The Fall Of The King

Peter Brixtofte and The Neoliberal Welfare Utopia

In early February 2002, the town of Farum radiated confident optimism. Just twenty kilometres north of Copenhagen, nestled between two picturesque lakes and connected to the capital by a commuter train line, Farum was a middle class Utopia for its roughly 18,000 residents.

Children strolled to school carrying not heavy backpacks, but brand-new laptops, a gift from the municipality. Pensioners prepared for their annual holidays in the Mediterranean, all expenses paid by city hall. These weren’t elite privileges, but public services, available to everyone. Remarkably, it wasn’t funded by soaring taxes: Farum boasted some of the lowest tax rates in the country.

Unemployment seemed a distant specter, kept at bay by a pioneering workfare scheme. Those seeking benefits were required to pack goods for private companies or attend intensive Danish language classes. Naysayers and killjoys on the left decried it as "slave labor," renting out citizens without proper rights, but official numbers showed that it worked. Public buildings shone with newness. Dominating the skyline was Farum Park, a striking 10,000-seat football stadium capable of seating half the town, a monument to civic ambition. Down by the lakeside, a new marina added a touch of prosperity. The local football team, Farum BK, fueled by municipal ambition and generous private sponsorships, was on the cusp of qualifying for Denmark’s top professional league after a meteoric rise. Everywhere one looked, things in Farum seemed fresher, brighter, and more generous than they had any right to be.

At the heart of this glittering vision stood Peter Brixtofte. Charismatic, tireless, and impossible to ignore, he was the mastermind behind Farum’s transformation. The right-wing press affectionately called him “Denmark’s worst-dressed politician,” a nod to his perpetually ill-fitting suits, a quirk that only seemed to enhance his everyman appeal. Brixtofte made himself accessible, seemingly knowing every resident by name, always ready to cut through red tape or call in favors from his vast personal network. If someone needed a permit, a job or even a bicycle, he could make it happen. Mayor for over a decade, wielding an absolute majority on the council, Brixtofte appeared to have cracked the code of municipal governance. His potent blend of tax-cutting, privatization, and lavish public services, the "Farum Model", was hailed as visionary, copied by other right-wing councils, and championed nationally by his own Liberal Party as the blueprint for the welfare state of the new millennium. Farum wasn’t just successful; it felt like a triumphant refutation of the old, lingering social democratic welfare state, proof that liberals were the true, efficient stewards of the future.

But beneath the shine, something was off. There was a tension in the air – a sense that the dream was too perfect, too frictionless. And as the old saying goes: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Farum was living in a dream. A harsh awakening was in the making

• Peter Brixtofte (left) wearing a mayoral chain and Thor Pedersen (right) wearing sunglasses at the opening of Farum's new city hall in 1989

A Liberal Wunderkind

Peter Brixtofte was born on December 11, 1949, in Copenhagen, the son of a civil servant. When his father landed an administrative job at NATO, the family followed along and for four years the young Brixtofte attended the Lycée Internationale d’OTAN in Paris, an exclusive school for the children of NATO bureaucrats. The experience left a deep impression. Surrounded by classmates from across the world, Brixtofte absorbed a cosmopolitan worldview and developed a distaste for nationalism and xenophobia that would later set him apart from Denmark’s increasingly xenophobic political mainstream. Later in life, he described his time “among Frenchmen, Americans, Chinese, [soft N-word redacted]” as transformative. His personal experience of language unlocking French society became the bedrock for his later insistence on mandatory Danish classes for unemployed immigrants, a policy masking its coercive edge as integration.

While his brother Jens pursued a musical career, winning Denmark’s Eurovision contest in 1982, only to place second to last internationally, Peter turned to politics. After earning a political science degree from the University of Copenhagen in 1972 at the age of 22, the youngest graduate to ever do that. He entered parliament just a year later. During the 1980s, as xenophobic rhetoric began creeping into Danish public life, Brixtofte remained aligned with the political mainstream which had not yet been infected. He warned that failing to engage with immigrant communities risked fostering “national self-satisfaction bordering on nationalism,” and argued that Danes could learn from immigrants, particularly in matters of family values. This early stance would later contrast starkly with the viciously racist policies of his party under Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Brixtofte’s true power base, however, was Farum. Elected to the local council in 1979, his breakthrough came on election night in 1985. Although the Liberals had won just 5 of 21 seats, Brixtofte outmanoeuvred the Social Democrats by rejecting their offer of the mayoralty in exchange for all committee chairs. Instead he struck a deal with the Socialist People’s Party (SF) and Farum’s lone Communist councillor, securing the mayor’s chain for himself. The communist, incidentally, would later defect and join the Liberal Party.

By 1989, the Liberals had won an outright majority. Brixtofte ruled unopposed.

Once in power, he moved fast. Inspired by the prevailing winds of Thatcherite and Reaganite neoliberalism, Brixtofte cut taxes, outsourced public services, and declared war on bureaucracy. City Hall staff plummeted from 220 full-time employees when he took office to a skeletal 55 by the time he left. Early results seemed miraculous: finances improved, and at the opening of a gleaming new City Hall 1989, Liberal Party Interior Minister Thor Pedersen praised Farum as a "model municipality." A new cultural center followed in 1992.

Brixtofte ruled Farum as his personal petty kingdom. Dissent was not tolerated. He cultivated a court of loyalists, appointing people without relevant experience or education to key positions, often people he had helped out of trouble, ensuring their dependence. Those who crossed him faced demotion, salary cuts, or dismissal.

In 1994 the municipally employed psychologist Ulla Andersen gave a sarcastic speech at a farewell reception for the latest victim of Brixtofte's leadership style, the town's fourth municipal director over a period of just eight years. She spoke ironically about the mayor's love of power and prestige. Paraphrasing the fairytale about The Emperor's New Clothes she said: "It makes no sense, they thought. But they didn't say it. For those who couldn't see the brilliance in the mayor's ideas were either unfit for their office or unforgivably stupid". Many people laughed. Brixtofte was not one of them. The infuriated mayor fired her on the spot. Though later forced to retract the dismissal, he subjected her to unbearable workloads until she resigned. During the ensuing legal battle, which the city lost, city hall made the extraordinary claim that mocking the mayor was just as serious an offense as physically assaulting him would be.

A cornerstone of Brixtofte’s early "success" was his aggressive workfare scheme. Benefit claimants were compelled into menial labor for private companies or language classes under threat of losing their benefits. An agreement between the union SiD and Farum in the 1980s meant that the unemployed in workfare were required to join unions and unemployment insurance funds. For the union it was about labour rights, for Brixtofte it was a cynical cost-shifting ploy. Farum would keep the workers in employment for a year before firing them, just enough for them to qualify for state-funded unemployment insurance payouts rather than municipally funded benefits. Brixtofte would openly boast about this strategy in media interviews.

SiD railed against the workfare scheme, accusing Farum of renting out the unemployed as cheap labor without rights, while companies reaped the benefits. In 1992, SiD took legal action, complaining about abuse of citizens in the workfare scheme. The municipality would rent them out to private businesses. The companies paid union wages to Farum, which then paid the workers unemployment benefits and pocketed the difference. SiD likened it to slave labour. The case failed. The county oversight committee and a labour arbitration court was convinced by the municipality's claims that the arrangement was a work capability assessment scheme and not employment.

In 1993 Jydsk Rengøring, the company in which Thor Pedersen had become CEO after leaving government, was awarded a contract on cleaning services at a retirement home. As part of the agreement they had been handed a large amount of benefit claimants who were formally undergoing a training programme but who were in reality working for Jydsk Rengøring. Although the unemployment schemes in Farum were notoriously opaque, it is clear that the scheme was a huge financial benefit for the company.

Though often lauded by the right as being the solution to unemployment, later analysis found that the claimed workfare miracle in Farum was built on hype and questionable statistics. Employment is driven by demand, not supply and in reality, Farum did no better or no worse than other municipalities when it came to fighting unemployment.

Brixtofte’s true financial wizardry, however, was the infamous "Farum Model", a sale and lease-back scheme. Starting as early as 1990, he began selling off municipal assets, the roads and parks department, the municipal sewer system, even retirement homes, to private investors, only to lease them back on long-term contracts. Loopholes in Denmark’s tax code made the deals lucrative for both sides, generating large upfront windfalls for the town. Critics said it shifted costs onto taxpayers in other parts of the country. Brixtofte brushed them aside.

In 1992, tax minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen resigned over a “creative bookkeeping” scandal. Brixtofte replaced him while continuing to run Farum as a side hustle but his time in government was short-lived. The conservative/liberal coalition of Poul Schlüter collapsed in 1993 as a consequence of a legal scandal in which minister of justice Erik Ninn Hansen criminally refused asylum to Tamil refugees despite them being entitled to it.

In 1995, Brixtofte was knighted, cementing his national stature.

His ambition grew stronger. In the mid-1990s, Brixtofte set his eyes on the leadership of the Liberal Party, positioning himself as successor to Uffe Ellemann-Jensen. His main rival was the shrewd Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The battle turned vicious. During the 1990’s and early 2000’s, persistent rumors about Anders Fogh Rasmussen allegedly being a closeted homosexual whispered through the public as well as the halls of parliament. Frequently politicians and journalists, including ministers in the ruling Social Democratic/Social Liberal coalition would joke among themselves about his alleged gay relationships. It was exactly the kind of thing people loved to believe about the robotic and uptight Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

While Brixtofte always denied responsibility, the near-universal belief within the political elite, including the leadership of the Liberal Party, was that he was the source of the rumours. Although many made jokes, few people seriously believed the gossip and the claims failed to hurt Anders Fogh Rasmussen politically. The homophobic smear campaign backfired and when Ellemann-Jensen stepped down in 1998, Anders Fogh Rasmussen secured the leadership. Brixtofte was sidelined, his national career was over. Embittered, he turned his energies entirely towards consolidating his power in Farum where he was still the big fish, determined to build his kingdom there.

The Kingdom of Farum

Brixtofte ruled over Farum unchallenged. Power was executed not in the council chamber but in the taproom of a local inn, unofficially dubbed "Committee Room Number Eight". There Brixtofte, presiding over his court of yes-men, would map out Farum's future over fine food and expensive wine. After the opening of Farum Park stadium in 1999, Brixtofte would move the proceedings to Restaurant Sepp, located there. Liberal Party group meetings would often feature food and wine paid for by the city. Under Brixtofte, Farum’s spending on “representation” ballooned, eclipsing neighboring towns by a factor of twenty.

Behind the charismatic public facade, a profound darkness festered. Brixtofte had developed a severe alcohol dependency. His daughter Maria later recalled the emotional toll: the unease of watching their father spiral, the unsettling transformation from the energetic, sober man of the morning to the distant, intoxicated figure who returned each evening. While his daughters also recalled moments of joy, dancing to Jewish folk music in the morning, being introduced to a broad cultural diet spanning from French cinema to folk comedies and football, even Sunday visits to the local Turkish cultural association, a highly unusual activity for an ethnically Danish family at the time, the alcoholism was a corrosive constant.

At city hall, the effects were visible. Brixtofte grew increasingly autocratic and paranoid, especially following his exit from national politics in 1998.

Financially, the kingdom was built on sand. The initial cash bonanza from selling off municipal assets fueled Brixtofte’s megalomaniacal construction projects and expansive welfare services. Beyond the legendary laptops and pensioner holidays, came guaranteed childcare, new housing projects for students and the elderly, and, above all, his obsession: Farum BK, the local football club forged in a merger of two smaller clubs, engineered by Brixtofte in 1992. Convinced Farum could host a Champions League club, he poured municipal resources into the team, becoming a major shareholder and chairman. Many Liberal councillors also held shares. Brixtofte was hellbent on making Farum Denmark's sports capital, hiring professional athletes as coaches and consultants. The stadium, Farum Park, and the adjacent Farum Arena stood as glittering monuments to his ambition. The new marina completed the picture.

Warnings were there for anyone willing to look. But few wanted to. Nationally, the “Farum Model” remained political gold. The Liberal Party, eager to shed its 1980s image as heartless libertarian cave-men and appeal to a broader electorate of welfare-loving Danes, the party pointed to Farum as proof liberals could deliver a generous, efficient welfare state. Lars Løkke Rasmussen, then mayor of the Frederiksborg County which Farum was part of, and himself a rising star, was a fervent admirer. He copied Brixtofte’s sale-leaseback scheme, selling a psychiatric hospital, praising the model as "a dynamic interplay of the public and private sectors" delivering "more service and more choices for the same money." As late as January 2002, the national Liberal Party lauded Farum as "an exemplary reform municipality," highlighting twelve years of tax cuts alongside free laptops and pensioner vacations as proof of what liberals could achieve in local politics.

But within Farum, the cracks were widening. Critics described a toxic political culture of opaque deals and vicious personal attacks. Helene Lund, an SF councillor with over a decade on the council, was one of the few who dared to oppose him. In a 1999 article she stated plainly: "I think he is mean. When we have a meeting I never know where the attacks will come from but I can be sure they'll come. And by the way the attacks are never of a political nature as I experience it." She fought a losing battle against Brixtofte’s tactic of moving most decisions from public agendas to closed sessions, a practice that intensified after 1998. Public council meetings became brief, meaningless formalities, with one regular attendant remarking that they were so short that it was hardly worth the trouble to take your jacket off when attending. Brixtofte attempted to cut the number of council meetings to just six a year but was stopped by the county's oversight commission.

An atmosphere of fear prevailed; several councillors reported being watched when reviewing documents at city hall and they were afraid to bring anything home, suspecting documents were marked to trace leaks, a tactic Brixtofte had used before. An anonymous councillor spoke of the "hell" that awaited anyone who dared challenge him publicly. The local branch of the liberal party dismissed the accusations as baseless and accused the smaller parties on the council for being mad that they could never vote anything through.

Inside the planning department, officials resented how anyone with a plot of land and a Farum BK sponsorship contract could get a planning permit. One official who refused to alter a critical note on a student housing project received what city hall employees called "the mushroom treatment": sent to a dark place and covered in shit, while more compliant colleagues were ordered to make the edits.

Brixtofte chafed against any constraint. In 2000, furious at how the National Municipal Association worked against his sale and lease back schemes, he withdrew Farum entirely. He refused an Interior Ministry directive to post 600 million DKK (RMB 672 mln.) as collateral for sports facility construction. In 2001, he ignored an environmental board order to halt the illegal construction of student housing in a designated industrial zone.

His next grand scheme was about to take off in the summer of 2002: transforming a decommissioned military base into a massive new neighborhood. The project would drastically expand Farum’s population and, Brixtofte believed, its tax base. The vision was bold but the foundations of his kingdom were already crumbling.

• Peter Brixtofte in his heyday

Downfall

On February 6, 2002 the tabloid B.T. detonated the first bomb: "Drank for DKK 150,000 in a day" (RMB 168,000). A few weeks before, a terrified anonymous city hall employee had snuck up the garden path to the home of journalist Morten Pihl under the cover of night. "I've never been here." was his first words to the journalist "You've never spoken to me. It must never be made public. I have never been here. You must promise me that!" Only once Pihl had agreed to the terms of silence did the man confirm what the journalist suspected, the plastic bag full of receipts from Restaurant Sepp that the table had been handed by an unknown source was authentic.

The B.T. story detailed astronomical spending on "representation," centered on Restaurant Sepp, owned by Farum BK. One receipt showed a single bill for 63,027 DKK (RMB 70,592), 61,440 DKK (RMB 68.822) of it for just eight bottles of wine for Brixtofte and four guests, fraudulently expensed as payment for "30 full-day seminars."

On February 7 B.T. struck again. Brixtofte had inexplicably delayed payment on a municipal property purchase, gifting the seller, a friend of Brixtofte, 325,000 DKK (RMB 364,000) in late fees. That afternoon, Helene Lund and other councillors filed police reports against the mayor. Brixtofte dismissed the unfolding scandal as nothing more than a politically motivated witch hunt and promptly announced a three-month leave from both the mayor’s office and parliament.

In the evening, the police questioned Jørn Frederiksen, the city’s former Technical Director, on the property deal. But while the authorities moved in, so did Brixtofte’s people. His chief of staff, Sten Gensmann, slipped into Frederiksen’s office and began removing large amounts of files about municipal property deals. Unbeknownst to Gensmann, the police had already seized the files related to the scandalous property deal. Gensmann had not acted alone; he’d been sent by party colleagues during a Liberal group meeting. When Frederiksen discovered what had happened, he filed his own police report, believing his office had been broken into.

The next morning, February 8, new damning revelations emerged. B.T. revealed that the municipality had systematically overpaid a travel agency, Alletiders Rejser, by DKK 500.000 (RMB 560,000) for organizing the widely celebrated pensioner holidays to southern Europe. The excess money had then been funneled back to Farum BK, disguised as a sponsorship. The pattern of illicit municipal funds propping up Brixtofte’s pet project was now undeniable.

By February 9, the illusion of invincibility had evaporated. Police launched coordinated raids on city hall as well as several private residences, including those of Brixtofte and Municipal Director, Leif Frimand Jensen. Computers and mountains of files were seized as evidence. Faced with a full-blown crisis, Brixtofte reversed course. He returned to city hall, abandoning his leave and attempted to reassert control. But the kingdom was falling apart, and the king was defending a throne that was collapsing underneath him.

The wine, the sponsorships, the real estate grifts, these were only the surface. In the days that followed, a deeper structural rot was uncovered. Farum’s clever finances had been built on sand. The tax loopholes that once funded the city’s wonders had been closed years earlier and the municipality had no more assets to sell. The city was running massive deficits. To keep the illusion going Brixtofte had taken out two massive, unauthorized loans behind the back of the council, totaling DKK 450 million (RMB 504 mln.), burying the town under unsustainable debt. Municipal Director Leif Frimand Jensen had signed the loan agreements, despite knowing how the council had been kept in the dark. Farum was bankrupt.

On February 19, ten days after the first story broke, the national government struck. Lars Løkke Rasmussen, Brixtofte’s former admirer now Minister of the Interior in Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s newly elected government, put Farum under state administration and imposed a harsh austerity programme of huge tax hikes and sweeping service cuts, costing the average Farum household an extra DKK 1700 (RMB 19,000) per month. Brixtofte railed against this intervention, labelling it a "deeply unserious economic punitive action." He insisted his grand designs to redevelop the former military base would have saved Farum, flooding it with new taxpayers. He pointed fingers at the Fogh Rasmussen government, accusing them of a political vendetta and told how the press would often get access to relevant documents from the Ministry of the Interior before the Farum council got it.

His defiance was short-lived. On March 20, his council, overwhelmed by the scandal and the looming oversight, voted to suspend him. On May 13, the day before the suspension would take effect, he resigned as mayor. The next day, his own Liberal Party expelled him from their parliamentary group. By June 5th, he was purged from the local party branch in Farum itself.

The county oversight committee descended, fining 18 out of 19 councillors for negligence in their duties. Six pleaded guilty and paid the fines, 12 others went to court where they were all acquitted a few months later. Officials were ordered to repay misused public funds.

The scandal reached into the national government. Thor Pedersen, Brixtofte’s old ally who had once praised Farum as a "model municipality" was now Finance Minister and his name appeared as the scandal unfolded. During his time as CEO, Jydsk Rengøring, had received a lucrative, no-bid contract for municipal assisted living facilities in 1999, jumping an existing contract from 24 to 96 units, coinciding precisely with a substantial 450,000 DKK (RMB 504,000) sponsorship deal with Farum BK. The police questioned the Finance Minister but no charges were filed. Pedersen steadfastly denied any wrongdoing, eventually weathering the storm.

Brixtofte, now a pariah, scrambled to revive his political career. Parliament stripped him of his immunity from prosecution later in 2003. He briefly joined the Centre Democrats who had lost representation in parliament and were desperate for influence but even they would not let him run under their name in the 2005 general election due to the ongoing legal proceedings against him. Undeterred, he founded his own Social-Liberal Party which was quickly renamed the Welfare Party, following legal complaints from the Liberal Party. Brixtofte's Welfare Party managed a pyrrhic victory, winning back a single council seat for Brixtofte in the newly merged Furesø municipality later that year.

Looking for new revenue streams, Brixtofte turned to business in 2003. Together with the infamous slumlord and horse trader Låsby-Svendsen, he launched a Turkish real estate venture selling vacation homes to Danes in Antalya. It failed by 2008 as a result of the financial crisis.

The law, however, was relentless. His criminal case was split in two: the Sponsor Case and the Main Case. In 2006, he was convicted of gross misconduct for deliberately overpaying construction giant Skanska by 9 million DKK (RMB 10 mln.)for building Farum Arena, with the understanding the excess would be given as sponsorship to Farum BK's handball division Ajax Farum. He was sentenced to two years in prison. His appeal failed in 2007.

It was during the years of legal proceedings that his marriage for more than 20 years ended.

In 2008 he was found guilty of gross misconduct and abuse of public office in the Main Case, adding an additional two years to his sentence in addition to an order to pay 7 million DKK (RMB 7.8 mln.) in damages and legal fees. His former right-hand man, Leif Frimand Jensen, was convicted as well, receiving a suspended two-year sentence.

Later that same year, the Supreme Court upheld the Sponsor Case conviction. Brixtofte now had a final conviction to his name and the Queen stripped him of his knighthood. Lars Løkke Rasmussen, once his disciple, now as Minister of the Interior, formally barred him from his council seat. Peter Brixtofte began serving his sentence in an open prison.

His final act of defiance came in 2009. As his last appeal in the Main Case was rejected, he appeared on television, calling the presiding judge "an extreme nationalist" and accused him of pursuing a political vendetta against him. The performance earned him another conviction, this time for defamation, and a fine of DKK 10,000 (RMB 11,200).

He was released on parole in 2011. The friends and sycophants he partied with as mayor had abandoned him a long time ago. The kingdom was gone.

Legacy

Though infamous for his taste in expensive wine, few grasped the full extent of Peter Brixtofte’s alcoholism. After his political downfall in 2002, he cycled in and out of rehab, repeatedly failing to stay sober. From time to time gossip magazines would bring funny stories about his drinking. They wrote about the funny drunk, not about how he was hospitalized multiple times with alcohol poisoning or how his drinking drove a wedge between him and his three daughters, who often cut off contact for weeks or months as they could not bear being around him when he spiraled.

On November 8 2016 a police car and two ambulances pulled up in front of a Farum housing estate. Peter Brixtofte’s daughters had found him dead in his apartment, lying on the sofa. He had died alone, aged 66, several days before. The medical examiner ruled his death to be alcohol-related, a conclusion his daughter Maria later agreed to. She had not spoken to him for three weeks at the time of his death.

Following his downfall, parliament launched an official inquiry in 2003. Nearly nine years later, the Farum Commission released its findings: over 7,000 pages across sixteen volumes. Despite its staggering length, the report stopped short of recommending sweeping reforms. Its tangible outcomes were modest: changes to municipal legislation clarifying how councils could remove mayors mid-term, and improved training on minority rights and procedural safeguards for councillors. The story of Farum, of pride, hubris, and corruption, captured public imagination and has inspired several books and documentaries.

Lars Løkke Rasmussen’s 2004 local government reform forced smaller municipalities to merge. Farum, toxic and bankrupt, found itself without suitors. Neighboring Værløse, unwilling to merge into "the red sea" of neighbouring Social Democrat councils had secured no other options and found itself forcibly wedded to Farum by Løkke Rasmussen’s decree, creating the Furesø Municipality. Citizens of Værløse protested and the local council spoke of expropriation and hired lawyers but it was to no avail. The merger went ahead.

To soften the blow to Værløse, legislation was passed, levying a special tax on residents living in the former Farum municipality until 2013. The new municipality received a 50 million DKK (RMB 56 mln.) annual bailout until 2021. Farum’s citizens ended up paying the price for Brixtofte’s vision. Today the Furesø municipality has recovered, not to the heights of the Brixtofte age but to stable mediocrity, having a tax rate slightly below and a service level slightly above national averages.

Farum BK rebranded as FC Nordsjælland in a bid to shed association with the Brixtofte age and to appeal to a broader regional base. Being one of Brixtofte's few enduring legacies, the club survived the financial blow of the mayor's downfall and continues to play in Denmark’s top tier, having qualified for the Champions League several times.

Most insidiously, Brixtofte’s harsh workfare policies, once controversial for exploiting the vulnerable, entered the political mainstream and became a cornerstone of Danish labour policy. Although he remained critical of the racist turn of Danish politics to the end, the workfare model he championed became a tool wielded by islamophobic politicians. Today, both Liberals and Social Democrats alike consider underpaid coerced labour for the unemployed to be commonsensical tough love for the undeserving and racialised poor.

The origins of the leaks that brought Brixtofte down remain murky. His autocratic leadership style and ruthless political maneuvering earned him many enemies. Speculation persists that elements within the Liberal Party, recognizing Farum’s unsustainable finances as a ticking time bomb under the party’s "model municipality" narrative, orchestrated a controlled demolition. By turning the story of the systemic failure of an ideology into a story of a single man’s criminality, fixating on wine, property deals, and sponsorships, they avoided being tainted. For Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, destroying his former rival would have felt like sweet revenge while also ridding him of a prominent internal critic of his national conservative turn.

Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who had been made prime minister by 2016, penned a warm eulogy for Brixtofte. He praised Brixtofte’s "drive and immense commitment," his "grand gestures" and "profound impatience to achieve results," framing the scandal not as corruption but as "irregularities" caused by this impatience. He expressed pain at having had to "put his foot down" as Interior Minister. He never had to answer for having embraced Brixtofte’s policies, including the infamous sale-and-leaseback schemes, as county mayor. His local government reforms dissolved the counties altogether, burying the financial wreckage in bureaucratic reorganization. Thor Pedersen retired with his reputation largely intact. The businessmen who profited from municipal contracts and facilitated the illicit sponsorships faced no consequences.

Shortly before his death, Brixtofte gave a final interview to B.T., the very tabloid that had first exposed him. He bore no grudge against the paper. He described the articles that brought him down not as an expose of criminal wrongdoing, but as sport, a fair game between him and the media where he had simply been outplayed by an opponent he underestimated. Once more he insisted on his innocence, calling the trials a “parody”.

In later interviews his daughter Maria would tell how he had been drunk while making most of the decisions that landed him in jail but during the interview he pointed to the official inquiry’s failure to prove decisively that alcohol had affected his judgement, claiming it vindicated him. He took pride in what he had built: the sports facilities, the elder care, the integration efforts. He had nothing but disdain for his successors and claimed that “nothing has happened in Farum” since his ouster. “I don’t regret shit,” he stated, recasting himself as a misunderstood jovial visionary, a far cry from the domineering narcissist described by those closest to him.

Peter Brixtofte refused to accept responsibility. He left behind a town in ruins and blamed everyone but himself. He didn’t regret shit. But he was full of it.

Mr. Smile's Last Laugh

How The Communist Resistance Took Out One of Denmark's Most Dangerous Nazi Snitches

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary on the morning of February 23rd, 1945 at Café 44 in Copenhagen's Nørrebro neighborhood. Around 10 o'clock, the owner, Henning Walthing, unlocked the door and entered alongside an elderly man. Shortly after, two patrons entered and ordered beer. A little later, two more men arrived. When Walthing emerged from the basement carrying supplies, the scene shifted dramatically. Two of the guests produced guns, held him up, and searched him. They found a loaded, unlocked pistol and a wallet containing a large amount of money.

Walthing was no ordinary café owner. To his Nazi associates in the Svend Staahl Group, he was known as "Walther Smile," or simply "Mr. Smile." He was a notorious and lethal informant. The elderly man was merely a bystander. The other four men in the café were resistance fighters from the communist resistance group BOPA delivering long-overdue justice.

The resistance fighters handed the wallet to the elderly man, instructing him to deliver it to Mr. Smile's mother and instructed him to wait 30 minutes before alerting anyone. They then drove off in a borrowed van with their prisoner.

It was common for the resistance not to seize money during operations like these. While the money could have funded their struggle, taking it would make it easy for Nazi propaganda to paint the resistance as common criminals and to mask resistance as robberies. Leaving the money sent a clear signal: this was a political action, not a robbery.

The elderly man did as instructed, and waited 30 minutes before reporting the incident to the municipal guard corps at a nearby police station. The guards accepted the wallet and handed it over to an associate of Walthing.

Compared to other Nazi-occupied nations, Denmark experienced a relatively mild occupation. Following their quick defeat of Denmark in 1940, German authorities pursued a "peacetime occupation," allowing Danish civil institutions to function relatively undisturbed. Large-scale destruction and imposition of direct Nazi rule was avoided. In exchange the Germans gained access to vital agricultural exports and control of their northern flank with minimal troop commitment. Initially Danish police supported this collaboration, actively hunting resistance members and rounding up refugees. However, as the tide of war turned and resistance swelled, the police increasingly shifted allegiance. By September 1944, frustrated by the police's perceived lack of cooperation, the Germans dissolved the force. Approximately 2,000 officers from major cities were deported to German concentration camps.

With the police dismantled, law enforcement was taken over by German forces such as the Gestapo and their collaborators in the hated HIPO corps (Hilfspolizei). HIPO was composed of Danish Nazi sympathizers, many of them returning Wffen-SS war criminals from the Eastern Front, tasked with doing the Nazis’ dirty work. The Nazis were only concerned with hunting the resistance and civilian law enforcement devolved into poorly trained municipal guards, civilians equiped only with batons and armbands, barely capable of breaking up fights or apprehending petty criminals caught in the act.

Amidst this chaos, the Svend Staahl Group operated. It emerged from a network of about 80 Nazi-sympathizing police officers. While the Danish police was largely anti-communist and reactionary, their nationalism made explicit Nazism unpopular, especially after the occupation, leading the Nazi officers to be shunned by their colleagues. By August 1943, in the lead-up to Germany’s declaration of martial law, roughly 30–35 of them organized into what became known as the Svend Staahl Group. These were not opportunists, they were ideological Nazis, virulent anti-communists with deep ties to the German intelligence apparatus. Many had been recruited by the Abwehr long before the group’s creation, and many were also active in other Nazi groups such as the HIPO and the Schalburg Corps – an organization of Danish Waffen-SS war criminals acting as a replacement for the embarassing failure that was the Danish Nazi Party (DNSAP).

Operating under the Schalburg Corps’ intelligence division, the Staahl Group used their positions in the police to spy on colleagues, report dissent, and feed intelligence to their German handlers. After the police were dismantled in 1944, they exploited their training and uniforms to infiltrate resistance cells. Public sympathy for the now-dissolved police force gave them cover: a glimpse of a badge sewn discreetly into the inside of a lapel was often enough to waive the usual background checks.

In the chaotic months that followed liberation, the Staahl Group was widely suspected of involvement in a wave of retaliatory assassinations carried out against resistance fighters. But these turned out to be the work of the more infamous Peter Group, a separate gang of collaborators. Unlike the Peter Group, the Staahl Group operated in deep secrecy, avoiding public raids and keeping their identities hidden. Their efforts served the Abwehr as much as they did the Nazi counter-resistance. They communicated with German forces and the Schalburg Corps through intermediaries to minimize exposure.

Their leader, Svend Staahl, real name Poul Otto Ditlev Nielsen, was a ghost. He reportedly bragged that the resistance would never catch him and claimed he’d kill anyone who suspected his true allegiance. Rumors circulated that he had already murdered six or seven men to keep his cover intact.

Nicknamed "Pretty Walthing" for his dapper style, Mr. Smile had been a committed Nazi since 1937 and once served as adjutant to Danish Nazi leader Frits Clausen. After the German crackdown on the Danish police in September 1944, he became second-in-command of the Svend Staahl Group. Funded by the occupiers, he opened Café 44 in the heart of Nørrebro, a known stronghold of the communist resistance. Feigning sympathy to the resistance, Walthing used the café as a front to gather intelligence, which he funneled to the Germans through the Staahl Group.

By December 1944, the resistance had identified both the group and an apartment they used as a meeting point. The Staahl Group posed a deadly threat: resistance fighters they exposed faced torture, deportation to concentration camps or execution. The group had to be eliminated. A liquidation team from BOPA was assigned the task.

At the time, many believed such liquidation orders came from the Freedom Council, the underground body coordinating Denmark's resistance. One participant later recalled in his memoirs that the group had been "sentenced to death" by the council’s liquidation committee. In truth, no such committee existed. For security reasons, fighters remained unaware of organizational details. Instead, liquidation decisions were taken by local leaders within individual groups like BOPA.

The team surveilled both the apartment and Café 44, aware of Mr. Smile’s key role. One BOPA member became a regular patron at the café, earning the trust of Walthing’s mother, Agnes, who worked there by offering her a black market deal for coke rationing stamps and was able to confirm Mr. Smile's identity.

Tracking the group proved difficult. The apartment was often empty, and when used, the collaborators slipped into traffic to evade pursuit. It took time to decipher the routines they followed to assemble discreetly. Just days before the planned raid, the resistance finally tailed a group member to the police guard post at Amalienborg Palace. They made a big mistake by asking the police for help identifying him from a photo. The police delayed, and one way or the other the Staahl Group caught suspicion they were being hunted, and abandoned the apartment. With the opportunity to strike the whole group lost, BOPA shifted its focus to targeting known individuals.

After his abduction, Mr. Smile was taken to the basement laundry room of a borrowed villa in a Copenhagen suburb. There, he was guarded while senior BOPA members were summoned for interrogation. Interrogations of captured collaborators was rare, but Mr. Smile was believed to possess critical intelligence.

He quickly recovered from the shock. Over the four hours he waited in the basement, the smooth-talking informant insisted on his innocence with such flair and conviction that his guards began to believe him. They assured him he had nothing to fear—he merely had to wait for questioning.

The interrogation was conducted by senior BOPA members Børge Thing (codename Brandt) and Erling Andresen (Lund). Andresen, a jurist and prosecutor with the Copenhagen Police, took the lead. Neither interrogator knew precisely whom Mr. Smile had informed on, only that he was a key member of the Staahl Group. Thing remained mostly silent except for once when he snapped, “You are fucking full of shit!” at Mr. Smile, a blunt interruption to what he felt was Andresen’s overly polite line of questioning.

Remarkably, the interrogation was filmed on silent film. The footage shows a well-dressed Mr. Smile in his fedora and overcoat, seated among dusty potted plants and laundry supplies in the basement. According to those present, no physical torture was used. The film corroborates this, showing no signs of violence.

At first, Mr. Smile denied everything. He claimed never to have heard of Svend Staahl. He asserted the pistol was merely for protection due to a past threat. He remained calm and one account describe him as "acting with the utmost servility and smarminess." However, when asked if he knew "Walther Smile," he turned pale. The resistance knew his codename. The game was up. He began talking.

He admitted to knowing Svend Staahl and revealed his real name. He confirmed he had been at the apartment but claimed his role was purely clerical. The interrogators told him he might be evacuated to neutral Sweden if he cooperated fully. He continued to deny snitching on anyone. He could not explain how he got the money used to open Café 44, funds the resistance knew had come from the Germans.

Then he made a fatal mistake.

He claimed to have told another group member about a young man involved in the resistance, arguing this somehow proved his innocence because he could have told the Gestapo about him but didn't. The young man in question happened to be the brother of interrogator Erling Andresen. He had been wanted by the Gestapo, and his evasion was certainly not due to Mr. Smile's restraint.

After an hour and a half of questioning, Mr. Smile had given up a few names and addresses, but it was clear he would divulge no more useful information. He had confessed to being part of the Svend Staahl Group and admitted to informing on at least one resistance member. It was enough. No one present doubted his guilt anymore or the inevitability of what came next. Mr. Smile, however, still clung to the belief that he would be taken to Sweden. The BOPA team maintained this illusion to keep him cooperative. They told him Svend Staahl had been captured and he would be taken to meet him to corroborate his version of events.

They drove him north, to a forest outside Copenhagen. Upon arrival, they told him they would need to walk a short distance through the forest to reach Staahl. Mr. Smile complied without hesitation, delicately stepping around puddles to avoid soiling his expensive shoes, apparently still unaware of what awaited him.

Then, on a muddy woodland path, two resistance fighters silently raised their weapons and fired from behind. A bullet snapped his neck and he died instantly. He collapsed face-down in the mud with a soft sigh.

The execution did not end there. One of the fighters, code-named "Moe", cracked under the psychological weight of the moment. Consumed by rage and revulsion, he emptied the rest of his pistol into the corpse. Andresen, a trained prosecutor, later described it as "a blood frenzy" and considered it far more chilling than the killing itself.

With Mr. Smile dead, BOPA turned its sights to Svend Staahl. They now knew his real identity and considered him the next target. But events took an unexpected turn.

When Staahl learned of Mr. Smile’s abduction, he panicked. Convinced that he was next, he barricaded himself inside the apartment of Mr. Smile's mother Agnes Walthing, a known meeting place for his group. Alongside him were Agnes Walthing and three other members, all fearing a resistance raid.

That afternoon, they phoned the HIPO corps at the central Copenhagen police station and requested reinforcements. A protocol was agreed upon: the HIPO men would knock five times, and Staahl would respond with a password to confirm their identity. Simple. Foolproof.

When the HIPO arrived, they knocked as planned. But Staahl forgot about the password and began opening the door without saying a word. The HIPO officer outside, jittery and expecting an ambush, opened fire with his machine pistol. Bullets shredded the wooden door, striking both Staahl and Walthing. They died instantly.

In a twist of fate, equal parts poetic justice and bloody slapstick, one gang of Nazis had accidentally wiped out another. Svend Staahl’s final boast had come true: the resistance never got him. His own carelessness and the paranoia of his fellow Nazis did.

The aftermath was bloody. In retaliation, German forces executed several civilians. In total, 21 people died violently on February 23rd, 1945, in connection with the Staahl Group.

Over the following months, the resistance hunted down and liquidated several remaining members of the group. Some members took refuge inside Copenhagen's central police station, hoping proximity to the HIPO corps would shield them. Others, sensing the war was nearly lost, tried to switch sides and ingratiate themselves with resistance circles.

After the liberation, known survivors were expelled from the police and sentenced to up to 16 years in prison for treason.

Although the Staahl Group is believed to have laid the groundwork for numerous German actions against the Danish resistance, details remain scarce and very little is known about their work for the Abwehr. The German police successfully destroyed most of their records shortly before capitulation.

You rarely have to count fingers when you go to an art exhibition — but here we are.

We had been invited to an exhibition titled The dragons are coming, with the breathless tagline Unleash your inner dragon. It even had a space where kids could build their own Lego dragons. I didn’t do my homework beforehand, but it sounded harmless enough. I like dragons. Dragons are cool.

The man behind the spectacle is Jim Lyngvild: fashion designer, writer, flamboyant Viking cosplayer, and media personality. He lives in a fake Viking castle and likes to dress up as an extra from a History Channel hallucination. He doesn't dwell too much on how someone as flamboyantly queer as himself would have fared in actual Norse society. He also happens to be best buds with fascist icon Pia Kjærsgaard.

I have survived another of Lyngvild’s exhibitions a few years ago, when someone at the National Museum had a stroke and invited him to make a Viking exhibition that was as historically accurate as a plastic horned helmet. It was Lyngvild playing dress-up with real artifacts, peddling the tired Hollywood myth of tattooed barbarians.

This time, though, he had pivoted to dragons. A perfect fit. After all, dragons are imaginary so no killjoy historians will be around to fact-check your fantasies.

The exhibition occupied a converted factory space, the kind of raw, industrial hangar every Western town now uses as a Hail Mary to gentrify the deindustrialized old working-class bones. It’s the same formula: slap some art into a disused warehouse and pray the microbreweries and gallerinas will follow. And you know what? Those places can be fine. It doesn’t have to be the Louvre to be a nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

We arrived, dragon-hopeful. The gift shop at the entrance was a Lyngvild emporium: You could buy his book about dragons (more about that later), his book of made-up Viking tattoos (so you too can look like a neo-nazi!), his Norse mythology-themed craft beer, and any number of chintzy branded items. If nothing else, Lyngvild is a hustler, milking his personal brand for everything it's worth.

The Fog of Meaninglessness

We entered to find what the website generously called "Lyngvild’s artworks". Huge framed prints of dragons stared down at us, flanked by fake “infographics” about dragon species. Okay. We’re playing make-believe: dragons are real. I can get behind that. I can suspend disbelief and have fun with it.

But something felt off. The dim, plasticky images crawled under my skin in a way I couldn’t quite place.

We went up a staircase and were treated with reproductions of stained glass windows, mostly of a crucified Christ. What was that about?

Then we entered the big room: huge prints of giant dragons attacking cities were plastered wall-to-wall. In a corner, a wooden Christ sculpture, seemingly nicked off a crucifix somewhere, lay face-up on the floor. Smoke machines wheezed, speakers bellowed dragon roars. The ambience was there. Lyngvild has a talent for the aesthetic. But there was no deeper meaning under all that roar and fog.

There was no story, no emotional arc, no big idea beyond "here are some Lyngvild-branded dragons". It was as empty and self-promoting as his Viking exhibition.

That whimsical “What if dragons were real?” premise from the start of the exhibition had disappeared into the mist, never to be heard of again.

At one point I peered through a slit in the wall — a leftover feature from the building's previous life as a factory — and peeked down on what looked like a giant head sculpture, submerged in smoke. Curious, we descended the metal stairs into the next room

Sure enough, there it was: a giant head on the floor, ghostly and inert, surrounded by more fog. What did it have to do with dragons? Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe Lyngvild just thought it would look good on Instagram.

Above the head were more close-up stained glass images of a crucified Christ’s bloodied face. Nearby, a few mannequins wearing white costumes, presumably meant to evoke something — anything. They did not.

I stood there, blinking at this potpourri of religious symbolism and cinematic dragons, trying to piece together what I was seeing. But sense was a guest who had long since left the party.

Midjourney to the Abyss

I turned to go into the hallway leading to the next room. We had been promised Lego dragons but on a side table stood a Lego owl — not a dragon, not a wyvern, not even a half-assed basilisk. An owl. Above it, a framed picture of the same owl in a still life. A scrap of paper in the corner read Hogwarts.

We had apparently stumbled into the Harry Potter Room. Yes, you read that right. From dragons to Jesus to Harry Fucking Potter.

On the next table was a Lego model of the Hogwarts Express, complete with a matching picture of that Lego train hanging above it. I squinted at the photos. Something was wrong. That unnerving, plasticky gloss. Those details that felt almost right, but slid into the uncanny valley. An utter, chilling lack of human intentionality. A profound emptiness behind the pixels. It wasn’t just bad art. It was soulless. It dawned on me in a hot, nauseating wave:

We were inside an AI art exhibition.

All these “Lyngvild artworks”, the dragons, the cities, the Hogwarts owl, none of it had been touched by a human hand beyond typing a few words into a prompt bar. Lyngvild hadn’t spent sleepless nights at the studio, hadn’t spilled paint on his clothes, hadn’t even stayed up wrestling with Photoshop layers. No. He’d simply typed "Dragon attacks city in dramatic foggy lighting, hyperrealistic," hit "Generate", and accepted whatever digital diarrhea the slop machine spewed forth. Then he framed it. And charged people money to see it.

Suddenly, the nagging familiarity snapped into focus. That glossy, over-rendered, conceptually hollow aesthetic that is the visual equivalent of fast-food styrofoam. The signature style of every talentless hack with a monthly subscription to Midjourney, flooding Instagram with derivative garbage. Lyngvild was just the hack with the gall and the brand recognition to put it in a museum and call it art.

That room full of dragons attacking cities from before head been the Game of Thrones Room, I now realized.

We descended into Harry Potter's Chamber Of Bullshit.

Lyngvild had splurged on some thrift store dark wood furniture for set dressing. One of the chairs still had the price tag on it. In the corners he had placed mannequins wearing Catholic liturgical vestments and rhinestone-covered peaked caps. I assume Lyngvild had a ball hot-gluing sparkly rhinestones onto headgear like a deranged RuPaul contestant — but what did it have to do with Harry Potter, dragons, or literally anything?

The walls were covered in garish, dull prints of AI generated characters from the Harry Potter IP. Some were missing fingers. Others were holding bizarrely deforming magic wands. Signage in the background contained what looked like lettering at first but turned out to be meaningless noise on closer inspection.

The dragons, the supposed main characters of the exhibition, were conspicuously absent from the Harry Potter Room. Not a single mythological reptile were to be seen. Perhaps Lyngvild intended us to Imagine Dragons?

We progressed to the next cabinet of horrors: The random Disney Character Room. Because of course. What dragon exhibition would be complete without famously draconic characters such as Cinderella, Pocahontas, and Snow White? It was like watching someone scroll through their Midjourney history on a head injury.

Here, under brighter lights, the slop was even more horrifying and the sheer, staggering ineptitude of Lyngvild’s quality control was mercilessly exposed. If he had spent even five minutes touching up this algorithmic vomit, it didn't show anywhere. Images were full of artifacts, lovecraftian anatomy and bizarre details that made no sense. And how could it make sense? No human thought had been involved in the process of making any of these abominations. The images were riddled with errors that screamed, “Nobody could be arsed to look twice.”

This wasn’t art as an expression of an inner world. It was branding spam. A hollow sugar high of pop culture keywords arranged into vaguely impressive shapes for five seconds of dopamine.

Humbug

Finally, we arrived at the kids’ section, the “build a Lego dragon” wonderland we had been promised at the start turned out to be two sad, shallow pits of random Legos, looking like the leftover pile after a yard sale. There were no signs that anyone had ever built anything remotely draconic there. My son built an airplane. It was on fire. His small plastic conflagration was the most perfect, unintentional review of the entire Lyngvild experience imaginable.

There was also a table with paper and crayons where kids could draw. On the wall, their drawings were pinned up and these drawings exhibited more originality, more discernible skill, more human intentionality and infinitely more heart than the entire multi-room, smoke-machine-pumping, dragon-roaring, AI slop fest we had just endured.

On the table, copies of Lyngvild’s fantasy-themed coloring book were scattered. Surprisingly, these were actually decent. it looked like they had been drawn by actual humans who gave a damn. The lines were confident, and the themes coherent. In this cesspit of brand-chasing, the coloring book was the only artifact that suggested a real artist might have existed somewhere upstream.

Later, I learned that Lyngvild’s dragon book — the one anchoring this entire dumpster fire — was likely ghostwritten by ChatGPT. Of course it was.

I left feeling insulted by Lyngvild's AI humbug. Swindled.

I’m no Luddite. I’m not here to wag my finger at new technology, or say that “AI bad, brushes good.” Art is agnostic to medium. Artists have always used new tools, and neutral networks might have valid artistic applications. But when you have the unmitigated gall to charge the public admission to see your "art," you’d better put in the goddamn work and make an actual effort. You’d better give a shit about what you're doing.

What Lyngvild presented wasn’t an exploration of new tech. It was a cynical cash grab, a soulless brand extension masquerading as a journey into the mythic. The exhibition reeked of staggering laziness. He started out chasing dragons, got bored halfway, said “fuck it,” and started gluing rhinestones on hats while the slop machine vomited forth enough derivative pop culture garbage to fill the walls.

Lyngvild is a man who desperately needs a brutal editor, someone to tell him “no” when he's being ridiculous. But when you’re too famous, too deep in your own reflection, no one dares.

Maybe AI is the perfect medium for Lyngvild: shallow, lazy and devoid of substance.

Is this a meta-commentary? A sly wink at the gullibility of a cultural establishment that will let a famous name get away with anything? Maybe. But I doubt it. I suspect it’s simpler than that.

Lyngvild isn’t satirizing us. He’s a charlatan cashing in on us. Peddling algorithmic schlock to an audience he seems to hold in contempt, assuming we’re too dazzled, or simply too dumb, to notice the utter, crushing emptiness at its core.

And so we shuffled out, counting our fingers, thankful they were all still there, unlike in those images.

On occasion of the 80th anniversary of Nazi Germany's unconditional surrender in the Netherlands, northwest Germany and Denmark, the media Arbejderen had published a series of articles on the history of the Danish resistance movement.

This is my translation of the article on the 1944 People's Strike of Copenhagen, the most radical uprising in modern Danish history.

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When the Citizens of Copenhagen Triumphed over the Occupiers

• https://arbejderen.dk/historie/da-koebenhavnerne-sejrede-over-besaettelsesmagten/

The people’s strike and the subsequent street battles against the occupying forces in June 1944 became the largest single confrontation between the Danish population and the occupiers. The uprising was also a clear signal that the populace listened more to the resistance movement than to collaborationist politicians.

• Barricade in Elmegade on Nørrebro in Copenhagen during the people’s strike in 1944. PHOTO: The Freedom Museum Collection/National Museum/No Known Rights

In June 1944, the citizens of Copenhagen — led by the working class — rose up against Nazi Germany’s occupying forces.

Denmark was occupied from April 9th 1940 until May 5th 1945. Various Danish governments cooperated with the German occupiers until October 29th 1943, when the government resigned. Nevertheless, the state apparatus continued to collaborate with the occupiers.

Through widespread strikes and uprisings in the streets of Copenhagen, the population brought the fearsome Nazi war machine in Denmark to a halt and demonstrated who truly ruled the streets.

The protests began on Monday, June 26th 1944, when 1,200 workers at the B&W shipyard downed their tools.

The work stoppage was a protest against the state of emergency imposed by the German occupiers the day before.

The occupiers had introduced a curfew, forcing Copenhageners to remain indoors from 8 p.m. until 5 a.m.

In addition, gatherings of more than five people on public streets and squares were forbidden. Public assemblies indoors were also banned.

The occupiers’ attempt to suppress the people of Copenhagen followed a surge in armed resistance against the German occupiers: the resistance group BOPA and other movements had carried out some of their largest and most successful sabotage operations in June, culminating in the explosion of the Riffelsyndikatet arms factory—owned by shipping magnate A.P. Møller-Mærsk—on June 22nd 1944.

Also targeted were the Neutrofon radio factory and the Globus aircraft factory, which manufactured tail sections for the German air force, along with several other companies.

B&W Workers Spark the Protests

The state of emergency prompted 1,200 B&W workers to go home early. They agreed that if they were to be forced to bed early in the evening, they would leave work earlier in the day.

Later that same day — Monday, June 26th — the Communist faction at B&W convened. They decided to launch a protest action against the occupiers’ curfew and to encourage workers at other Copenhagen businesses to go home at noon.

That evening, the work stoppage spread into spontaneous demonstrations. Particularly in the working-class districts of Vesterbro and Nørrebro, residents lit bonfires and refused to comply with the curfew.

The occupiers responded by deploying soldiers and the paramilitary Schalburg Corps, which drove through the streets firing at random.

The Schalburg Corps was a Danish paramilitary unit formed in April 1943 to support the German occupiers. The Corps carried out terror against the Danish resistance and society in retaliation for resistance actions. They also carried out reprisal killings against popular Danes whenever a German soldier or informant was killed.

In total, seven were killed and 29 wounded by German soldiers and the Schalburg Corps on June 26th.

• Barricade during the people’s strike in June 1944. Photo: The Freedom Museum Collection/National Museum/No Known Rights

The following day, B&W workers left work early once again.

Meanwhile, the strike spread to hundreds of workplaces across Copenhagen — offices, factories, the docks, and many other sites.

The illegal Communist newspaper Land & Folk reported on the B&W workers’ work stoppage.

The Danish Communist Party (DKP) distributed leaflets at workplaces, urging workers to go home at noon until the curfew was lifted.

At the same time, the Social Democratic wing of the labor movement sought to halt the work stoppages.

The Blacksmiths’ Union issued a circular refusing to support the strike and condemning its initiators, and the Employers’ Association distanced itself from the strike.

But the calls from the Social Democrats and the employers had no effect:

The work stoppages and protests continued. Copenhageners continued to demonstrate in the streets, build barricades, and light bonfires.

On Thursday evening, three were killed and 30 wounded by the occupying forces, and 75 were arrested by Danish police.

On Friday — June 30th 1944 — tram workers, urban rail functionaries, postal workers, and telephone operators also walked off the job. The People’s Strike of Copenhagen had become a reality.

DKP and the Resistance Movement Clash with the Social Democrats

The widespread protests prompted the Social Democrats to turn against the workers who had struck and the rest of the Copenhagen populace who had taken to the streets in protest against the Nazi occupiers.

On Friday evening, former Social Democratic Prime Minister Vilhelm Buhl approached the Freedom Council.

The Freedom Council was formed on 16 September 1943 by representatives of the major illegal organizations — (the Danish Communist Party (DKP), Frit Danmark, Dansk Samling, and Ringen) — as a coordinating body for the resistance during the occupation.

The Freedom Council was the closest thing to an alternative government in Denmark during World War II.

Its aim was to coordinate the various resistance groups’ work against the German occupation. The Council set up subcommittees to handle, for example, arms distribution and the illegal press.

Buhl attempted to persuade the Freedom Council to intervene in the protests and urge the population to end the strike and return to work.

The Freedom Council refused, and as soon as Buhl left, they drafted a proclamation insisting the strikes continue.

For the occupiers, the people’s strike was a catastrophe that threatened to spread and paralyze all industry and food production in Denmark, which heavily supplied Nazi Germany.

On 1 July, 4,000 German soldiers surrounded Copenhagen and sealed off the capital.

The occupiers deployed military patrols in the streets, occupied key utility works, and cut off water, gas, and electricity. Copenhagen was put under siege and isolated from the outside world.

Copenhageners were forced to cook their food over bonfires and fetch water from the city’s lakes.

German warplanes flew low over rooftops. German troops with artillery were moved into the Copenhagen area and encircled the capital.

• The large barricade on Nørrebrogade in Copenhagen during the people’s strike in 1944. Photo: The Freedom Museum Collection/National Museum/No Known Rights

On radio and with posters, the occupiers tried to intimidate Copenhageners into ending the uprising immediately.

Collaborationist politicians and a number of civil servants began negotiations with the occupiers to end the strikes and protests.

The Social Democratic leadership in several unions, together with leaders of various employers’ organizations, issued an appeal via radio, posters, and loudspeaker trucks, urging the people of Copenhagen to stop the strikes and uprising.

But their pleas fell on deaf ears.

Posters were torn down, and loudspeaker trucks were pelted with rocks: those who attempted to collaborate with the occupiers no longer held any sway over the population.

Defying the Occupiers’ Terror and the Collaborationist Politicians’ Appeals

On the morning of Saturday, July 1st, the Freedom Council published their appeal to Copenhageners to continue the strike.

The proclamation — distributed in thousands of copies — set out four demands: The hated Schalburg Corps were to be expelled from the country. The occupiers’ state of emergency and the siege of Copenhagen were to be lifted and that the supply of electricity, water and gas to be restore. Finally, the occupiers were to refrain from any reprisals against the People’s Strike.

The citizens of Copenhagen persisted in their uprising. The occupiers’ terror intensified. On July 1st, 23 were killed and 203 wounded in clashes between German soldiers and the population.

Sympathy strikes were initiated in several towns on Zealand, adding further pressure on Werner Best, the German Reich’s plenipotentiary in Denmark.

On Sunday, July 2nd 1944, the Social Democratic leadership — with former Prime Minister Vilhelm Buhl at its head — and other collaborationist politicians, department heads, union leaders, and the Employers’ Association once again demanded that the population resume work.

That same day, the Freedom Council distributed leaflets urging the populace to continue the strike.

Once again, the population ignored the demands of the Social Democrats and the rest of the collaborationist politicians, the union elite, and the Employers’ Association to go back to work.

Instead, they heeded the Communists and the resistance movement and the Freedom Council, which—despite being illegal—had far greater resonance and legitimacy among the populace.

On Monday evening, former Prime Minister Buhl and Conservative Ole Bjørn Kraft, along with representatives of workers and employers, appealed once more on the radio for work to resume the next day, Tuesday, “to avoid the misfortunes that would otherwise befall the population.”

Yet again the population ignored the collaborationist politicians and continued the protests.

In the end, Werner Best was forced to lift the siege and the state of emergency, withdraw the Schalburg Corps from the streets, and renounce any reprisals against the People’s Strike.

The Freedom Council was able to proclaim victory and urged Copenhageners to return to work on Wednesday.

In the Freedom Council’s declaration — distributed to the population Monday evening and Tuesday morning — the Council stated that the people’s strike had “underscored the unbreakable unity of the people and confirmed our strength and solidarity,” and that the strike “is only a prelude to the decisive battle that lies ahead.”

Picture: Social Democrat flyer from the period. The text reads: "Communists protests for 'peace among the peoples'. Say NO to that fraud"

The Labour Movement Information Centre (AIC) emerged as Denmark’s leading anti-communist intelligence and propaganda organization during the Cold War. Founded in 1944 by the Social Democrats and the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions, the AIC operated as a clandestine arm of the labor movement, dedicated to curbing communist influence within trade unions and workplaces. Over nearly three decades, the AIC's operations spanned deep surveillance, covert maneuvers, and partnerships with both the domestic security state and international intelligence agencies.

The Social Democrats' Weapon Against Communists

In the autumn of 1944, as it became clear who would emerge victorious from World War II, the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions, the Workers' Confederation in Copenhagen, and the Social Democrats founded the AIC (Arbejderbevægelsens Informations Central). The AIC was intended to continue the work of the defunct HIPA, a social democratic propaganda organization that had opposed both the Nazis and communists in the inter-war period. With the Nazis defeated, the AIC's focus shifted exclusively to combating the communists.

From its inception, the AIC aimed to bolster the presence of social democrats in workplaces, actively working to replace communist shop stewards with social democratic ones. It also functioned as a training ground for young social democratic politicians, many of whom would later rise to prominence within the party.

Post-war Denmark saw intense power struggles between social democrats and communists in labor unions and workplaces. The AIC meticulously monitored communist activities, reportedly maintaining a comprehensive database on communists, which was shared with the Danish intelligence service and the CIA. While direct evidence of individual registration remains elusive due to sealed archives, the parallels to earlier practices are striking. In the 1930s, HIPA and the Copenhagen police had compiled databases of communists, later used by the Danish state to round up communists and imprison them in concentration camps at the request of the Nazis during the occupation. 150 Danish communists were transported to the Stutthof concentration camp in Germany where 22 of them were eventually murdered.

An "ice front" against communism

By 1947, the AIC had intensified its efforts, urging social democratic organizations and officials to closely monitor local communist activities and report back. This surveillance network extended to attending and reporting on communist meetings across Denmark, regardless of the meetings' content, and to gather statistics on the venues **used and the frequency of meetings. The AIC’s agenda was clear: collect as much intelligence as possible to undermine communist influence.

The AIC didn’t stop at surveillance; it also engaged in counter-infiltration. In 1947, when a communist defected with membership lists, the AIC quickly identified and expelled communists who had infiltrated social democratic ranks. It also produced social democratic election materials and disseminated anti-communist propaganda. A notable campaign followed the 1948 communist coup in Prague, where chain letters, allegedly conceived by "a circle of Danish men and women from all walks of life, representing all political opinions", encouraged Danes to create an "ice front", ostracizing communists socially and economically, portraying them as foreign agents of the Soviet Union.

The message of the AIC was clear: At no point should you listen to the communists, seek common ground or reach across the aisle. The social democrats would rather go under than compromise with the communists.

Not only communists were surveilled by the AIC, the organisation also kept a close eye on social democrats who opposed the party line and were open to a less hostile attitude to the communists.

Throughout the 1950s, the AIC employed personal agitation tactics to isolate and diminish communist influence in workplaces, engaging in what it called "systematic preparation" to cleanse the labor movement of communists. This was evident during a strike at the B&W shipyard, where Social Democrat Prime Minister Jens Otto Krag requested a list of strikers from the employers' organisation and passed it on to the AIC, enabling them to break the strike by addressing loyal workers individually.

Krag was not the only prominent social democrat to be involved with the AIC. When he was chairman of the warehouse workers's union in 1963, future prime minister Anker Jørgensen was also closely involved in AIC efforts to sabotage communist influence at the new campus of state broadcaster DR.

Connections to intelligence agencies

The AIC's activities were not confined to the labour movement; it worked closely with Danish military intelligence and the CIA. The post-war Danish military intelligence service, having escaped Nazi infiltration unlike the secret police, was a natural ally for the Social Democrats. Together, they monitored and documented communist activities, sharing intelligence with the CIA and the British embassy who considered the social democrats to be the strongest anti-communist force in Denmark. By 1949, American intelligence reports indicated that around 35,000 Danish trade union members were registered as communists.

The AIC also collaborated closely with "the Company," a private intelligence organization led by resistance fighter Arne Sejr and funded by domestic oligarchs and the CIA, which engaged in activities such as wiretapping and disinformation that were too illegal or too controversial for official agencies to do. "The Company" was part of the CIA's broader Gladio network in Europe, aimed at countering leftist movements through sabotage, propaganda and terrorism.

Closure and legacy

The AIC’s influence waned in the 1960s as funding diminished, leading to its closure in 1973 with its functions being absorbed by the Social Democrats and the Confederation Of Trade Unions. In the 1990s, renewed interest in Cold War-era intelligence activities led to social democratic prime minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen announcing the opening of the archives. This was a rather odd announcement as the archives had already been publicly available for years. Within hours of Rasmussen's announcement the organisation tasked with maintaining the archives decided to seal them, allegedly to give "peace and quiet" to the few researchers approved to access them.

The story of the AIC resonates in today's world of heightened paranoia, geopolitical conflict and an elite scrambling to consolidate ideological control over the populace. Only today the shady organisations doing the CIA's dirty work have access to advanced technological tools of propaganda and surveillance that Cold War social democrats could only dream of.

May 2025 be a year where the libs are seething, the fash are crying and the reds are laughing.

I hope we all get communism this year.

Some people collect stamps, some people collect baseball cards. I have realised that I collect spices. My small spice cupboard is full of jars, bags and bottles of different spices and it is a giant mess. I always have to take ten different things out of the cupboard to get what I want. It is annoying and takes a lot of time.

I would like to have some boxes to put inside the cupboard. Then I could just take the box out, get what I want and put it back.

I could buy some plastic organising boxes and be done with it but there are many spices and the cupboard is small so I can't afford to lose any space. I need something that fits snuggly in the cupboard so I have to make it myself.

I would like some good ideas on how to make the boxes. Ideally they would:

• Be made of thin material not to take up space
• Be strong enough to hold a box of salt or a bottle of soy sauce.
• Be easy to clean, or at least able to withstand being wiped with a damp cloth
• Be easy to make without access to a proper workshop
• Be cheap

I don't know if any of this is possible. Thin wood would be nice but it can get quite expensive and would need more time and tools than is feasible for my situation. Cardboard covered with something moisture resistant would be easy and manageable to make but I'm not convinced about it being strong enough or about if it is able to withstand cleaning. It would be cool if you could make custom-sized plastic boxes but you can't do that, right?

There once was an overseer on the Hellerup estate who was a real scourge on the peasants. He rode around the fields to make sure peasants worked hard enough and he was keen to use his whip on the serfs. Once he struck so hard that a peasant died from it. The overseer didn't get any peace in his grave though, every night he had to ride the fields where he had done his injustice. He rode a white horse and it was especially in the Southern Woods and around the Fjerritslev farm he hung out, until a peasant met him one night and - in the name of God - pulled him off the horse and gave him a beating. The horse ran away and the overseer suddenly disappeared in the hands of the peasant. He was never seen again.

Following Chairman Mao's call to go down to the countryside, I spent a day connecting to the dark heart of whiteness and avoided revealing military secrets in the process.

I had never heard of that village until the day that a friend of us called and told us that they had an annual market going on there and asked if we wanted to go. There would be stalls where you could buy all sorts of crap, beer on tap and rides for the kids. So me, my partner, our kids and our friend loaded up our cars and left the multicultural wokery of the big city behind to spend a day among the hardworking salt of the earth people who constitutes the real Denmark.

The market was organised by the village citizens' association in order to raise funds for local amateur sports and similar activities. Upon arrival, we were greeted by members of said association dressed in yellow vests who directed us to park on the muddy patch of grass that was the parking lot for a seven dollar fee. People there still follow the old ways, so when our female friend drove up to them with our queer short-haired teenage daughter on the front seat, they assumed she was the man in charge of the vehicle and tried to solicit payment from her, until our friend insisted that she, as the adult driving the car, was going to pay.

Then we went to the market, a mix of tents, caravans and rides put up on an empty field outside the village. A road divided the grounds into two and we went to the left where we quickly found a beer tent with wooden benches and a stage in front. We bought pints for the adults and sodapop for the kids. The beverages were cold and refreshing as we sipped them from the disposable plastic cups that are ubiquitous whenever beer is sold in a field. Nearby, a stall sold fried pork sandwiches, and we had the dubious pleasure of having direct view of the stand of a fascist party adorned with a big banner airing their latest grievance: "Save Danish agriculture!" Apparently, farming is about to be ended by an upcoming carbon tax.

The police had sent the two youngest and blondest female cops they could find to the market to mill around and smile at people. In police lingo, this is called "safety-creation." You have to hand it to the fuss on this one, the marketgoers were exactly the kind of people who would feel reassured by the sight of cops. Apart from a Native American guy selling pan pipes and dreamcatchers, we hadn't seen a single non-white person among the guests and merchants. We would soon find out why.

A bearded man in his 60's, wearing glasses and a baseball cap, went on stage singing and playing a Stratocaster. He was covering popular 1980s and 1990s pop songs, the kind anyone coming of age in Denmark during those years would know. Was he any good? Certainly not. Was he good enough for the job? Absolutely. He even had the courtesy to move his head away from the microphone whenever there were notes his voice couldn't reach. A few older people were dancing in front of the stage, the sun was shining, and the mood was good.

We browsed the stalls to see what was on offer. The shopkeepers' attitude towards taxation was best described by the "We love cash!" sign prominently displayed at one stall. The goods fell into two categories: old stuff and new stuff.

In the old stuff category, items ranged from garage sale junk to what you’d expect in low-tier antique stores. Several stalls sold old hand tools in varying states of disrepair. One stand's inventory looked like the going-out-of-business sale of a 1995 hardware store teleported to the present day.

The new stuff category offered goods you can't find in proper shops: the world's fakest football jerseys, cigarette lighters with skulls on them, a live poodle, cigarette lighters shaped like guns, supplies for dog and horse ownership, USB-charged cigarette lighters, 20 dollar Gucci watches, and cigarette lighters shaped like muscle cars with watch movements in them. There was also an abundance of food products of inscrutable provenance that were either disgusting health and safety hazards and/or much better than anything you would ever get in supermarkets.

As we browsed the stalls my partner noticed that shopkeepers were treating her weirdly. Being born and raised in Denmark and having a name so stereotypically Danish that JK Rowling could have come up with it, she has also inherited her stunning black hair and slightly darker skin tone from an Italian grandparent. People often mistake her for being Turkish or otherwise non-white. In the immigrant-run stores at home, this usually results in nice discounts, but here, it was a different story.

The shopkeepers clearly didn't like her. When I or our friend looked at the goods, they were nice or indifferent. But when my partner did the same, they immediately stopped what they were doing to closely watch her, as if she might steal their old silverware or porcelain figurines. They had decided she was one of "them." One shopkeeper directly asked her to leave, while another angrily told her to "talk Danish" when she spoke Italian to our kid.

We were deep in the heart of whiteness, so it wasn't surprising to see the Home Guard had set up a stall. The Home Guard is a Cold War relic of civilians LARPing as soldiers a few weekends a year. They offer the easiest way to get a gun and a uniform in Denmark, accepting those too fat and out of shape for the police or military. They hold a special place in the hearts of chuds, some of whom fantasize about being the white vanguard in an upcoming race war.

Their stall featured a jeep and an assortment of rifles, all firmly secured to the table with chains, that the public could hold. We were greeted by a woman in military uniform who looked the exact opposite of how you imagine the ideal elite soldier. "Come in!" she said, immediately trying to recruit me for the defense of the fatherland by enthusiastically mentioning that they had enlistment forms inside. I smiled and nodded.

Unlike me who have not even been a boyscout, my partner over spent a few months as a recruit and she is familiar with military hardware. "Do you have an M/75 in there?" she asked, referring to the long-time standard-issue rifle of the Danish military. "We have all sorts of stuff in there!" The Home Guard woman said, clearly confused. I am not sure if her confusion was caused by the technical nature of the question being above her expertise or if she was thrown off by the question coming from my partner and not from me.

Our kids had great fun holding the guns and my partner reached for her phone to take some pictures. "You can't do that!" the Home Guard guy overseeing the stall said. If pictures of children holding guns was posted to social media it could "hurt the image"of the Home Guard, we were told. The guy explained to my partner that "we don't have child soldiers in Denmark", as if that needed clarification.

We didn't want to stay after this visit to the people keeping us safe from Putin. The vibes in that area were nasty and my partner felt unsafe. We went across the road to the other hand of the grounds and things were a lot better there. We began to see other skin colours than pig pink and people were noticeably less nasty. Signs of civilization like kebab stalls and Asian grocers emerged.

We went to the area where the kids could try different rides. The rides were mostly operated by seasonal workers from Eastern Europe and each ride was blasting it's own playlist of either current hits or 1980's Eurovision songs into the air. As the kids were having fun in a bouncy castle next to the employees' restrooms I noticed how the restrooms were segregated with one reserved for Danish and Polish workers and the two others for Romanian workers.

After the kids had finished their rides we needed refreshments so we went into a big beer tent and sat down at an empty table scattered with the remnants of several of the giant hot dogs, giant burgers and giant kebabs offered for sale nearby. You don't buy normal-sized food at events live this. We looked at the beverages offered, a few sodas, beer by the buckets and lots of moronic shots sold in tiny tubes, and decided that we had had enough for today and that we would grab something to drink from McDonalds. On our way home instead. As we exited the grounds I noticed how someone had been so overjoyed by the selection of beverages offered at the market that they had emptied the contents of their stomach beneath the sign at the entrance.

Spending a day like this, connecting to my cultural roots, was an educating experience and I am happy to report that I had so much authentic Danish folkishness that I will not need to go again any time soon.

The elder tree held a magical reputation in Western European folklore, deeply intertwined with goddess cults such as those of Venus and the Norse fertility goddess Freya. In Scandinavia, planting an elder near your house, especially by the kitchen, was believed to protect the home and fill it with love. Elders were thought to be immune to lightning strikes, offering further protection. The tree was also seen as a portal to the spirit realm; standing under an elder on midsummer eve supposedly enabled one to see the king of the elves.

Elder was highly valued in folk medicine despite its mild toxicity. The plant contains prussic acid, which can cause vomiting or diarrhea in small doses. It was believed that elder bark cut from the bottom upwards acted as an emetic, while bark cut from the top downwards served as a laxative. The flowers and berries were used to treat colds and flus. To ward off evil spirits and relieve toothache, people would put a twig from an elder tree in their mouths.

However, one couldn't just take from an elder tree without consequences. The tree was believed to be inhabited by an Elder Mother or Elder Woman, a protective spirit (some say she originated as a localised version of Freya) who would avenge any harm done to the tree. People would ask her for permission three times before picking out cutting anything from the tree. Cutting down an elder without planting a new one was considered bad luck, with folk stories recounting the deaths of those who did so, presumably at the hands of a vengeful Elder Mother.

The Elder Mother also disapproved of using elder wood for furniture or tools. Stories tell of her disturbing babies who slept in cots made from elder wood or in rooms with elder paneling by pulling their legs. However, if treated with respect, the Elder Mother, and sometimes an entire elder family with elder women, men, and children, would help busy housewives by churning butter or polishing copperware at night.

Some stories even tell of the elder tree itself being sentient and animate, with one story from Copenhagen telling of how the elder tree in a courtyard would move to a new position every night and look through the windows of the rooms inside.

The Elder Mother exemplifies traditional Germanic belief in wights, collective spirits or deities connected to a locality like a landscape, river, or farmhouse, and sometimes to families or bloodlines. Wights are neither good nor evil but are forces of nature to be reckoned with. Respect them, and they will help you; disrespect them, and they can destroy you.

Back in February we paid to get new tires on the car. One of them has been leaky for the last couple of months, something I've continually been putting in the "I'll deal with it later" pile as topping up the air once a week was easier and cheaper than dealing with it.

Now the damn tire is flat. The roadside repair guy said that the tire was soft and decayed. I'm 75% sure that a new tire is not supposed to do that so soon.

Now I'm wondering if the mechanic put on old tires or if I've been an idiot by not getting the tie fixed in time and the frequent deflation/inflation cycles has ruined the thing.

Edit: Fucking hell! The code on the tire says it's from 2007! What the fuck? The damn car went through inspection and everything with that antique on.