Swedish party suspends prominent member after comments about Anne Frank

The radical right-wing Swedish Democrats suspended a local politician and media personality for comments about Anne Frank. In a now-deleted Instagram post, Rebecka Fallenkvist called Anne Frank “immoral” and “horny.”

Fallenkvist was elected councilor of the Stockholm regional council at the end of last month. She is also one of the faces of the online media channel Riks. This channel was founded by Swedish Democrats and often covers topics from a right-handed angle.

The deleted Instagram post featured an edit of Anne Frank’s diary, with Fallenkvist writing: “Fifty pages later, Anne Frank just seems immoral to me. Excitement itself.” A screenshot of the message was shared by Israel’s Ambassador to Sweden, Ziv Nevo Kulman, among others.

The ambassador called the message “disrespectful” and “in stark contrast to Sweden’s efforts to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive.”

The party has now suspended Fallenkvist. She is not allowed to engage in political activities and will not be seen on the Riks Channel at this time. “We take Rebecka’s insensitive and inappropriate language on social media seriously and are beginning an internal investigation with our human resources department,” a party spokesperson told the national tabloid, among others. aftonbladet. “She has been suspended while this investigation is ongoing.”

According to Fallenkvist, his Instagram post was misunderstood. “The diary is a beautiful representation of the kindness and anger of man,” she told the national newspaper. Dagens Nyheter. “In the early chapters, Anne is like any other girl, living her life in peace and being interested in boys (which I have described). This good contrasts with the evil of Nazism. With my message, I wanted the good to portray Anne in human beings, but don’t minimize the evil she faced.”

This is not the first time that politicians have been discredited. On his party’s victory in last month’s parliamentary election, Fallenkvist spoke of a “helg-seger”, which literally means “a weekend win”, but could also be a play on the words “hell seger”. “. This is the Swedish version of the Nazi slogan “Sieg Heil”. Fallenkvist said she regretted her decision to give an interview while intoxicated, but denied giving a variation of the Nazi salute.

In last month’s national elections, Sweden’s Democrats won the most votes from the right-wing bloc they formed with other parties. However, they are not part of the minority government on which this week an agreement has been reached. The party will however have a direct influence on politics through a construction of tolerance.

Tomorrow the Swedish parliament will vote on the new minority government. It will be made up of Liberal-Conservatives, Liberals and Christian Democrats.