31 Denmark’s Counter-Extremism Program

This chapter explores Denmark's counter-extremism program, finding that Danish approaches have often been characterized as avoiding the more overt racialization of terrorism compared to other European states, through the use of broad, internationally driven legislation, well-established practices of proximity policing within local communities, and a joined-up approach between various social support structures. However, operating within a political context which is increasingly reacting to mainstream nationalist and Islamophobic language once identified with the far right, Danish counter-extremism practice has become implicated in processes of racialization. Through approaches which overwhelmingly focus on so-called non-Western minorities - which in practice always means Muslims - which frame Muslim communities as problematic in themselves, counter-extremism has entrenched experiences of marginalization and social exclusion amongst Muslim communities. In the long-term, this acts to exacerbate rather than alleviate the conditions for polarization, societal fragmentation, and extremism.