The reform includes newly tightened residence and employment requirements to receive more than the lowest tier of benefits, a Kafkaesque hurdle demanding nine years of residence and two-and-a-half years of full-time work within the past decade. Previously reserved for those arriving after 2008, now, in a generous display of equal-opportunity cruelty, this barrier has been generously extended to all benefit claimants. Mette Louise Brix, a social worker and union coordinator in the municipal job centre in Gribskov, puts it starkly: “There are citizens whose monthly benefit is being halved… Some citizens can see they will have trouble staying in their homes. Others are asking how they are supposed to ensure food for their children.” She adds that this policy also targets people with substance abuse disorders and young people with severe mental illness. “Social workers are worried about what they might do,” she tells.

But Denmark’s benevolence does not stop at mere impoverishment. Those relegated to this basement-level benefit must now prove their “usefulness” through a mandatory 37-hour weekly work obligation. Failure to comply results in sanctions to their already skeletal benefits. This obligation may be fulfilled through Danish language classes, unpaid internships for private employers or through the Orwellianly named “usefulness jobs.” These are not jobs in any meaningful sense but rather penances in the form of unpaid labor for the public sector, such as park maintenance or cleaning public toilets, ritual humiliation designed to deter and discipline rather than to prepare for real employment. The subtext is clear: work will set you free, or at least keep you too busy and broken to complain.

Signe Færch, Chairwoman of the Danish Association of Social Workers, notes the bitter irony: “It is thought-provoking that they talk about de-bureaucratisation and yet introduce new bureaucracy where social workers risk having to control citizens’ commute times, attendance and job seeking efforts. … We know that usefulness jobs rarely lead to lasting employment.” She is concerned that the reform compels social workers to become overseers of “pseudo-work” instead of facilitators of real jobs.

Simultaneously, despite dire warings from 18 humanitarian NGO’s, the reform eliminates a crucial lifeline: the section 34 housing subsidy, until now an indispendable tool in efforts to reduce homelessness. This support was vital for benefit recipients facing high rents in a country experiencing a severe shortage of affordable housing, especially in large cities. Jeanette Bauer, head of the independent humanitarian organisation Danish Church Aid, has warned that scrapping this aid would be a “human catastrophe.” The homeless advocacy organisation SAND was blunter, stating its removal was like “setting a roadblock on the road from shelter to housing” and has stated that it is guaranteed to lead to more homelessness.

The human cost, predicted by experts and NGOs with near-unanimous dread, is stark. People battling addiction, severe mental illness, or simply the crushing weight of systemic disadvantage are deemed insufficiently “useful” or too racially impure to deserve adequate support. They face hunger, eviction, and destitution. Færch summarises the cruel paradox: “Necessities like rent, food, and transport are expensive in Denmark. You cannot live a dignified life on DKK 6,789 before tax… If a citizen is worried about whether they can pay their rent or electricity bill, it is difficult to muster the surplus to write a good CV.” The reform, she concludes, creates “another roadblock” for the most vulnerable.

This Danish experiment in punitive welfare “reform” is not an isolated incident. It resonates with a disturbing transatlantic trend. Across the North Sea, the Starmer regime is pushing for eugenicist cuts to Personal Independence Payments (PIP), a vital support for disabled people, insinuating that the sick and the disabled are simply malingering. In the US, the Trump regime’s “Big Beautiful Bill” gleefully gutted essential support systems for the most vulnerable. The shared logic is painfully clear: the disabled, the racialised, the poor, those least “productive”, are to be discarded.

Meanwhile, western leaders find no difficulty mustering funds for other priorities. The money that could have gone to help the civilian population are spent on balooning military expenses, with NATO recently planning to raise expenditures to an eye-watering 5% of GDP to fund agressive military buildup. While civilians are ordered to subsist on crumbs and scrub toilets to prove their worth, the Danish regime has embarked on a dangerous path of rearmament fueled by the slogan “spend! spend! spend!”.

Denmark’s sleek Nordic image remains a powerful export, candles, hygge and smiling cyclists. But beyond this curated postcard lies a ruthless machinery of surveillance and social discipline. Under the smooth slogans, one finds that the cruelty is the only point.

Sources:

• Reform sender tusindvis under fattigdomsgrænsen og gør flere hjemløse, Arbejderen, July 1st

On Friday, June 20, two members of Palestine Action rode into the UK’s largest military base on e-scooters, carrying a Palestinian flag and fire extinguishers filled with red paint. After spray-painting two military airplanes, effectively (if temporarily) grounding them both, the actionists escaped. This bold direct action forced the media to cover what it had long ignored: the participation of the Royal Air Force in the war on Gaza. On Wednesday, July 2, a humiliated and reactionary British parliament voted to proscribe Palestine Action as a “terrorist” organization, threatening members and supporters with up to 14 years of prison.

The same moribund empire that first authorized the Zionist project in 1917 continues to abet mass death and displacement in Palestine. The UK’s F-35 jet fighter program supplies 15% of the components making up Israel’s warplanes — including ejector seats, rear fuselage, active interceptor systems, targeting lasers, and weapon release cables. Its bases in Cyprus are likely waypoints for the transfer of arms to the genocidal state, and the R.A.F. itself flies planes over Gaza to provide the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) with intelligence.

In the five years since its founding, and particularly over the past 20 months, Palestine Action has put the death-dealers on notice like no other political organization in the U.K. or the U.S. By strategically and systematically targeting Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms company, they have already brought about the closure of several Elbit factories; forced dozens of companies and contractors to cut ties with Elbit; and helped bring about a “debanking crisis” for the entire so-called defense industry.

Proscription would endanger the whole of the Palestine solidarity movement, criminalizing word and deed alike. It would punish not only members but supporters of Palestine Action: To publicly praise their brave acts would be to risk a 14-year prison sentence. We call on our British readers to take this risk. The label of “terrorist” has long been wielded by Western powers to brand their sins onto all those who challenge their impunity. In this way, it is an honor.

But the epithet is also a threat. It is through this designation that the West has justified the imprisonment and slaughter of journalists, activists, poets, musicians and cultural workers throughout the history of our movements. We must remind ourselves and the world that terrorism is the true legacy of Western imperialism and colonization, and resistance is the real counter-terrorism.

Palestine Action has offered us a template for resistance in the imperial core, for an insurgency that strikes unflinchingly at the supply chain of death. Proscription may force the organization to formally disband, but it cannot stop the action happening everywhere, every day, in the name of Palestine.

The entire movement must defy the draconian criminalization of resistance, which haunts us with the specter of incarceration. We cannot allow fear to distance us from our conscience or our will. Thousands of political prisoners — many who are Palestinian, others who have been radicalized by Palestine — have already shown us that while the cost of resistance can be high, it can never outweigh the power of a united front. The effectiveness and popularity of anticolonial resistance is why organizations like Samidoun and Palestine Action have been targeted by fascist governments and other counterinsurgent forces attempting to divide the movement with fearmongering and hysterical finger-pointing. As Samidoun wrote in their July 2, 2025 statement of solidarity with Palestine Action, “The British colonial mandate was the first to introduce ‘administrative detention’ — imprisonment without charge or trial — to occupied Palestine, a policy enthusiastically adopted by their Zionist colonial successors.”

Almost two years into this genocide, the Zionist and Western powers have sent clear signals to the world that their final solution is the extermination of the Palestinian people in Gaza and beyond. Day after day, we see images too horrific to comprehend and hear the unforgettable screams of children. But as Israel’s attacks intensify, so does our conviction. Popular support for the Palestinian cause continues to build, both despite and because of escalating fascist repression. Hundreds of people have joined Palestine Action in the past 10 days. “If we defeat the government’s attempts to destroy our organization, victory in our fight against Elbit is near,” the group’s spokesperson, Max Geller, told us this week. “If they do proscribe us, then let a thousand Palestine Actions bloom.”

There have been significant attempts to isolate Palestine Action by liberal forces within the movement. We maintain that — as with resistance in occupied Palestine — there must be a visible, aboveground movement that serves as a popular cradle for underground militancy. WAWOG will always stand with militants in the imperial core. We call on all people of conscience to do the same.

Death, death to the IOF.

Free Palestine.

Kind of funny how Trump 2016 was such a huge gift to the liberals and they totally failed.

If Hillary had won in 2016, Republicans would probably crush the Dems in 2018 and 2020, giving them enough power to unilaterally change the US Constitution.

Trump didn’t even plan on winning and was instantly one of the least popular presidents ever. He didn’t have a team for his presidency, he just picked random supporters of his, most of them were just bickering among themselves and the only thing that was really accomplished were the tax cuts. Even deportations were below the Obama or Biden average.

Now, things are different. Because Trump actually had a transition and picked a lot more effective ghouls who aren’t so consumed by interpersonal drama. Especially the guy in charge of immigration, who was also Obama’s main deportation guy. These people know how to get things done!