Daníel E. Arnarsson, director of the National Queer Organization Samtökin ´78 and substitute MP recently departed the Left Green movement (Vinstri græn) as Iceland’s political landscape rapidly changes and immigrant rights are coming to the forefront. GayIceland speaks with Daníel about his decision, where the Left Green party is headed next, and the fight for queer and immigrant rights in Iceland.
In a Facebook post he explained his decision following the vote. “Last night, the immigration bill of the Minister of Justice was approved. A bill that a number of human rights and aid organizations have fought against, restricting the rights of one of the most vulnerable and marginalized groups in our society: people seeking international protection… I was always against this bill and did my best to stop it. It didn’t work.” He went on to say that he was leaving the party after seventeen years because he “couldn’t stand behind a movement that, as it is, denies rights to one of the most vulnerable groups of society”.
Regarding the original bill, he says: “It was disgusting. I saw a draft [of the bill] and just said ‘no, no, no, we can’t let this through’ and the Left Greens managed to postpone it. Then it was taken up again with a new minister, and the Left Greens managed to postpone it once more. Now, the fifth time it’s proposed, it’s still as horrible as it was in the beginning. Twenty humanitarian organizations and NGOs signed a letter to parliament saying ‘this is not ok.’ The Left Greens and the majority of parliament didn’t listen to these organizations.” Yet, the bill passed.
According to Daníel the Left Green Party went against its core values. “A couple of us formed a small group, all of us members of the Left Greens, and we decided we needed to do something. So we sent the parliamentary group a letter challenging people to vote no on this bill. We had a meeting with the open members. We asked questions, but we didn’t get real answers,” he says.
Pushing the subject further they asked, “What in this bill was better for asylum seekers that was not already in the older law from 2016? No one answered, but they talked a lot about how these matters, in general, are going in a better direction because of the Minister of Welfare. That’s true. But we’re talking about this specific bill. What is better than 2016?” he says.
“The Left Greens have always been a party to support human rights, minority groups. We can see it when it comes to feminism, to queer rights. We can see that the Left Greens have really pulled through and the biggest changes in queer rights have been when the Left Greens are in government. The gender autonomy act and the one marriage bill both passed when Left Greens were in control. It was like ‘ok, we’re going to do really good for some of you in this group, but if you’re a part of this group, we’re not, we’re just following the Minister of Justice.’ So we didn’t get answers. We had good talks, but at the same time, the people that managed this bill for the Left Greens just couldn’t handle it in my opinion,” he adds.
“The Left Greens are in a quiet struggle within themselves. It’s a little bit of an identity crisis.”
When asked why Daníel thought the Left Greens made accommodations to the center-right wing of parliament, he isn’t sure. “I don’t know,” he says with conviction. “I have repeatedly asked them this question: what political favors did we get from Jón Gunnarsson? What has he ever done for the Left Greens? Why did we handle this? But I never received an answer.”
After considering it for a moment, he expresses hope that the Left Greens weren’t still paying for political favors made years ago. “I don’t know. I remember that the Independence Party was really upset with the Left Greens when it came to abortion and it had to be pushed through the parliament, through the bench, so the MPs could just vote how they wanted. You can see this with the Minister of Finance, Bjarni (Benediktsson). He even said no to abortion rights. I don’t know if we’re still paying for that. I hope not, but we never got answers to these questions.”
Daníel says he also received questions from members of other parties, all wondering why the bill passed with Left Green support. “The Pirate Party did an extremely good job of defending the human rights of asylum seekers. They were there day and night trying to work with this group of people. I noticed that they started asking us towards the end, ‘what are you buying? What are you getting for this?’”
Regardless of whether Vinstri græn got anything for their support of this bill or not, Daníel doesn’t think it matters. “If someone told me, ‘Oh, well, we’re doing this because we got this instead,’ my position would still be the same. It’s more curiosity than anything else because there’s nothing else that could justify these actions by the Left Greens.” He also says that it’s obvious how much this move was in contrast to the party’s core values: “If you read Vinstri græn’s agenda when it comes to immigration and asylum seekers, it’s really good but in total contrast to what they just did. So why are we doing this?”
Immigration in Iceland has been a hot topic since the founding of the nation and the island is facing more applicants than ever. Following Iceland’s popularity as a global tourist destination, the island’s need for foreign workers has dramatically increased. Iceland has also seen an increase in foreigners arriving at the border to claim asylum from countries like Syria, Venezuela, and Ukraine. Daníel thinks we need to look at this entire system with a new lens.
“We have always thought about immigration in that we need to have tight borders and we have to limit people inside. I think we need to look at immigration laws from a totally different perspective,” he says. “We have to completely change it, and we have to listen to the experts and the no borders movement. Maybe that’s the correct perspective. The no borders movement has been treated with violence and has been painted as crazy people, but maybe this is the responsible or reasonable thing to do right now,” he adds.
Given the state of conflict in many regions of the world, Daníel doesn’t think it’s unreasonable for people to want to come to Iceland to escape chaos. “We’re talking about war in Europe, war in the Middle East. Of course, people are leaving these war zones, and we’re saying no to them. We have to think about it from another perspective. We should be thinking about what we can offer, what we can give, not how we can limit. Because if we’re going to keep the quality of living in Iceland, we’re going to need more people. We just do.”
Iceland does need more workers. Last year, there was an expected shortage of twelve thousand workers. Daníel says he believes most people who are applying for asylum want to stay and work in Iceland to contribute to society. “I know we shouldn’t talk about human beings like they’re money makers or only taxpayers, but at the same time, we are. Most of them want to work. Most of them want to do something for this community, and most of them don’t even want to be here in the first place. Of course, they want to be at home. People are coming here because of desperate need. Maybe their sexual orientation isn’t accepted in their country. Even those people still want to be [in their home countries].”
In the end, he says Iceland is better off taking in immigrants and teaching them how we live. “We gain more from people coming here than we lose. It can be a struggle in the beginning. We have to face [their] trauma, we have to face something that people have experienced, but in the end, it’s a gift for this country,” he says.
When asked if he thinks most Icelanders are concerned about being outnumbered by foreigners on their own island, Daníel says yes. “I’ve heard that. I mean, you can see it in comment threads. ‘When will the day come when Icelanders are a minority group in our own country?’ It’s a profoundly dumb statement to make because when people come here, most of them want to be a part of the community. Of course, some people still hold onto their beliefs and cultures in some things, but a multicultural society is a better society. That’s just a fact. There can be problems in the beginning, but we can work on it, talk together, and communicate. It’s nothing too difficult. Correct integration protocols. For example, you have to face someone’s root problems before you say ‘oh, you have to speak Icelandic.’ We have to change focus from ‘we have to raise the borders’ to the point where there are no borders.”
Then there’s the issue of housing in Iceland; it’s hard to welcome more refugees if the locals are already having a hard time finding places to live. Daníel attributes the lack of housing in Iceland to increased privatization. “The mentality is that everything should be outsourced, the state shouldn’t run anything. That’s the mentality of many people,” he says.
“Samfylkingin (the Social Democratic Alliance), the Pirate Party, and Viðreisn (the Liberal Reform Party) are just wholesome, good people who are just doing their job.”
When asked if privatization has increased since the coalition government was formed in 2017, he says yes. “You also have to take into this picture that by forming a coalition with the Left Greens, if you take it from the Independence Party’s perspective, you are weakening the left in Iceland. That’s a huge responsibility of the Left Green movement, for weakening the left. The left isn’t united at all, which is a sad thing. There’s more privatization in healthcare now than there was just five years ago, but we don’t realize it because it’s all hidden beneath the surface. The public wants healthcare to be public, for example, not private.”
Immigration was what caused him to leave the party, but Daníel also says there were other sentiments brewing for a while. When pressed to say if the Left Greens were making too many accommodations to the center-right parties and losing their way, he tempered his response. “In some cases, yes. It was a very difficult thing for the Left Greens to lose the Ministry of Environment. Mummi (Guðmundur Ingi Guðbrandsson) was an extremely good Minister of Environment. He’s doing a great job now as Minister of Welfare, but for the Left Greens to lose that ministry was a huge cut,” he says.
Daníel’s not the only one thinking that losing the Ministry of Environment discounts the Left Green name since they have less influence over “green” or environmentally sustainable legislation in Iceland. The Left Greens are also struggling in the polls, and it’s beginning to show.
“It has happened very slowly, but it’s really the immigration policies that have really scared me with the movement. For example, the plane that was rented and people were just flown out in the night (with the floodlights blocking reporters). That is not a government that I want to be a part of. And people tend to say ‘oh well, the Left Greens, they’re not running the Ministry of Justice, so there’s nothing we can do.’ That’s not correct. Of course, it was the directorate of immigration and the police that were involved in this, but they were just following procedures, rules, and regulations from the government,” he adds.
Now that he’s left the Left Greens officially, Daníel is unsure about which political party appeals to him most. For now, he’s happy not being associated with the brand anymore. “It’s the first time in seventeen years that no one can tell me ‘oh, you’re in Left Greens, so you have to answer for this’.” It’s also easy for him to separate the brand of the party from the people it’s made up of. “When we talk about the Left Greens, we’re just talking about the brand, about the logo and the name. But at the same time, the party is nothing without the people. The people are the party, so parties can change quite rapidly,” he says.
It is, after all, the party where his political career was born. “I’m raised in Vinstri græn, these are the people that raised me and gave me a lot, so it was a difficult decision, but the very correct decision to make at this moment,” says Daníel. “I talked to Katrín (Jakobsdóttir, Prime Minister) today, and we had a really, really nice chat. Friendships go over parties, and that’s true in our case. We are good friends and have been good friends since 2013, and that’s not going to change.”
“Of course, we’re both very sad that we’re not working together in the same party anymore, but there’s nothing that’s black and white. Many people in V.G. are very beautiful people trying their best, working to do their best. I just couldn’t be a part of a party that accepts those kinds of rules. That’s the bottom line,” he says.
There are many parties in Iceland that are really appealing to him. “Samfylkingin (the Social Democratic Alliance), the Pirate Party, and Viðreisn (the Liberal Reform Party) are just wholesome, good people who are just doing their job. I am not joining another party at this moment. That was never even in the back of my mind when I made this decision. When someone asked me where I was going now I thought ‘oh maybe I should have thought about that.’ But in my heart, I am Left Green, that is who I am. At this moment, I just can’t work with them.”
The responsibility for these decisions may lie with the leadership of the party then, but Daníel says every member of parliament also has an individual responsibility. “Members of parliament are only bound by themselves and what they want. The responsibility has to lie with them. At the same time, the decision I made to leave the party was also because I felt responsible to my people, for the people who voted for me in the primaries. They voted for me with that in mind that I was going to make these things better. I tried. I couldn’t. I’m not an MP, but still. When I realized that it was very hard for me to face these people and tell them that everything was okay because it’s not. One of my core issues was challenged so my responsibility is to leave.”
He may not be leaving the Left Greens forever though. When asked if this was a permanent break up, Daníel says he’s willing to rejoin the party if they adapt. “If the party shows dramatic change, maybe. Then I’d just open the door again. When one door closes, you just open them again if you want, that’s literally how they work. You can open them and close them. The saying when one door closes another one opens, that’s really not how they work,” he laughs.
“I am not mad,” he adds. “I know this was the correct decision that I made because I haven’t been irritated or sad about politics. Of course, I’m deeply sad about leaving my people, not being able to attend meetings and so on. But also, they’re just people. If I want to call them, I do because they’re my friends. Everything is personal. Politics is personal. That’s a fact. You become friends. I haven’t had that many enemies, luckily, but I’m not closing any communication with anyone in the party.”
He also clarifies that Vinstri græn has some work to do before they’re ready for the next elections. “The Left Greens are in a quiet struggle within themselves. It’s a little bit of an identity crisis. I know that every person who’s working in the Left Greens is doing it with integrity, but they have lost some kind of sense of communicating their message. When you’re in control and you feel like your position is being attacked, you put yourself into a bunker and tell yourself ‘we are great, we love each other, and we are going to go deeper and deeper into this bunker and not listen to anyone.’ It becomes this thing where the smallest criticism is an attack. ‘Oh, so you’re not with us? You must be against us!’”
“That’s a very difficult place for a political party to be, where you feel like you always have to be defending everything and everyone is the enemy,” says Daníel. “When I sensed that the Left Greens had stopped taking criticism and saw it as an attack, I thought, ‘oh, this is going to be bad.’ I never wanted to be in that bunker, and I was never there. I’m talking about a very small group of people, but I wasn’t invited to the bunker anyway. So I was not going to dig myself in there.”
“We have run out of time. The building is on fire right now. It’s time to take bold decisions.”
Daníel also believes that if a general election were called tomorrow, the Left Greens would struggle to form a coalition like the one they have today. “This coalition wouldn’t be called, no, I don’t think so. What we need right now is a strong left government.” He also thinks that people don’t want to be told what they can’t do, even when society needs them to change. “In 2003, when VG was running, they were talking about the environment as a crisis and how we were building this dam, and we have to stop this madness. They didn’t get as many votes as they did in 1999 because they were talking about things that people didn’t want to hear about. That’s why I sometimes say that I’m scared we’ve lost the battle with climate change because who’s going to vote for a party that bans things, that limits what you can do, tells you that you can’t live like you have before? 98% of people want to vote for someone who gives you what you want, not takes it away.”
“It’s just like the economic collapse. Now we have an environmental collapse. And can you imagine how many refugees there will be when that happens? The battle of water, the battle of land, temperate areas. If we’re going to be in some kind of messed up game about where people are from or what color their skin is, we can just forget about survival. We’re going to stick to those old kinds of prejudices? Then we’ve lost,” says Daníel.
“We know how to face a crisis; this country is good at the crisis. We should know. We have run out of time. The building is on fire right now. It’s time to take bold decisions. Make them affect the poor and the minority groups the least. We have to make crisis plans based on equity, not just equality. Every single decision we make now we have to think it through, but they have to be bold. What I’d like to do, for once, is to let the parties on the left control the government before we get the crisis, not after.”
Beyond the environment or the economy, queer rights are the one thing Daníel believes Vinstri græn has done well in. “The Left Greens are definitely on point when it comes to queer rights,” he says. “Samtökin ’78 looked at all of the parties running and their agendas, and VG was the only one that had a platform on queer rights that was approved by the general annual meeting. The others had it only as an election platform. VG had done the work beforehand. They had it approved.”
Some parties have always taken a more libertarian point of view on the LGBTQ+ community. “The Independence Party has never been opposed to queer rights, but they’re also not the most radical or outspoken party when it comes to queer rights. They’ve always been true to themselves when it comes to freedom of the individual as the basic core.”
Daníel says there are three or four parties that are focusing on queer rights, taking them seriously, and wanting to make changes. Samfylkingin (the Social Democratic Alliance), the Pirate Party, Viðreisn (the Liberal Reform Party), and the Left Greens. “These four parties should work together,” he adds. “I’ve always dreamed about a coalition where these four parties share power because I think they could be very beneficial towards one another. Viðreisn is maybe more on the right when it comes to economics, but they are on the same page when it comes to human rights. They want privatization, but we could keep that to a minimum [if a coalition is formed]. The leadership of the party is superb; they’re great politicians. Samfylkingin is changing very rapidly at the moment. They’re going from a party in crisis to a power structure again, just based on polling. They want to be this big party that they intended to be when they were founded. The Pirate Party is probably the best people of them all. Every decision they make, they do it with heart. I really respect them and have respected them even more after this immigration debate inside parliament.”
At the end of the day, Daníel hopes that he can be proud not only of Iceland’s LGBTQ+ community or as a politician, but as an Icelander who’s open to the rest of the world. Through international cooperation and humanity, he hopes that these immigration struggles will play out better in the future. “I am proud to be an Icelander. I am proud of my country, our language, the people, our history. But being proud of something, and with this the queer community has taught me a lot about being proud, doesn’t mean that you’re better than anyone else. You can be proud of who you are as a nation, but don’t go abroad thinking you’re better than anyone else. Not as a person, not as a nation.”