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The Greenlandic election and the inter-imperialist contradictions
We here present a requested translation of our article om March 10th on the then upcoming national elections on Greenlend on March 11th.
Since Trump expressed his desire to ‘buy Greenland’ in December 2024, Greenland has dominated both the Danish and international press.
Trump has reiterated US interests in gaining control of the country, as he did back in 2019. Just like then, all kinds of colonial chauvinism is now being spread in the Danish press and among the parties in Parliament. Despite how much the government and the Danish state have tried to deny it, the diplomatic crisis with the US is forcing Danish imperialism to drop its mask. It now openly and shamelessly refers to Greenland as a colonial power would refer to its colony.
What is behind the US move?
Trump is the supreme representative of US imperialism, which is the world’s enemy number one. He is one of the most powerful presidents in recent North American history, where both the Senate and Congress can be dominated by his party’s majority. He is an expression of the reactionarisation of bourgeois states around the world, embodied in presidential absolutism, among other things. That said, it is also important to make it clear that Trump is not ‘crazy’ and that his desire to gain control of Greenland, or his other threats, have nothing to do with his personality.
The United States, the world’s only hegemonic superpower, is losing its world hegemony, plunging it into a huge crisis. The US ruling class, which exploits and oppresses both the US working class and the working people of the world, has an interest in maintaining its power for as long as possible. US imperialism is therefore like a dangerous beast that has been cornered – it is desperate and it is trying to bite back. This leads the US to play a dangerous game of trade war, even against its ‘allies’, or utilise the war in Ukraine to divide imperialist competitors in Europe against each other.
In this international panorama, Greenland’s economic and military importance must be taken into account. As the ice caps melt, new sea routes open up in the Arctic, which are important for imperialist powers to control for both military and economic reasons. At the same time, the melting ice caps expose large deposits of “rare earth metals” and uranium, which now makes the land particularly interesting to other imperialist countries such as China and the US.
US strategic goals
Today, US imperialism still has two main strategic goals on its agenda when it comes to competing with other imperialist powers: 1) to encircle and wrestle Russian imperialism from its status as a nuclear superpower, 2) to keep the Chinese social imperialist power down and force it to open up its markets.
Greenland holds an important strategic position for the US vis-à-vis Russia in the Arctic. A quick glance at a map of the Arctic Circle shows how the US and Russia are not on opposite sides of the globe in the “east” and “west”, but are practically neighbours in the Arctic region.
When it comes to mining, rare earth metals are incredibly important for things like electric motors and turbines. Today, most of the available deposits are concentrated in China, which accounts for between 95 to 97 per cent of the world’s production of rare earth metals. China and other imperialist powers have already attempted to enter Greenland to extract its natural resources. This forces US imperialism, which wants to break China’s monopoly, to rush its control over the country’s resources.
The US wants to control but cannot buy Greenland
Trump is a businessman who uses blackmail as a bargaining tool. It is not in the strategic interests of the US to directly occupy a colony. This will only exacerbate the antagonism and tensions between the Inuit in Greenland and the imperialist occupying power. At the same time, it intensifies inter-imperialist antagonisms in the Arctic by getting rid of a ‘buffer state’ through direct annexation.
For several years, Greenland has undergone a process from being a Danish colony to a semi-colony. This means that Greenland is going from being politically, culturally, economically and militarily subordinate to Danish imperialism, to only being economically subordinate to Danish imperialism or several imperialist powers. In practice, this will also mean an informal political subordination, as those who control the economy can to a large extent also dictate politics. The process is determined by two main reasons: 1) Inuit desire for national self-determination, and 2) the interests of other imperialists to gain influence over the country.
In many ways, Danish imperialism provides what the US already needs by allowing it to have troops and military bases in the country. At the same time, there are already growing US economic projects in the form of airport expansion and infrastructure projects in the country to prepare the ground for tourism and mining. The US goal is to gain even more while excluding other imperialists from gaining anything at all.
The US goal of controlling Greenland will be in an economic sense, with the possibility of deploying more troops and military outposts in the country. After the first weeks of panic and outcry in the Danish bourgeois press about Trump’s threats of military power and economic blackmail, the result was in fact the calling of an election in the Greenland Parliament. The main theme of the election is Greenland’s formal independence and its relationship with Danish imperialism.
The crimes of Danish colonialism
It is naive to believe that greater US influence will bring anything positive for the Inuit. The Yankees have slaughtered and displaced millions of indigenous people and left bloody traces wherever they have gone in the world. That being said, Danish colonial chauvinism must be completely rejected. It has been disappointing to see how prevalent social chauvinism and excuses for colonialism and imperialism have been even among self-proclaimed anti-imperialists. On the very issue of Greenland, many throw away their principles and fall into “white man’s burden” criteria, saying that Inuit need the bloktilskud (”economic aid” by Danish imperialism to Greenland – trans.), that they cannot fend for themselves. This denies that Inuit have been self-sufficient and thriving for thousands of years, whether it was Dorset, Saqqaq Independence or Thule culture before Europeans came to their land.
Some even claim that the Inuit were lucky that Denmark became the colonial power in Greenland, or that Denmark was a better alternative than the USA, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
Denmark’s national oppression against the Inuit
The name ‘Greenland’ was imposed on the country by the lawless invader, Erik the Red, who lived in exile from his people for murder. He arrived in Greenland in the southwest, where he chose to name the land after what he could see, the country’s southwestern green shores, and established the first long-lasting European settlements. The indigenous people, the Inuit, he chose to call them skrællinger, which means weaklings, or sub-humans. Although Erik the Red’s settlements disappeared, this patronising name has endured and has since been revived by the Danish colonial power, established in 1721 by the priest Hans Egede. Today, the name is still maintained by the Danish colonial power, which is a direct continuation of the exploitation of the land and its people, the Inuit. The Danish colonial authority calls its people “Greenlanders”, or “kalaallit”, which in the translated version of “Greenlandic”, “kalaallisut”, still means skrællinger.
Many Inuit refer to Greenland on a daily basis as ‘Nunarput’, which means ‘our country’. There is a movement today to make this name the official name of the nation. A similar movement has achieved the same result in Northeastern Canada, where the indigenous Inuit people have a province named ‘Nunavut’, which is the local dialect for ‘our land’. The movement wants to break with the colonial definition of the land and let the people define themselves. This is a need that wants to break with 300 years of assimilation and attempted annihilation of Inuit culture to make them Christian and later ‘Danes’ or ‘Greenlanders’.
When Hans Egede arrived and established what would become the Danish colonial power, he imposed Christianity on the people by forbidding Inuit to practice their culture, customs and religion. Inuit drums were burned, the people whipped, beaten and starved unless they converted. Colonialisation has scarred the people so deeply that talking about the old spirits and Inuit culture is still taboo for many.
In 1953, Greenland was directly annexed and made subject to the Danish constitution after a vote in Denmark, without the Inuit themselves being able to vote on it, and the country was said to cease to be a colony.
Before Inuit were granted Danish rights as Danes on paper in 1953, the Danish colonial authority rushed to carry out mass forced relocations of indigenous people. Inuit were forcibly relocated to places such as Thule, where the US wanted to build its military airbase. Inuit were forced to travel 130 kilometres further north on dog sleds or on foot with a few days’ notice. People were promised finished and modern houses when they arrived at the new location, but nothing was finished and many had to sleep in summer tents during an icy winter that killed many.
The Inuit demanded justice after the forced relocation, but were initially ignored. When the Inuit took up the case again in the 1990s, they received less compensation, despite winning the case. The court ruled that they could not prove they were indigenous because they refused to call themselves Greenlanders, or kalaallit, which means weaklings in the Inuit language.
To put this into perspective, it’s the equivalent of a Palestinian being forced to be called an Israeli Arab.
Within the so-called Commonwealth, Greenland is the most oppressed party within this exploitative institution. Today, Denmark has created an idea of the ‘Greenlander’ who, unlike the people of the Faroe Islands, are not recognised as their own sovereign people – the Faroese passport reads Faroese-Danish, whereas the Inuit only read Danish. In other words, there isn’t even a legal concept of Inuit in the legislation.
Today, Denmark continues its colonial policy: only those who allow themselves to be Danicised and become ‘Greenlandic’ can be promised a future and a higher education. The Danish Parliament in Christiansborg, despite the ‘self-government’, still dictates many essential policies, especially foreign policy, in Greenland, where anyone who does not speak Danish has difficulty following the public debate as there is no simultaneous interpretation.
People are kept in ignorance and excluded from international political debate unless they learn Danish or English.
Danish imperialism’s economic exploitation of Greenland
For centuries Greenland and its people, the Inuit, have been called inferior, dehumanised, kept down and disempowered. Danish imperialism, which today continues to colonise Greenland, claims to help the Inuit, they claim to do this by sending the so-called bloktilskud (block grant) without mentioning what Danish imperialism gains from having its colony and allowing its troops to occupy the country on military strategic and economic terms.
Danish imperialism discriminates in Greenland on labour conditions, where Danish workers have access to a ‘Danish-Greenlandic agreement’ that the local Inuit do not have access to. People in higher education or Danish workers always have contracts, whereas unskilled workers often do not even have an employment contract and therefore no job security.
98 per cent of the country’s exports still consist of seafood, with 53 per cent of the country’s entire exports going to the Danish colonial power. A large proportion of the catchers are Inuit living in settlements away from the cities, who are either full-time or part-time catchers. They get the worst share of the fishing quotas and have to sell their fish to large fishing companies at a lower price than other European fishermen, pushing people into overfishing. This threatens people’s livelihoods.
Despite the fact that many Danish companies have been “nationalised”, their boards of directors are still Danish and their huge profits have not benefited Greenland in its development, but still end up in the pockets of the Danish monopolistic bourgeoisie. The “block grant” of DKK 4.3 billion per year is in reality a lucrative investment that serves to deepen the exploitation of the country and keep it dependent. Many more billions of kroner leave Greenland each year than the country receives in the form of superprofits.
About the election and the big bourgeoisie in Greenland
Politicians in Greenland, whether they represent Inuit Ataqatigiit, Siumut, Naleraq, Democrats or Atassut, have not and cannot manage to lead Inuit towards real self-determination. The Inatsisartut (Greenlandig parliament) and ‘self-government’ is itself an administration established by Danish imperialism and colonial power to facilitate exploitation.
The only perspective the parties can present is a future where Greenland continues to be dependent on one or more powers. While some want to remain subject to Danish imperialism, the only alternative others can present is to be dependent on another imperialist power. They repeat the lie that the country and Inuit are unable to fend for themselves and need a benefactor.
To leave the country in the hands of the current politicians in the current state is to leave it in the hands of people like Kuno Fencker from Nelaraq. While still a member of Siumut (SI), Kuno Fencker travelled to the US in January on a self-paid holiday to the US, where he networked with 300 politicians and investors from the US. Or Muté Baier Egede from Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA) who openly invites investors from both the EU and the US to extract raw materials in the country despite the harmful consequences it has for the people. SI and IA, who were in government together, are by far the largest current parties in Nunarput and together hold 2/3 of the seats in both the County Council and the municipalities.
The parliament does not represent the interests of the working class and the people, but the big bourgeoisie in Greenland and imperialist corporations and powers. Everything in society carries a class imprint, the same goes for the state. And the state in Greenland today is created and maintained by the colonial power, and the colonial power has not designed its own tool to be turned against itself.
From the election we can expect an acceleration of the process where Greenland goes from being a colony to a semi-colony as the next step in the process, led by Danish imperialism, of establishing “home rule” and “self-government”. The reasons are the people’s desire for independence from Denmark on the one hand and inter-imperialist contradictions on the other. But in reality, this will only mean that the face of exploitation will change, or that the country will go from being mainly exploited by Danish imperialism to being exploited by several imperialist powers.
If true change is to take place in Greenland, it must come from the Inuit themselves, not within the mechanisms established by the exploitative order. If anything, this whole process taking place today has set in motion a great politicisation of Inuit protesting colonialism and national chauvinism with the desire for a true and genuine independent Greenland.
In recent weeks and months, protests have taken place that together have mobilised whole percentages of the country’s population of 57,000.
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