What started as one teenÂ’s humorous protest against the new immigration ministerÂ’s comments has become something of a popular movement among social media users.
Last week on Thursday, 18-year-old, left-wing political activist Christian Træholt from Aarhus changed his Facebook profile picture to Pind’s official press photo. Later, he and his 15-year-old real-life friend and fellow activist, Malthe Lange, set up a Facebook group called ‘Assimiler Søren Pind, skift dit profilbillede’ (Assimilate Søren Pind, change your profile picture).
By Friday morning, about 500 had changed their picture and as of this Wednesday over 23,000 people had joined the group.
According to the group’s own description on Facebook, the point of asking people to change their pictures is “to show Søren Pind how boring a country without diversity and space for multiple cultures would be”.
“We were deeply dissatisfied with Søren Pind’s statements,” Lange told The Copenhagen Post. “A country that isn’t big enough for more than one culture, and where immigrants aren’t allowed to leave their mark on our culture, even if it is for the better, is a country that is at a standstill.”
Only hours after taking over as immigration minister on Tuesday last week, Pind declared himself ready to tighten up immigration laws. He said it should be set in stone that the country welcomes foreigners that adopt and respect Danish values, norms and traditions.
“The way I see it, when you choose Denmark, you choose Denmark because you want to become Danish,” Pind told Jyllands-Posten newspaper.
Pind, who has stated many times in the past that he prefers the term ‘assimilation’ to ‘integration’, said a misunderstood notion of integration, where traditional Danish values have been compromised in an attempt to accommodate foreigners, was a threat to Denmark as a nation.
“In my view, mixing cultures creates friction, and I will do everything I can to fight that,” he said, adding that he would seek to roll back what he saw as appeasements the nation had made to immigrants in the name of integration.
According to the group’s founders, however, “most of Denmark’s culture comes from immigrants from all over the world, who have each contributed to Denmark in their own special way.”
Lange added they were surprised by the number of people following their example.
“We figured people would find it funny, but didn’t expect that so many people would join the group,” he said.
Over 300 people have signed up to another Facebook event planned for Monday, ‘Assimilate Søren Pind Day’, which encourages people to dress up as the minster to show “how boring a homogenous, mono-cultural society is”.
Despite the fact the campaign was designed to ridicule Pind’s beliefs, his own response to the Facebook initiative was that it served as a “good advertisement”.
“It just gets my name out there more,” he told The Copenhagen Post by text message. “It means I’ll have to hang fewer posters during the election.”
At the time of going to press the event was no longer online after Facebook closed the account used to set it up.
One of the founders explained that his Facebook account was closed without warning, because he had changed his profile picture and name to Søren Pind.
“Facebook saw it as a big violation and chose to deactivate my profile and my events without hesitation or warning.”
