Ghost of Facebook Past Comes to Haunt Rookie MP

Ghost of Facebook Past Comes to Haunt Rookie MP

On Wednesday, December 11, the Lithuanian parliament’s Ethics and Procedures Commission met to discuss facebook posts made in the past by newly-elected MP Petras Dargis, who belongs to the controversial Nemuno Aušra party led by Remigijus Žemaitaitis.

In the posts in question, Dargis published an indecent picture of a prostitute leaning into the driver’s side window of an automobile, saying, “I’ll do everything your wife doesn’t.” The speech balloon of the driver says, “Can you make me a tasty goulash?”

More troubling are older posts dating back to September of 2011 where Dargis repeats anti-Semitic jokes. In one, a father asks his sons how the good Santa Claus differs from the evil Jew. Santa is good and the Jew is bad, one says. Another chimes in: Santa gives gifts from out of his bag, but the Jew takes them and puts them in the bag. That’s all true, the father says, but more importantly, Santa enters by coming down the chimney, and the Jews exits by going up the chimney.

In another post from the same time, Dargis says a “good Christian” is leading “several bad Jews” into the forest to shoot them. The Jews cower every time they hear something in the forest. “What are you worried about?” the Christian says. “I still have to go back through the forest.”

Nemuno Aušra party leader Žemaitaitis was kicked out of his earlier parliamentary party and was forced out as MP after making a series of anti-Semitic facebook posts back in the spring of 2013 continuing unabated for over a year. Lithuania’s Constitutional Court found he had broken his oath of office and he resigned. Žemaitaitis then made political capital out of his alleged anti-Semitism and status as victim to found his party which came in third in recent parliamentary elections. The Social Democratic Party initially promised not to for a ruling coalition with Žemaitaitis but then reneged.