Rasmus Paludan
© Reuters/Ritzau Scanpix/Mads Claus RasmussenRasmus Paludan of Stram Kurs ("Hard Line") party
A dark horse right-wing candidate in Denmark's national elections who has called to militarize the country's land border and to build a wall to keep out migrants just might earn enough votes to enter the parliament.

Immigration is already defining the contours of the upcoming national elections in Denmark, but one party is literally following the "hard line" on the issue, with calls going as far as to strip Muslim Danes of their citizenship, and deport them.

Now, debating two government ministers on Denmark's Channel 2 TV, Stram Kurs party leader Rasmus Paludan has called for Danish troops to be pulled from overseas peacekeeping missions and to instead be stationed on the country's border with Germany - all to prevent the entry of Muslim migrants. He stated:
"Instead of making invasion wars, where you put Danish help out, to meddle in foreign affairs of other countries, where we cannot perceive the consequences, and where the consequences are mostly awful - Libya, Iraq and Syria, etc. - I think that we should use the defense forces in order to protect our own border, and not meddle in other countries' affairs. Because we do not want other countries meddling in our affairs."
Facing off against Interior Minister Emil Amnitzbøl of the Liberal Alliance party and Integration Minister Inger Støjberg of the Venstre party, Paludan called for the construction of a physical border wall that would prevent the entry of asylum-seekers, according to Danish journal Der Nordschleswiger.

In fact, a metal fence is already being built over a 70-kilometer stretch delineating the border between Denmark and its neighbor to the south. But the objective of that fence, only a meter-and-a-half high, is to impede the entry of wild boars. Danish officials fear that German boars could spread African swine fever to Danish pigs, a species so integral to the country's economy that they outnumber human beings in Denmark by a ratio of about two to one.

On its website, the Stram Kurs party - whose name means "Hard Line" - details its political agenda. According to Stram Kurs, the most important challenges facing Denmark are that its people are "being threatened by Muslim dominance-behavior" and that their government "wastes billions each year" on integration programs. The party claims that Muslims have made life "intolerable" in Denmark for homosexuals and Jews, and derides the European Union as a "non-democratic empire" for not prioritizing its demands to keep Muslims out of the country.

The latest polling predicts that Stram Kurs will earn about 2.8 percent of the total vote when Danes cast their ballots on June 5, 2019. Such a result would put them over the 2 percent minimum threshold necessary to qualify for parliamentary representation.

After first refusing to rule out a coalition government which would include Stram Kurs, Danish Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen has since publicly ruled out any parliamentary partnership with Paludan. The leader of Denmark's Conservative party, the junior coalition partner to Rasmussen's Venstre, has likewise sworn off any alliance with Stram Kurs.

It was unclear whether Paludan's previous police record - made public for the first time last week - would affect the candidate's popularity at the polls. It emerged that beginning in 2011 and 2012, Paludan carried out a sustained harassment campaign against a 24-year-old man and his family from the town of Esbjerg. In 2013, local police banned Paludan from contacting the man and his family and friends for a period of five years.

Last month, Paludan was handed a suspended sentence of 14 days in jail for racism after he filmed and uploaded a video in which he alleged that the members of South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress, are a "low-intelligence population."