Henrik Arens, a local politician in Aarhus, was met with a very unpleasant surprise when he had to go out to his car on Saturday to hold an election campaign.

Someone had tagged the word “racist”, or “racist” in Norwegian, and a swastika all over his silver-colored car.

Arens belongs to the party Nye Borgerlige, which is a national conservative, right-wing political party. The party is also known for having a clear anti-immigration and anti-Islam policy.

– To start with, I got quite angry and thought I had to get my heart rate down before I called the police, Arens says to Dagbladet.

He further says that the police quickly moved out to the crime scene and that the officers took pictures of the car.

Has happened before

Arens is in the middle of an election campaign during the municipal elections in Denmark, which will be held on 16 November.

On that occasion, he was to be visited by the party leader for Nye Borgerlige, Pernille Vermund, to hand out brochures at Bispetorv in Aarhus.

The brochures to be distributed were all in Arens’ car.

That’s how he put out the car fire at Wara’s

But this is not the first time his car has been vandalized.

Over the past month, he has, among other things, had yogurt and other foods spread over his car, according to the Danish newspaper BT, who first mentioned the case.

Arens tells Dagbladet that he does not normally receive threats or ugly comments, but he states that he has previously been called a neo-Nazi in the comments field on Facebook.

Drove the car anyway

Four weeks ago, the first candidate in Aarhus had New Civic advertisements put on his car in connection with the election campaign. And Arens believes that this is what has provoked the perpetrators.

– I do not think that it is a threat to me as a person, but that the perpetrators have prejudices around the party’s policy. They may think New Citizens is racist, but that’s not true. People do not know about our policies, he says and adds:

– Cut into eight car tires

– But I’m not very happy that it should affect me.

Arens says that the election campaign could not stop as a result of the incident, so he still chose to drive the car to Bispetorv to meet party leader Vermund.

– It was very awkward. This is not ok no matter what party you come from. It’s okay to disagree, but it’s not okay to ruin other parties or do vandalism, says Arens.

When Dagbladet called Arens on Saturday afternoon, he had just returned from the campaign, so he had not had time to call the insurance company.

– I do not want to drive around in my car when it looks like this. I will try to polish the car, but it probably needs brand new paint to repair the damage. In the meantime, I will have to borrow a car through the last days of the election campaign, he says.