Jacob Christensen

Passed this one last week and was fascinated by the leaves.

The social web can lead you in strange directions. Some months ago, Chris Bertram mentioned German director Edgar Reitz’ Heimat trilogy in a Tweet and it struck me that I had watched the original Heimat on TV back in the 1980s and Heimat 3 some years ago, but for whatever reason Zweite Heimat – Reitz’ portayal of a group of young artists coming of age in Munich during the 1960s – had eluded me. I have no idea why: Perhaps it was just the effort needed to follow a TV series in thirteen parts, each of which lasts two hours (with the exception of one episode lasting two and a half hours!), which overwhelmed me back in the mid-1990s.

So I decided to make a search on Amazon.de and sure enough: The entire Heimat trilogy was available as a massive 18 DVD set. Time to order, wait for the postman and to get watching.

On a curious note: Despite being screened in the early 1990s, the edition of Zweite Heimat had no subtitles – not a big deal to me as long as the characters speak High German, but when they began speaking Bavarian or Pfälsisch I was competely and utterly lost.

Zweite Heimat is a very strange experience: In many ways, it must be one of the most ambitious TV series ever made, and despite all the developments in the production of US TV series during the last 15 years (cue: Sopranos), I find it hard to imagine a mainstream TV channel take on a similar project today. It simply doesn’t fit easily into any of the predesigned formats preferred by today’s executives. It is slow, it is highly stylized and theatrical and as far as I can see, the interplay between picture, word and music takes its cues from the post-war musical avantgarde. Somehow, it could only have been made in Germany – not just because of some of the themes (the heritage from the Nazi era, the 1968 rebellion turned into terrorism), but also because it fits into what I see as a particular German theatrical and musical aesthetic. The series may look naturalistic but in many ways we move between a real and an imagined world – Hermann Simon’s journey through a Germany in social, political and personal upheaval during the last episode is a major case in point.

It is as much meditation as drama and this is why the individual episodes have to be long in traditional TV terms.

But for those who would like to make the journey through a (West) Germany of what is now the distant past, here are some of my cues:

Obviously, the main character Hermann Simon experience the same development most of us do during our youth: From a not quite mature 20 year old, uncertain of his future, to more weathered 30 year old, finding himself in a position much different from what he had imagined ten years earlier.

We find the old dynamic of an unhappy love story: Quirky Renate loves Hermann who is in love with beautiful Clarissa who marries Hermann’s friend Volker. Hermann instead marries hometown girl gone city girl Waltraud aka Schnüsschen while Stefan longs for distant Helga who almost becomes his bane.

Interestingly, even if Reitz may have built the series around the male protagonists, it is the women who stand out. Perhaps this is because the role of women – even in conservative Germany – changed so much during the 1960s. Clarissa, the cello player, becomes involved in a travelling collective of female performers, Schnüsschen takes up sociology while Renate becomes an inn-keeper presenting absurd theatre plays. Finally, Helga joins the RAF becoming one of the hard women of the terrorist left. The men almost strike me as bland in comparison.

And then there is the music which is a far cry from the standard Hollywood fare being used (and especially abused) in most movies and TV series an an integral part of the narrative. I really can’t describe it in a competent way, but the soundtrack is that of the 1960s avantgarde. I suspect that what people who – like me – are not from Germany or Central Europe fail to understand intuitively is the role played by art music in modern bourgeois culture – not just in terms of specific compositions but also in terms of music as an essential part of that culture.

In the end, the result wasn’t even close: Astrid Krag won 34% of the vote while Annette Vilhelmsen won 66% with a turn-out of 60%. The latter figure may be the most significant: I would interpret it as a reflection of the party members’ dislike of Krag (as the leadership candidate) combined with a lack of enthusiasm for Vilhelmsen who is relatively new to national politics. Her rise to power is still rivalled by Helle Thorning Schmidt – but then again, Thorning Schmidt only ran for the party chairmanship after a number of more likely contenders had back out of the competition.

This is slightly surprising as we would expect party chairmanships to be some of the most desired political positions. On the other hand, both the Social Democrats in 2005 and SF today had serious problems with factionalisation and conflicts over parliamentary and policy strategies.

Yesterday, my Twitter-stream turned nasty. What happened was that a bug in a Twitter-client prevented one Tweep to send a direct message to another Tweep – something which would usually mean that Tweep 2 had unfollowed Tweep 1. In the end, we had to call in the psychiatrists and tranquilizeres were prescribed.

Well, perhaps it didn’t go that far but we were reminded that social media contacts are in fact not just purely instrumental but that they also carry emotional attachments with them. At this point, negotiating the social webs gets complicated – perhaps not quite as complicated as handling real world contacts, but still complicated.

So, in case you wonder: What are my policies for following people on platforms like Twitter and Facebook?

First of all: There is no Grand Design. My contact lists are to a large degree the result of what researchers call snowballing – following one contact leads to interactions which in turn leads to new contacts. So, on Twitter interacting can – but do not automatically – lead to following. Things are a bit more complicated on Facebook, but most, if not all of my Facebook contacts are people I have interacted with one way or the other, even if I may not have met them IRL.

Another way of making me follow you on Twitter is to post interesting tweets which get re-tweeted, but I do not seek out Tweeps on any systematic basis.

Following me on Twitter won’t make me follow you back – Twitter is not symmetrical – but if you make mentions that demand some kind of answer, I will be happy to comment back.

And now for the nasty part: What will make me unfollow you?

I think relevance (to me) and activity are the two main parameters. I check my Twitter feed regularly (as in: Every other month) for abandoned accounts or accounts with very little activity – basically following an abandoned account is like having a dead phone number in your list of contacts. If you haven’t announced a Twitter holiday and go missing for one or two months, you in all likelihood have abandoned the platform. Even people that I have followed for a long time have been struck from my list of followers.

Relevance is trickier but some topics hold very little of interest to me (Advice: Do not tweet every date you are on, including detailed comments about the guy’s hopeless behaviour – the only good thing about such tweets is that they make me even more determined to never EVER entering the dating scene. There are some female Tweeps I haven’t unfollowed despite their breaking the dating rule but generally the details of your love life and sarcastic comments about failed partners are better left off the internet). Besides that, the internet is like life itself: Occasionally, you have contacts which just fade away after some time.

Finally, I don’t check if people unfollow me. In most cases it doesn’t matter that much, in other cases I have to accept that people make other priorities. I could name some people who would make me very sad if they unfollowed me, and in this case the social web is like life itself. I wouldn’t unfollow anybody to deliverately hurt them – but on the other hand, I wouldn’t keep people on my Twitter stream for fear of hurting or offending them.

Oh, abd please note that I talk about contacts or followers, not friends. Yes, there are some Tweeps and Facebook contacts I for one reason or the other hold dearer than others but I think we should remember that most social web contacts are “thin” rather than “thick”. They can still be positive and useful in many ways but we should be very careful in overestimating our emotional value for or role in the lives of those on the other end of the line.

Remember 2010? This was the year when SF and its chairman Villy Søvndal were still able to walk on the water and perform other miracles. Actually, serious people wondered if there was a chance that SF could actually overtake the Social Democrats and become the largest party on the left wing of Danish politics. We were talking 20% of the vote here.

The Social Democrats continue to be in a rot, languishing around or even well below 20% of the vote – in many ways, the decline of the Social Democrats is eerily reminiscent of the implosion of the Dutch Christian Democrats – but for SF it has been downhill all the way since 2010. Eventually, Villy Søvndal declared his resignation as party chairman – observers still debate if he jumped or was pushed.

What we had – or thought we had – was this: An old red-green party with a strong emphasis on membership participation had been transformed and mainstreamed into a “workerist” left-wing party with a strong executive. So there was a change in policy – out went the green image and the focus on permanent and temporary welfare recipients, in came breaks for the hard-working families – as well as in organisation – out went the membership-focussed organisation, in came a strong parliamentary executive. All with the charismatic and often erratic Villy Søvndal as the figurehead and people like Ole Sohn and Thor Möger Pedersen as the engineers.

At some point, Søvndal’s grasp on the electorate started to vane, Möger Pedersen failed to win a seat at the 2011 elections and Sohn mysteriously disappeared from the public eye, leaving … well, what exactly?

Losses in opinion polls can only go so far before the MPs get restless and start considering their own future, and the membership organisation began wondering if the loss in direct influence had paid off in SF influence on government policy.

Typically, Søvndal’s resignation appeared as part accident, part strategy with the 29-year old Minister for Health Astrid Krag as the likely successor with some symbolic unknown challenger pulled out of the sleeves of disgruntled members.

As it turned out, we had the unknown challenger: Annette Vilhelmsen, a first-term MP with a background in local politics on Funen.

Curiously, this opened for the third membership vote in a row where a candidate for the “moderate” wing is pitched against a candidate for the “traditionalist” wing: In 1991 Sten Gade lost to Holger K. Nielsen, in 2005 Pia Olesen (Dyhr) lost to Villy Søvndal and it increasingly looks like Astrid Krag will have to hope for the moderate wing to be third time lucky with Annette Vilhelmsen pulling off a far more convincing performance than anybody had expected. (Note incidentally that both candidates for the position as chairman are women)

But what would a win for Vilhelmsen mean?

In policy terms, the outcome is far from certain: Both Nielsen and Søvndal were seen as traditionalists but pulled the party towards the political centre. Vilhelmsen’s task is more complicated as SF is now a part of the government (and a government following the austerity policies of the EU). Combining the welfare and the workerist approaches into something reasonably coherent and acceptable for the two partners in government will take a lot of strategic skill. Still, we have a history of SF Nixons going to China and Vilhelmsen could be a leader combining leftist credentials with centrist strategic skills.

In organisational terms, the big risk is that the faction supporting Astrid Krag could start an all-out war against Vilhelmsen. Vilhelmsen might have the support of the party bases but the higher echelons all came out in support of Krag. If there is one thing voters hate more than parties having the wrong policies, then it is parties consumed by internal struggles. If Krag wins, she will have to make peace with a large section of the organisational base; if Vilhelmsen wins, she will have to accomodate party executives.

In the eye of this storm we have one of the most curious figures ever to have appeared in Danish politics: Tax Minister Thor Möger Pedersen. Möger Pedersen combines a supreme strategic talent with a complete lack of ability to connect with either voters or party members. In many ways he is a descendent of Social Democratic notabilities like Jens Otto Krag or Mogens Lykketoft: Both immensely gifted politicians who just lacked that magic element which will make a political leader tick with voters and activists.

On October 13 we will know who will be the next chairman of SF. What we will not know, is the political direction SF will take.

Yes, lots of things are happening in Danish politics right now: The continued conflict between the parties in the governing coalition over unemployment insurance benefits and the leadership battle in SF are the two most obvious developments. However, despite being back in work (in a new job), blogging is not really a priority for the moment.

So the blogging hiatus continues until further notice but you can catch me – in Danish – on Twitter as jacobchr

It’s not that there isn’t anything to write about Danish politics – the bizarre angles to the story about Troels Lund Poulsen’s attempts to undermine Helle Thorning Schmidt prove my friend Carsten Fogh Nielsen’s claim that it can ALWAYS get more absurd and the government’s attempts to save face in the unemployment insurance mess both merit blog posts, but for the moment I am very busy preparing this autumn’s teaching.

Still, when the dead-serious Monkey Cage blog linked to this (original here), I simply had to share it with those of you who do not follow me on Twitter or Facebook.¹

And now my question is: How would you rank the chances of the Danish prime ministers since 1848 in a similar fight?

1. I would definitively go for Nixon as a likely candidate, followed by Lyndon B. Johnson [↩]

Pia Kjærsgaard’s announcement that she will be resigning as chairman of the Danish People’s Party with Kristian Thulesen Dahl as her chosen successor was hardly surprising: The question was more when rather than if this change would happen. Even if DPP in particular appeals to older voters – something which sets the party apart from the typical “angry young un-educated man” of right-wing populist parties – her age (she is 65) would begin to show in the coming terms and a change during the autumn would give the party a chance to profile Thulesen Dahl in the run-up to an election which could come during 2013 or 2014.

Most of the comments have focussed on the perceived differences between Kjærsgaard’s and Thulesen Dahl’s background and style: Kjærsgaard has a lower middle-class background while Thulesen Dahl’s parents were teachers, Kjærsgaard was trained as an office worker while Thulesen Dahl has a university degree in business economics and while Kjærsgaard was seen as a politician with an emotional style, Thulesen Dahl is seen as the negotiator with a strong grasp on policy details. All in all, a woman of the people is replaced by a man of the parliament and this raises some questions about the future direction of the DPP. Or so we are told.

The reality is more complicated. First of all, Kjærsgaard was always concerned with turning the anarchic and often dysfunctional Progress Party into an effective parliamentary and membership organisation. Even if the PP continued to attract votes, its political impact during the 1970s and 1980s was more often than not very limited. The creation of the DPP also adopting a tightly controlled party organisation on both the membership and parliamentary arenas. Researchers have pointed out that a party like the DPP in fact in many ways is reminiscent of classical communist parties with a strong leadership which leaves little or no room to manoeuvres for the membership. Thulesen Dahl was one of the people helping to turn Kjærsgaard’s visions into realities all the way back from 1995. Kjærsgaard may have had an emotional style in public but she did have a correct appreciation of the uses of organisation and discipline and there are few signs that a change of leader will lead to any significant changes in the DPP organisation.

As Troels Mylenberg has pointed out in a perceptive commentary, Kjærsgaard often used the politics of offence as her weapon of choice (thereby curiously mirroring the behaviour of her opponents in the 2006 cartoon crisis) and many Danes would probably recognise the otherwise inimitable Yvonne from the Olsenbanden films as a major inspiration. Other prominent members of DPP – most recently Ole Hyltoft – have used the same style even if Thulesen Dahl in general has avoided making too crude statements. Consequently, while Thulesen Dahl may adopt a more mainstream style than Kjærsgaard, the party still has plenty of representatives who can play the offended-by-the-elite card. And Thulesen Dahl’s image as the perfect son-in-law will still go down well with the party’s electorate.

Finally, we shouldn’t necessarily expect a change in policy strategies because of the change of leaders. Again, Thulesen Dahl has been a core member of the DPP leadership since 1995 and the dual emphasis on anti-immigrant and welfare policies has characterised DPP strategy since the 1990s. The big difference between the present and previous electoral terms is that the DPP isn’t a supporting party to the government. On the one hand, this gives the party a freer hand in its choice of issues, on the other hand it will have fewer concrete results to show voters. What the 2011 election did show was that the DPP despite changes in the general political agenda with the general economy overtaking social and health policy and immigration as the main issue was able to hold on to its voters.

So to sum up: The change of leaders points to continuity in terms of organisational, parliamentary and electoral strategies. What we may see is a situation where Kristian Thulesen Dahl will be playing the “good cop” while other DPP representatives play the “bad cops”, delivering emotionally charged attacks on immigrants, “the elite”, the EU and so on.

It has been almost six months since my last serious post and what has happened in Danish politics in the meantime? Basically, we’ve had two major agreements about tax policy and disability programmes, SF and the Social Democrats look more doomed than ever in the polls and the economy is still frail. The summer entertainment was provided by Berlingske which discovered that the Red-Green Alliance was a revolutionary socialist party (I’m like … Who would have thought? I mean: Really?) and a restaurant-keeper in Vejle who decided to put a bomb under the agreements governing the Danish labour market – and receiving full support from the party of the moment (the Liberals, in case you wonder).

But today delivered two contributions to the debate about the state of the three-party government: An op-ed piece by SF veteran Aage Frandsen hinting that SF should consider leaving the coalition and a blog-post by (conservative) commentator Niels Krause-Kjær arguing that the Social Liberals are putting the government in danger by pushing their policies at the public expense of SF and the Social Democrats.

First, I think Frandsen in many ways make the correct diagnosis of what ails SF but given his political experience made an unexcusable mistake in suggesting that SF should choose the nuclear option and pull out of the coalition. Obviously, all interest has concentrated on this rather than his discussion of SF’s chances of raising its profile in while staying in government.

Perhaps I should point out that parties leaving a government during a parliamentary term is a very rare occurrence in Denmark. In fact, the only case is CD which left Poul Nyrup Rasmussen’s coalition in 1996 after a budget agreement with the left-wing. The problem for SF is that CD had the choice of supporting a Liberal-Conservative coalition while SF’s only choice is to try an enjoy a position as a left-wing protest party (in effect as a second Red-Green Alliance).

My advice to SF would be to put more emphasis on developing a deeper understanding of the demands being a governing party put on a political organisation and here a number of reshuffles and organisational reforms look like a more promising strategy. (I’m with those who think Villy Søvndal should never have taken the Foreign Affairs portfolio, not because he wasn’t qualified – I don’t think he has been less successful than most of his predecessors – but because of the demands of the position. SF desperately needs someone who concentrate on the parliamentary group and the party organisation).

Second, Krause-Kjær raises a question which is essential for anyone trying to either understand or control the dynamics of a coalition. Compared to many other countries, Denmark is a bit odd as the Social Liberals despite being the junior partner in the coalitions the party has participated in, has a reputation of being frighteningly efficient in promoting its own positions at the expense of its coalition partners with the economic and immigration policies of the 1990s as the case which is mentioned most often. Usually, junior partners suffer from participating in coalitions (see: Norway, Sweden).

First of all, I would agree with those who argue that the Social Liberals don’t exactly suffer from a lack of self-confidence. But as a (Social Democratic) saying goes: Once you deal with the fact that the Social Liberals are an arrogant and self-righteous bunch of politicians, you can do business with them – and the crisis which hit the Social Democrats during the 1990s also had a lot of internal reasons. Making the Social Liberals the scapegoat was in many ways the easy option for the Social Democrats. (And we should also remember that the Social Liberal participation in the three-party Conservative-Liberal-Social Liberal coalition between 1988 and 1990 hardly counts as a success in terms of policy and votes)

But the charge remains: The Social Liberals has been maintaining a profile which is so high that it is endangering the present coalition in the medium and long terms. The question is if this is true and what the party should do if this is the case.

The first problem is to decide if the Social Liberals are too successful or the Social Democrats and SF are failing. If failing is the problem, the question is if the Social Liberals can do much to help: The coalition partners need to improve their performance. A complication is that the SocDems and SF compete for different voter segments – basically no blue collar voter will vote for the SocLibs. On the other hand, a successful coalition is also a matter of giving and taking – a situation where one part constantly appears as the winner risks undermining the coalition in the longer run. The present Con-Lib coalition in the UK could serve as a warning to all parties.

The second problem is to figure out what the chances and risks of the Social Liberals in the electoral arena look like. If the party make major concessions to the SocDems and SF, it could risk losing voters to the right wing (in particular the Liberals, the Conservatives and Liberal Alliance) if it doesn’t SocDems and SF lose voters to the right and left. Perhaps all three parties need to take a common and harder look at the dynamics which have been pulling voters back from the left to the right since September 2011.

It is hard trying to be original in describing how going down with stress and coming up again feels like but looking back somehow I feel that Phoenix’ “If I Ever Feel Better” gets close to where I have been and emphatically do not want to get back to ever again. I have absolutely no idea about what the video is about.

(The song is probably about a love story gone wrong but never mind: The experience was just about the same.)

In other news: I will be leaving the University of Southern Denmark at the end of the month and move to UC Lillebælt for the coming year. And even if the present developments in Danish politics call for loads of comments and analysis, I will stick to my plan and not make any politics blogging until the autumn.