This pastoral innovation is the brainchild of Ida Auken, the newly appointed head of the Nordic hermit kingdom’s Social Democrat-controlled Ministry of Health and Ecclesiastical Affairs. For the past couple of years, Auken has organised weekly prayer meetings for state-Lutheran MPs. A theologian herself, she first got the idea back when she served as the Social Democrats’ “democracy spokesperson with a particular focus on spiritual rearmament” (not a real job) in 2025. She claims an on-site priest will help reduce stress among MPs.

The idea is a remnant of Danish leader Mette Frederiksen’s broader push last year for a “spiritual rearmament,” a propaganda campaign designed to lend moral and cultural justification to her regime’s aggressive military rearmament. The thinking, such as it was, held that if the public could be nudged toward a vague sense of national-Christian purpose, they might prove more willing to die heroically for the fatherland in the coming struggle against the Russian menace and Putin’s Asiatic hordes, or, failing that, at least accept austerity and declining public services to pay for the latest generation of expensive war toys.

Frederiksen claimed the nation was in the most serious situation of her lifetime and urged the Lutheran state church to step up as “a spiritual and physical framework for what Danes are going through,” confidently predicting that “people will increasingly seek the Church, because it offers natural fellowship and national grounding.”

The people did not seek the church.

The spiritual rearmament fizzled out with all the cultural impact of a wet fart, failing to inspire the intended national-Christian awakening among a public who found the fervour weird and who simply couldn’t be arsed. The domestic intellectuals and artists who had initially welcomed the initiative, naively hoping that “rearmament” meant actual money for libraries, museums, and the arts, quickly jumped ship when they realised that, unlike military rearmament with its bottomless budgets and defence-contractor blowjobs, spiritual rearmament was all flag-shagging and no funding

Frederiksen’s crusader rhetoric also sat awkwardly with the actual character of Denmark’s Lutheran state church. This is not the Church Militant. It is, by design, a very low-intensity affair, where strong religious emotion is considered awkward and making any demands upon adherents is regarded as outright rude. It is a church for people who do not particularly wish to go to church, religion for non-believers, a theological outsourcing service where a priest believes in God so the average Dane doesn’t have to.

But these MPs are not seeking God. They are seeking cheap political points by performing reactionary nationalist piety. For many of them, Christianity simply means putting up a big sign saying “No Muslims allowed!”

For years these same politicians have waxed hysterical about the supposed Islamic threat emanating from non-denominational prayer rooms in schools, chattering darkly about nebulously defined “social control” and extremism. But apparently, practising religion in rooms is only a problem when brown people do it, and now the politicians have voted themselves their very own prayer room, complete with a house cleric to hold their hands.

Official press releases make great effort to create the impression that the parliamentary priest comes at no expense to the public, boasting that parliament will not have to pay a single penny for their spiritual life coach. Well, technically Parliament isn’t paying the salary, the state church is. Which is funded by lavish state subsidies and a special tax on members. But at least it is a different spreadsheet.

The absurdity of the religious push from the elite is only heightened by the actual religious landscape of the country. Although roughly seventy percent of the population belong to the Lutheran state church, churches are mostly empty, with only about two percent bothering to attend regular services. A mere eighteen percent of the population finds religion to be an important part of their daily life. According to a 2017 Gallup poll, 61 percent of Danes define themselves as either “not a religious person” or outright atheist. The Danes, in other words, have long since made their peace with secularism. It is only their politicians who still feel the need to pretend.

The trial, which opened on June 24 before the Copenhagen District Court, marks a disproportionate state response to what has historically been routine student activism. When the six defendants occupied the university’s Museum Building on September 4, 2024, heavily armed officers responded with submachine guns, battering rams, and police dogs, a level of violence not deployed against campus protests in Denmark since the Second World War.

In addition to the charges of trespassing, one activist is charged with assaulting police for allegedly “wrenching himself free” from an officer’s grip during arrest at a separate protest. Two activists face additional charges for “assaulting officers” by hurting their feelings: one for saying “oink oink, piggy piggy,” and, revealing how Denmark’s notoriously racist police understands class, another activist has been charged for saying “class traitor” to a non-white cop. The two offending phrases were said, not shouted.

Prosecutors are seeking fines and criminal records for all six defendants. Their decision not to pursue prison sentences likely reflects their awareness that the case is legally questionable. By seeking only fines, they ensure the defendants cannot receive public defenders and must pay the full costs of their own legal counsel even if they win, burdening defandants with legal costs and avoiding the scrutiny that would come with guaranteed public defenders. One activist has nonetheless been granted a publicly funded defense attorney, courtesy of a clerical error from the court.

According to Malver’s own account, posted to social media in the hours following the assault, he had been standing in the public square before the courthouse filming a video about the trial when an angry secret police officer first accosted him. The officer accused Malver of photographing illegally parked government vehicles, an act that is not a crime under Danish law, and demanded identification.

Malver, a trained human rights jurist who has built his career holding state power to account, refused.

Alerted now to the presence of secret police in the area, Malver began surveying his surroundings. He spotted an official ministerial vehicle bearing markings from the tiny nation’s Moderate Party-controlled Foreign Ministry, parked illegally nearby. Looking into the adjacent restaurant, he reportedly observed Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen inside, casually knocking back pints of beer. Malver filmed a brief, satirical video about the minister’s “parking permit” before returning to the courthouse to complete his coverage.

What happened next suggests the video had reached its target. Two uniformed officers soon accosted the journalist, who had placed his official press card in plain view on his body. When Malver mentioned that he was pursuing financial compensation for their illegal detention of him, one of the officers became visibly agitated, shouted in his face, and moved aggressively toward him.

Malver took a few steps back. The officers then attacked.

One officer forced Malver’s head against the pavement while another dropped a knee onto his skull. Officers also attempted to strangle the journalist during the assault.

Malver has long been a thorn in the side of Danish police, criticizing everything from routine brutality and operational incompetence to the wearing of extremist “Blue Life Matters” patches on uniforms, raising suspicions the assault was retaliatory. The attack on Malver comes amid a disturbing pattern of increased police brutality in Denmark. Just days earlier, officers in Aarhus were filmed shouting racist slurs at a suspect and kicking him in the head after he had already surrendered and was lying prone on the ground.

Earlier this year, a peaceful protest at the headquarters of shipping giant Maersk, where activists demonstrated against the company’s complicity in the Gaza genocide, descended into an orgy of violence. Unarmed protesters were surrounded by frenzied security forces and beaten with batons. A journalist from the independent outlet Arbejderen, covering the protest, was among those victimized, despite bearing clear press markings.

The square in front of the Copenhagen courthouse is heavily surveilled, and the assault on Malver was captured on multiple CCTV cameras, footage that has yet to be released to the public.

Following the beating, officers initially told Malver he had been arrested under provisions of the Police Act, an administrative detention measure, and that he had not been charged with any crime. He was transported to the Valby police station and placed in a holding cell. There, Malver’s requests for medical attention and legal counsel were both denied.

Officers also lied to Malver, telling him investigators were en route from another police station. When investigators arrived, seemingly unaware of that claim, they initially said they had just clocked in, before changing their story when Malver pressed them on whether they had traveled from a different facility.

Despite having been told that the detention was purely administrative, after four hours the police had fabricated something to charge him with and Malver was ultimately charged with assaulting his own attackers. The charge appears to rest on the claim that one officer allegedly scratched himself on Malver’s fingernails while beating the journalist.

Malver has since shown medical reports from the emergency room and video evidence of the assault to select journalists in an effort to prevent them from running stories based on distorted official narratives. He has declined to publish or surrender the material to establishment media before the officers has been questioned by Denmark’s so-called “Independent Police Complaints Board”, a body independent human rights observers say is notorious for failing to investigate complaints properly and for siding with officers in nearly all cases.

At least two legal proceedings are expected to emerge from the incident: Malver’s lawsuit for compensation for illegal detention, and the spurious criminal case against him for “assaulting” police.

In 2022, Copenhagen opened its borders to Ukrainian refugees with unusual speed, granting blanket residency permits in a rare departure from the Nordic hermit kingdom’s notoriously racist asylum policies. The decision stood in stark contrast to the treatment afforded to less fair-skinned refugees from less politically convenient conflicts.

Now, those rules are being clawed back. Ukrainian male refugees between the ages of 23 and 60 who have not secured exemptions from forced military service from the Kiev regime will no longer be eligible for protection in Denmark.

The timing is telling. As the Kiev regime’s forces suffer mounting losses and prospects of victory recede further into fantasy, NATO vassals are growing desperate to prolong the proxy conflict by any means necessary.

State-controlled broadcaster DR quotes Morten Bødskov, head of the nation’s Social Democrat-controlled Ministry of Aliens and Immigration, claiming the restriction on humanitarian protection is in fact “a helping hand to Ukraine.” Bødskov insists that Danish asylum was never meant to be used to “avoid the mobilisation for the Ukrainian defense,” and accuses refugees of “undermining the Ukrainian war effort and weakening Ukraine’s ability to defend itself.”

Unable to attract volunteers, the Kiev regime has relied increasingly on forced conscription to sustain its faltering war effort. The regime remains indifferent to the suffering of its troops, who face high mortality rates and brutal conditions during training and at the front. Independent Ukrainian media and human rights monitors have documented systemic abuse within military units, including the notorious “Skala” assault regiment, where captive recruits experience torture, extrajudicial punishment, and deaths in training camps. Conscientious objectors are routinely persecuted.

For now, Ukrainian refugees already granted residency permits are safe, as the new rules are not applied retroactively. What happens when those permits come up for renewal remains an open question.