The political challenges of community-level PVE practices: The Danish case of Copenhagen vs. Aarhus on dialoguing with extremist milieus
Keywords:
Preventing Violent Extremism, dialogue, Denmark, local politicsAbstract
In 2015 and 2016 two interesting cases occurred in Denmark regarding practices related to Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE): a community-level dialogue was discontinued with an extremist milieu in Copenhagen due to the specific worldview but allowed to continue in a similar situation in Aarhus. What were the reasons for this divergence? When examining the community-level political argumentation, an exclusion paradigm played a crucial role, but other factors, such as confusion about the core concepts and goals of PVE, the political dynamics at play, and the prevailing decision-making structures also influenced the differential outcomes despite the similarity of the situations. Since community-level PVE practices constitute a rapidly growing field, there is a lesson to be learned from the Danish cases: building coherent and continuous PVE practices is not only a matter for professional practitioners, but also calls for a solid understanding of its goals at the political level.
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