‘A society at war with its own youth has no future’
On the struggle of the Danish youth today
DKU: For the 22nd International Antifascist and Antiimperialist Youth Camp, Selcuk, Turkey August 3rd-12th 2010
www.dku99.dk
Copenhagen March 1st 2007
Military helicopters hoist special forces soldiers down on the flat, but barricaded roof of the building Jagtvej 69 in the old workers’ district Nørrebro in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark. They were followed by a huge contingent of police that during the next hours attacked the house to arrest its inhabitants and defenders and prevent people from all over Copenhagen to come to its defense.
This building was the old assembly house of the workers of that are, constructed in 1897. In august 1910 it hosted the 2nd international socialist women’s conference with Clara Zetkin in the front, that decided to organize a global day of the struggle of the working class women, which became the glorious tradition of March 8th, the international women’s day. V.I. Lenin visited the house and the conference.
Since 1982 it had been ‘The Youth House’ of Copenhagen, handed over by the City to a self-administrative body of young people. Leftist, anarchist, revolutionary and progressive youth used it as their central meeting point, and the old workers’ assembly house had a new revival as an important shelter of the development of the progressive youth culture. Many fine bands had their debut there, and several international artists such as Björk played there
But this rich activity was not greeted positively by the social democratic and bourgeois politicians of Copenhagen. A great constant propaganda campaign was launched against the youth house, trying to criminalize the cultural and political activities of the users. In 1999 the City decided to sell the house cheaply to a private entrepreneur, that eventually showed itself to be a fundamentalist right wing Christian church, called ‘The Father House’, which was firmly decided to close this ‘center of evil’.
For almost seven years a juridical struggle to evict the youth from their house took place, and in the autumn of 2006 the Christian sect asked the police to empty the house of its inhabitants, according to the prerogatives of private property.
The response of the youth was a great number of protests and demonstrations. They would not give up their house voluntarily, without a fight. The City Council remained passive and did not seek a solution to avoid the great impending confrontation, but supported the ‘right’ of ‘The Father House’ to evict the youth.
The house was heavily barricaded, and permanently voluntary defenders would sleep there at the same time as its normal cultural functions were preserved under siege.
The Youth House, Jagtvej 69
But on Thursday, March 1st 2007 the police and military men attacked and entered the house, using tear gas and other brutal means of force against the defenders, who were all arrested and eventually charged with conspiracy, violence against the police etc. and most of the convicted to 15 months imprisonment.
A big demonstration was organized the same day, that was attacked by the police that beat up and arrested a great number of people. This led to the most serious street battles between police and activist, Copenhagen has ever seen. 716 people were arrested and later charged on this and the following days, when the police chased and broke into the offices and gathering places of many left wing organizations and collectives, taking computers and other material in custody, making arrests and creating general havoc. Plainclothes policemen beat up youth, and threatened to take them to a wood and shoot them. In later trials most of the people arrested were acquitted, while more than hundred received jail sentences.
On March 5th the historical building Jagtvej 69, which held an important place in the history of the international workers’ and women’s’ movement was torn down by a scab building crew under heavy police protection. The Christian sect claimed victory, praising God for assistance in getting rid of evil.
Barricades and fires in Copenhagen March 1st 2007
The progressive youth of Copenhagen was devastated. Thousands went to the streets, crying in sorrow. The Youth House had become a symbol of the strength and endurance of a new generation, and now it was made into rubbles, hardly a trace left.
Famous singer Annisette of the revolutionary band The Savage Rose, that had played in the Youth House at the opening in 1982 and at the final concert in 2007, summed up the situation on national television, stating: “A society at war with its own youth has no future.”
Indeed, such a society, capitalist society, has lost any right to a future, while the future rests with the youth.
But this was not the end of the struggle of the Youth House. Every Thursday, every week, from March 2007 until June 2008 the users and supporters of the Jagtvej 69 demonstrated and made actions demanding a new youth house. Often attacked and several times tear gassed by the police it became the habit of the progressive and revolutionary youth of Copenhagen to prepare themselves against tear gas and other violent attacks by the police. It was ‘good training’, as they used to say.
G13 action October 6th 2007
In the summer of 2007 a new initiative called Action G13 announced that they on Saturday October 6th would organize a huge non violent action of civil disobedience to occupy an abandoned hydro electrical plant in another old district of Copenhagen. More than 20.000 took part in this action, that entered the premises despite being attacked with great amounts of tear gas and violence by an big and aggressive police force, that arrested 436 persons, who did not attack or resist the police, the biggest mass arrest ever in Denmark at that time.
This created a great and renewed popular support for a youth house. And by now the police force was worn down by the continual confrontation with the youth, having spend huge amounts of money and personnel from all over the country. A spokesman from the police asked the Mayor of Copenhagen to find a political solution. This resulted in an agreement to create a new youth house, that opened July 1st 2008, 16 months after the brutal attack on Jagtvej 69.
The Christian sect was never able to construct a new building at the site and create a Christian Youth Center, as was the plan. In the end (2010) they had to sell the property with a loss.
More than 10 percent of the Copenhagen youth took an active part in the demonstrations and actions in support of the youth house, and the struggle was supported by a majority of the Danish youth. At the same time it was a great school of struggle, where democratic illusions vanished in the air with the bitter tear gas of the police.
Youth taking action
The struggle of the Youth House is only one important and iconic struggle of the present young generation in Denmark. If we define ‘youth’ as the life period between the age of 13 and 30 (and this changes, historically and culturally) this generation entered the stage of events at the beginning of this century, where an unprecedented onslaught of neoliberalism and imperialism took place globally.
Also in Denmark major changes, affecting the whole of society and deeply influencing the conditions and future of the young generation, has taken place during the first decade of this century.
It was a period when most of the remnants of the once highly praised Danish (or ‘Nordic’) social model –the so-called welfare states – were annihilated and with them many social gains, won by the workers through decades and indeed more than a hundred years of struggle. The welfare states were a capitalist invention to avoid a socialist revolution implemented after the defeat of fascism during the Second World War and the creation of the camp of socialism and people’s democracies.
Health workers demanding equal pay april 2008
The workers and indeed all members of society were guaranteed certain social rights, like the right of free education, of mostly free health service, of child care institutions, of regulated housing prices etc. The unemployed had benefits that could cover the costs of living, which also held true even for those without unemployment insurance, though more scarce. The pension age was 65, but it was possible for ordinary workers to retire already at sixty, if you had chosen to pay regularly for this. And so on …
Every single one of these gains are or have been the target of neoliberal ‘reform’ – which is simply another word for regression. These reforms have been and are applied in a concerted manner – no matter whether the government was social democratic/social liberal, right or center-right - by every member country in The European Union, founded on a neoliberal constitution, that the peoples of the member states were forbidden to vote about.
Big demonstration against neoliberal policies in Copenhagen May 17th 2006, organised by the youth organisations
The working class has been in the forefront of the struggles against privatizations and the public sector workers have been combating the deterioration of wages, working conditions and social services in this sector, that is being restructured along the lines of so-called New Public Management. This means the introduction of capitalist methods and principles in every minute part of the system, allegedly to make the public sector more efficient, cheaper and more competitive, but actually introducing capitalist chaos into every sphere of public life, with its incredible inefficiency and enormous costs, feeding profits on every level and harboring a big new bureaucracy of consultants and controllers.
The youth, being among the primary users of the public services, such as education, has been on the barricades during this decade, as in the 90es of the last century, against al kinds of cutbacks in schools, high schools and universities. Great mobilizations have taken place, including the biggest one before the outbreak of the present economic crises, that took place in May 2006 under the slogan ‘Wellfare to all’ – called by all the youth organizations of education, and eventually being supported by the trade union movement as well, and more than a hundred thousand, mostly youth, took to the streets and protested in front of the Danish parliament, demanding an end to neoliberal’refom’.
But even more sinister onslaughts were on the agenda of imperialism and the bourgeoisie: Capitalist globalization was accompanied by a series of imperialist wars, and Denmark joined the illegal war against Afghanistan after September 11th 2001, and in March 2003 it became an important ally of the United States in the criminal war of George Bush and his neoconservative pro-zionist gang against Iraq. The youth was massively present in the anti-war movement, that grew to large proportions up to the attack on Iraq.
As the Danish government was to announce its decision to send troops to join this war, the prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen was covered in red paint by an activist, member of the Communist Youth League DKU, who shouted: You have blood on your hands. Also the foreign minister was painted by another activist. They had to go to prison, while the war criminal Fogh Rasmussen with real human blood on his hands was promoted to become the present Secretary General of the alliance of Criminal Imperialist War States called NATO.
The anti-war movement and the progressive youth manifested itself strongly during the Israeli war on Gaza and again at the massacre on the Freedom Flotilla and the ‘Mavi Marmara’, killing unarmed relief activists.
The reactionary government of Fogh Rasmussen and his successor Lars Løkke Rasmussen also implemented the ‘terror laws’, dictated by the US and adopted by the European Union, severely limiting the democratic freedoms and criminalizing political protests, enhancing the competences of the police and increasing surveillance in all spheres. The direct road to the police state.
At the summit in the Bella Center December 2009
Up to the complete failure of the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen December 2009 a law was passed to boost the police and punish people for protesting peacefully. All democratic forces protested against this law, which was used at the main demonstration of one hundred thousand people from all over the world during the summit. Almost 1000 people in the demonstration were forced to sit down in the street for hours, and later withheld and arrested, without anyone from the demonstration later being convicted of having done anything at all. ‘Join a peaceful demonstration – and get arrested!’ was the message, to scare the population and making legal protests a crime.
Police uses tear gas at a demonstration to enter a jail-like asylum camp
Another field of struggle of mainly the youth that has been very intense during this last decade has been the struggle against racism, racist laws and the treatment of asylum seekers. The reactionary two party government has the parliamentary majority thanks to the support of the populist right wing Danish People’s Party. A series of racist laws continuously have been adopted, formally disguised as applied to all, but in reality targeting immigrants and their families, including reducing social benefits to below minimum of existence (!) The policy has been ‘assimilation and rejection’.
Vicious small state chauvinism has for this whole decade been the prevailing social ideology, amplified by the bourgeois media. In this context the ‘caricature crises’ broke out, a provocation by reaction and Zionism, that lead to large protests all over the Middle East and beyond.
The image of Denmark in the world as a small, peaceful, progressive country was rightly reversed. The present youth is understanding, that Denmark in spite of its small size is an aggressive imperialist, a willing lackey of greater imperialist powers, with the US at the head.
Crises and the youth
Another world is necessary
From demonstration at the XX International Antifacist and Antiimperialist Youth Camp in Denmark, hosted by DKU - The Communist Youth League
Even before the outbreak of the global economic crises in 2008, that is shaking the capitalist system today, the youth in the imperialist countries in Europe and North America had bleaker prospects for their future than the generation of their parents.
That is because the decline of the real wages of the families, leaving less for investment in the children and their future, and also because of the neoliberal attacks on the public services, that have meant a more expensive and qualitatively worse educational, health and social security system.
The resources have become more scarce, and this means that the youth have to lend money to get housing, education etc. becoming slaves of debt, before their independent economic and social lives even begin.
The crises has just made this situation worse, much worse. Capitalist politicians understand profits, but not economy, not even capitalist economy. They always delude themselves, like the Danish minister of the Fogh government, who on top of the boom, just on brink of the fall, exclaimed: ‘Things are going so well, that we can almost buy the whole world.”
The youth and the workers were also told, that they did not have to think about unemployment or assurance, and unfortunately many followed the tune: “The greatest problem for Denmark for now and a long time to come is lack of working power”.
In order to secure that and make people work more and longer the retirement age has increased to 67, the possibility of withdrawing at 60 raised to 62 and made more difficult to achieve, and just last month the period of receiving unemployment benefits, that once was seven years, was halved from four to only years. And by the way tax reductions for membership of trade unions were removed, and the families of small children forced to pay even more for their overpriced institutions, etc.
The policy of the Danish capitalist state and its government follows the same directions as in the other EU countries in this coordinated attempt to savagely throw all the burdens of the capitalist crises on to the backs of the working people and the youth.
From demonstration at the XX International Youth Camp 2006
As the Communist Youth League DKU said in a statement:
“The correction plan of the reactionary government is classic capitalist crises policy. Just as certain as the crises will return, as certain it will be the working class and the broad masses of the people, who will pay for the profit hunt of Capital.
Those who already have paid a great price for the crises, are now punished for the inability of Capital and its politicians to create jobs and progress for the broad masses.
There is one way to stop this policy: To create so much noise and trouble, that the reactionary government will fall.
In Greece the strike struggle against the austerity program, dictated by the European Union continues, and all over Europe demonstrations and strikes as a response to the capitalist crises policy are planned.
The road of struggle is the only road, and we must together with the European youth and working class mobilize all our strength to stop the anti-social cutback and crises plans.
We refuse to pay for your crises!
We want jobs, education, welfare and peace!”
The severity of the crises in Denmark can be seen from the fact the Gross National Product in 2008 fell with 0,9 percent and in 2009 with 4,9 percent, the biggest decline in a year registered. Unemployment has hit hard not least among the youth, and bankruptcies and evictions are reaching record heights.
Another fact: The hunt for profit has meant the de-industrialisation of the Danish economy. In the year 1990 existed 500.000 industrial work places.
Twenty years later, in 2010, the number has been reduced to 331.000. Almost two fifths of the jobs in industry have disappeared. Outsourcing has increased dramatically during the crises, especially to China and India, adding this unemployment factor to the closures and bankruptcies.
Will the present day youth accept their situation and these prospects for their future? Raised on discount “welfare” European Union style, debt ridden, unemployed, the youth will be an obedient and servile workforce, renouncing on solidarity and collective class struggle, but competing among themselves. This is what the Danish and European monopolies and their political and economic union envisages and work for.
It is up to the revolutionary and communist youth to find a better way.
DKU: For the 22nd International Antifascist and Antiimperialist Youth Camp, Selcuk, Turkey August 3rd-12th 2010 
