Far-right FvD MP facing fine for swastika tweet about Cabinet members

Far-right Parliamentarian Pepijn van Houwelingen should be convicted of charges related to an “unnecessarily offensive” tweet about Cabinet member Ernst Kuipers and Karien van Gennip, said the Public Prosecution Service (OM) on Monday. He should be sentenced to pay a fine of 450 euros for the post on social media platform Twitter of an altered photo where the two politicians were shown hoisting a swastika flag.

Kuipers was the minister of health in 2022, when the post was distributed, while Van Gennip was the minister of social affairs and employment. The tweet also showed the original, unedited photo of Kuipers raising a flag depicting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These are seventeen goals, such as eradicating poverty, that UN member states are trying to achieve.

Van Houwelingen expressed his view that these goals are “totalitarian” and “utopian” and wanted to warn against them, he said during a session in front of a three-judge panel in the District Court of The Hague. He believes that this is precisely his duty as a member of parliament, and said it falls under freedom of expression. His lawyer defended that the message is not aimed at the man, but at the ball.

The prosecutor disagreed. She raised the issue that the doctored photo shows Kuipers raising the flag with a swastika, with Van Gennip next to him. In this way, the ministers are associated with the “death and destruction” of the Nazi regime, she argued.

The prosecutor also did not agree with Van Houwelingen’s explanation that he was concerned specifically with the SDGs and not the Ministers, because he explicitly mentioned the goals in the tweet. Most users of Twitter, which has since rebranded as X, would have only seen the message in passing, she stated. Because of this, the MP’s intention is lost on most people, she remarked.

In retrospect, Van Houwelingen finds it a “politically clumsy tweet” because it gave his political opponents “a stick to beat with.” He said he did not mean the swastika as a “literal equation” with the Ministers but as a symbol of evil aimed at UN goals. Supporters of Van Houwelingen were also present, one of whom the judge had to order to be quiet.

A day after posting it, he deleted the post and replaced it with an edit of the same photo but showing a communist flag.

It was a bit stupid, or maybe clumsy. But that doesn’t mean it’s punishable,” his lawyer said.

Last year, the OM recommended the same fine of 450 euros against Van Houwelingen for the post on X. He objected to that, which is why the matter ended up in court. The court will rule on October 21.