Distortion by Nigel Rapport

Author:Nigel Rapport
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781315317526
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

‘The Syrian refugee is not my neighbour’

In October 2015, at the height of the so-called European refugee crisis, a heated discussion took place in a live studio on Danish national TV between two well-known public figures: Lisbeth Zornig Andersen (an award-winning social worker who has devoted her life to helping people from social backgrounds as marginalized as her own), and Marie Krarup (MP for DF, and daughter of Søren Krarup, former pastor and MP, and widely recognized as the leader of Tidehverv and the national conservative right). At issue was the fact that Zornig Andersen, along with other Danes (ranging from left-wing activists, to urban youth from immigrant backgrounds, to actors and intellectuals), had assisted foreigners crossing the border to Sweden, the preferred destination for many refugees/migrants at the time. In keeping with DF’s stance towards what they refer to as ‘the mass migration’ (folkevandringen), Krarup criticized Zornig Andersen on two counts. Not only were she and other ‘people smugglers’ breaking the law by engaging in ‘trafficking’ (indeed, Zornig Andersen was later charged and convicted with ‘people smuggling’, which in turn sparked off a crowd-funding initiative to pay her fine), she was also, fumed Krarup, putting the security of the Danish nation and its people as risk by ‘helping what could be future terrorists’ to enter the country.

Still, neither of these two aspects of Zornig Andersen’s intervention was the object of the most passionate scorn from Krarup. Instead, what really infuriated her and other right-wing Christian commentators in arms was the fact that Zornig Andersen and some other ‘people smugglers’ were justifying their actions on Christian grounds. Thus, the most heated (and for present purposes revealing) point in the debate between the two women happened when Zornig Andersen tried to rebuff Krarup’s critique by posing a counter-question that went, essentially, as follows: How can someone like you, coming from a Christian background, not understand and appreciate my actions? After all, is that not what Christian love (næstekærlighed; lit. ‘neighbourly love’) is all about? [Interestingly, there appears to be no standard English translation of næstekærlighed, which has been variously – but never really satisfactory – translated as ‘charity’, ‘solidarity’ and ‘grace’]. And was that not what people were doing by going to the German border?, Zornig Andersen rhetorically asked. They were not just exercising a democratic right as citizens of a progressive state but performing a moral duty as faithful Christians.

The intensity of Krarup’s response was almost visceral. One could literally see her face redden as she turned towards her adversary to make clear in no uncertain terms, and with a voice shivering from ill-disguised affect, how totally and utterly wrong Zornig Andersen was about Christianity in general and about Christian ethics in particular. After all, as Marie Krarup further elaborated the following days (with explicit reference to some of her father’s many books), the whole point of næstekærlighed is that it cannot be reduced to a ‘principle’ or ‘rule’. For the love that a Christian exercises towards his neighbour (næsten) is always concrete in the form of a specific encounter between two individuals.

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