(voices of resistance from occupied london)

Klara Jaya Brekke, jayapapaya[at]gmail.com

In March 2007, Copenhagen Denmark witnessed riots that the Scandinavian consensus society had forgotten to be possible. Although resistance to the eviction and demolishing of the 25 year old squatted house, Ungdomshuset, was predicted, the mass mobilization, intensity and international response had been wildly underestimated. The house had for 25 years functioned as a place of learning and experimentation, as a home to the K-town, a punk music and zine festival, as one of very few self-organized alternative night clubs, as meeting place for activists, peoples kitchens, gigs and workshops: A stronghold of alternative culture in Copenhagen.

The struggle for Ungdomshuset should also be seen in the context of a rising discontent with the Danish state, as the welfare system is gradually being undermined, spurring large demonstrations against the welfare reforms as well as wildcat strikes rising from cut backs in the health system. On the other hand insecurity and suspicion (if not downright hate against anything falling outside the narrowing definitions of “Danishness”) is intensifying and altogether forming a part of what the neo-liberal government calls its ‘Kultur kamp’: Culture war. The goal is to eradicate any traces of Denmark’s socialist, communal history, which lives strong in the cultural sphere. Everything that does not conform is attempted marginalized, undermined or crushed. The response: Intensifying conflict and refusal of compromise._