Postscript 2005

In 2002, an invented character of mine - "Thomas Strøbech" - managed to get a part-time job at the newly created Danish Ministry of Refugee, Immigration and Integration Affairs based on his merits as a student of political science. This ministry was set up in order to handle and promote the anti-immigration policies of the new nationalist majority in the Danish parliament. The populist Bertel Haarder – a preacher type manic renowned for his aggressive outbursts towards opponents (especially when he forgets to take his medication, according to the rumours within the ministry) – was picked as head by the Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Rasmussen and his coalition of nationalist parties had won a landslide victory after successfully grooming xenophobic inclinations in the Danish Electorate. Like Haider and Schüssel in Austria, we have in Denmark a constellation of a right wing radical freak – leader of the Danish People’s Party, Pia Kjærsgaard - who boldly speaks the truth about the true aims of the Muslim hordes and then a straight man – Anders Fogh Rasmussen – who efficiently translates the irrational sentiments into public policy.

In the spring of 2002, The Ministry of Refugee, Immigration and Integration Affairs was put to work on a series of measures aiming to drastically reduce the number of foreigners in Denmark. A new Aliens Act was drafted and came into force July 17 2002. Danish Citizenship was now to be determined by such factors as age, income, the size of apartments. In addition, it was made almost impossible for people from the third world to gain entry visas - it was in essence an act of state racism and a wholesale abolition of such core liberal democratic ideals as equality and protection of minorities.

As an employee of the Ministry of Refugee, Immigration and Integration Affairs, Strøbech saw a beautiful opportunity to counter the anti-immigration policies with his own little initiative.
He conceived a web dating service where foreigners could get in touch with Danes who were prepared to marry out of convenience to ease the process of naturalization. The Ticket to Denmark was presented as a marriage certificate - an easy and straightforward entry point to Denmark.

Applying a radicalized version of performance art guerrilla-tactics, he committed his working hours to producing the site on the facilities put at his disposal by the Danish State. He then intentionally launched the web site with his ministry mail-address posted on the ‘About’ page to ensure that journalists would sniff out the potential ‘scandal’. In the vortex which followed, he lost job, family, friends and failed to pass a crucial exam. He sort of catapulted himself out of his hitherto stable geostationary orbit. It was a personal disaster, a complete failure and yet at the same time a huge sucess.

I hope the provided documentation will serve as inspiration for all who do not settle for the pre-fab life styles provided by the ideological state apparatuses. As Blake tells us, it is nothing but the road of excess that leads to the palace of wisdom.

THOMAS ALTHEIMER

The world is coming to Denmark!

Tonight, just before I left work, I sent out a short message to press mail addresses, which I culled from newspapers at the public library, advertising for the new cross-frontier immigration opportunities:
____________________________________

The world is coming to Denmark!

Obtain Danish Citizenship through marriage.
Visit the new transnational dating service and meet Danish citizens eager to marry foreigners.

Sign up at:

www.ticket-to-denmark.dk

We also invite Danish citizens to sign up for a transnational marriage.
Choose between marriage out of convenience and marriage out of love.

A marriage out of convenience offers foreigners an entry point in Denmark.
A marriage out of love is the heralding of a new globalized Danish generation.

Join today!
________________________________

To be sure to get a reaction, I posted my ministry mail tst@inm.dk on the 'About' page on the site.

The world is coming to Denmark II

Nation states today survive and legitimate themselves largely through laws of exclusion. The Nation State is a threatened species and will consequently surpass itself in the violent treatment of alien subjects. To resist this Moloch, individuals must undertake creative strategies to deflate political authority. Ticket to Denmark is one such strategy.

The dark affects
This initiative targets the dark social affects of society. It participates in a play which is played everyday in societies throughout the world. Society can be seen as a big plastique formed by affective material. The most prominent feature is the endless play of elimination. A play of exclusion and inclusion. In Denmark the State excludes - therefore Ticket to Denmark sees an obligation to include. The means is inclusion through marriage.

A transnational movement
Ticket to Denmark is part of a new transnational movement which aims at overpowering the nationalist system of exclusion. This is to be achieved by creating a new legal transnational immigration flow. In the politics of immigration, marriage is considered to be the strongest instrument available to the individual. Through marriage, individuals can transcend the statist system and found a new world system. A new state is born whenever two people get together and dissolved when they part. This is a world system based on individuals by chance - we call it the world.

THOMAS STRØBECH

Initial Public Offering

So this is how it looks like - nice beech trees and all. Warm thanks go to Dennis Orneborg who did the graphics:

To gain resident permits, foreigners either sign up through the ‘Basic Letter of Introduction' in case they seek a Danish partner out of love (or both – love+permit); or - if they settle for a purely instrumental marriage - they sign up using the ‘Barebones Letter of Introduction', which just states the basic facts such as country of residence, age and e-mail address and so forth.

Alea Iacta Est

Tuesday at work - I've crossed the Rubicon - a snowballing effect is rapidly gaining momentum. I already knew yesterday that something would happen as I had a phone call from a TV journalist around 11 pm - just half an hour after I sent out the batch of mails. Now my desk is filling with sticky notes telling me to call journalists at various networks, newspapers and news agencies. Foreigners and immigration laws are just the hottest topic in town! These issues brought the current Government into office and could easily bring them out of office again. The immigration issue is the single most important political variable which decides the fate for all Danish parties with a taste for Government.

An elderly journalist from Ritzau (a Danish news agency) was the first to reach me. He went to great lengths to verify and then come to terms with the fact that I actually worked in the ministry. It was very surreal as he took it as a personal insult. He could just not comprehend that someone within a ministry could do such a thing. I even tried to moderate the scandal (counter to my usual conduct when talking to journalists, of course) as I tried to explain the relative insignificance of my position and tasks in our secretariat. He then asked to be put through to the Head of Department. I later heard that he ended up scolding her for having such a treasonous anarchist in her department.

Anyway, it was a matter of minutes before someone from upstairs would turn up in my humble cubicle. Journalists were probably already calling the minister on his cell phone. In all my time in the ministry I never received a single sticky note. Not so any more. It's difficult to describe the unsettling tension, the anxiety and the strange filter which veils your mind when you realize that you've done something that is irreparable, irreversible and might be of immense, disastrous consequences to your life in the short term. Alea iacta est.

A Commander of the Order of Dannebrog

I had about five minutes to tell my always friendly boss about the magnificent new immigration service before his superiors would arrive on the scene. He was unfortunately the one to blame for employing me in the first place. He immediately sensed something was very wrong. Upon seeing the screen with the web site, he chuckled hysterically to himself for several minutes – occasionally pausing, asking at random - ‘God, what have you done?' We had always been on friendly terms. He belongs to the boomers. He keeps his thesis on Lenin's concept of democracy on the shelves behind his desk. After being transferred from the liberal ambience of the Ministry of Housing to the dark-side Ministry of Immigration, he had kept a low profile and eagerly followed the shifts of the political winds, always dashing to keep up with the signals from upstairs. One day he had panicked upon reading an account of a meeting in which he had participated. He was quoted for saying something positive about Marx. I know this because he told me to call the responsible editor and demand that he retracted it (which of course they refused).

In Denmark, the internal culture of the ministries does not follow the qualities of the Minister, instead it hinges upon the character traits of the Permanent Secretaries. The Ministry of Immigration was favoured by the presence of the honourable Permanent Secretary Niels Preisler. He is - according to the ministry gossip circuit - one of those uptight gays who seem to be more conservative than the pope. Preisler had managed to create a culture of terror where everyone – especially those from the departments transferred from the Ministry of Housing – feared to be deemed superfluous. In this culture, the superiors focused more on the grammar of their subordinates than the actual content of working papers. In the Ministry of Housing clerks had been taught to use notions like ‘integrated processes' and ‘holistic approaches'; expressions that would all tend to disappear with the fifth or sixth draft version in the culture revolution managed by Preisler - Commander of the Order of Dannebrog. So, who else would click his heels together in the entrance to my office and call out my name other than the Commander himself?

The Permanent Secretary Issues a Warning of Conduct

N. Preisler -
Commander of the Order of Dannebrog

Surprised by the unexpected visit by Preisler, my boss scrambled to his feet and suggested a meeting in his office. This was his big moment, but unfortunately for the wrong reasons. It was probably the first and last time the Permanent Secretary would grace the humble secretariat with his presence and undivided attention.
It was certainly one of the most outlandish meetings that I ever attended. We were three public servants discussing how to contain the deplorable mistake of one of them. The person responsible for the web site was spoken of in third person narrative (certainly a classic example of public service fire containment discourse - and carried to schizophrenic extremes when my boss after the meeting requested me to write up a memo about myself). This confused person – 'he' - belonged to a private realm outside the walls of the Ministry. It was obvious that Preisler was unable to comprehend what could bring a civil servant – be it only a student - to encourage citizens to take unlawful action. He resorted to a recital of all the relevant sections in the Danish Aliens Act which dealt with marriages out of convenience.

It was all very surreal given the uncertainty of the consequences – my boss was probably sitting there thinking what other job he would be able to get. The Commander was making strategic calculations. There was the question of how the public would see it. He would have loved to fire me, but of course that could have made a martyr of me. Eventually he finished his monologue and told me I should consider this as a ‘warning of conduct'.

Spinning smoothly

Spinning smoothly

Everything is running according to the plan. I've got the rest of the week off, so I have time to answer calls and give interviews all around. Newspapers are interviewing the Permanent Secretary and me. Sadly, the minister has gone into hiding somewhere near Brussels .

'Mole' urges integration

A goverment employee has challenged fellow Danes to marry immigrants and refugees

Minister of Refugees, Immigrants and Integration, Bertel Haarder, is fighting to push through proposals limiting the number of immigrants gaining residency through family reunification and arranged marriages. However, one of his employees at the Ministry of Integration is the architect of an Internet homepage promoting pro-forma marriages to foreigners as a way of getting them into the country. Go to article

The moonies and the annual Transnational Marriage Festival

The most compelling image seems to be the vision of a transnational wedding festival with “out of convenience-couples” in Denmark's national stadium staged in the style of the mass weddings of the Moonies. This image turns out to carry the necessary iconic value to launch itself uninhibited, directly into the hyper-sensitive xenophobic synapses of the Danish People. Accordingly, Ticket to Denmark's matchmaking forms now carry the offer to would-be transnational couples to have their wedding celebrated in conjunction with the “annual Transnational Marriage Festival” in Copenhagen.

Dog "Rollo"

Debut on national television in a folksy ‘stories of the day’ type of program that follows after the news. I was slotted in between stories about a wonder dog and a wonder coffee machine. After an initial discussion where the interviewer focused on my readiness to marry whoever despite the fact that I have a family, viewers were invited to call in questions.

The callers picked up on this family focus and kept going on about how dreadful it must be for my partner to hear that I’m prepared to marry a foreigner.
So, there I was with years of poststructuralist studies behind me - in a freak show - flashing my advanced dialectics dealing with the need to undercut US-THEM schemata by allowing hordes of foreigners into the country, and yet only answering outraged questions on my relationship morals by concerned middle-aged wives.

Coffee machine

The Nazis

The nazis have reported 'Strøbech Jensen' to the police. According to the letter, 'Strøbech Jensen's' actions are not only illegal; he also offends the sense of justice of thousands of Danes. (In all their hate mail, text messages and death threats, they are never able to get my name right - reminding me of the insufferable Clint Eastwood movies featuring the ludicrous "Black Widows" motorcycle gang, which incessantly gets run over by the bareknuckle brawler Philo Bedoe. On several websites, my phone numbers were followed by calls to phone 'Strøbech Jensen'. One web page just carried a single sentence: 'Thomas Rørbech should be killed by a shot to the neck'.)

Brimstone & Threats

Brimstone & Threats

A Nazi called my family - starting off very courteous and civil - he politely asked for my cell phone number, switching to a nasty, abusive rant after my girlfriend had given it to him. She was very scared, so now we’re considering to retreat to my uncle’s country house for a couple of days.
After they’ve posted the home and cell number on a Nazi-site, my cell phone is bombarded with anonymous text threats. The file with the contact form from the internet is also taking some raps:

_______________________________
Date: Wed April 24 19:24:57 CEST 2002
Contact: Contact
Name: a dane
Email:
Country: here
Message: Stop the insanity or you will pay dearly.
_______________________________

_______________________________
Date: Wed April 24 13:25:54 CEST 2002
Contact: Contact
Name: N/A
Email: anonym@mail.dk
Country: N/A
Message: You asshole !!!
Traitor, you should be killed
_______________________________

_______________________________
Date: Thu April 25 15:29:11 CEST 2002
Contact: Contact
Name: mike
Email:
Country: denmark
Message: fuck you you complete bastard don’t fucking help illegal immigrants to come to denmark to marry or go under ground, if me or my friends ever get to you, you will dieeeeee
_______________________________

The one that took the prize in the comedy category was this:

_______________________________
Date: Thu April 25 19:05:09 CEST 2002
Contact: Contact
Name: Claus XXXX
Email: xxxxx@xxxxxx.dk
Country: Denmark
Message: God, you’re not very clever.
I, myself, am married to a Russian.
You have no idea about what you’re talking about!
_______________________________

And the most boring one, but representative of a large number of responses:

_______________________________
Date: Thu April 25 14:38:14 CEST 2002
Contact: Contact
Name: Henrik Xxxxxx
Email: xxxx@hotmail.com
Country: Denmark
Message: Hi there!
This homepage makes me furious! It encourage people to deal with the law in a way which in no way was meant to be. You can thank yourself for making it hard for couples who actually loves each other (of course in cases where one of them is a Dane) to get to live in Denmark.
As it is Denmark already have enough immigrants, you think your ways of avoiding the rules will make things better? When I say Denmark already have enough immigrants it is not with thoughts about how big a percentage of the population who is immigrants, but with thought of how bad Denmark is to integrate them. Besides that the young immigrants in Denmark actually have a remarkable higher crime rate than young Danes.
By avoiding the laws in the way you encourage people to do only results in a change of the rules.
On the front page you can get a marriage by love, don't you think people are supposed to know each other a little better before loving each other? This homepage is simply bullshit, and it makes me angry as hell.
50% of the Danish population feels that the immigrants in Denmark sponge on the system, and you want to bring more freeloaders to the country?
These arranged marriages which haven't got anything to do with love in any way are forbidden.
This homepage is a disgrace, and you, the makers of this homepage are nothing but traitors.
Where's your pride?

Regards Henrik Xxxxxx
PS: Don't really know if I should expect an answer back.
_______________________________

WABC-TV, New York

Ticket to Denmark taking Manhattan!

_______________________________
Date: Mon Apr 25 22:38:27 CEST 2002
Contact: Contact
Name: Darcy Bonfils
Email: darcy.r.bonfils.abc.com
Country: USA
Message:
Dear Mr. Thomas Strobech, I am a producer at WABC-TV in New York. I am going to be going to Denmark next week to do a story on immigration. I would love to interview you! Please e-mail me back.
Thankyou
Darcy Bonfils
_______________________________

Nazi’s imitated by the Danish People’s Party

Nazi’s imitated by the Danish People’s Party

How sweet, the Nazi’s gesture has inspired their representatives in Parliament, the Danish People’s Party; according to the broadsheet Politiken, a representative called Morten Messerschmidt has reported me to the police, referring to section 23 of the Danish Criminal Code pursuant to which it is illegal to incite others to commit an offence.

Morten Messerschmidt, MP

_______________________________
Date: Wed May 5 16:14:03 CEST 2002
Contact: Contact
Name: Ronald Odhiambo
Email:
Country: KENYA
Message: To all Danish ladies between 18 &22 yrs. LOVE is in the air from Kenya!
_______________________________

Trying to stir a bit

Trying to stir a bit

After three relatively quiet weeks, I decided to heat things up a bit. So, I called a friend who is a journalist at a regional newspaper and gave him some spoof statistics – slightly exaggerating the number of applicants and topping the story with a romantic story on a first Ticket-to-Denmark couple about to marry.
This proved very effective – most papers took the story straight off:

Click here for love or convenience

The founder of controversial webpage Ticket-to-Denmark.dk has announced the site's first possible match

The first internet-arranged marriage between a Dane and an African citizen, aimed at securing a residence permit for an African woman, may be in the works. This according to the founder of the webpage Ticket-to-Denmark.dk, Thomas Strøbech. Go to article

Questions in the Danish Parliament

Questions in the Danish Parliament

The rightwing nationalists in Parliament jumped when they learned from the papers that a DANISH man was about to marry an AFRICAN woman. Accordingly, my employer received questions from a concerned MP from the Danish People's Party:

 

Question no. S2333

To the Minister of Refugee, Immigration and Integration Affairs (05/31-02) by:

Peter Skaarup (Danish People’s Party):

“Would the Minister please assess the potential immigrational consequences of the website “Ticket to Denmark”, and also consider the fact that the author of the website is an employee at the Ministry of Refugee, Immigration and Integration Affairs?”

See full exchange

Dead Wood

The past few months have been quite tranquil. I'm very much left to myself at work. I learned in a course on Public Administration that the term which applies to my situation is 'dead wood'. This covers employees who are going nowhere, who somewhere along the way got stuck in the organization. The wonderful openness of the experiment has disappeared – the angel of utopia – the exciting feeling that something new and unexpected would appear – a grand mobilization – a revolt – a revolution – a mark – a sign – the angel of history.
Out of disappointment, I committed myself to my academic obligations and tedious individual career considerations and recently finished a paper on Hannah Arendt and Kant's Critique of Judgement. In the prologue, I praise the categorical imperative of the notion of Failure as Chance (German: Scheitern als Chance): "Failure as chance will serve as the battle cry of self-insight towards the impossible understanding. Failure as chance demands that we interpret each new spectacular failure as a glorious new opportunity. The bridge, which reaches from the predetermined perpetual motion machine of nature into the realm of freedom and ideas, goes through the apocalypse of the private individual. This criterion is the one which alone will enable us to tell the existence of walls by pointing to the wounds on our bloodsmeared heads."

Impregnable States

They didn't sack me straight away; somewhat disappointing. It says everything about the strength of state systems – the fact that they have inexhaustible means to pay the salary of employees who no longer contribute to the output - this way no martyrs are produced, things quieten down, no flare ups, and no scandals. Everything quietly returns to normal. The rotten mean.

Descending into the trivial

The WUMR

I'm gradually sinking into the prison of the private. I've developed an obsession with the workplace union members' representative (WUMR). She's a spunky blonde – married, with two kids like me – living somewhere north of Copenhagen in the affluent suburbs. She's top of the female hierarchy of the office. Seems to be able to twist most of the dry sticks here with a wink of her eye.
I'm obviously loosing focus and shifting the revolution to my utterly trivial personal life.

Postscript II: Strøbech – a valediction

“Thomas Strøbech” vanished from the public eye in the fall of 2002.
We had met a few times during the months after his public stunt. As the months went by, he became increasingly taciturn and distant. He was clearly disappointed with the outcome of the whole thing. Initially hoping to create a crack in wall of the established order through which the light of some utopia would appear, he was now trapped - indulging in a private obsession with a woman at his workplace.

We last talked on the phone Saturday September 29th, 2002 - although “talk” is not the proper word. He seemed to have lost it. Babbling away about how to be true to yourself, about true love, about how THEY were trying to deny him his share of a proper human life.
What I could gather from his manic, paranoid discourse was this:
That friday had been a complete blow-out – first he had gone to pick up his final grade at the faculty, only to find out THEY had finally failed him. Then he went to work, only to find out THEY had finally sacked him. But he had to work out one month's notice so, on Saturday he then travelled with his Section to Jutland to participate in a conference in Hotel Munkebjerg. Knowing that this would be the last chance to go for his middle-class trophy, he told me how he intended to do a determined pass at the WUMR that evening. Now he was preparing to mobilize and stake every scrap of cultural capital he had accumulated over the years on this final act. An act he felt to be a leap onto 70,000 fathoms of roaring, existential ocean. Another Rubicon, I wonder? This time a private one.

Some six months after our talk I received a package from him containing press cuttings, letters, including a print of the paper he failed on Hannah Arendt and Kant. There was also a copy of the report from the September conference. There’s a picture in it with him taking the minutes in one of the workshops; sitting in his suit - what he thought of as his “social wetsuit” - behind the laptop.
The letters were letters expressing his love to his blonde middle-class trophy. So, he had succeeded in his seduction. Judging from the letters, he had knocked down her fortifications by an intense bombardment in that hotel bar on September 29th. More bombardments in the form of a veritable letter campaign followed during the last month in the Ministry.

In the package was another huge load of letters and mails from all over the world with requests like “i want to married with a danish girl” (sic!); “want to marry dane”; “I wan't you all!”. Ha, how ironic that he was the one to take off with a picture book blonde Danish girl despite all his high-minded, idealist declarations about marrying a third worlder. She left her husband and he moved from his family that Christmas. Didn’t last long, though. His truth is in the throwing of the dice. He has to keep moving in order to be able to breathe.

On November 8, 2002 I proclaimed a new state – an individual state called “The State of Rasmussen”. It was dedicated to the legacy of “Thomas Strøbech”. All his former colleagues from the Ministry were invited to attend the proclamation which was followed by a reception. The show took of with an opera performance – a piece from Götterdämmerung. I had the singer finish with these lines:

Nicht Land noch Leute biete ich
noch Vaters Haus und Hof:
einzig erbt’ ich den eignen Leib;
lebend zehr’ ich den auf.

{I can offer neither land nor people,
nor father's house and palace:
I inherited only
my own body,
and that I eat up as I live.]

THOMAS ALTHEIMER