Being Danish and having lived for several years in Brazil, I was well aware that the Scandinavian countries are regularly praised as models of successful social policy. Their welfare systems, high economic equality, and human-development index are frequently cited to prove that social-democratic policies are both possible and effective today.
Yet this coin has another side: an idealised notion of a supposedly more “civilised,” morally evolved “culture.” Besides being racist, this ideal ignores Denmark’s own colonial and slave-trading past (1), and its – sometimes violent – struggles for social rights and democracy (2).
An unexpected rumour
The political relevance of this moral geography became clear when a Mexican colleague asked me about a story circulating on social networks in Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil: according to the post, anyone receiving welfare in Denmark cannot vote, and the post urged Mexico to adopt the same rule. Shocked, I denied the claim—I have received several kinds of benefits and have always voted (after all, my mom would never allow me to skip that civic rite). But the surprise piqued my curiosity: where had this falsehood come from, and how had it spread through Latin America?
Instead of debating the fairness of welfare itself, this essay explores how Scandinavia—especially Denmark and Sweden—has been distorted in Brazilian and wider Latin-American political narratives amid a strong right-wing resurgence that rejects egalitarian social programmes and the state as an instrument of justice. As such I seek to set out an approach to understanding how the sharing of false information in virtual space, as regulated by algorithms owned by social media companies, is informed and exacerbated by – often archaic – offline ideas, reinforcing beliefs about culture, race and space as static and discrete.
A rhetorical appropriation of Scandinavia
Thus, I argue that Scandinavian societies are being deployed rhetorically by the right, not to promote economic redistribution – arguably one of the most evident characteristics of these societies – but to disseminate disinformation and legitimise authoritarian projects that sustain the historically violent inequality of most Latin American countries. Middle- and upper-class mobilisation against social programmes (backed by the armed forces) financed fake-news campaigns from the 1964 coup to the election of Jair Bolsonaro, and 8 January 2023 riots and coup attempt – in a key part of this strategy (3).
To exemplify this dynamic, the below analysis centres on two widely circulated fake-news cases that marshal moral imaginaries and distorted data to attack the welfare state, social rights, and democratic institutions.
Conceptual lenses: moral geographies and moral panic
Drawing on Stanley Cohen, moral panics erupt when a condition, event, or group is cast as a threat to societal values. Latin-American conservatism systematically mobilises such affect to denounce “communism,” “corruption,” and LGBTQIA+ rights. Social-media networks have amplified these narratives, as seen in Brazil’s 2016 and 2020 elections. They operate through what Shapiro calls moral geographies: That is, ethical maps that pre-structure explicit political discourse, spatially locating corruption or vice in Congress, the Left, or “Brazilian culture.” (4) This same toolbox frames social policy and liberal criminal law as fostering dependence, laziness, crime, and drug use—especially among racialised groups (5)—while Scandinavia is brandished as the “civilised” example while similarly omitting historical context, implying a cultural or even natural, that is, racist explanation.
Case 1 – Do welfare recipients lose the vote in Denmark – No, they don’t?
In 2023 a viral post in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina claimed that Danes on benefits forfeit their voting rights. Denmark’s embassy and fact-checking outlets such as Chequeado (6), UOL (7), and Boatos.org (8) quickly debunked this. Thus, historically, from 1849 to 1961, Danes who relied on poor relief could indeed lose certain civil and political rights, but sweeping social reforms begun in 1933 and concluded in 1961 abolished those restrictions (9). Decontextualising that history allows a moralistic, racist narrative in which the “industrious” and “civilised” Northern citizen is contrasted with a Southern “social parasite.” The tale also erases the violence of the old Danish poor-law regime, which involved forced confinement in workhouses with prison-like restrictions for the poor and indigent, largely seen by national elites as biologically and racially inferior (10).
Case 2 – “Denmark has no minimum wage”
In a similarly de-contextualised way, the Brazilian right-wing think tank, Von Mises Institute, published a piece in 2015, as right-wing political radicalisation was increasing with demonstrations against the centre-left Worker’s Party, titled All the socialists want to be Denmark – should they? (11) Under this polemic title the article divides society into a “parasitic” class and an “entrepreneurial” one, while arguing that freedom would flourish if Brazil abolished its minimum wage - because, it is claimed, Denmark has no such legislation.
However, this claim is decontextualized as it ignores Denmark’s corporatist tripartite system, in which unions, employers, and the state negotiate sectoral agreements that function, in law and practice, as wage floors. That arrangement is viable only thanks to high union density and socioeconomic equality - conditions lacking in Brazil, where big business wields outsized power over politics, particularly on the right, including with the use of physical violence, most notably with the murder of journalists and human rights defenders. Furthermore, the Institute’s article also notes that dismissed workers receive no statutory severance pay in Denmark while omitting the generous unemployment insurance and activation policies funded by high taxes, which give the Danish model its famed flexibility.
Conclusion – Scandinavia as a moral co-ordinate for panic and fake news
The two examples show how parts of the Latin-American right use Scandinavian countries as moral reference points. Once stripped of context, these societies legitimise contradictory projects: rolling back welfare while deploying a civilisational rhetoric of whiteness and “cultural” superiority. Understanding this moral geography of fake news reveals how colonial imaginaries of progress and underdevelopment continue to shape a hyper-connected world where information travels instantly yet through historically conditioned filters which the algorithm tends to reinforce as the cognitive bias towards confirmation. Combating disinformation therefore demands grappling with the culturalist narratives that render such distortions plausible, as only an informed, plural, and critically engaged democracy can take full account of Brazilian – and global - history, culture, and society as an interconnected whole, rather than a series of discrete cultures that can be ranked on hierarchical scales.