By ANDREW PRICE
The hippy enclave that is the self-styled independent country of Christiania, in Denmark, occupies the site of an old barracks and is home to around 1,000 people.
Advised to visit it on a trip to Denmark I entered this dusty enclave of alternative living quite ignorant of its history. At the entrance a sign declared “No Photo”. The last time I saw that was at Moscow airport under the communist regime.
Walking through hordes of tourists by endless saggy racks of lace edged clothing I was reminded of a downmarket Camden lock fused with every inner city “people’s project” ever built. The cobbled together wooden shacks were covered in that familiar “rainbow weed vernacular”.
A waft of marijuana and patchouli oil told me I wasn’t at an Oklahoma bake n’ buy sale. Jostling through the crowd I saw a very still man in a slit balaclava holding sentry to what seemed like a Punch and Judy theatre. At first I thought he was a human statue or the ticket seller to a kids show but very soon realised he was a rather threatening looking dealer peddling drugs, the curtains being the makeshift showroom to his wares.
I nearly asked: “Is that a gun shaped penis in your trousers or do you just hate to see me”? I’m glad I didn’t because only recently the undercurrent of criminality which makes up Christiania’s main thoroughfare Pusher Street, spilled over to a drug shooting that has prompted officers to tear down 37 cannabis stalls and arrest 18 people. Kilos of marijuana and hundred of joints were confiscated.
The idea that these meek locals encourage then independently and non-violently dismantle a drug trade that generates $150 million a year within Christiania is just one of the many tragic contradictions of this commune.
Christiania’s central precepts are the rejection of property rights, inclusivity and (with predictable conformity) tolerance towards cannabis. I used to enjoy a puff but soon realised that in the grand scheme it forms, over time, a rather dull axiom to one’s existence, especially if that existence seeks to be independently alternative.
For starters, if you’re planning to occupy someone’s land and form a radically unconventional society (without the Amish’s extensive land and massive hand book for the task) doesn’t it make sense to have a clear head and not obsess over an activity that invites criminality and thus pisses off the very people (the State) from whom you might desire good will?
The personable spokesperson of the community – Mr Risenga Manghezi- at a TED talk mentioned how it all started as a fairy tale. But unlike Hans Christian Andersen, Christiania started with violence, the magic being the collective demonstration of Newton’s Conservation of energy thrown upon a reluctant fence by a big plank. Once through the wardrobe, this Narnia just happened to be a disused military base, or “abandoned” as hippies like to say of empty property they wish to live in.
Mr Manghezi’s persuasive rhetoric of Christiania describes their children and nature growing wild and free like (here we go again) cannabis. At this point he seems naively exasperated that this universal token of hippy freedom would form a turf war – ignoring that the whole tiny edifice of their utopia exists within gargantuan forces of criminal incentives that strain state tolerance of alternative lifestyles and property ownership.
Manghazi goes on to describe the constant battle between themselves and the Danish state. The State once offered to sell them Christiania or they would sell it to developers. He then says how, in their defence, they couldn’t possibly buy the land that they considered wasn’t their ideology to own, but apparently it was theirs to occupy.
Mr Manghezi talked of Christiania being a sanctuary to the poor dispossessed people. He describes a character whose freedom “to be” consists of sitting about drinking outside a convenience store. Apparently he has “a life plan” that “money can’t buy” (apart from the beer and the lack of applicants from those with money).
I know I know, the sun’s gonna fry the planet man and we’re all gonna die anyway and in the grand scheme of things being an idle boozer makes as much sense as anything else and that’s all great…BUT… what about all the other similar “excluded” people outside of Christiana’s image bubble?
Mr Manghezi is right, the view across the water from Christiania should be a view that money can’t buy, but like his characterful pal, he talks as if these values were already cherished universal principles on lifestyle and ownership which clearly they are not. One doesn’t expect Christiana to be the Venus Project but equally Christiania demands to live by principles that can only be achieved because they receive external protection and social concessions from a state they seem to hold in distain.