Political Frenzy

News reached me today from Copenhagen resident Knud Erik Henriksen - who also happens to be my cousin and friend. In an email he described a current event in Denmark’s capital:

Since 1982 we have had a house for the youth in Copenhagen. It was owned by the city but the kids had the right to use it. In 1999 the [community] decided to sell it, and it was sold to a very religious and rightwing organisation. Since it has been brought to the court several times to throw out the youngsters. On [March] 1 the police cleared the house, and this morning they have started to tear down the place.

Continuing, he said that the now homeless youths responded with violence, going so far as to burn cars. Knud Erik said it best:

At the moment they express themselves in a way only few like, but what are they going to do else? They don’t have money. They don’t have polical influence.

The resulting riots can only be described as the desperate acts of the disenfranchised. Some I have discussed this with have said that it is odd for the young people to react in such a way, as Denmark is one of the most egalitarian states in the world. But it is precisely these kinds of things, Youth Houses and such, that help make the Danish socially so strong. It’s akin to removing bricks from a building just because there are so many. “No one’s going to miss this brick… or this brick… or this one…” Anyone who’s ever played Jenga knows this isn’t the case.

The most disturbing part, however, is not the actual event, but the Associated Press article regarding it. According to the AP’s article, published on English news site Guardian Unlimited (companion site to the Manchester Guardian), the kids were “squatters”, using the title Youth House exclusively in quotation marks. Shockingly enough, it makes no reference to the sale of the property, and concludes that the building was “used by young squatters since the 1980s”. Squatters? Until recently, they were legal residents. As Knud Erik filled me in, they had to take this to court several times to try and evict the young people.

My outrage builds as the Associated Press article attempts to pin the riots on specific sub cultures, citing anarchists and punks specifically. The influx of foreign Europeans to protest the removal of the house was the focus of the article, whose headline read “European Anarchists Join Denmark Rioters”. And as anyone can plainly see, anyone who believes in social welfare, high taxation in return for economic egalitarianism, and a social net is an anarchist. Yea right.

In a cheap shot by AP writer Jan M. Olsen, the former Communist leader Vladimir Lenin is somehow obscurely linked to the incident through having once visited the house when it was a conference center, predating its years as a youth house. The mention alone is enough to send red flags (pun intended) to any American reader - but Lenin having once visited the building long ago does not make the protesters all communists, despite the intentions. The very poor connection is meaningless to the topic at hand.

This is exactly the problem with media today. Anyone reading this article clearly knows my agenda - I support the protesters and condemn the violent rioters; I believe that houses like that should be built here in the United States and it is a travesty that they are being removed in Denmark - but the Associated Press has masked itself with the stench of false unbiased reporting. In presenting opinions as inherent truths (it can never be proven that these protesters are anarchists or communists, and is most likely not true) and omitting inconvenient facts (the sale of the property, the fact that they were up until recently legal residents) they make a case to the world that misrepresents reality.

Thank you, Knud Erik, for bringing this horrible injustice to Danish society and grievous injury to journalistic integrity to my attention.

Dear readers, please think critically before you read any news. Every journalist on Earth cares about what they write, one way or another. Don’t trust anyone claiming to be unbiased, because all that means is they are very good at making you hear what they want you to hear, and hiding their agenda in carefully worded sentences.

You show me an unbiased journalist, and I’ll show you a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Europe, United Kingdom, Denmark, Associated Press