What Denmark Just Did to Islamism Changes Everything

The hardest crackdown on political Islam in Europe wasn't launched by the far right. It was launched by socialists. Not by nationalists waving flags. Not by a populist strongman. By the Danish Social Democrats — a party of the left, the party of the welfare state, cradle-to-grave healthcare and generous benefits and everything progressive Europe was supposed to stand for. That party just built the toughest assimilation regime on the continent, aimed squarely at parallel Islamic societies inside its borders. And it didn't lose power for doing it. It got stronger. That is the thing that changes everything. For twenty years, the entire European debate rested on one assumption — that confronting political Islam was the exclusive business of the anti-immigrant right, and that any mainstream party that tried it would be branded racist and destroyed. Denmark just proved that assumption dead wrong. And once that assumption falls, nothing about European politics stays the same. To understand why this changes everything, you have to go back to what Denmark used to be.