Dutch far-right MP fined for posting image with Nazi flag on Twitter – Reuters

A far-right Dutch lawmaker has been fined for posting a doctored photo of two government ministers next to a Nazi flag, the Dutch public prosecutor’s office said in a statement. THURSDAY.

Pepijn van Houwelingen, of the populist Forum for Democracy (FVD) party, will have to pay a fine of €450.

“After reviewing the case, the Crown concludes that this constitutes a legal insult,” the statement said, adding that the photo was “unnecessarily offensive.”

Last September, van Houwelingen posted a photo showing Dutch Health Minister Ernst Kuipers raising a flag featuring the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, as well as an edited version of the same image in which a Nazi flag had been added.

Social Affairs and Employment Minister Karien van Gennip can be seen looking up and smiling at the flag in the background.

Van Houwelingen later deleted the tweet, but the two ministers took legal action, to the Minister of Health saying “a line (had) clearly been crossed.”

The Dutch MP then sought to justify himself in an op-ed on his party’s website, in which he said the reactions to his tweet were “a bit over the top”.

“Other members of the FVD are also constantly associated with Nazism,” he wrote. “But if we do it once – as lighthearted and teasing as they are – the world is too small. What a double standard. What hypocrisy!”

Both ministers are part of Mark Rutte’s centre-right coalition government – ​​Kuipers is from Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), while van Gennip is a Christian Democrat.

The far-right FVD, whose leader Thierry Baudet is openly eurosceptic and a supporter of Dutch policies first, is currently a small opposition party, holding five seats out of 150 in the lower house of parliament, and A of the 75 seats in the Senate.