Explications du New York Review of Books

A cartoon published by the Danish newspaper Politiken showing Inger Støjberg, the country’s integration minister, lighting candles on a Christmas tree that has a dead asylum-­seeker as an ornament, December 2015
A cartoon published by the Danish newspaper Politiken showing Inger Støjberg, the country’s integration minister, lighting candles on a Christmas tree that has a dead asylum-­seeker as an ornament, December 2015 – © Anne-Marie Steen Petersen

The open, egalitarian nation has taken one of the hardest lines on refugees

“In the nationalist self-image, tolerance is seen as good,” writes the Danish anthropologist Peter Hervik. “Yet…excessive tolerance is considered naive and counterproductive for sustaining Danish national identity.”