By Peter Imanuelsen
June 16, 2020
Karl XII Greta Thunberg
Photos: Statue of King Charles XII by ArildV / Greta Thunberg by Anders Hellberg
There are now calls in Sweden to replace historic statues, with a former Mayor suggesting that the famous Swedish King Charles XII, also known as Carolus Rex, be replaced with a statue of the climate activist Greta Thunberg.
http://timesofsweden.com/2020/...After statues having been vandalized across the world by far-left extremists, there are now calls for statues to be removed in Sweden as well.
Statues of Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill and Christopher Columbus have all been vandalized in recent protests around the world.
In an opinion piece for Aftonbladet, former Mayor of Umeå municipality Jan Björinge, says that we shouldn’t have memorials for “oppressors”.
He goes on to suggest that we should use technology to create interactive experiences where removed statues once stood. For example using QR codes to give visitors information about a statue that previously stood there.
The former Mayor says that this is not a revision of history, saying that statues are symbols of ideologies, not objective history.
“Remove the autocrat Karl XII and replace him with the climate activist Greta Thunberg” he writes.
King Charles XII (or Carolus Rex) is one of Sweden’s most famous Kings. He is known for being a warrior King, leading the Swedish Empire to victory in defensive wars in the Great Northern war in the 1700s.
In 1700, a triple alliance of Denmark-Norway, Saxony-Poland-Lithuania and Russia launched a threefold attack on the Swedish Empire. However King Charles XII only 18 years old, led the Swedish army through multiple victories despite the Swedish army usually being outnumbered.
By 1706, Charles at only 24 years old had forced his enemies into submission. But by 1709, Charles XII was defeated at the Battle of Poltova.
Later on in the war, Great Britain, Hanover and Brandenburg-Prussia joined the alliance against the Swedish Empire.
The Great Northern War eventually ended in 1721 with the defeat of the Swedish Empire.
The Swedish King is not the only statue that the far-left wants to remove. Now a petition has been started to remove statue of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl Von Linné because of racism.
He is known as the father of modern taxonomy, inventing the modern system of naming organisms. He wrote the famous Systema Naturae.
