The city of Borås’ commercial shows far too many Swedes, according to the local Gota Media newspaper Borås tidning. The municipality of Borås agrees and has taken down the film to be replaced by a new version with more people of non-European origin.
The story is now attracting international attention as an example of the exceptional political correctness that still characterizes Sweden.
The commercial was produced by the municipal company Borås TME with the aim of promoting the city. Images and short clips from different parts of the city are interspersed with sequences of people bathing and walking in what appears to be a fairly typical and uncontroversial Swedish ‘municipal film’. However, the film is heavily attacked by local media who believe that too many people in the film are Swedish.
– The criticism we have received is that the film does not correspond to the diversity we have in Borås and we will rework the film, Alexandra Pérez Liberg, the newly appointed marketing manager at Borås TME, promises Göteborgs-Posten.
It was the Gota Media newspaper Borås Tidning that first “discovered” and problematized the absence of people of non-European origin in the film. They quickly contacted those responsible to “put them on the spot” and the film was soon taken down. Those responsible have now apologized and promised a “much greater focus on diversity” in the future.
According to Borås TME’s former CEO Helena Alcenius, it was already clear that the “lost diversity perspective” would be corrected by the summer – but after the mass media campaign, the original film was immediately removed. She also regrets that a commercial that does not show people with a skin color other than white was allowed through – but points out that the film does feature two men holding hands.
Lisa Höglund from the advertising agency Brainforest, who helped produce the film, also agrees that it is positive that the commercial is being taken down – because it was going to be “updated” with more people with darker skin anyway.
The fact that a Swedish city is deleting its own commercial because it is seen by too many Swedes is causing both amusement and more serious criticism on social and international media.
– One wonders whether the newspaper would have complained if the film had shown no white people at all, asks British political commentator Paul Joseph Watson, suggesting that such a film would have been seen as a prime example of “diversity and inclusion”.
Watson further notes that one third of the population of Borås has a foreign background and is an example of the extreme demographic change that mass immigration has created in Sweden in recent decades.
– 32 percent of the population in Borås has a foreign background, which is typical of Sweden, which has embraced mass immigration to such an extent that ethnic Swedes will be a minority in their own country by 2050, Watson adds.
