GroenLinks-PvdA is reporting defamation against PVV MPs Maikel Boon and Patrick Crijns. That writes de Volkskrant Monday. According to the newspaper, the PVV members manage the Facebook page ‘We are NOT reporting Geert Wilders’, on which (fake) photos and cartoons of, among others, GroenLinks-PvdA leader Frans Timmermans are shared.
wrote earlier this month The Green Amsterdammer also a piece about the Facebook page that was founded in 2014, then removed by Facebook, and relaunched in 2017. The magazine found that administrators posted, among other things, AI images of blonde, white women with blue eyes being chased by fictional migrants. The makers entered prompts (effective commands) such as ‘Make her blonde, innocent and pretty’.
For example, a fake image – created with the help of AI – shows Timmermans with his hands on a pile of money. “Be careful! GroenLinks/PvdA want to take your hard-earned money!”, reads the accompanying text. Underneath these messages, people post inflammatory texts such as ‘Take off his head for fraud and treason!’.
“Politicians are increasingly being threatened, we also see that during this campaign,” GroenLinks-PvdA said. de Volkskrant. “That is a threat to democracy. Pages like this contribute to that.” During the anti-asylum protest on October 12 in Amsterdam, Timmermans was intimidated on a terrace by a group of men while he was giving an interview to RTL News. A man scolded him from up close as a “right-wing, left-wing cancer whore.”
NEW: Give this item as a gift
As an NRC subscriber you can subscribe every month 10 items give as a gift to someone without an NRC subscription. The recipient can read the article directly, without a paywall.