Today’s big topic: Violent international online culture has moved closer to Denmark
What’s happening?
Police revelations involving three teenagers who allegedly were in the process of planning an attack on a school in Hadsten in eastern Jutland should be seen as a warning that more preventive initiatives are needed to address a growing number of young people’s boundary-crossing behavior online.
That is the view of Ask Hesby Holm, director of the association Digital Responsibility, who closely tracks young people’s drift toward extremist communities in digital networks. He believes the current case shows how an extremely violent international online culture has moved closer to Denmark.
»The Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) is the backstop in cases like this. PET is the big gun that rolls into position when things have truly gone wrong. But we need to take this development much more seriously long before cases ever get that far. When PET sounds the alarm and describes the threat in annual reports, it’s because it has reached a scale where, as a society, we need preventive initiatives earlier«, he says.
Why it matters!
In the Hadsten case, prosecutors say the preparations took place on the online platforms Discord and Telegram.
According to Ask Hesby Holm of Digital Responsibility, the case may be an example of internet subcultures such as NVE – short for “nihilist violent extremism” – and a similarly widespread network known as The Com, short for “community.” Europol, the European Union’s police cooperation agency, says it is made up of overlapping digital spaces and groups that promote or engage in deviant or extremely violent behavior.
In its latest threat assessment, PET’s Center for Terror Analysis similarly warned of a rising terror threat from perpetrators who do not have a clear ideology but who emerge from »violence-fascinated online cultures«.
»They use violence to build communities and to break down what’s considered normal. That’s how you get hardened and your boundaries shift what you’re able to be fascinated by. Manuals for school shootings have made clear that it’s about making yourself emotionally cold so you can plan and carry it out without being hit by guilt along the way«, Ask Hesby Holm says.
Still curious? Read the full article here.
In other news
– Residents want to preserve a scenic vacation spot for the many
There’s always drama in Tisvilde, a poster hanging on the yellow wall of the local shop, Min Købmand, on the main street of this seaside town in North Zealand, proclaims. Now it’s a dispute over the town’s historic holiday center, Sankt Helene, which is run on social-enterprise principles with affordable cottages and holiday apartments for up to 450 guests, but which in the future is supposed to make way for a luxurious spa and wellness resort for as many as 1,000 well-heeled visitors at a time.
– »She didn’t say much – she screamed«: Spiny predator fish is spreading in the sea area Kattegat
Even for an extremely seasoned angler like Johnni Frederiksen, it was an unusual experience. Johnni Frederiksen isn’t the only one to have had a close encounter with weevers this summer. But while the angler has been all smiles, unlucky beachgoers have had the exact opposite experience. Along the beaches on Zealand’s northern coast, a number of swimmers have stuck toes and feet on the weever’s spines, which protrude when the fish buries itself in the sandy bottom like a flatfish. According to preliminary figures, lifeguards have handled just under 40 incidents this season involving beachgoers who had painful close contact with a weever, John Heine Mogensen says. That number is marginally lower than in the past two years, but it doesn’t change a broader trend that experimental trawling over the past five years has also shown: The small predatory fish is growing in number quite dramatically.
– Metal legends’ farewell tour includes a concert in Denmark
After more than four decades onstage, the American metal band Megadeth is calling it a day. It comes with the farewell tour, ’Breakout: Hibernation of the Nations’, which will also bring the band to Denmark next year. That will be on Saturday, March 27, 2027, at K.B. Hallen in Frederiksberg, the band itself and the concert promoter All Things Live announced in a press release.
»This isn’t about saying goodbye – it’s about celebrating everything we’ve built together over the past four decades«, said Megadeth’s 64-year-old frontman, Dave Mustaine.
Talk of town: »We gain energy from using energy«
All the technologies and systems at our disposal should be giving us time and energy. Instead, they drain us. That is what the researcher and author Steen Hjul Lybke says.
Need a vacation? Walking around feeling burned out? Then you’re not alone. Around the world, stress, depression, and the feeling of burnout are on the rise.
But it’s possible to recharge and get your energy back – not just in a hammock, but in everyday life. That’s the view of researcher Steen Hjul Lybke, 33, a former hip-hop dancer, a sociologist at the University of Copenhagen and soon-to-be father.
Together with the German star researcher Hartmut Rosa, he has written the book ’Social energy’. Here, he explains how other people can help recharge you.
»We can see in the data that stress, depression, anxiety – and now burnout as its own diagnosis – are steadily rising. Not just in Denmark, but globally. We know we have to do something, rethink our habits, our consumption, our actions. Both as individuals, because of burnout, and politically, where polarization is growing, where the big problems – like the climate crisis – aren’t getting solved«.
Change has to begin with the individual, the sociologist says. And if we cultivate social energy, we get more of it. Meaningful communities create fertile ground for changing our habits – and, in turn, influencing the big agendas.
Still curious? Read the full article here.
This newsletter features stories originally published in Danish. AI was used to shorten and translate the articles into English, after which a member of the editorial staff reviewed and refined the content.