“Today was January 7, 2025. The day when Denmark learned that we can no longer trust the United States. I will NEVER forget that day.”
So wrote political commentator, right-wing influencer Jarl Cordua on social media. This statement reflects what Denmark’s mass media are communicating in their editorials, and quoting influencers and experts on the U.S.-Denmark relationship—a new paradigm totally unexpected is taking place.
In Donald Trump’s second news conference since his election, he said that the U.S. needed Greenland—and the Panama Canal—for “economic security,” for “national security” and to “protect the Free World.”
When a journalist asked if could rule out use economic or military force to acquire them, he replied: “No I can’t assure you on either of those two.”
Trump further stated that, if Denmark resists his offer to purchase Greenland, he would impose tariffs on some of Denmark’s exports.
On the same day, Trump Jr. flew in his father’s private plane for a five-hour greeting to Greenlanders, some of whom were wearing red MAGA hats. “Red” does not stand for communism, rather anti-communist-socialist-social democrat Republicans.
Following his son’s visit, Trump Sr. said, “The reception has been great.” He continued, “Greenland and the Free World need safety, security, strength, and peace!” “Make Greenland great again!” he added.
January 7: Immediately upon hearing what Trump said, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen met with her coalition government for hours. When she, and Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen (former PM for the rightest “Liberal” party), spoke to the media, her first words were:
“We have close relations with Greenland, Faroe Islands, EU, NATO, USA. We are prepared for the new president. We don’t think anything concrete will happen until Trump takes office. We don’t believe it will lead to such developments. We are USA’s closest ally, and other things are important too, such as our defense of Greenland. We are also a great contributor to NATO and Ukraine.”
Foreign Minister Rasmussen told the media: “We have good dialogue with USA. There is a new situation in the Artic with Russia and China interests.”
Aaja Chemnitz, one of two Greenland members of the Kingdom’s Parliament, responded: “It is a question of whether we should collaborate a bit more with the U.S. We shouldn’t be bought by anyone because we are not for sale, but we can have closer collaboration on business development.”
Ironically, Denmark authorized more money ($1.23 billion) and more military presence in Greenland just days before Trump made his threat. Last year, Denmark signed the Defense Cooperation Agreement, which allows the Yankees to occupy territory at Danish military bases very soon. Denmark is one of only a few NATO countries that, until now, has never allowed foreign powers to station their military on its territory.
My hope is that Trump’s imperial statement about taking over Greenland, and his own racist-misogynist-imperialist character, will influence Danes and other Europeans to cease feeling comfortable being vassals of “the good guys”—the United States of America Racist Military Empire (US-ARME), and rediscover their own sovereignty.
I had that hope as well, in 2017, during Trump’s first administration. In 2019, he told Social Democrat Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen (who is still PM but now within a center-right-left coalition government) that he wanted to buy Greenland. She made the faux pas comment that this was “absurd.”
Insulted, Trump cancelled his planned trip to Denmark. He later met her in London at a NATO meeting. She said, “We swing well together,” and immediately began to take more of our taxes to build more weapons and spend more money on NATO for “defense”
January 13: The media praised King Frederik X (kings and queens don’t have their own surnames) as a “lover of Greenlanders,” a unifying figure. However, Greenland’s government leaders felt the need to cancel a planned meeting with their King when they learned that Donald Trump’s son was flying to their island on the same day that his father threatened a takeover.
Rescheduling the royal visit has yet to occur. Media speculates that a visit now might be indelicate. Greenlanders are preparing for an important government-parliament election in April. Although the subject of independence is not directly on the ballot, five of the six parliamentary parties are in favor of independence.
Royalists are afraid that many Greenlanders might be influenced to lean toward some sort of relationship with Trump’s Make America Great Again. However, Denmark pays an $800 million subsidy for security and some welfare. The subsidy may prevent Greenlanders from voting for independence. However, a majority might opt for such an eventuality—because the rich minerals there could be extracted with U.S. technology and funds at potential profits—and Trump’s bombast could become a reality.
Also on January 13, PM Frederiksen told the media that Denmark and Europe’s NATO states are worried that Russian ships are prepared to cut underwater cables in the Baltic Sea connecting NATO countries’ communication.
This is classic psychological thinking: “If we do it, maybe they will too.” Everybody can know, if they wish, that Norway and the US-ARME did the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines. Russia would have less income from its cheap natural gas. Germany and other European countries would have to buy gas and oil from Norway and the U.S.’s dirty fracking gas, which is what is happening. It was Norway and the U.S. which did the physical job while Sweden and Denmark, as observers, were complicit.[1]
Danish media use slurs about Trump: “bully,” and “narcissist,” for example. They have not called him a Hitler or Mussolini though, which U.S. Democrats do. Denmark’s largest media outlet—DR (Denmark’s Radio) radio-TV-online—is worried that the U.S. might just “become” a greedy empire builder, as if it has not been such for two centuries. The term, “Empire Dreamer” was the title of a prominent DR radio program. Some of the media’s most known journalists, including three who had been DR correspondents in the U.S., threw a “Cold Shoulder to Trump’s Heated Imperium Dream.”
The MSM, politicians and weapons industry are worried that Trump might even stop the war in Ukraine. After spending many billions on weapons for Ukraine they would lose all that if Russia is able to kick out the fascists from former Ukrainian territory where the inhabitants have voted to join the Russian Federation. He might even end sanctions and trade with Russia.
The Danish media, and politicians, spread the Russiagate lie that President Putin had intervened in the 2016 election to help Trump win. There are insinuations galore about Trump being in Putin’s boots. Danish Queen Margrethe II let her flock know where she stood, saying that, when she met Putin in Moscow in 2021, she looked into his eyes: “I remember that I thought he was not pleasant.”
I took this to mean not only that she did not like him but also that Danes should distrust him, as the media have been doing. The MSM applauded her remarks while reminding us that royalty must not speak politically; nevertheless, her remark was a welcome exception.
Margrethe may not have remembered what President George W. Bush had said about President Putin two decades earlier: “I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul.”
No matter what wars the U.S.-ARME creates, no matter how cruel, the following quote from Peter Kofoed, a 62-year-old psychotherapist and management consultant, shows the mentality of the vast majority of Danes, and nearly all its political parties, even the so-called Socialist People’s Party:
“Even in my generation, no matter that the USA was cruel in Vietnam, and that the CIA was involved in regime changes in South America, there was a basic belief that the USA were ‘the good guys’ and our most important support in the World.” (Christian Daily, January 17, 2025)
Yes, that is the basic immorality of Danish culture, as well as most Western capitalist cultures. That is why Denmark has killed for the U.S.-ARME in every war it has engaged in since 1991.[2]
that it had no weapons of mass destruction, which the U.S. and many other countries have. [Source: defensenews.com]
Even the ten-bishop Lutheran Church hierarchy is also worried. They send parish priests to comfort Danish soldiers that Denmark has sent wherever that U.S. presidents of both parties war against. Those priests train to shoot and kill “if necessary,” in order to protect their flock of mercenaries.[3]
January 15: Trump-Frederiksen 45-minute telephone talk. Denmark’s government and capitalist leaders, including owners/CEOs of the largest corporations and the director of its stock exchange anxiously conferred.
Greenland Home Rule leader Múte B. Egede wrote: “Greenland is not for sale. Greenland is Greenlanders. That will not change neither now nor in the future. Greenland is part of Western defense alliance, NATO.”
Egede was on a Danish TV program later, one of several Greenlanders and Danish politicians, and civilian influencers, discussing the new world under Trump domination. He made it clear that Greenland would not be treated under the Monroe Doctrine. “We have no interests in war. We live with nature.”
He also said that Greenlanders’ issues would not be news today in Denmark and internationally had it not been for January 7, referring to Trump’s threat to Denmark.
Prime Minister Frederiksen wrote: “Kingdom Denmark is ready to shoulder an even greater responsibility” for Greenland and “for security in the Arctic.”
Later, she repeated: “We are the closest ally to America. We donate [massively] to Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.”
Denmark and the Netherlands sent the first F-16s to Ukraine with President Joe Biden’s permission. That is a key reason why Biden appointed former Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte to be NATO’s chief. Frederiksen had also been a candidate but Denmark had already had its former PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen in that top war job.
Denmark’s six million people are the fourth largest donors of military aid in absolute terms, and first or second in donations per capita of the 50-some warring countries against Russia via Ukraine.
January 16: PM Frederiksen emerged from a closed door with a sour face confronting the MSM. “I would put it this way: There is a very, very strong American interest in the new administration as far as Greenland is concerned. I stand in my own half…Trump will not retreat from what he said…It is a serious situation. We do not want a conflict with Americans.”
[Source: kyivindependent.com]
Kristian Jensen, director of Denmark’s Stock Exchange, met with top capitalist firms owners-CEOs. They are worried that eventual tariffs on several products they export could cost them tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars. The U.S. is Denmark’s largest importer of its goods and technology. Denmark’s export income last year was $40 billion. Much of their products are produced by sister companies inside the U.S., which would not be charged the tariff. There are 120,000 jobs related to this trade, and many would be lost.
On the same day, DR news reported that a leak shows that Denmark’s military is preparing to build a new base on Greenland, and send more weaponry and soldiers for “protection” against Russian and Chinese interests in the Arctic. “A show of force,” DR editorialized.
January 17: No longer will Denmark use Parental Competence Examinations on Greenlanders. For a century, families had been subjected to separation based on “too low” IQs. The media reported at least 500 families were so separated forever. The “tradition” of separation was originated by two-time Social Democrat Justice Minister K. K. Steincke’s social reform (1920). He advocated racial hygiene. Steincke’s thoughts were based on a particular interpretation of Darwin’s teachings, which also became part of the Nazi racial doctrine.
In his book Fremtidens Forsørgelsvæsen (1920), Steincke believed that forced sterilization of the mentally weak and socially vulnerable was an essential element in social policy.
January 18: Politicians and MSM begin to tone down the shock and fear widely felt during the last ten days. Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen “welcomes” U.S. expansion of security for Greenland. “Our 1950 agreement [allowing the U.S. to build a military base at Thule] calls for possible expansion. That means closer U.S.-Greenland relations. The official tone is already one of accepting the inevitable when Trump is in the White House-Pentagon-CIA.
Greenlanders are glad to be receiving a great deal of international recognition, and offers of trade. That realization could make my hope that Danes just might “study war no more,” and retake their sovereignty more realistic as a possibility.
January 23: I witnessed with awe and joy as Clement Kjersgaard, the host of Denmark’s most popular TV debate program “Debate”, challenged major Danish political party spokespersons. He said, in essence—What is new with Trump’s threat to injure Denmark’s economy and take over Greenland? It is that he tells it like it is, like it has always been. In reality, Denmark has always been under U.S. domination. Those are my words for what he stated or implied in Danish. Again, I gleefully applauded that the truth of Danes acceptance of being one of USA’s colony is out. So, maybe many Danes might just “study war no more”, and retake their sovereignty is a possibility.
Greenlanders are also under attack with another potential colonial status, yet they are also glad to be receiving a great deal of international recognition, and offers.
Greenlanders cannot be independent today as they are still dependent upon economic aid. However, they stand upon great wealth in minerals, mostly untapped. It would take a lot of investment and technology to drill effectively, in order to exploit those minerals.
“Drill baby drill” business mogul Trump wants Greenland’s minerals. That is what capitalism is all about. Greenland’s parliament seems to agree. In October 2013, the parliament opened its mining policy for extraction of uranium and other radioactive minerals. Mining companies are welcome to submit applications to exploit its subsoil. The Pentagon would be happy, too.
Greenland has many other valuable minerals, rare earth metals, and playthings for vanity such as gold and silver, as well as for useful products. In addition, there is copper, lead, zinc, graphite, olivine, cryolite and marble. Coal was mined for a long time but shut down for cleaner environment about which Trump is indifferent.
Greenland’s Home Rule government announces that it is open for drilling ventures. https://govmin.gl/
January 28: The Kingdom of Denmark and Greenland Home Rule announce another new development, hoping to convince Trump that he need not takeover Greenland. Any Danish military support for Greenland will henceforth require both Denmark and Greenland consent.
The first such pact, in addition to its $800 million subsidy, will see Denmark spending over $2 billion for greater military and surveillance support. 1) Three new Arctic ships; 2) Two long-range surveillance drones; 3) Satellites; 4) Young Greenlanders trained in “sovereignty preparedness”; 5) Another funding package later in 2025.
Following this announcement, PM Mette Frederiksen and Foreign Minister Lars Lukke Rasmussen started a whirlwind tour of EU/NATO allies seeking support for maintaining Greenland in Royal Denmark. After the upcoming April parliament election, it is expected that a referendum will take place soon about independence. Greenland’s political parties are already gearing up. The major opposition wants only Inuits to vote and not ethnic Danish nationals with residence in Greenland.
Denmark’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs latest 2024 report shows that Denmark has spent $7.4 billion on military support for Ukraine, and $740 million in civilian aid, the fourth largest warring contributor of over 50 countries.
Furthermore, Denmark is a founder of the EU Ukrainian Fund. As I reported earlier, Denmark and other European governments require billions more to shore up Ukraine’s economy, also with the view of rebuilding. In all, Denmark has spent over $9 billion.
Moreover, Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen announced an extra $43 billion above the $6 billion 2025 defense budget for internal purposes, which is a 5% increase from 2024. That staggering addition will be spent over five years. However, Poulsen added that even more funds for “military and surveillance defense” can be expected. Silence about where it all will come from.
More youth are to be trained for military service, and girls are now part of the draft. Even the alleged Socialist People’s (SF) party and Red/Green (EL) party voted for that. EL started just after the end of the Soviet Union as a new communist party. Now, it supports NATO and neo-fascist Ukraine. It also raised the issue of both gender draft in the parliament. It and SF “cheered”, according to MSM, when parliament overwhelmingly adopted their proposal.
Denmark’s daily “Information” reports that every Dane “donates”125 times what an Italian does. “Denmark gives five times more in weaponry than Italy, France and Spain combined.”
The population of Italy is 59 million; France, 68 million; Spain, 48 million=30 times the population of The Kingdom of Denmark.
History
Greenland became a Danish-Norwegian colony in 1721. Martin Luther missionaries forced the natives to believe and pay homage to “Christianity.” The rationale was, of course, holy.[4]
In 1814, Greenland remained ruled as a colony but only under the Kingdom of Denmark. In 1950, Denmark granted the U.S.’s wish to occupy part of Greenland for military purposes. In 1953, Denmark changed Greenland’s status slightly as a “province.” The Yankees have a long history of killing or just removing people from where they live for whatever purposes the U.S. wants. So, in 1953, they kicked out the Thule tribe so that the military base they were building could be expanded to hide atomic bombs.
Denmark’s large majority was against atomic weapons, but then-Prime Minister H. C. Hansen, yet another Social Democrat, allowed the U.S. to place atomic weapons on Greenland. That was in 1957, the same year that the Social Democrat government and parliament said “No” to having atomic weapons “under the present circumstance.” There is no law against such an eventuality.
In 1968, four atomic bombs accidentally sank into the sea when the U.S. B-26 carrying them crashed. Many of the clean-up workers (Danes) and Greenlanders living nearby became sick and many died early due to radiation. The fact that Hansen was savvy to his master’s placement of atomic weapons was not revealed until 1991 due to a leak. (Long live whistlebowers!)
The U.S. can have atomic weapons anywhere it wants if that country is an “ally.” That even includes “enemy” Cuba where the U.S. forcibly has a navy base at Guantánamo where they torture prisoners from many countries. No one is to know where the U.S. places its weapons because no investigations are allowed of U.S. bases anywhere. Any ally of the U.S. is a colony. Two exceptions: “Great” Britain, mostly; Israel, almost totally.
In 1979, Greenlanders were granted “home rule.” In 2009, Greenland became a self-governing entity. Nevertheless, Denmark retains control of its foreign and defense affairs. That means that Greenlanders are dependent upon, or subjected to, both the U.S. and Denmark for military matters.
In February 2023, the United Nations sent its representative, José Francisco Calí Tzay, to investigate racism in Denmark. He traveled around Denmark to assess how it is protecting the rights of its Greenlandic people—as part of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples from 2007. https://cphpost.dk/2023-02-13/news/un-to-denmark-stop-being-racist-to-greenlanders/
Tzay’s conclusion: “My biggest concern is the structural racism that they encounter. Even though they are Danish citizens, they face a high degree of racial discrimination in all public services they require.”
“The Danish government claims that the welfare state is equal opportunity, but in reality the Inuits endure significant administrative and institutional barriers, as well as racism and racial discrimination.”
In March 2024, 143 Inuit women in Greenland sued Denmark for forcing them to be fitted with intrauterine contraceptive devices in the 1960s and 1970s. They demanded total compensation of $6 million. The women say Denmark violated their human rights when they fitted them with the coils. Some of the women — including many who were teenagers at the time — were not aware of what happened or did not consent to the intervention.
The purpose was to limit population growth in Greenland by preventing pregnancies. The population was increasing because of better living conditions. “Danish authorities say as many as 4,500 women and girls — reportedly half of the fertile women in Greenland — received coil implants between the 1960s and mid-1970s.”
Denmark’s past and current actions in Greenland have been haunting some Danish authorities. In 2020, Prime Minister Frederiksen apologized to 22 Greenland children who were forcibly taken to Denmark in 1951 in a failed social experiment. Officially, the plan was to modernize Greenland and give children a better life, but it ended with an attempt to form a new type of Inuit by re-educating them and hoping they would later return home and foster cultural links. Frederiksen said that “the children lost their ties to their families and lineage.”
In the final analysis, of course, the Danish state will not lift a military finger to do anything about whatever any U.S. president does to it, just as they did not under Nazi occupation. I doubt that the rest of Europe’s NATO states will lift a finger either.
European government leaders have mostly been quiet (as of January 19). In the first two weeks following Trump’s threat, only three country government heads said anything—Italy, France and Germany. It was German Chancellor Olaf Scholz who spoke firmly. He had lost the most when his Scandinavian and American “allies” blew up his Nord Stream pipelines. Russia’s Gazprom owns 51%. The remainder is owned by German, French and Dutch energy firms.
Scholz said Trump’s threat is “incomprehensible” to European leaders. It is against the “inviolability of borders,” which is a “long-standing central principle that borders must not be moved by force.”
Quietly, however, there is renewed talk about creating a European Union army, something earlier U.S. presidents opposed. What would Trump think is “unpredictable”. Nevertheless, following the mainstream media in Denmark, I see signs of something else emerging—a fear that NATO is weakening, and then what. Will Trump actually get the proxy war against Russia stopped? Will he even want to trade with Russia, and end sanctions?
Returning to my lead with Jarl Cordua, he said: “We must stand much more together internally in Europe, and avoid being dependent on American military.”
See Sy Hersh, “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline.” Substack, February 6, 2023. ↑
See my series about the wars Denmark has fought for the United States: https://covertactionmagazine.com/2024/11/11/scandinavians-the-worlds-happiest-people-love-killing-for-the-usa/ ↑
Ten years ago, I was invited to a dinner which a local priest, who knew my love partner, also attended. He wanted to meet me. He sat before me showing his T-shirt: “Operation Enduring Freedom”! He had been a “field priest” in Afghanistan for George Bush’s OEF war. I roared and invited him outside to fisticuffs. He declined and I left the house cussing at murderer priests. ↑
Martin Luther was a/the main ideologue for the reformation transition from the European feudal economy to market capitalism, and the new ruling class needed some workers who could read. So, Luther split from the Catholic Church, which wanted workers to remain illiterate—better to control them. The emerging capitalist class needed what Luther offered them in his new church, allowing people to learn to read and thus read the Bible with his interpretation. Luther loved having women burned alive if they were witches, that is to say, strong women who did not cater to that genocidist’s tastes. Luther also supported the aristocratic landowners’ war against peasant farmers’ uproar demanding for a decent living. The landowners’ army murdered 100,000 of the 300,000 landless farmers. Luther supported the landowners but cautioned against murdering “too many,” something akin to Biden-Harris telling their fascist Zionist comrade-in-arms that it would be better not to murder all Palestinians. In Luther’s book On the Jews and Their Lies (1543), “he called for the destruction of Jewish homes and synagogues, forced labor, the prohibition of the teaching and practice of their religion, raging that Christians were ‘at fault in not slaying them.’” Adolf Hitler praised Luther in Mein Kampf (1925) as a great German nationalist, and the German Lutheran Church backed Hitler and the genocide of Jews. ↑
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About the Author
Ron Ridenour is a U.S.-born author and journalist, anti-war and civil rights activist since 1961. After joining the U.S. Air Force at 17, he saw the inner workings of U.S. imperialism first hand and resigned. In the 1980s and 1990’s he worked with the Nicaraguan government and on Cuban national media.
He now lives in Denmark and, in addition to writing a dozen books, has served as a special correspondent and freelance investigative journalist for many publications in the U.S. and several Latin American and European countries—among them: The Morning Star, New Statesman, The Guardian (U.S. and England), Playboy, Liberation News Service, Pacific News Service, Coast Magazine, Qui, Skeptic, Seven Days, and Pacifica Radio.
CAM co-founder Philip Agee wrote commentaries to two of his dozen books: Yankee Sandinistas: Interviews with North Americans Living and Working in the New Nicaragua, and Backfire: CIA’s Biggest Burn. See also: The Russian Peace Threat: Pentagon on Alert and Winding Brook Stories at Amazon and Lulu. Other work can be found at ronridenour.com.
Ron can be reached at ronrorama@gmail.com.
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Recently there has been an increase in Anti-Semitism in Denmark;
https://apnews.com/article/denmark-antisemitism-israel-gaza-war-jewish-goldstein-02102614b498aa170732c266b410eb0c