Rasmus Paludan is a Danish politician and former lawyer. He is the leader of the far-right political party Hard Line, which he founded in 2017. He is the older brother of poet Tine Paludan and writer Martin Paludan. He has acted as defence attorney in a number of cases involving self-styled "critics of the system" and proponents of medical cannabis, but also in several cases involving immigrant asylum. Between September 2015 and August 2018 Paludan was employed as a lecturer at the law faculty of the University of Copenhagen in the areas of civil law and property law. In April 2019 he was convicted of expressing racist views. He appealed to the High Court of Eastern Denmark, which confirmed the sentence. Paludan was in June 2020 sentenced to a three-month prison term, with two of the months suspended. He was in addition also barred from working as a lawyer for three years, and lost his driver's license for one year. The case included 14 different charges, and Paludan was found guilty in all of them. They included expression of racist views and an episode in Sorø where Paludan drove into a man when he tried to escape a situation where he felt threatened. Paludan is under constant police protection.
Education
At 25 years old, Paludan held a bachelor's degree in law and had the ninth-highest average score among his fellow 187 students who finished their law degrees and started their degrees the same year.
Policies and demonstrations
Rasmus Paludan and his party represent strong extremist views on Islam and non-western immigration. Paludan is extremely opposed to non-Western immigration and Islam's presence in Denmark. He is well known for his numerous happenings and political demonstrations, often in areas with many Muslim immigrants. During these demonstrations he has presented anti-immigrant and racist statements and taunted Muslims who have shown up to show their opposition to him. At his protests, Paludan has burned the Quran and defaced it in other ways that many Muslims find offensive. Videos of the subsequent confrontations are shared on YouTube where his party has gathered a large following. Rasmus Paludan calls for putting expelled foreign citizens unwilling and unable to travel back to their country in detention camps in North-Eastern Greenland. In June 2020, Paludan held a demonstration in Aarhus, when a 52-year-old man pulled out a knife entered the cordoned-off area and ran towards Paludan. Police fired a warning shot but the assailant did not lay down his weapon whereupon police open fired and wounded the assailant in the leg. In the aftermath, there was unrest in the area: police were hit by fireworks, and rocks were thrown by other assailants in the Gellerup area of Aarhus.
Controversies
In January 2013, Paludan was given a 5-year restraining order, forbidding him to contact a then 24-year-old man whom he had been stalking since 2010, when they both started to study Latin at University of Copenhagen. Despite the restraining order, the harassment continued until December 2013. In 2015 Paludan was sentenced to a fine for offending the police officer who handled the stalking case. Paludan has stated a desire to ban Islam in Denmark, and to deport all Muslims from the country, reportedly for the preservation of its ethnic community. In April 2019, Paludan held a demonstration in Viborg that led to chaos, when 100 people showed up. Three people were arrested, and, in June 2019, a 24-year-old Syrian was sentenced to 60 days in jail for having thrown a rock at Paludan. He was also to be deported after the jail term and was banned from returning to Denmark for six years.
