Antisemitic statements, including one mocking Holocaust victims with a picture of Anne Frank, were discovered on the social media accounts of regional politicians from the far-right Sweden Democrats party.
Per Olsson, who represents the party on the city council of Oskarshamn, a coastal Swedish city, earlier this year posted a picture of Anne Frank captioned “coolest Jew in the shower room” on the Russian social network VKontakt, the Expressen daily reported last Friday.
Anne Frank, a Dutch Jew who wrote a famous diary while hiding for two years from the Nazis, died of typhus in 1945 at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Out of 6 million Jewish Holocaust victims, the Nazis and their collaborators killed more than half in gas chambers – some disguised as shower rooms.
The Expressen report was part of a project in which journalists for that daily and the Expo magazine looked into the digital footprint of many politicians from various parties ahead of the country’s September 9 general and local elections.
Sweden Democrats is currently in third place according to various polls, with 18.7 percent of the vote. Its share was just under 13 percent in the 2014 elections.
The journalists also found antisemitic material on the social media accounts of Raghu Jacobsen, who represents the party on the city council of Stenungsund, located in western Sweden.
“As long as Rothschild controls the economy and with the modern slavery on this planet, there will be anti-Semitism. #Jews #israel,” he wrote in English in February on Twitter. One month later, he shared a picture of a woman with a milk package and the English-language text: “What is the difference between a cow and the Holocaust? You cannot milk a cow for 70 years.”
Martin Sihlén, representing the Sweden Democrats in Örkelljunga in Sweden’s south, wrote on Facebook that “Hitler wasn’t so bad” and “did not lie about Jews.” He also wrote that “international Jewry is thirsting for destroying Europe. It was ultimately not Germany who started the Second World War, it was the Jews.”
While SD has no chance of entering government as long as the other parties refuse to reconsider its pariah status, it will nonetheless wield strong influence, holding key positions on parliamentary committees that draft legislation.
