A leading Sweden Democrat has been forced to resign following revelations that she had posted xenophobic and insulting messages on various far-right websites.
“For us it’s primarily a question that representatives must never represent extremism regardless of platform,” Sweden Democrat spokesperson Martin Kinnunen said on Tuesday.
Marie Stensby represented the Sweden Democrats in Jämtland in northern Sweden and was voted in as an alternate member of executive board at the recent party conference; until Tuesday’s revelation in the Expressen daily she had furthermore intended to stand for election to Sweden’s Riksdag in 2014.
The local politician previously leapt to national media attention in November 2012 when she called for the establishment of a “reservation for Sweden’s indigenous peoples” in her home county of Jämtland. “In my darkest moments I wonder if you (Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt)… would consider adopting an old American model. For us Swedes who want to carry on being just that, Swedes,” she explained at the time.
Stensby is among some eleven representatives for the Sweden Democrats named by Expressen on Tuesday to be the people behind aliases used to express insulting and xenophobic comments on various websites frequented by Sweden’s far-right. The aliases have been exposed by a group named Researchgruppen which is credited by the newspaper with having established their identities via the forum platform Disqus.