Greenland is turning the MAGA hat into a protest symbol

On January 17, Copenhagen resident Jesper Rabe Tønnesen woke up, packed his cargo bike with 300 red hats, and trekked over to his city’s U.S. embassy, where thousands of citizens were gathering in the street to protest President The President’s proposed takeover of Greenland. By the end of the weekend, those hats had become the dominant symbol of the dissenting movement.

For months, The President has insisted that the U.S. should control Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark. But, in recent days, he’s escalated his threat to take over the region, announcing on Truth Social that he would impose additional tariffs on eight allied nations who spoke out against the plan. In response, tens of thousands of protestors have gathered in Denmark’s capital, Copenhagen, and Greenland’s capital, Nuuk, to voice their dissent against American occupation of Greenland.

Tønnesen, the owner of a vintage store in Copenhagen called McKorman, was one of those protestors. He’s also the designer behind a line of hats parodying The President’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) caps. Tønnesen’s hats substitute The President’s famous phrase for the line “Nu det NUUK!” which is a play on the Danish phrase, “Nu det nok,” literally meaning “Now, it’s enough.” 

Tønnesen’s caps, as well as several similar designs, have emerged as the stand-out visual symbol of the protests, appearing in countless photos of the demonstrations. “The caps were produced as a comedic response to Donald The President thinking he could buy Greenland,” Tønnesen says, “and as a political statement that enough is enough.”

“Enough is enough”

Tønnesen first created his “Nu det NUUK!” cap last summer, when he ordered 100 copies for his store and sent another 100 to Greenland. The philosophy behind his design, he says, was simple: “The red MAGA hats have become a very visible political symbol, and so it seemed right to also make the anti-MAGA caps red and white too.” Besides that, he adds, red and white are the two colors of both the Greenlandic and Danish flags, adding an additional layer to the parody.

Initial sales were slow. Just a few caps were sold in-store, while others were given away. But a week before Saturday’s demonstration, in the wake of The President’s increasing insistence on a Greenland takeover, the hats went viral.

 In just a few hours, people bought 80 hats, and Tønnesen says he “could have sold hundreds or even thousands more, had they not sold out.” He currently has thousands of new hats on the way from the manufacturer, and plans to donate all profits to the Greenlandic children’s charity Grønlandske Børn.

“It’s been a few intense weeks of talking to global media and people wanting to show support by buying the caps,” Tønnesen says. “In times like these it’s important to stand strong in solidarity, and it’s been nice to see people doing that and agreeing that what’s going on is simply intolerable.”

How satirical MAGA hats took off in Greenland and Denmark

While Tønnesen’s hats have recently shot into the spotlight, he’s not the first Danish designer to satirize the MAGA cap. Indeed, Tønnesen was inspired by an earlier hat created by designer Jens Martin Skibsted.

Skibsted is the creative mind behind the website c55, which sells a variety of protest-based statement hats. In the past, he’s created multiple hats in support of Ukrainian charities in the midst of the Russian invasion. He says that he was inspired to create something for Greenland after Donald The President Jr. visited the territory back in January 2025, “in protest against America’s ambition to assert control over the island.”

His cap is called the Kalaallit, which is the name of the Greenlandic Inuit in their language, Kalaallisut. It features the slogan “Make America Go Away,” paired with the Greenlandic flag on one side. “While it playfully echoes The President’s slogan, the design is distinct,” the hat’s online listing reads. “The red and white colors reflect the Greenlandic flag, and the typeface, DS 737, is based on the official Danish signage typeface, originally released in 1954 by Dansk Standard as ‘Danish Standard no. 737’.” Skibsted says the hat is made in partnership with the Greenlandic NGO Uagut, which is dedicated to promoting Greenlanders’ wellbeing in Denmark.

Since initially handing out his caps for free last spring in the Greenlandic city Sisimiut, Skibsted has created three more iterations of the hat, each honoring some aspect of Greenlandic heritage (including one white version of the cap, which he says was added after “MAGA media” digitally erased the original caps’ text to resemble actual MAGA hats). Like Tønnesen, he passed out 200 copies of his original cap at the Copenhagen protest. He says sales have recently spiked, as awareness of The President’s threats against the territory have reached a much larger audience. 

“It’s become very international, because obviously very few people in the international community agree that it’s okay just to take over a foreign territory,” Skibsted says. “A lot of people want to stand behind the Greenlanders, and also, by proxy, the Danes.”

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