National conservative right-wing social democrats. Used to be a workers' party way back in the day, aggressively claiming they still are. Today they are a party of power for power's sake. Their entire leadership went straight from university to parliament and has never worn work clothes a day in their life. They claim to speak for the working class, who they imagine to be a bunch of racist simpletons who are more concerned with deporting Muslims than improving healthcare. Allergic to class analysis, they define the working class through an incoherent stew of income brackets, educational backgrounds, cultural preferences, job titles, and consumption habits.

Three decades ago they were bleeding voters to the Danish People's Party which prompted them to embrace a strategy of being as racist as them which continues to be their primary objective. Despite all of them being university educated they spare no occasion to air reactionary grievance politics against anyone with a degree. They think they have a monopoly on representing workers politically and harbour a visceral hatred for anyone to their left.

Their immense smug pride over having built the welfare state is not affected by the fact that they have been spending four decades leading the neoliberal charge to destroy it. They would be the living proof that social democracy is the moderate wing of fascism if only they were more moderate.

Their youth wing is a snake pit of sociopathic nerds doing sexual harassment and backstabbing.

They got slapped by voters in local elections a few months ago so to improve their progressive credentials leading up the the election they have promised a symbolic wealth tax to fund schools and remove property taxes on cheap houses. Little is likely to come from this.

Leader

Mette Frederiksen: A power-hungry and autocratic control freak, even for a social democrat. Does not give interviews where she might get asked critical questions, prefer one-way communication through Facebook instead. Her experience with unscripted interviews are not great, last time it happened she managed to tell the puzzled public that it was more important to her to put an age limit on TikTok than to handle rising food prices, green transition or the lack of affordable housing, only racism and militarism was more important to her.

She is performatively folkish and will post images on Instagram of her polishing windows and eating canned mackerel to show how ordinary she is.

She will say and do whatever benefits her career. When she was a young opposition MP she was known as "Red Mette" in the mainstream press for her slightly-more-pointed-than-average rhetoric. When she advanced to be minister of employment she seamlessly transitioned into a neoliberal ghoul defending brutal benefits cuts and exploitative workfare schemes. When she had to be a frothing racist in order to become prime minister, she did that without batting an eyelid.

She tolerates no opposition and has filled her party with yes-men and sycophants who will not question her. She ordered the blatantly unconstitutional culling of 17 million mink during COVID with no legal foundation.

he would rather kill you than ever admit a mistake. Behind closed doors, she is known for volcanic rage and violent outbursts at subordinates. A convinced Zionist, she offered only weak, ineffectual criticisms of the Palestinian genocide after shifting public opinion made her previous stance embarrassing. She is a rabid NATO maximalist with a war boner.

Mainstream reactionary right-liberals. Used to be the party representing farmers, later it morphed into being the default right-wing party. They remain the political wing of big agro-business though, as their lobbyists dictate their agricultural and environmental politics completely.

In recent years other reactionary parties have been eating their lunch: the Liberal Alliance took all the true believers and all the small business tyrants who are butthurt over taxation, the Denmark Democrats took all the fascists, the Moderate Party took all the sensible centrist adults in the room. They are still extremely nasty but it is unclear exactly what the purpose of the Liberal Party is any more except power for power's own sake, yet it staggers along like a political zombie out of pure inertia.

Leader

Troels Lund Poulsen: Became party leader by accident. He is the least crooked, most charismatic person the Liberal Party has to offer, which doesn't say that much. He is unpopular even within his own party but he is the best they've got left.

When he was minister of taxation he probably leaked information and tried to influence the tax audits of then-social democrat leader Helle Thorning-Schmidt's husband in order to discredit his political opponent.

He earned the nickname "Trolex" after being caught accepting luxury watches from American puppet regimes in the Middle East. He is also a deranged NATO maximalist, of course.

Centrist neoliberals. Founded solely as a vehicle for the continuation of the political career of its leader Lars Løkke Rasmussen, a political cockroach who will cling to power no matter the cost.

The moderate leader has a long career in the Liberal Party behind him. He used to be leader of the Liberal Party as well as prime minister. His administration collapsed, factional struggle arose in the Liberal Party and he was ousted, leading to his founding of the Moderate Party.

The Moderate Party wants to project an image of sensible "adult in the room" technocratic managerialism, but since the party was hastily cobbled together from nothing to allow the party leader to stay in office, the Moderate party is full of rejects from other right-wing parties, leading to the party being a clown car of weirdos and village idiots, that produce one embarrassing personal scandal after the other.

The Moderate Party appeals to voters who want to vote for the right but who would also feel embarrassed by associating themselves with the other right-wing parties who have all established themselves as being gaggles of crooks, liars and hucksters. The typical Moderate Party voter is the kind of person who wants to feel sensible and professional and who wants their government to feel the same way, without having to care too much about what the actual policies are.

Leader

Lars Løkke Rasmussen: The Danish champion of compusive corruption with a political career that is as impossible to kill as a cockroach. Nobody likes him but in all likelihood he will remain surgically attached to government until the heat death of the universe.

As Liberal prime minister he built a coalition with the Danish People's Party, indulging them in all their racism but once he was out of office he suddenly became a moderate centrist warning against "the outer wings".

Throughout his political career Lars Løkke Rasmussen has been riddled with a steady stream of minor and major corruption scandals. He is extremely bad at personal finances, he always needs more money and he will have his hands down every public coffer he has access to and he can be bribed by anyone. Needing a seat in government to stave off personal bankruptcy he will do whatever it takes to stay in office and keep receiving his paycheck.

His most recent corruption scandal involves him getting caught on tape, trying to bribe an ex-Moderate MP who had been kicked out of the party over his technically legal but incredibly gross and unethical relationship to a 15 year old girl to resign from parliament and leave his seat to a Lars Løkke-loyal substitute.

He is known for his violent angry outbursts at subordinates behind closed doors as well as his fondness of alcohol, especially if someone else is paying.

Far right libertarians. A party for spoiled petulant boys who never grew up. They would be a frivolous party if they were any fun and didn't actually mean it. They are the closest thing you get to a leading force in the right opposition.

They are a party of cranks with weird opinions on women's rights and the age of consent, small business tyrants, oligarch tax tourists, business school students who went mad from reading too much Ayn Rand, incels and weird bearded men who write angry columns about how women have no honor.

They appeal to spoilt entitled adolescent men (of all ages) because their political thought is so simplistic that it fits perfectly into a 30 second TikTok video.

They claim to be in favour of liberty but in practice their brand of liberty is the simply freedom of rich white straight men to do whatever they want and the freedom for everyone else to shut up and endure it. Their youth wing has had debates on whether necrophilia should be legal.

Leader

Alex Vanopslagh: A deeply unserious fuckboy politician whose libertarian grievance politics has the perfect depth for TikTok videos. Weird, robotic and unlikable. Will be sanctimoneous about "benefits fraud" yet he lied about his residence in order to claim an extra housing allowance from parliament (parliament predictably reached the conclusion that he should face no legal consequences).

Conservatives. The traditional nasty party until they were dethroned by the newer and nastier Danish People's Party a couple of decades ago. A more elitist form of flag-shagging than the Danish People's Party and the Denmark Democrats. A party for anyone who feels they are born a century too late.

Beloved by cops, business executives, military officers, senior bureaucrats and weird angry academics who are still seething about how the hot feminists wouldn't fuck them 30 years ago. They love cops and prisons and punishment and guns and parades and the military and the flag and the monarchy. They have never seen a workfare scheme or a benefits cut they didn't love.

They claim to be more green and socially responsible than the rest of the right despite the complete absence of any proof thereof.

If you get two pints into the average conservative, he will wax nostalgically about the good old days during the 1880's when dictator JBS Estrup ruled the country with an iron fist backed by large estate owners and a brutal police state.

In the 1930's their youth wing was wearing uniforms, goose-stepping all over the joint and doing funny arm stretches, they don't want to talk about that any more.

Leader

Mona Juul: Bland and generic mainstream right-wing politician with a girlboss business background. Has enough personal wealth to be insulated from ever having to live with the consequences of her own policies.

The embodiment of a live, laugh love poster, she is too bland to get aroused about king and country or to do the expected flag-shagging (probably because the flag isn't beige).

Fascists. Uses racism against non-whites and provincial grievances against Copenhagen to sneak through economic policy that benefits the rich. Other party policies involves being mad about renewable energy and inventing the slur "iron fields" for solar power farms.

The party was founded as an organisational vehicle for its leader Inger Støjberg, a former Liberal Party minister of immigration who was so performatively mean to refugees that she was impeached and sentenced to a slap on the wrist for it which made her a martyr for the far right.

The party is a lifeboat for politicians from the Danish People's Party's Lawful Evil faction who were pushed out when the Chaotic Evil faction won a power struggle. A more folksy form of flag-shagging than the conservatives.

Leader

Inger Støjberg: Used to be a minister of immigration for the Liberal Party and was so performatively and stubbornly cruel to refugees by illegally separating families that she was eventually convicted for abuse of power and received a slap on the wrist. Getting convicted for being mean to refugees as a Danish politician is an impressive feat in itself.

Her notable public appearances includes the time she postied a picture on Twitter of herself holding a cake celebrating deportations of refugees and the time she was randomly involved in a traffic near-accident and made wild claims that the incident was somehow a deliberate terroristic assassination attempt against her, likening it to Charlie Kirk's final celebration of the second amendment.

She was kicked out of the liberal party in the factional struggle following Lars Løkke Rasmussen's clownish downfall. This martyrdom made her the shining star of the far right which she leveraged to form her own fascist party.

Fascist. The OG far right people's party. Will go on and on about better elder care and more animal welfare (for cute animals only, not for factory-farmed pigs) and then vote for austerity in order to make life worse for the Muslim majority. Their voters are fine with this, they're there for the racism, all the welfare stuff is secondary.

They have adopted the neo-Nazi term "remigration" enthusiastically and are promising to deport 100,000 foreigners although they don't want to talk about the nasty violent details necessary to make this happen.

They nurture an impressive amount of petty grievances and outlandish conspiracy theories. They will demonstratively consume pork as a political statement and probably think that pork is a form of anti-Muslim cryptonite. They are deeply distrustful of anyone with more education than a high school diploma (and even that is kind of suspicious). Their representatives have denied citizenship to applicants because their names were "too foreign". They seriously believes the Muslims have been eating their cookies and drinking their lemonade. They suffer from a chronic martyr complex and are still butthurt that people were mean to them for being racist back in the 1990's.

In many ways they are the most successful political party in recent history as they've managed to turn virtually everyone else into raging xenophobes, yet despite having won they are constantly unhappy about now winning more. They are the kind of people who will say "I'm not a racist but..." before telling you the most racist shit you've ever heard. A more folksy form of flag-shagging than the conservatives

Leader

Morten Messerschmidt: Used to lead a fascist group in the EU parliament and was convicted of defrauding the EU but was lucky enough to walk on a technicality due to an idiot judge who couldn't help himself posting online about the case.

When Donald Trump returned to power in the US, Messerschmidt was the first (and only) Danish party leader to make the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago and kiss the supreme leader's ring while proudly posting on Twitter about it. Later, when Trump tried to steal Greenland, he discovered his inner Danish nationalist and doesn't want to talk about the Mar-a-Lago trip anymore.

He leads the most folksy party in Denmark, yet he curates a public persona of an effete 1930's aristocrat. His voice has all the charm of a Prussian juncker lecturing a disobedient chambermaid. Him being named after a Nazi airplane is one of the best examples of nominative determinism in Danish politics. His idea of a fun party trick is to get drunk, raise his right arm and sing the edgy verses of the German national anthem.

Fascists. Unlike its predecessor party (The New Right) that enjoyed oligarch funding and massive mainstream media support, this gaggle of village idiots, antivaxxers and covid truthers has neither. It is unlikely to become a permanent fixture of Danish politics.

They proclaim a hodgepodge of half-baked far-right grievance politics that includes islamophobia, drain-the-swamp and a weird fixation on reforming car taxes.

Leader

Lars Boje Mathiesen (citizens party): A deranged conspiracy theorist with weird opinions on COVID who stumbled into being leader of another fascist party (The New Right) that has since collapsed. He was kicked out of that party a month later over exorbitant salary demands.

A moderate right-wing party. Centrists, social liberals. Used to be a party for small-holders who were getting the short end of the stick of the economic system but who were too rural to be socialists. Now it is the preferred party of stylish urban professionals who want to vote their economic interest while still feeling smug and holier than thou about it.

A century ago they were against the monarchy and the military, today they shut up about the monarchy and support NATO. They change their logo to rainbow colors during Pride month. Used to be anti-racist but has toned it down to almost nothing to be allowed to stay in the club of "sensible" parties.

They are socially liberal and fiscally conservative, meaning that they will sell out any of their progressive stances if they get to do regressive economic policy. They claim to be the sensible adults in the room. Their voters are consistently more left-wing than the party is.

Leader

Martin Lidegaard: A run-of-the-mill neoliberal centrist, pro-EU, pro-NATO and pro green transition (as long as it doesn't challenge economic power structures). Even his own party members find him weak and uninspiring. He perfectly channels his party's condescending academic tone. He is married to his former secretary. The most exciting thing he has ever done was to consult on a season of a fictional political drama TV series. Originally became an MP through a clerical error.

Imagine the social democrats but with more wind turbines, less overt racism and much less political relevance. Beloved by high school teachers and anyone else who wants leftist aesthetics (red flags, singing the old songs and getting drunk on May Day) with none of the actual leftist politics.

They have seen a surge in popularity in recent years, not due to their own merits but simply because an increasing number of voters can no longer vote for the Social Democrats in good conscience.

They have changed their english name to "The Green Left", probably because "socialism" and "the people" are scary terms that frighten the horses.

Leader

Pia Olsen Dyhr: Her fresh and energetic haircut is the most radical part of her politics. She is willing to vote for racism, welfare cuts and militarism if it allows her "a seat at the table". She has advocated for a "security tax" to fund ever-increasing military budgets.

She was railing against the flight of privileged families from public schools, only to enroll her own kid in a private school.

Well-intentioned socially progressive green liberals. Identifies climate change as the main threat but refuses to make a class analysis as that would make them marxists and marxism is an angry ideology that ruins the good vibes.

They will enthusiastically preach green sustainability to people while failing to address the systemic factors that lock people into car dependency, processed foods and consumerism. They are the perfect party for people who live in central Copenhagen, smoke weed occasionally and ride 5,000 dollar cargo bikes.

They attempt to reform the political system with kindness, a strategy that has had absolutely no success for the last decade. They have no power whatsoever.

Leader

Franciska Rosenkilde: Took over leadership of the party after her predecessor was ousted for verbally abusing members and physically shaking them. Has failed to expand her party's support from hovering right above the threshold for losing representation. Her failure to produce any truly colorful personal scandals has made her party even more invisible.

Democratic socialists in rhetoric, polite social democrats with a human face in praxis. They are scared of their own shadow and terrified that one of them might inadvertently say something too radical that might make the right-wing press call them Stalinist communists.

They have announced that a one percent wealth tax is a condition for them supporting a Social Democrat-led coalition after the election but don't take it too seriously, the Red-Greens have a long history of letting the Social Democrats walk all over their publicly stated red lines without doing anything about it other than getting mad.

They were originally formed from the combined estates of the communist party and two other small socialist parties that were killed off by the destruction of the Soviet Union. Today their political strategy is to be as civil as possible, refrain from any dirty tricks and speak to the good hearts of the social democrats, hoping they can convince them to maybe improve society somewhat.

The social democrats hate them and would rather hand government to the right than give them any influence.

Leader

Pelle Dragsted: Was cool in his youth where he would beat up Nazis in the street. He was once convicted of cutting down the fence of a refugee detention camp. That was a long time ago, now he has publicly apologised for being cool once.

Today he is chasing respectability, writing books glazing the social democratic welfare state and trying to move his party to the right to appear more "moderate", and proclaim a soft cuddly "democratic socialism" that no powerful capitalist is ever going to lose sleep over. Has internalised every half-baked cold war anti-communist talking point.

He is considered to be the chief ideologue of the Danish left which says more about the Danish left than it does about him.

His greatest hope is that the social democrats will one day treat him like a serious politician. He didn't have the spine to support Palestinian resistance as doing so would enrage people who were always going to hate the Red-Greens anyways.

Denmark is the best country in the world. Everyone who is not a Dane wants to become one - or at least they ought to want it. Suggesting that someone else might be doing some things better in some other part of the world is either a sign of extremism, mental illness or a grave personal insult.

Everybody agrees that it is there and it is amazing. Even the liberal alliance has to pay lip service to things like universal healthcare and free education. Except a few fringe parties on the left everybody also agrees that it needs constant pruning, austerity and enshittification through "reforms" that all makes service worse and allows private business to get their beaks wet.

::: spoiler The Cult Personality of the Monarchy

The monarchy is wonderful, the monarchy is good, every little thing the royals do is amazing - the king's speech is always inspiring, the princesses are always beautiful, the old queen's handicrafts are always masterful. If the king farted during a state dinner, the media would all agree that it was a brave expression of personal vulnerability that is truly inspiring and personally meaningful to anyone who has ever let one rip.

Every political party besides the Red-Greens (who will watch their language when criticising the monarchy, as they are afraid to make people angry at them for ruining their fun) and the Radical Left (who simply shuts up about it) competes over who can be the most performatively monarchist.

Formally, the king is a reality but in reality the king is a formality. The Danish constitution grants the king vast powers but the last king to be stupid enough to use them was the harebrained irredentist great-grandfather of the current king who threw a hissy fit in 1920 because the government wanted to respect a referendum on drawing the border with Germany, that pissed lots of people back then and ever since the royals have focused on being the blandest, most boringly respectable people imaginable. Helpful constitutional scholars have interpreted away the king's political powers to protect the monarchy against itself.

The old queen, the current king's mother, was a master of giving feel-good speeches that were so vapid and uncontroversial that nobody could disagree with them but the current king can't even do that and stumbles over words and struggles to string more than two of them together, giving his public appearance a wooden, deer-caught-in-headlights character, like a bad middle school play.

The king is a stunningly unremarkable man. When he was younger he did generic rich kid stuff like fucking models and crashing sports cars but now even those signs of personality has been ironed out, leaving a completely featureless man with a fondness of jogging as his sole personality trait.

The people love the monarchy and the personality cult around the royals is just as pervasive and deranged as westerners like to imagine the cult around North Korea's great leader is.

Racism is good and non-white immigrants are bad especially if they are Muslims. The entire political system of Denmark is fine-tuned to cater to the sensibilities of drunk racist uncles. Clearly, the foreigners are only here to mooch off the perfect Danish welfare state.

The United States is good, NATO is good and if anyone disagrees they are probably a Russian agent. If you wake up any Danish politician at night, the first thing they will say is "the United States are our most important ally!" Denmark's leaders will tolerate any humiliation and pay any price to demonstrate their loyalty to Washington. There has never been a labradoodle who was as unquestioningly loyal to their master as the average Danish politician is to Washington.

Even as US supreme leader Donald Trump is threatening to invade and annex Greenland, Danish politicians cling to the safety blanket of Atlanticism, totally unable to even imagine a life outside the American sphere of influence.

Russia is the great big bogeyman. So is China. And Iran. And so is Venezuela and North Korea and Cuba etc. The geopolitical rivals of the United States (and thereby Denmark) are all ontologically evil and aggressive and constantly plotting for conquest and world domination.

The idea that other nations might have legitimate interests or that the US (and by extension Denmark) has no business meddling in the other side of the world is completely alien. The Danish political elite's idea of diplomacy is that anything other than their counterparts surrendering in advance and giving the US all they are asking for before negotiations even start is appeasement akin to Chamberlain's Munich agreements.

Denmark needs more military spending.

If anyone is hesitant about shovelling more money into the armaments industry and the military they are either Russian Agents or naive simpletons why simply doesn't know how scary Russia and China are.

If Denmark doesn't pour enough money into the military to build the Death Star, Russia is going to invade, close down the entire welfare state and Vladimir Putin is personally going to eat your pets.

It doesn't matter what the money is spent on, it doesn't matter if the money is wasted, it doesn't matter how much money is already being spent. The point is that the world is a scary place and that you always have to spend more.

All parties engage in this. The Red-Greens used to be anti-NATO in principle but are now so cowed that they consider NATO to be "the only realistic option".

Since the United States is Denmark's most important ally, Zionism is baked into the political system. "Israel" is the only democracy in the Middle East and are defending our values. Handing over the Palestinians' land to dentists from New York as reparations for the Germans doing the Holocaust is the only good and moral thing to do.

However, Denmark also understands itself to be a soft and squishy defender of human rights and the people of Denmark are as horrified as anyone by seeing the Zionist atrocities so the politicians have to appear like they give a fuck about Palestinians. They do this by occasionally sending the Zionist regime softly worded letters asking them if they could please dial the unsightly atrocities down a notch. The letters are ignored but the politicians can claim they have done something and continue to collaborate with the Zionists on trade and military.

Denmark has freedom of speech so of course you are allowed to criticise "Israel", as long as you don't criticise the underlying ideology, mention their atrocities, suggest they should face any averse conseuences, voice support for Palestinian resistance or otherwise say or do anything that could possibly make a Zionist feel bad. Palestinian resistance groups are classified as terrorists. The left doesn't not like the atrocities but they are too afraid of people getting mad at them to voice any form of support for Palestinian resistance.

Everyone who is someone agrees that gender equality and LGBTQ rights are important - or at least they agree as long as Denmark's gender equality and LGBTQ rights can be used for self-congratulatory purposes to claim that Denmark is the best, most civilised and most enlightened country in the world. Even the fascists support gender equality and LGBTQ rights as long as they can be weaponised to depict the muslim minority as backwards savages.

Support drops drastically once it comes to actually expanding existing rights and, say, raise pay in traditionally female professions to the level of similar traditionally male ones, accepting trans people in society, taking sexual harassment seriously or stop doing homophobic jokes.

Climate science denialism in Denmark is not the clunky old-school kind you see on the American right where oil lobbyists claim reality does not exist. No, Danes are much more sophisticated in their denial of reality. Instead of denying that climate change exists they pretend that tiny inconsequential reforms are sufficient to deal with a problem of civilisational importance. They do not propose the kind of sweeping changes to the way things are produced and consumed and the way society is structured that any serious reading of the scientific consensus would lead to.

Outside of the Alternative Party and the Red-Greens no Danish politician would ever propose anything that would even slightly inconvenience the middle class' rights to drive private cars, fly on airplanes or consume like a swarm of locusts. All they are capable of is some tax breaks for electric vehicles and some green growth initiatives. The green transition is only taken seriously to the extent that it doesn't inconvenience important voter demographics and as long as someone can make a profit off it. This has given Denmark an image of being a green model nation.