Talk politics.

Yep. Faux "news" host Trish Regan has become a real celebrity in Denmark now. The reason: her bizarre claim that no one wants to work in Denmark. Oh, and that young Danes don't want to complete their education because the state pays them money to study. You know, socialism. Where people are deprived of their right of personal initiative.

Fox news host ridiculed for comparing Denmark to Venezuela
"Danish politicians respond to Trish Regan's strange claims about cupcake socialism"

In response, Danish social-democrat Dan Jørgensen published a funny video where he ridiculed Regan's claims. The video was translated in many languages and has gone viral now, even Bernie Sanders has shared it on FB. And therein lies the problem: right-wingers in the US often like to cite the Nordic countries as the ideological enemy, and guys like Bernie have a lot to do with that. Leftists have often pointed at the Scandinavian societies as an example. Bernie recently published a short documentary about health-care in Norway and the education system in Finland. A Finnish guy was interviewed and said schools in his country are not just free, but students are being paid to go and study. This was the "clue" that Trish Regan caught like bait, then she slapped it on Denmark, making the conclusion that in result of being paid to study, people there don't want to finish their education. No proof, no evidence, just a made-up "fact" that was supposed to teach us how bad socialism is. You know, Faux News classic.

Granted, it's also true that while he idealizes the Nordic countries, Bernie Sanders doesn't even mention the problems in the big cities, or the sharp domestic political clashes that have led to a swing to the far right. In Denmark, Finland and Norway, right-wing populists are now part of the governments, and at the upcoming elections here in Sweden, the right-wing Swedish Democrats are expected to become the second-largest political force.

The clash of political positions in this region is along several fault lines, just like in most of Europe: immigration, crime, and the question if these countries are capable of defending themselves. There are all sorts of lies around the Internet on these questions. Professional journalists are busy investigating and refuting such falsehoods. In Norway, several private media are funding the Faktisk.no portal that has been following and fighting fake news for about a year now.

For example, on the national day of Norway this year, some online rag published the claim that people were banned from walking with a foreign national flag on the street on Norway Day, risking a 4500 kr (450 euro) fine. Faktisk.no refuted this news and many others, including claims by right-wing politicians. One such claim was that in result of migration, Norway's population was growing at a faster rate than India. Another claimed the US, Canada and NZ had issued warnings to their citizens travelling to Sweden. All lies, and refuted as such. Other claims were that the Oslo police had lost control on certain neighborhoods, where Islam and Sharia was reigning. Or the one that the EU has worked out a secret plan for the Islamization of Europe (this one has circulated around various right-wing groups in FB).

You may think we're overreacting to these things; freedom of speech and such stuff - but you see what happened in Coblenz, Germany, the other day, where the fake news that foreign migrants were killing people and the police was doing nothing about it, prompted huge right-wing rallies that saw skinheads and other extremists randomly attacking people on the street who "looked foreign", and the whole thing ultimately resulting in one person getting shot to death. So yeah, words do tend to make holes, and big ones!

There's a battle going on in the public space, led by journalists against fake news. Some fake news was recently caught and duly refuted, coming from a Polish publication on the wildfires in Sweden. The Poland Daily claimed that Sweden was ignoring the wildfires, and preferred to waste money on migrants and gender-promoting projects. The journalists also refuted the fake news that Sweden had refused help from Russia in the fight with the wildfires. Another fake news was spread by a Danish TV channel, claiming that in a live debate, the leaders of several Swedish parties hadn't even remotely touched the issue of the burning of cars in some southern Swedish cities - demonstrably false.

Of course, we all know the most famous fake news about Sweden, which came from no other but US president Trump himself. "Look what happened last night in Sweden", he said a while ago. At first everyone was confused what he was talking about, and then he clarified that the remark had been inspired by a report on the migrants in Sweden he had earlier watched on Fox.

Still, even Fox, through their host Trish Regan admits that the Nordic countries cannot be compared to socialist Venezuela, not really. In one of her commentaries, Ms Regan noted that she couldn't have compared the living standard in Denmark to that in Venezuela, she simply wanted to show that "socialism isn't a solution". Her statement demonstrates very well why the Internet is full of so much fake news about the Scandinavian societies. It's just that leftist politicians from around the world are using them as an idealistic example for their preferred social model, while their right-wing opponents are knee-jerkingly demonizing it. It seems Scandinavia has become an arena for ideological confrontations, where various agendas, spins and biases converge, clash and mix up, to paint a confusing, often polarized picture of something which, I suspect, none of those who presume to analyze it, actually understand in reality.