Definitely not a cult, right?
An ex-mayor of a Swedish municipality took some heat online for suggesting that a statue of King Charles XII be pulled down, and a sculpture of Greta Thunberg or the late UN head, Dag Hammarskjold, be installed instead.
Jan Björinge, the former mayor of the Umea municipality, couldn’t resist jumping in as the Black Lives Matter-inspired trend of toppling statues gained traction across the world. Joining the debate in an opinion piece for the Aftonbladet newspaper, he wondered if it was “right to allow public places to disseminate anti-democratic values†on Swedish soil.
He recalled that a number of statues of “oppressors†had been pulled down over the years, and made particular mention of Vladimir Lenin, Karl Marx, and Saddam Hussein – quite a mixed bag, in anyone’s view. And Sweden, he said, had its own bronze candidate for removal, who also went by the name Karl.
For Björinge, King Karl XII (otherwise known as Charles XII), who occupied the Swedish throne between 1697 and 1718, was undemocratic enough to warrant being removed from his pedestal. Pushing ahead with his argument, he went a lot further than others who advocate the tearing down of controversial statues.
Hammarskjöld, a renowned Swedish diplomat who led the United Nations in the 1950s, and Thunberg, a long-time mainstream-media darling, especially since her incendiary UN speech in 2019, “contributed to a more humane and more sustainable world,†the retired politician insisted.
This actually didn’t go over to well online with fellow Swedes, but, personally, I think this is great. Let’s replace the king’s statue with that of a girl who stopped going to school, has no high school diploma, and is the face of a movement that’s supposed to be about science, yet, all she does is scold.
