Note to Sanders: Denmark is no socialist paradise

In the recent Democratic Party presidential debate in Las Vegas, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton squared off about Denmark being a template for the type of social democracy Sanders would like to see introduced to the United States. Sanders said, “We should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.” Clinton, ever the corporate two billion dollar trollop, responded by saying, “We are not Denmark,” and then going on to defend capitalism against overreaching state regulation.

The elderly Sanders has likely not read a book or article about Denmark since the early 1980s, the last time Denmark had anything in the way of a truly leftist social democratic government. As for Mrs. Clinton, she undoubtedly loves Denmark because over the last few decades the country has embraced the pro-corporate Third Way politics championed by her husband Bill Clinton and their good pal Tony Blair. In fact, Denmark’s last Social Democratic prime minister, Helling Thorning-Schmidt, is married to Stephen Kinnock, the son of former British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock, the man who paved the way for Blair to turn a truly labor party of the working class into a vassal of the British “corporatocracy.”

Denmark’ social welfare state was untouchable since 1933 when social democratic and conservative business-oriented parties agreed that in order to prevent Denmark from drifting toward communism, the vested interests would offer Danes a “cradle-to-grave” welfare system based on very high taxation. For over four decades after the end of World War II, no party, including the conservatives, dared touch the welfare state guarantees of unemployment benefits, universal health care, child day care, maternity leave, nursing home care, and generous paid vacations. The last book or article Bernie Sanders read about the Danish social welfare system was likely in the early 1980s, just before Denmark elected a conservative government bent on whittling away at the welfare system.

Up until the election of Denmark’s “Ronald Reagan,” Poul Schluter, Denmark was not only a model social welfare state governed by the Social Democratic Party, but a NATO member willing to oppose the U.S. policy in Vietnam, reject Reagan’s Pershing II missiles from Danish soil, and bar U.S. Navy ships with nuclear weapons from entering Danish ports. Schulter, a “free market” advocate, began to suggest that Denmark’s social welfare system had its limits but stressed that there should be greater freedom for Danish corporations. By the time the Social Democrats returned to power in 1993, they had been transformed into the same pro-NATO corporatized party that Britain experienced with “New Labor” under Tony Blair.

Denmark’s Social Democratic Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen not only maintained the Conservative’s program of cutting back on social welfare benefits but began to privatize Denmark’s state-owned enterprises, long a goal of the Danish right-wing. The sale of Denmark’s state-owned telephone company, one of the largest privatization schemes in Europe, was followed by further sales of rail and bus lines, toll roads and bridges, utilities, the postal bank, airports, ferries, the postal system, and airlines served as a template for the European banks’ austerity vultures who began demanding similar privatization in economically hard-hit countries like Greece, Italy, Spain, and Portugal.

In 1996, Denmark sold its government data agency, Datacentralen, the the U.S. firm Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC). Included in the databases held by the center, were Danish social security identification numbers, firearms registration data, police records, and census data. CSC was also a major National Security Agency contractor, a fact that did not seem to concern the Danish government.

Sanders forgot to mention that Denmark is the virtual “nirvana” for privatization and outsourcing advocates. Or, as already been suggested, Sanders has not read a recent book or article about the “New Denmark,” and that suggests that the would-be president’s reading library is as old and musty as the candidate himself.

By the time the corporatized Social Democrats were replaced by the Conservative-led government of Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen in 2001, the stage was set for the Conservatives to begin cuts in public spending. Fogh Rasmussen also steered Danish foreign policy clearly toward the Bush-Cheney administration, with the Danish leader becoming the leading cheerleader for America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fogh Rasmussen was rewarded for his sycophantic embrace of Bush with the post of Secretary General of NATO. Today, there is little difference between the Danish Social Democrats and the Liberals/Conservatives in matters of social welfare and foreign policy. They hand off power between one another with minimal effects on overall policy. Denmark has become a good little foot soldier for the central bankers and the NATO military commanders.

Mrs. Clinton did say she “loves Denmark.” But that is because Denmark today is actually “Denmark, Incorporated.” It is a country that gives tax breaks and other favors to the companies that have turned Denmark into a brand name: Lego, Bang and Olufsen, A.P. Moller/Maersk Line, Carlsberg, Novo Nordisk, DONG Energy, Arla Foods, Danish Crown, Nordea Bank, Danfoss, and Skandinavisk Holdings.

A few years ago, this editor was walking by the Danish Parliament in Copenhagen, the Folketing, and spotted a few anti-war protesters. One, a bearded elderly gentleman holding an anti-war sign, said he was an old time member of the former Danish Communist Party. He railed against the Social Democrats and Left Party members who were arriving for a parliamentary session in expensive Mercedes and BMWs. When I mentioned to him that my grandmother was a member of the Danish Communist Party’s executive committee and editor of its party newspaper, the old man’s eyes widened and said he never knew Victoria Madsen had a son, let alone a grandson. He urged me to return to Denmark and resurrect the old party and rally the comrades. However, in “Denmark, Incorporated,” there is no room for expats returning to urge the nation’s working class to transform the country into a true social democracy. That would begin by stripping the power away from the highest-paid unemployed person in it: Queen Margrethe II.

In retrospect, the Social Democrats arriving in their expensive cars at the Danish parliament and Bernie Sanders do have something in common: they are all phony socialists.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2015 WayneMadenReport.com

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).