What the Danish and European media misunderstand (and misrepresent) about America, and vice versa. And other stuff.
Rasmus Paludan is back in the international spotlight. I’ll just cite the lede from Danmarks Radio (DR): Rasmus Paludan burned a Koran in Stockholm on Saturday. Now Turkey will not support Swedish membership in NATO. Danmark’s Foreign Minister called that both shaming and shameful—the buring of the Koran, obviously, not a sovereign nation responding to…
In the most (and maybe only) memorable line of the movie A Few Good Man, the character Colonel Jessup (Jack Nicholson) lashes out at Lieutenant Kaffee (Tom Cruise) from the witness stand: “You can’t handle the truth!“ In the context of the movie, he’s saying that comfortable civilians are incapable of handling the reality that…
All this fuss about Twitter is annoying the hell out of me because the activist left is deliberately mixing up its terms either to make sensible debate impossible or to prevent it altogether. (I know where I’d put my money.) So this is one those posts I’m writing today in order to reference later. First…
On Sunday, Berlingske published an editorial in which they came out in support of free speech—arguing against the censorship of fake news on the basis of sunlight being the best disinfectant. Here’s the lede: “Instead of censorship, Western democracies should bet on freedom of expression as the best antidote to the information war.” That should…
Berlingske published their most superfluous and redundant editorial of the decade this morning: Berlingske believes: Everything and everyone is better than TrumpBirgitte Borup, Berlingske.dk Leader, August 1 There’s no need to parse through the whole thing because there’s very little in it that’s new or novel. The headline alone is just a condensation of the…
The richest person in the world is always going to be the person in whom the most people are interested, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the richest person in the world is always going to be the most interesting person in the world. But Elon Musk certainly is. Flamboyant, eccentric, iconoclastic, mischievous, and a master…
An opinion piece in Berlingske asks an interesting question: Should there be room for “well-coiffed hatred and cheeky fascism” at the Popular Assembly?Esben Vest Billingsøe (Opinion), Berlingske.dk, May 20 What I’m translating as the “Popular Assembly” could also be translated as the “People’s Meeting.” It’s an annual summer event (held in the 24th week of…
We begin this post with two quick items before getting into our headline event. First: last night’s Fredagsrock at Tivoli appears to have been a calm affair. Youngest attended with four friends: they were able to enter the park at about three in the afternoon, the crowd never got out of hand, and they enjoyed…
That seems to be consensus elite opinion right now. Leftists used to be champions of free speech. Everyone did. It was something we took for granted in the west. “I disapprove of what you say,” everyone was always saying, “but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” When today’s western elites…
On January 7, Ekstra Bladet published an editorial in which they apologized for not having done a better job questioning the government on all things covid: We FailedEditorial, EkstraBladet, Jan 7 I only became aware of the editorial today when I stumbled over it on a conservative American website (AceOfSpades). There are two reasons I…
There’ve been a lot of international headlines the past couple of days about the British Home Secretary’s having put forward a bill to punish Britons expressing racism online toward soccer players by depriving offenders of the right to attend matches in person for up to ten years. For example: British minister tightens grip: Online hatred…
There’s a lot going on in the world these days. The Danish media are bubbling over with stories about the upcoming election, the continuing mink scandal, and reactions to the COP26 summit. The prime minister has called a press conference for this very evening to discuss “the corona situation,” and her remarks will surely dominate…
My first career was in politics. My jobs involved a lot of writing: memoranda, speeches, whitepapers, presentations, letters, reports, talking points, even monographs. I’d studied classical rhetoric in college and had a lot of preconceptions about effective political communication; these quickly fell by the wayside as I was forced by bosses, clients, and circumstances—that is,…
A celebrity said something silly, got called out for it by a politician, and Berlingske seemed to think that deserved a story: Fauci goes after Nicki Minaj for sharing vaccine skepticismBerlingske.dk/Ritzau/DPA, Sep 16 The headline is what Dan Rather might call “fake but accurate.” It wasn’t general skepticism Fauci was going after, but a very…
Friends of Big Brother rejoice! First: good news! According to DR, Twitter is partnering with AP and Reuters to improve their ability to enforce the narrative in real time: According to Twitter, the two news bureaus will contribute to trustworthy information about central topics and events being accessible while they happen. This will be especially…
There was an article on Berlingske’s AOK website yesterday about the problem of internet misinformation: Nonsense and fake news have been spreading like a virus—here’s the cureKresten Schultz-Jørgensen, AOK, Berlingske.dk, July 29 Schultz-Jørgensen is the administrative director of Oxymoron, a Danish communications bureau that, according to their website (emphasis in original), “creates change by uniting…
I haven’t seen any coverage of this in America (yet), but four Nordic newspapers published an open letter to China on their front pages today: Norway’s Aftenposten, Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter, Finland’s Helsingin Sanomat, and Denmark’s own Politiken. Politiken had it blaring out at the world from the top of their home page this morning: At…
