In an opinion piece published in Expressen, a tabloid daily newspaper, popular stand-up comedian and columnist Ozz Nujen slammed the right-wing Sweden Democrats (SD), whom he not only blamed for the stalemate following the September parliamentary election, but also called 'apes'.
Nujen started off by saying that it's easier to be an ape than a human being, only to expand his monkey metaphor further.
"Apes don't have to deal with a parliamentary situation, in which some apes, more precisely 17.5 percent of them, don't see other apes as their equals, that is simple monkeys. And those 17.5 percent of apes want to be in control and lead the flock. Why, not the entire flock, of course. Some apes must be removed, while others have to change their mind and so on", Nujen wrote, alluding to the recent general election results, where sizable gains by the right-wing Sweden Democrats resulted in an impasse.
Furthermore, Nujen called the Sweden Democrats 'racists', describing the current situation by saying that "some want to take control with the help of the racists, while others want the racists to continue as background artists". In conclusion, he reminded the readership that 82 percent of Swedes "didn't vote for the racists".
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Nujen's lunge against Sweden's largest opposition party triggered an angry outcry in the social media.
"So, Ozz 'Creepy' Nujen calls 1.1 million Swedes 'apes'. Had someone called Ozz himself an ape, the entire PC-ensemble would have spewed out its the entire arsenal of 'racism' epithets and filled the PC-media with warlike headlines," user PK Kontroll tweeted. "The 'decent' ones have called us Sweden Democrats 'brown rats' and 'cockroaches', now we are apes as well," he added, citing previous verbal attacks by Expressen columnist Cecilia Hagen and high-ranking Social Democrat Ingvar Ståhl.
"Well, apes is fine, over 99 percent of our genes are the same. But calling over a million people who voted SD racists is really indecent," Eva Häggström tweeted.
"He just wants to throw in the racist card to prompt someone to say that he's the monkey himself. It's the only card he's playing with. The devil knows what kind of card game is on his mind, but it must be sad," another user wrote.
Other users were indignant that Expressen published such deeply offensive material.
Lastly, many called Nujen a 'sponsor of terrorism', as Uzbek terrorist Rakhmat Akilov, the man who rammed a crowd of pedestrians in April 2017 in Stockholm, claimed to have worked illegally at Nujen's two villas on the island of Gotland, for which he received SEK 85,000 ($9,500). Nujen doggedly denied all the allegations.
Meanwhile, the public support for the SD has increased further after the election, making the Sweden Democrats, whom the other parties still try to isolate with the help of a cordon sanitaire, Sweden's second-largest party with 21.1 percent.