At the libertarian net magazine Free times, you could on August 24 read about how the Bonnier family, concerned about the growing hate on the Internet, started a campaign against net bullying in their magazine for young women, VeckoRevyn. The Bonniers also demanded that the state create new, stringent laws against what they called net-hate and a new special department called the “Internet Ombudsman.”
They even created a stylish and lavish commercial for just this purpose.
And sure, it is a praiseworthy goal. Most of us view bullying and the spread of hatred as a cancer on the Internet—and just like cancer, it can be deadly. The family of the late Lucas Hertzman has experienced this first-hand. Hertzman committed suicide because the online hatred toward him from the feminist party’s youth organization, Young Feminists, had become too much for this fragile person to handle—a case that AVfM Sweden has already written several articles about.
The mainstream media, however, has never mentioned this particular case of net bullying. Newspapers that otherwise love to revel in these types of stories, at least when they affect women, have not printed a single line of text on the fate of Lucas Hertzman. They have not even held him up as an example of how badly hate of this kind can hurt someone. Major Swedish newspapers such as Dagens Nyheter, Expressen, GT, the Evening Post, and Sydsvenskan have all remained dead silent—an inaction that many in the social media have found very strange. On Flashback, media people behind the scenes promised that articles would be published, but they never appeared. Nor did any TV news channels, such as TV4 or SVT, take up the story about a young transsexual man who had been bullied to death by the youth league of a political party that now represents Sweden in the European Parliament.
The explanation, however, is probably easier than one might think.
All the newspapers and TV channels listed above (except SVT) are owned by the Bonnier Group—that same Bonnier Group that cares so much about victims of net bullying that they now lobby for stringent laws against what they call net-hate. Especially the kind directed at women online. And if you look at the list of the biggest economic contributors to the feminist party, you will not find Benny Andersson of ABBA at the top. Kristina Gustafsson Bonnier donated twice as much, only to be beaten by a measly 50,000 SEK from one Stefan Bengtsson.
So why is Kristina Gustafsson Bonnier the second largest contributor to the feminist party? The explanation probably lies in that her and Åke Bonnier’s common daughter, Anna Rantala Bonnier, is one of the top names in the party. She is currently the seventh name on the party’s election list for Stockholm.
In 2002, at the age of 18, Anna Rantala Bonnier was already ranked as Sweden’s third-richest teenager. In 2006, she became a member of the Feminist Initiative. However, it was not until last year that she became an active member.
Since then, it appears as if the party suddenly got a much larger media space. In less than a year, they grew from a 0.2% party to one that crossed the 4% barrier to the European Parliament—a feat that very few could achieve.
Many have attributed this huge success to party leader Gudrun Schyman, who you would likely consider to be a skilled politician because she basically took a dead party to the European Parliament in less than a year. But that skillful she is not. No one is.
A more likely theory is that the party has Anna Rantala Bonnier and her rich and influential father and mother to thank for this express ticket into the power parlor. Likewise, Lucas Hertzman’s family has the right to know the reason for their son’s death and to address those responsible for it. Powerful patrons are always good to have if you want to bully someone to death without the risk of having to pay the consequences.
I will conclude with a quote from the blog “The undisturbed mind,” from which much of this information has been taken:
The Bonnier clan seem to treat FI as a father who buys a horse for her daughter. If the horse gets injured the daughter will be sad, so you have to protect the horse, even though it might be totally retarded, and should really be put down. It’s the daughter’s hobby. And of course she will get to play policymaker with Sweden and its taxpayers.
