Mogens Glistrup would have turned one hundred, and a new anthology honours him in fine fashion by portraying Mugge as the system’s nightmare.
The new anthology brings together authors such as Asger Aamund, Lars Seier Christensen, Morten Messerschmidt, Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard and Jonas Herby. Common to the contributions is a clear sympathy for Glistrup’s reckoning with state paternalism, which he treated from the very beginning as a moral scandal.
At the same time, several chapters deal with Glistrup’s outspoken immigration policy and his merciless, vivid rhetoric, in which the system and the old parties were made the principal enemies in a struggle that still haunts Danish politics.
The Sham Popes Glistrup Mocked
It is precisely this rhetorical style that strikes me as one of Glistrup’s most effective manoeuvres.
For if one wishes to understand why Glistrup still pains respectable people, one need only have an ear and an eye – Glistrup’s metaphors were always wonderfully concrete – for how he spoke about them. These “desk popes”, “paper fondlers”, “paragraph riders” – the entire self-satisfied stratum of people who make their living by standing in the way of others.
The effectiveness of this linguistic criticism lay in the fact that Glistrup did not merely go after abstract structures. He went after the elite of people who thrive within them. He mocked their titles, their self-understanding and their paperwork. He turned the office into a joke.
One can picture bureaucrats sitting there with greasy fingers, leafing through piles of papers, or looking down haughtily on the citizen from behind the counter.
Immigration Policy: The Forbidden Clarity
Like a lone voice in the wilderness, Glistrup also warned against Islam, against parallel norms and against cultural conflicts, and at the time was branded an extremist. Today it is entirely commonplace in Danish politics to speak of a struggle over values, Islamic pressure on freedom of expression, social control, the formation of ghettos and conflicts of loyalty. But, of course, it is far too late.
If only people had listened to Glistrup in time – and if only Glistrup had argued more and better for his case. Messerschmidt makes sensible reservations along these lines in his contribution to the anthology.
What was liberating about Glistrup was that he said aloud what many people saw, long before it became part of any “strict immigration policy”. Glistrup broke so forcefully with left-liberal political correctness that one was compelled to engage with it.
“The Paternal State”, Glistrup Mocked, Before It Became Fashionable
Glistrup was particularly allergic to paternalism, before we even had the language to describe it. Before lifestyle campaigns and behavioural regulation became a profession. He saw that the state does not merely redistribute money, but also reshapes people. From citizens into clients, from responsible individuals into users who are to be guided by experts and campaign material.
Glistrup hated the system in which paper replaces judgement, in which rules and circulars carry more weight than reality. Where one can be entirely in order in the eyes of the system and yet still stand in the way of all common sense.
I know there are many dedicated people who wish to build up local communities, but who are soured by excessive reporting requirements, bureaucracy, oversight and regulation. It is the death of civic engagement.
Glistrup’s Necessary Contribution
Glistrup spoke of taxation as though it were organised robbery. He described the state as a form of institutionalised theft, disguised as care. He spoke about the answering machine in Russian, and about taxpayers as resistance fighters and saboteurs. Today the state has assumed even more fully the role of moral parent, tasked with educating us towards the Sustainable Development Goals and the correct, inclusive terminology.
Taking Glistrup seriously does not mean endorsing every single tirade. It does, however, mean saying: in the midst of the exaggerations there lay an important truth that must be unearthed and held on to.
The new anthology, “Mogens Glistrup 100 Years – The System Critic Who Is Still Remembered”, does an exceptionally good job of digging it out.