BBB Candidate Withdraws After Nazi Tweets

A candidate MP from the BoerBurgerBeweging withdraws after it emerged that during the corona crisis he called numerous politicians ‘child abuser’, ‘pharma whore’ and ‘from niece to Nazi bitch’ on X, then Twitter. Jasper Rekers is number thirteen on the BBB candidate list.

Rekers will not take his seat if he is elected. He ran an anonymous Twitter account for two years in which he continuously insulted public figures and made Nazi comparisons, regularly calling for tribunals and uprisings.

After being confronted with an investigation by the ANP news agency into his online past, Rekers initially denied it. After the BBB was informed, he relented. He has apologized to the party. He says he was not aware of the insults, was ‘very shocked’ by the content of the tweets and the party distanced itself from them.

Rekers informed BBB that the tweets come from a ‘dark period in his life’. “I was seriously concerned about developments in society and that had an effect on my state of mind,” Rekers said in response. He adds that he only recognizes some of the expressions presented to him. If his statements have hurt people, “I am deeply sorry,” he says.

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Of coronacrisis ‘has also made major dents in many lives’, the party itself says. It is important for BBB that Rekers did not inform the party. She respects his ‘inevitable decision’ not to take his possible place in Parliament.

‘Child molester’

From the Twitter account Verzet op Links, Rekers called the then corona minister Hugo de Jonge, among other things, a ‘child molester’ and ‘PABO quack’. He wondered whether the CDA minister has already booked a ‘one-way ticket to Nuremberg’ to the Nazi tribunal. After Prime Minister Mark Rutte wished the new Chancellor Olaf Scholz good luck, the BBB politician called Rutte ‘NSB’er. The Flemish virologist Marc van Ranst compared Rekers to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels and murderer Marc Dutroux.

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Resistance on the Left

Rekers (35) is an entrepreneur from Enschede and a teacher at Saxion University of Applied Sciences. With his thirteenth position on the list, according to the polls he had a good chance of getting into Parliament. The ANP found nine hundred Twitter messages over a period of two years. During the corona pandemic, Rekers changed the name of his personal account to Verzet op Links. There, the focus is mainly on policy surrounding the pandemic, on which subject comparisons are incessantly drawn with Nazi Germany.

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BBB leader Caroline Van der Plas has often spoken out in favor of politicians dealing with each other more politely. Harsh accusations against the person do not improve ‘confidence in politics’, Van der Plas said in 2021.

D66 in particular had to pay the price for the candidate MP. According to Rekers, that is a ‘Nazi party’, the party congress a ‘fascist ball’. Rob Jetten, now party leader, went ‘from niece to Nazi bitch’, according to Rekers. He compared party chairman Jan Paternotte with Goebbels. D66 healthcare minister Ernst Kuipers was called a ‘pimp’, ‘child abuser’ and ‘war criminal’ in one tweet.

‘To hell’

Rekers attacked Christian (former) politicians on their religious beliefs. “To hell, Gert-Jan, via Nuremberg,” he wrote to former Christian Union leader Gert-Jan Segers. He also called former CU minister Arie Slob the devil. When MP Nilüfer Gündoğan posted a photo of her getting vaccinated against corona, he called her a ‘pharma whore’. Rekers also focused on scientists and journalists, such as virologist Marion Koopmans, sports journalist Jeroen Stekelenburg and columnist Asha ten Broeke, and organizations such as the Health Council, NOS and RTL News.