Comment by tokai

2 days ago

What do you mean the migrant crisis stirred up things? The anti immigration position in danish politics has been a winning position since the mid 00's.

As the crisis has worsened across Europe, Denmark started unbelievably intrusive AI-enabled mass surveillance of welfare recipients (almost 15% of the population), dangerous infrastructure which could be applied to the population as a whole. And I’d argue that fears over migrant-driven crime are what allowed Denmark’s politicians to push for Chat Control in the first place.

  • Yeah no I don't buy that, and have never heard that angle before. Surveillance in Denmark is much older than that. Since the personal ID number was rolled out in 1968 its been one long process of integrating public systems with each other to surveil and control. Surveillance of welfare recipients started getting serious in the 00's too. The migrant crisis drove polices like the confiscations of jewelry from foreigners, and public funded commercials in the middle east telling people to stay away.

    Internally chat control and migration are never talked about together. Chat control has no leverage on migration in Denmark. Its not a factor that would change anything. It's all about international treaties making it impossible to send people out of the country forcefully. That's the policy the migrant crisis really ignited.

    • Sounds like you would know more on this, then, I had heard that there was a link between Chat Control and migration. I was also unfamiliar with Denmark’s long history of surveillance, as I’d literally never heard of this being an issue there until recently—but I do not live there. Thank you for the correction.

      Edit: this in no way should be read to condone Denmark’s position here.

      1 reply →

They saw Sweeden and freaked out, Denmark being already a nanny state.

What is funny is that it has been pushed by the social democrats. See also what Labour have been doing in UK.

Whatever we call centre-left today we would have placed much further to right a couple decades ago. At this point even the US Democrats are more progressive than our EU "liberal" parties.

  • The whole left vs right is a useless caricature. And it’s especially meaningless when comparing ideologies across country borders. Better talk in terms of policies.

  • I think it's a more useful analysis to add a second dimension than to try to project everything onto 'left' and 'right' (in the style of the .

    Axis 1 - civil & political rights: In favour of broad social & political rights (down) -> In favour of few social and political rights a.k.a. authoritarianism (up) Axis 2 - economy: In favour of social responsibility / society ensuring people's needs are met (in the sense of 'from each according to ability, and to each according to need') (left) -> In favour of individual responsibility and a laissez faire economic freedoms (right).

    On this 2d view, Social Democrats are nominally lower left, while Chat Control is an authoritarian policy (i.e. appealing to anyone on the top half of the coordinate system), so it would run counter to their nominal values.

    Note that there is a significant number of the economic left who are nominally authoritarian (see for example Stalinist / Maoists), and likewise for the right so it doesn't make sense to project that as a left/right thing.

    • That helps slightly, and this version is often favored by libertarians, but I prefer the “8 values” or 8 dimension test that also looks at diplomatic, technological, and religious dimensions. I think I’ve also seen a 9 dimension version.

      A multifactor values-based approach better maps niche positions and explains why there are often irreconcilable disagreements among large blocs that are otherwise compatible. For instance, there will always be recurring tensions between progressives and leftcoms despite their neighboring positions on the 4-quadrant political compass. And right-wing secular monarchists don’t really get along with theocrats either.