by Margaret Kimberley, published on Black Agenda Report, January 21, 2026
Donald Trump and other U.S. presidents are gangsters who will sometimes steal from their own crew. The Greenland heist is but the latest example, as the Denmark colonizers cry that they were robbed after assisting the head criminal in charge.
“A court in Denmark has ordered the government to compensate 18 civilians who were tortured during the Iraq war in an operation carried out by Iraqi security forces along with a Danish battalion.” Al Jazeera
A popular meme that has circulated on social media since 2015 reads as follows. “‘I never thought leopards would eat MY face,’ sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.” The joke is usually told at the expense of people expressing buyer’s remorse upon finding themselves negatively impacted by policies they once justified supporting.
But immigrants voting for Trump and then realizing they actually don’t like ICE enforcement are not alone in expressing regret after choosing what turned out to be a self-inflicted wound. Entire nations are also guilty of this practice and most of them are the United States’ European allies.
Donald Trump is committed to making his dream of claiming Greenland, a colony of Denmark, as a United States territory. Trump is moving full speed ahead despite the fact that many indigenous Greenlanders want to be independent of Denmark and that Denmark opposes this seizure. There is no domestic or international law that allows this forced expropriation to take place, but no matter. The United States has eviscerated international law for years and usually with the help of NATO allies like Denmark.
Trump claims that Russia and China will snatch Greenland if the U.S. doesn’t, despite the fact that neither country has shown such an interest. Trump wants Greenland because billionaires want it too. During the first Trump administration in 2018, “… a prominent businessman [Ronald Lauder] he knew had suggested that the U.S. buy Greenland …” Lauder is not alone in coveting that enormous Arctic island. Tech billionaires Peter Thiel, Elon Musk and others plan to use Greenland as a source of rare earth minerals and as the site for dystopian “freedom cities” which would operate outside of law and regulation.
The Kingdom of Denmark is unhappy, to say the least, as are other European countries, but they all must be scrutinized for the behavior they exhibit towards other nations that are targeted by the U.S.
The U.S. began its regime change and asset-stealing effort against Venezuela in 2019 by designating an “interim president,” Juan Guaido. In order to legitimize what was illegitimate, the Trump administration asked allies to join in recognizing Guaido. Denmark was among those going along with the dirty deed. “Denmark recognizes the President of the National Assembly … until new free and democratic elections take place.” Of course, Venezuela already had free and democratic elections but when the puppeteer demanded compliance with regime change, Denmark went right along.
There are many examples of Denmark’s commitment to being a junior partner in U.S. imperialism. Anders Fogh Rasmussen served as the Prime Minister of Denmark from 2001 to 2009. Just a few months after leaving that office, he became the Secretary General of NATO, serving in that role until 2014. Rasmussen led NATO during the 2011 regime change plot against Libya, and proclaimed the mission “successful” and himself “proud” to have played a role in that nation’s destruction.
Trump’s determination to take Greenland from Denmark is one that anti-imperialists must oppose. His gangsterish stance, “If we don’t do it the easy way we’re going to do it the hard way,” is shocking to the conscience of anyone who believes in international law or ethics or basic human decency. Yet Denmark’s history and politics must be examined as well. That country is no paragon of democracy and justice in its domestic policies or in its international relations as a loyal U.S. proxy.
Leftists in the U.S. are often advised to look to social democratic governments such as Denmark as a guide for governance. But when the Global South immigrant population grew to the kind of tipping point that makes white people uncomfortable, those same social democrats enacted racist legislation in order to police those people, determine where they live and even how often they can interact with their own children. Called the Ghetto Package, the 2018 legislation designated neighborhoods as “ghettos” or “tough ghettos” if their population was more than 50% non-European. The law decreed that public housing could make up no more than 40% of housing stock. Immigrants from nations such as Iraq, Syria, and Somalia were impacted as they were forced out of their neighborhoods through evictions and demolitions. Of course, gentrification followed as private investors renovated the empty housing and immediately raised rents.
Even family life was placed under governmental control. Children born into “ghetto” families had to attend special programs for 25 hours per week, and parents were not allowed to accompany them. Even crimes committed within these communities were punished more harshly, designated as double punishments. All of these initiatives were popular with Danes and were supported by the major political parties.
Eventually, the term ghetto became inconvenient and Denmark chose different terminology, instead referring to “parallel societies” that should be integrated. In 2025, the European Court of Justice ruled that the legislation may be discriminatory and unlawful. The fence straddling about what may be discriminatory is laughable. Ukrainian refugees were allowed to live in the housing that immigrants were forced to leave. Even second-generation immigrants were included in the parallel society criteria, thus proving that the program is race-based and should be considered discriminatory by any society calling itself enlightened or advanced.
Immigrants were not the only victims of Danish racism. Greenland is the ancestral home of Inuit peoples who share the struggles of indigenous peoples throughout the western hemisphere. They face job discrimination, higher incarceration rates and even the loss of their children, who are removed by Danish authorities.
In the 1960s and 1970s, 4,500 Greenland women and girls as young as 13 were forcibly sterilized when Intrauterine Devices (IUD) were inserted in their wombs, often without their knowledge or consent. Some were permanently rendered infertile, others suffered from a variety of medical conditions. The current Danish prime minister apologized in 2025 for this genocidal practice, but words ring hollow when terrible harm is done to oppressed people.
Now, indigenous Greenlanders are caught in a dilemma. They do not want to be part of the United States, but many of them now fear that efforts at an independence movement will put them in the hands of Trump’s billionaire cronies.
While Denmark and other European countries are crying foul over the fate of Greenland, they have often behaved as the good little vassals that the U.S. requires and act against their own interests, and not just when Donald Trump makes that demand. On September 26, 2022, a portion of the NordStream pipeline exploded near the Danish island of Bornholm. NordStream was built as part of a Russian and German agreement to enhance the supplies of natural gas to Germany and other European countries. The Joe Biden administration had loudly and publicly condemned the project and Biden even said that he would stop it. It was natural for the U.S. to be the suspect and an investigative report by Seymour Hersh made a convincing case for U.S. culpability.
But aside from stating the obvious, that the explosion was caused by sabotage, Denmark closed the case without comment. The open secret stayed closed, as Denmark chose not to investigate lest doing so prove that the logical conjecture of Biden administration involvement was true. The NordStream explosion was an ecological disaster, an act of war, and the cause of an ongoing economic crisis for European countries that depended on Russian natural gas.
Denmark and other European nations are steeped in white supremacy just as much as the U.S. and Denmark is not the only colonizer among them. France, too, is a leading agent of neo-colonialism around the world and is also a U.S. partner in crime. Trump publicly released what should have remained a personal communication from Emmanuel Macron. In his missive, Macron told Trump, “I don’t understand what you are doing on Greenland.” But when the Trump administration kidnapped Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro on January 3, 2026, Macron understood quite clearly, giving evasive approval, claiming that France did not support the “method” of the abduction while also saying that the kidnapping was “good news for Venezuelans.” Macron knows all too well where his bread is buttered so to speak, and so does Trump, who broke protocol by releasing the foolish and servile message, making clear that he will not abide Europe’s hypocrisy and phony claims of independence from U.S. power.
Of course, the U.S. has no right to Greenland but neither do the colonizing Danes. It is wrong for the U.S. to do the bidding of the ultra-wealthy elite who want to grab Greenland and the fact the state operates on their behalf should not end condemnation of these practices. But Denmark and other European nations cannot be allowed to play the victims when they are also the victimizers. They are happy vassals one day, joining the coalition of the willing in the Iraq invasion, but shedding tears when the mafia chieftain takes their stuff. No one should accept Denmark’s claims of innocence. In regard to Greenland, there is indeed no honor among thieves.
*Featured Image: Somali immigrants in Mjølnerpark, a Copenhagen neighborhood designated as a “ghetto” in 2018. (photo: Andrew Kelly/Reuters/File)
Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her work on Patreon and also find it on Twitter, Bluesky, and Telegram platforms. She can be reached via email atmargaret.kimberley@blackagendareport.com.