Rasmus Paludan (born 2 January 1982) is a Danish-Swedish politician and lawyer, who is the founder and leader of the far-right, nationalist, Danish political party Stram Kurs. Paludan has become known for his extremist views, including that Islam should be banned and that immigrants of non-Western background should be deported from Denmark. He is considered by political scientists and media to be far-right and a right-wing extremist.
Paludan is known for his Islamophobic and Islam-critical events and demonstrations, which are often held in urban areas with many Muslim immigrants, initially in Denmark. During the demonstrations, he has called the Quran "the big book of whores" and Islam "gay Islam". He has also burned, spat on and thrown the Quran and encouraged people to urinate on it. Paludan has particularly attracted attention by recording videos of his demonstrations and uploading them to the Stram Kurs party's YouTube channel. In 2020, the channel was shut down by YouTube, citing that their guidelines prohibit harassment and hate speech directed at individuals or groups based on race or religion. His burnings of the Quran led to rioting in Sweden in 2022, and burnings in 2023 were said to have started what caused "an enormous global controversy".
Paludan has been a defence attorney in several cases with press attention. Paludan has also been involved in and subject to a number of lawsuits, legal disputes, and criminal charges. In 2019, he was sentenced to 14 days conditional imprisonment for violating the Danish racism clause. In 2021, he was found guilty of racist and derogatory statements, received a conditional sentence of 3 months in prison, and had to pay compensation to the offended, a Somali woman.
As of 2020, Paludan was under constant police protection due to threats against him for his activity.
Background and education Paludan was born in North Zealand and grew up in Hornbæk, Denmark. Rasmus Paludan is the brother of poet Tine Paludan and writer Martin Paludan, who was a former social media manager for The Alternative. Paludan's mother married his Swedish father, Tomas Polvall, in 1979 thereby acquiring the right to Swedish citizenship. Paludan became a student at Helsingør Gymnasium in 2000, where he was student council chairman for a period. After high school he served his military service. Paludan began studying law in 2001 and in 2008 became a Master of Laws from the University of Copenhagen. Paludan had the year's ninth highest grade point average after his Bachelor of Arts. However, he was involved in a road accident in 2005, which delayed his law studies. During his studies, he worked for Kromann Reumert in 2004 and the following year was an intern with the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. In 2014, Paludan was commissioned as a lawyer with the right to appear before the High Court. From 2015 to 2018, Paludan was employed as an external lecturer at the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagen, where several students complained to the student management about Paludan's teaching and behaviour.
Both of Pauldan's siblings have publicly distanced themselves from his political messages and methods. Paludan has stated that those who know him know that he is "out of category". Paludan has described himself as principled and added that he is so to such an extent that it has probably limited his circle of friends.
Paludan suffered a brain injury in a road accident in 2005, which has been claimed in court documents to have resulted in subsequent significant personality changes, including the lack of ability to tolerate others' mistakes, depression, as well as a 25 percent loss of work ability. Paludan's father, however, rejects the idea that the accident caused any significant mental changes in his son.
In 2020, Paludan founded the Church of Saint James the Moor-slayer with himself as Archbishop, named after the Spanish legendary figure James Matamoros who helped the Christians conquer the Muslim Moors as part of the Reconquista. He also attempted to register the church in Sweden in 2022. In August 2022, Paludan was accepted to study theology at the University of Copenhagen, but stated that he did not want to become a priest of the Church of Denmark, since he is already Archbishop of his own church.
Political career Former affiliations Paludan has been a member of the Danish Social Liberal Youth and, according to the news agency Ritzau, sat on the organisation's main board in 2003, which has however been publicly denied by Rasmus Paludan himself, who stated that he was only on its board in Copenhagen. Paludan has also been a member of the Danish Social Liberal Party and in 2010 of Venstre. In 2009, Paludan ran for the European Parliament for the June Movement without being elected. In 2016, Paludan started attending meetings of the International Free Press Society. In November 2016, he was appointed as a member of the Lars Vilks Committee. In January 2017, Paludan said that he was a member of and a lawyer for the far right Islam-critical association For Frihed (formerly Pegida Denmark). Paludan has on several occasions given speeches at the association's events and participated in the association's demonstrations.
In January 2017, Paludan said that he had been a member of the political party New Right since September 2016. Paludan was nominated by the party as a candidate for Copenhagen's Citizens' Representative on 28 January 2017. Some days later Paludan had to leave the party after its leadership became aware of a controversial speech Paludan had given at a demonstration organized by the association For Frihed in October 2016; in the speech, Paludan predicted civil war-like conditions in Denmark as a result of an invasion from "foreign enemies". According to the New Right's chairman, Pernille Vermund, Paludan had called for violence with the speech. Peter Seier Christensen, who is a co-founder of the party, also stated that he found the speech completely unacceptable.
Subsequently, Paludan reported that he had joined the nationalist party Danish Unity. However, Paludan was never accepted into the party, as it found several of his statements "out of step with Danish Unity's basic view".
Stram Kurs
In July 2017, Paludan founded the Stram Kurs party. The party's main issues include a ban on Islam and the deportation of up to half a million non-Western citizens. In 2017, Paludan ran for Stram Kurs in the municipal elections in Copenhagen without getting enough votes for a place in the Citizens' Representation.
After disturbances at Paludan's demonstration in Nørrebro in Copenhagen in April 2019 gave him massive press coverage, the party collected the necessary number of signatures to become eligible for the 2019 general election. The Copenhagen Post noted in May 2019 that "Paludan has become a paladin for some and sits at an astonishing 2.6 percent in the polls". Paludan and Stram Kurs received a lot of attention during the election campaign and obtained 63,114 votes, corresponding to 1.79% of the votes cast, slightly below the threshold of 2%. Paludan was the party's leading candidate in the Zealand constituency and received just under 10,000 personal votes. With his popularity among youth on YouTube, if only those aged 18 to 24 voted in the election, Stram Kurs would have received 11 representatives in parliament according to a poll. In December 2019, Paludan was ranked number 18 on Politiken'''s list of opinion leaders of the year.
Election results Election Constituency Votes Result 2017 municipal elections Copenhagen 85 2017 regional elections Capital Region 243 2019 general election Zealand 9.959
Political activities Early activities One of the first times Paludan noticed himself in the media was in 2007, when he launched a website, on which he published pictures of cyclists and pedestrians who violated the traffic law. Paludan said he did it to reduce the number of people killed in traffic and to make people think twice. In August 2007, Paludan was knocked down by a cyclist he had photographed. The website no longer exists.
In 2008, it was reported in Jyllands-Posten that Paludan had reported a 21-year-old man to the police under Section 266 b of the Criminal Code for making offensive statements about homosexuals in a Facebook group.
In February 2016, Paludan brought a gun dummy to a meeting of the Lars Vilks Committee at Christiansborg. Paludan later said that it was part of the artwork Toys at Christiansborg; the work was intended to illustrate that the police react excessively to harmless incidents, while at the same time, they react unsatisfactorily to real terrorist threats. Paludan was questioned by the police but got his dummy back without being charged. Paludan said he had erected a similar piece of art in a shopping mall in Orange County, California; here he was interrogated by the police and also expelled from the shopping centre for five years.
Voice of Freedom In January 2017, Paludan introduced the media channel Voice of Freedom (Frihedens Stemme). The media is registered with the Press Board, and Paludan is its editor-in-chief. The Voice of Freedom also had a YouTube channel, and in a series of videos for the channel, Paludan has posed in front of the Youth House and other known sites associated with the radical left in Nørrebro in Copenhagen. In the videos, threatening situations occur, which lead Paludan to flee and call the police.
On 25 January 2017, Paludan appeared at the People's House in Nørrebro to interview participants in the left-wing assembly, where one of the items on the agenda was a discussion of "the militant resistance". Paludan was told to leave the area and had to flee from shelling and threats of violence. The Copenhagen Police subsequently ordered Paludan not to approach the People's House for the next twelve hours for his own safety.
Stram Kurs Quran-burnings During 2018, Paludan became an internet phenomenon by holding a number of controversial demonstrations and uploading videos of them to YouTube. Paludan has especially organised demonstrations in the country's "vulnerable residential areas", where he has made hostile statements about Islam, has spat on, thrown and burned the Quran and encouraged people to urinate on it and has featured satirical drawings of Muhammad. Paludan has, for instance, referred to the Quran as "the great book of whores" and Islam as "gay Islam". Many of the moves have been recorded and posted on Stram Kurs' YouTube channel, which as of April 2019 had more than 300 videos, some of which had been viewed over a hundred thousand times, with about 25 million total views in June, which was more than all other Danish political parties combined. The YouTube videos have especially experienced popularity with children and young people, who can also often be seen in the background at the demonstrations. In 2020, the channel was shut down by YouTube, citing that their guidelines prohibit harassment and hate speech directed at individuals or groups based on race or religion.
In April 2019, Paludan held a demonstration in Viborg, which led to chaos with the presence of about one hundred counter-protesters. Three people were arrested, and in June 2019, a 24-year-old Danish-Syrian man was sentenced to 60 days in jail, deportation, and a ban from returning to Denmark for six years for having thrown a rock at Paludan.