Statues have been vandalized across the world in recent weeks by leftist extremists and Black Lives Matter supporters, but now there are also calls to remove statues in Sweden, including one politician writing that a statue of Swedish King Charles XII should be replaced with one of climate activist Greta Thunberg.
The call to build a statue to Greta come from former Mayor of Umeå Jan Björinge in an opinion piece he published in Aftonbladet. In the article, he argues that Swedes should not have memorials for “oppressors” and believes the best candidate to replace King Charles XII, also known as Carolus Rex, is the 17-year-old Thunberg.
Ett litet försök att bidra till statydebatten… https://t.co/eE993DUQRs
— Jan Björinge (@janbjoringe) June 16, 2020
As Remix previously reported, statues of, Winston Churchill, Thomas Jefferson, Christopher Columbus, and even the statue of Matthias Baldwin, an abolitionist opposed to slavery, have all been vandalized during a wave of riots that were sparked by the death of George Floyd.
Björinge also alleged that the statutes being attacked in the U.S. “stand for the white power movement’s anti-democratic values…and that is why these statues are so hated by many black Americans.” However, he omits that many of the statues attacked were actually involved in helping free slaves, including Polish-American hero Tadeusz Kościuszko.
Björinge continued by saying that Sweden should use modern technology to teach people about history in places where removed statues once stood. He suggested using QR codes to give visitors background information about a monument that used to stand on the site.
The former mayor also argued that statues are symbols of different ideologies, not objective history, so the act of replacing Charles XII should not be perceived as historical revisionism.
“Remove the autocrat Karl XII and replace him with the climate activist Greta Thunberg,” he suggested.
Björinge said that the statue to Charles XII represents “evil deeds and outdated values” that encumber the public space. He argued that statues “are erected to disseminate the values of power at the present time” and that Thunberg’s work as a climate activist was more aligned with modern Swedish norms.
In response, some Twitter users created first design suggestions of how this statue could look like while others consider it to be a provocation.
Här har vi ett första arbetsprov. Tycker det blir bra, speciellt med ANTIFAS weapon of choice, värjan. pic.twitter.com/mvtOBIniFe
— Fredric Morenius (@FredricMorenius) June 16, 2020
King Charles XII is one of the Sweden’s most famed kings and is held up as a warrior who led the Swedish Empire in the Great Northern War in the 1700s.
As an 18 years old, he led the Swedish army in a defensive war against the triple alliance of Denmark-Norway, Saxony-Poland-Lithuania, and Russia launched an attack on Sweden. The Great Northern War eventually ended in 1721 with the defeat of the Swedish Empire.
But the Swedish king is not the only statue under discussion right now. Far-left extremists now also want to remove the statue of the famous Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician Carl Von Linné because of alleged racism. They have even started a petition to have the statue removed.
He is the author of “Systema Naturae” and is most known as the father of modern taxonomy because of his role inventing the modern system of naming organisms.
