You need to see this picture of a woman hitting a neo-Nazi with her purse

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If you haven’t seen it, a cathartic meme of a badass Swedish woman hitting a neo-Nazi with a purse is circulating in some progressive corners of the internet right now.

This fierce woman is the hero many of us need right now for our revenge fantasies in light of the bleak reality of a Trump presidency and emboldened white nationalists. (Though it goes without saying, please don’t actually attack Trump supporters and neo-Nazis with your purse.)

The photograph from 1985 depicts Danuta Danielsson, whose mother survived a German Nazi concentration camp. The photo went viral (even without the help of the internet) and Danielsson was praised at the time, according to The Washington Post.

Since then, her legacy of taking zero shit has become somewhat controversial. A Swedish artist planned to memorialize Danielsson, who has since died, by making a statue of the purse-slinging hero. Susana Arwin shared her first model on Facebook.

But a local committee in the city of Växjö, where the incident took place, rejected the proposal. The statue sparked a national debate in Sweden about whether Danielsson was an offender or hero according to The Washington Post.

According to the committee, a statue of a woman who used her handbag as a weapon would glorify violence. “We in Växjö work for democracy and free speech. Of course, we don’t like Nazis,” city councillor Eva Johansson told The Washington Post on Friday.
“But we can’t accept that one can hit a person because one does not like him or her. Furthermore, a close relative has called us and has said he does not want Danielsson to be remembered that way,” Johansson said.

Of course we shouldn’t condone violence. But c’mon, the Nazi’s put Danielsson’s mother in a concentration camp. She gets to hit the garbage human with a purse, and we can celebrate the small act of defiance. The assertion that she’s an offender is outrageous.

A lot of other people thought the committee’s decision was crap too, so they armed other statues with handbags.

Statue or not, the internet is loving Danielsson’s act of defiance, allowing her to be properly memorialized in the digital age.

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