblematic. 

“Even if you can see that it is a deepfake, it can still influence voters to think that there is something wrong with them [the politician] or that they look stupid,” she said. “We have a situation where another person is used as a digital hand puppet.” 

 
 

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