Comment: One of the most interesting matters that media culture Professor Mikko Lehtonen states in the Tampere University publication, Aikalainen, is that the rise of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) was helped by the traditional parties that didn’t look down on some aspects of their campaign message.
“If for example the Social Democrats would not have started to clearly go in that direction but would have stated that we have certain constitutional values and a certain welfare state tradition, it could have challenged this (PS) phenomenon,” said Lehtonen. “I think the old political elite could take a look at itself in the mirror.”
Lehtonen is correct in stating that by not challenging strongly enough the rise of the PS, the traditional parties fuelled it with their lack of counterarguments and silence. This can be seen as well in the Finnish media that appeared in many cases like its US counterpart before the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Only a few publications, like The New York Review of Books, questioned the US-led invasion.
Even though Lehtonen doesn’t state what aspect of the PS message appealed to the traditional parties, we could make a case that one of these was their anti-immigration and anti-Islam stance. Did the PS awaken their xenophobia and ignorance of immigration and refugee issues?
Another point that Lehtonen makes is about the core PS voter, who is a 20-35 year old man with little education.
“Rarely are the PS supporters spoken of in a positive fashion by the media,” Lehtonen says. “They are always something else and always a problem. In this respect they remind us a lot of how immigrants are spoken of (in public).”
Do you agree?
________________
Heikki Laurinolli
Mediakulttuurin professori löytää persujen suosiosta vasemmiston heikkoutta ja identiteettipolitiikan nousua. Perussuomalaisten nousun syynä on vasemmiston heikkous ja kyvyttömyys miettiä identiteettipolitiikan kannalta esimerkiksi maahanmuuttoa. Näin arvioi Tampereen yliopiston mediakulttuurin professori Mikko Lehtonen kevään eduskuntavaalitulosta.
It has long been obvious to me that the core support of PS comes from an epähikke element that cannot reason beyond a single line argument and is therefore prone to accept any fallacy with a two-line refutation or any claim that is seductively facile, but essentially unverifiable. This is why we no longer hear the old lines that were familiar in the 1980s about immigrants stealing our jobs and causing unemployment, but now hear assertions that immigrants are work shy benefit fraudsters. It also explains why it is possible to lead a PS supporter patiently through the refutation of some outlandish prejudice or mischaracterisation and secure agreement on this matter, only to see the same person repeating the offence again a few days later.
It occurs to me that 20-35 year-old uneducated males are similarly overrepresented in the prison population, so some PS-style statistics on the political views of prisoners might be worth collecting in order to prove that the supporters of this political faction are more likely to commit jailable criminal offences. Just how typical is Mr Hakkarainen in this regard?
Interesting point in the article
First it says:
“Perussuomalaisten kannattajat ovat tutkimusten mukaan suhteellisen hyvin koulutettuja ja pääasiassa miehiä.”
but later it says what you quoted
“Kun vihreiden peruskannattajat ovat 20–35 -vuotiaita koulutettuja naisia, niin persujen peruskannattaja on samanikäinen kouluttamaton mies.”
Do these not contradict each other?
JusticeDemon,
dont you think you do the very same thing people blame PS to do? Basically you label all PS voters as uneducated and good for nothing. Does this mean we can do same for somalis? Since statistics tell their unemployment is high, they must all be lazy and have no tradition of work!
Yossie
Don’t I have a right to be perussuomalaiskriittinen? Why are you trying to limit my freedom of speech? Shouldn’t we be allowed to discuss the academic standards achieved by PS supporters and the tendency for this population group to commit criminal offences such as stealing silverware from churches?
“…and the tendency for this population group to commit criminal offences such as stealing silverware from churches?”
Do you think some PS representatives have given generalized statements about any tendencies based on single, individual cases? Or what is your point exactly?
Not very good journalism as Yossie pointed out with the contradiction of those two sentences.
–Do you think some PS representatives have given generalized statements about any tendencies based on single, individual cases? Or what is your point exactly?
Isn’t that what some PS politicians do all the time?
Arto
My point is that we need to review the political opinions of the prison population in order to show that support for PS is overrepresented among convicted criminals. There is every reason to believe this, given the 20-35 year age band of this group, which is also the most common age band for perpetrators of jailable offences.
Of course, if you are willing to accept that PS supporters are statistically more likely to commit these offences than the general population, then we can move on to the steps that must be taken to tackle this social problem. We have enough problems of criminality already, without encouraging unnecessary political movements that increase the problem.
I also expect you to accept my right to be perussuomalaiskriittinen. This important research must go forward as a matter of urgency.
–I also expect you to accept my right to be perussuomalaiskriittinen.
A good point, JusticeDemon. If you ask me, and judging by the good portion of PS bloggers on Migrant Tales, the party doesn’t score very high on accpeting criticism. I would say that it is one of its weakest points.
By the way, those extracts are not contradictories, nor even contraries. Read the intervening paragraph to make sense of the analysis.
Of course, if you can’t make sense of the analysis, then this may in part be due to your educational level. I’m sure that Green Party supporters would understand it clearly.
Hint: women are better educated than men in Finland. The epähikke school leaver is relatively uneducated, then relatively well educated after learning a trade amiksessa, but still very much uneducated compared to a university postgraduate.
The prevalence of the epähikke element in PS seems quite obvious to me, but perhaps this should also be researched in greater detail. Only one party leader immediately announced after the election that he would consider appointing government ministers from outside Parliament. Is it really so difficult to guess who?
I am looking forward to reading the new edition of Eduskunnan Matrikkeli.
Enrique: “Isn’t that what some PS politicians do all the time?”
Well, not that I am aware of.
“By the way, those extracts are not contradictories, nor even contraries. Read the intervening paragraph to make sense of the analysis.”
If one sentence says “relatively well educated” and the other says “uneducated”, I think there is a contradiction there. “Uneducated” is not a very relative expression.
I am not sure if it is appropriate from you to suggest something about other conversationalist’s education (or intelligence…?). But in case you are curious, I have a university degree. But I am also not a PS voter/member…
“I also expect you to accept my right to be perussuomalaiskriittinen.”
Of course I do. I have the same right myself. Good luck with your argumentation such as “We have enough problems of criminality already, without encouraging unnecessary political movements that increase the problem.”
What is “epähikke”? The word is completely unknown to me. (I will surely find it from the internet and your text gives some hint about it, but please note this is most likely a local slang word that you should probably avoid using if you want to get understood in the whole country).
Arto
You clearly understand epähikke. Now come up with a standard Finnish synonym, or admit that as a native Finnish speaker you are no wiser in this regard than I am.
You are familiar with the word hikke as commonly used at school in Finland. What’s the opposite? We are talking about kids who tend to sit at the back of the school classroom (mihin opettajan ääni kantaa, muttei häiritsevästi) and show only minimal interest in academic studies. Remember we need a term for the group as a whole, not for various causes of membership (this rules out anything associated with sloth or mental disability). There is some hint of extraordinary or strenuous effort in hikke (as opposed to “nerd” and “dweeb” in English), but I don’t think the antonym must necessarily imply a lack of effort, though it probably should suggest a lack of interest.
I did find epähikke on the web, used in precisely the required way.
These are the kids who go on to support PS, and even vote for them if the polling station is near enough to the local keskiolut baari.
What they lack in most cases is any sense of parody. My argument about the political views of prison inmates and associated policy initiatives to reduce the crime rate is precisely parallel to the Halla-aho position on allegedly disproportionate criminality among immigrants. If you take a predominantly male population sample in which the 20-35 year age band is strongly overrepresented (this describes both immigrants and PS supporters), then you will find that this sample has a higher crime rate than the population as a whole. “Stop immigration to stop crime” is no better as an argument than “ban PS to stop crime” if this is its rationale. What we have to do to reduce crime is to send the epähikkeet to university, give them transgender therapy and enrol them in the Green Party. Problem solved.
Maybe Ricky can tell us if there is any truth in the story of a Latin American dictator who ordered the slaughter of all donkeys in the country after noticing that countries with a large donkey population always have high levels of poverty. “Donkey infestation always brings poverty”.
JusticeDemon, if you look at the video clip of David Duke and look at the way some PS MPs argue like Jussi Halla-aho there is in my opinion a similarity: denial and trying to make up any cock-and-bull argument on any issue; playing down and questioning facts.
“You are familiar with the word hikke as commonly used at school in Finland.”
Let’s not get stuck to this, but actually I have never heard the word before you used it. Perhaps I’m too old.
“Stop immigration to stop crime” is no better as an argument than “ban PS to stop crime”
Actually I see a major difference between the two. We have the possibility to choose our immigration politics, but we do not have the possibility to dictate what kind of voting decisions people can make, neither do we have a right to ban a legal party that is not promoting any criminal activity.
Arto
And your fundamental justification for asserting a link between immigration and crime is what, exactly?
This is a little test to see whether you have been paying attention at the back of the class.
JD: “And your fundamental justification for asserting a link between immigration and crime is what, exactly?”
Well, statistics like this: http://www.hs.fi/kuvat/iso_webkuva/1135233947201.jpeg
Sorry, I thought you knew about such statistics.
Arto
Even after I warned you:
And after you had declared your credentials:
You still point to statistics that are unweighted by age and sex in order to “prove” something that is so strongly age and sex dependent that it has determined prison architecture in all countries for over a hundred years.
As I pointed out:
So your rationale equally shows that there is a link between PS support and crime.
Unless you have some magic refutation of the above that you have not yet declared.
If your methodology is sound, then it also shows that Finnish men are unfit for senior positions in banking and finance (100 per cent of serious economic crimes in Finland are committed by Finns, and the perpetrators are exclusively male, with the arguable exception of one individual last located in Switzerland).
Where did you get your degree, Arto? Ti Ti Nallen Talo?
“Where did you get your degree, Arto? Ti Ti Nallen Talo?”
JD, you sound increasingly like a smartass high school student – which is now my best guess of your background, if you really want to turn our converstation into that subject.
You just try to turn black into white with your argumentation.
The whole point of the idea of more carefully choosing immigrants is to minimize the damage and maximize the benefit to our society. Yes, we have many kinds of native Finn criminals. But why the heck would we like to import a single criminal more? Are you really so sure there is no way to affect this by immigration policy?
I believe emphasis on work-related immigration could be a reasonable choice. I still have not seen you (or Enrique) admitting that there could be any novel qualification criteria in immigration that could actually be used for the best interests of our country.
Arto
Suddenly this is about your hurt feelings? lol
You made a complete fool of yourself in referring to unweighted statistics, Mr in case you are curious, I have a university degree. Not much of a credit to your Alma Mater, really, are you?
And you know what? I bet you do it again, too.
That’s a brilliantly academic riposte. I must recommend it to my old professor. Why bother to engage with content when you can refute any position with the seepra suojatiellä argument.
Bleating about not importing criminals is unhelpful. Do you have some magic X-ray vision that enables you to see whether an applicant for a residence permit is going to commit a crime? We could use the same technique to stop Finnish economic criminals from doing much greater damage to society (Ooh look! They’re all Finnish men!). Sweden could have applied the same technique in the 1960s to keep out Finnish criminals. PS supporters could be pre-emptively detained…
The residence permit application form for, say, a foreign student includes the following questions:
It requires the following consent:
And it includes the following acknowledgement at the point of signature:
What else would you like? Cross your heart and hope to die?
This characterises Finnish immigration to Sweden in the 1960s and 70s and the resulting crimewave En Finne Igen.
The challenge remains: Show me what specific changes you would make to the Aliens Act. Much better brains than yours have been working on this legislation since the early 80s, but let’s be charitable and hear your specific proposals.
JD: “Suddenly this is about your hurt feelings? lol”
Hurt feelings? Did I say anything like that? But in general, it is not wise to make this kind of conversations too personal. At least I don’t want to spend my beautiful day in such an aggressive atmosphere. You should always remember to respect the people you are talking to, unless they give you a reason to have a different attitude with their own behaviour. Even if they have different opinions.
Have you contacted HS and expressed your concern about publishing such misleading statistics? What about ministry of justice that has used the same statistics source (Tilastokeskus) and also published a report about the same think without any age-weighted mathematics? Complete fools?
Perhaps you have alternative statistics available somewhere, producing weighted results that produce results you like better?
“The residence permit application form for, say, a foreign student includes the following questions:”
How well do you think these work when people come here without even an ID?
“Do you have some magic X-ray vision that enables you to see whether an applicant for a residence permit is going to commit a crime?”
I think it is worth considering that if a person immigrates here to work, he perhaps does not have a need to commit crimes as likely as a “social security cases”. I have mentioned this a numerous of times without getting a proper answer. Or do you think the past Finnish immigration to Sweden proves the idea wrong?
“Much better brains than yours…”
Yeah. But hardly better than yours?
Surely you are aware that changes have been made to immigration policy very recently, during the previous government. Why, if everything was already so perfectly designed by those genius brains?
Have a nice day. The playground is all yours.
Arto, I believe JusticeDemon is trying to show a less- biased way of looking at statistics. This issue of crime and how it is measured has been discussed ad infinitum on this blog. What do they prove? That is not such a simple question.
The most important matter to keep in mind is that people are individuals not robots of culture.
–How well do you think these work when people come here without even an ID?
Arto you are mixing up immigrants/students and refugees.
Arto
At what point did any government department suggest that those figures could conceivably serve as grounds for policymaking? The lack of sex and age weighting is only the beginning of what’s wrong with them as a justification for the kind of comparison that you are trying to make. For example this chap would have to affect any figures that included offences committed by tourists, and the influence of someone like Jouko Petri Jaatinen would skew the numbers out of all proportion immediately. Incidentally, do you think Thailand should close its borders to specifically Finnish tourists because of such cases?
I doubt that you have ever even looked at the Aliens Act, but this is where any concrete changes would have to be made. It is not at all clear that humanitarian migrants are any more prone to commit criminal offences than other people of comparable age, sex and social situation, but you definitely need to specify what changes you would make to such provisions as subsection 2 of section 87, subsection 2 of section 88, subsection 2 of section 88a, point 8 of subsection 1 of section 148 and sections 89 and 147 of the Aliens Act, and subsection 4 of section 9 of the Constitution of Finland. Aside from section 89 of the Aliens Act, these provisions have not been amended since 2004. Section 89 was changed in 2009, but not radically from your point of view.
You can blather about picking and choosing all you like, but you can’t send people to places where they will be tortured or executed no matter what you think they might do, and least of all simply because you don’t like their social circumstances. If you would have it another way, then the process begins by disengaging from the Council of Europe.
Where are your concrete proposals and serious analysis, Mr in case you are curious, I have a university degree? Anyone can moan that the world ought to be a better place, but few do so from a sober analysis of current conditions and a sound appreciation of what is really feasible. You are simply parroting the same facile epähikke prejudices that we can hear any night of the week in the local keskiolut baari where the real motivation has nothing to do with statistical science or intelligent social policy.
JD: “Mr in case you are curious, I have a university degree?”
And formerly:
“Of course, if you can’t make sense of the analysis, then this may in part be due to your educational level. I’m sure that Green Party supporters would understand it clearly.”
So I answered your inappropriate statement and next you start using my answer as a weapon, which then goes on and on. That is simply not good behaviour. You are clever enough to understand that such a behaviour does not promote your cause. Psychologically, it just creates more resistance. I honestly thought that was not what you were after, but it seems you just one of those people whose number 1 priority is just to always prove themselves right.
I guess in your opinion, I should be a lawyer to even talk about this subject. I have proposed several times that perhaps we should look at the Canadian model (which has been recently referred to in public several times), but I have got surprisingly little response to that. I have been talking about higher level principles instead of single sentences in legislation. There is no reason to go to such a detailed level if even the principles are still under discussion. Have I ever claimed I have ready answers for improving our immigration policy?
As far as I have read this blog, I think Enrique has shown good example about how to discuss with people having different opinions (even though I find the blogs themselves often exaggerated and not 100% truthful). But your attitude, JD, I just don’t want to deal with anymore. When discussions get poisonous they are no longer fruitful for anyone.
Arto
You need to look deeper to find the source of your psychological resistance.
You are not the first casualty of keen analysis of PS lies and distortion. In just about every case we have passed through a stage of feigning offence when the PS position is refuted and made to look foolish. You may now go off in a huff and maybe decline to respond in future, but this will not discourage me from countering those lies and distortions when you express them here.
Religious fundamentalists pull the same stunt when challenged over ridiculous claims that they assert to be literally true. I am not impressed by any of these efforts at emotional coercion. If you feel bad about having your views analysed and shown to be false, then you should interpret that feeling as a sign that it is time to revise your views. We are discussing serious public policy here, and the casual brutality of your attitudes and bogus reasoning causes real pain to real people.
As usual per se JD is arguing on a completely flawed logic. Without immigrants there is no chance of immigrant crime in Finland. Now by linking PS to crime along the same lines as immigrants to crime she is also saying that without the PS native crime will be eradictated too. So that means pre 1995 before the PS even existed there was no native crime at all. Sound silly? Well ofcourse but that’s what JD is implying. Also a word of note in probably every single country 20-35 year old males will always be overrepresented in crime so to pinpoint this trend uniquely to Finland and blame the PS for it shows what kind of planet JD lives in.
JD: “You are not the first casualty of keen analysis of PS lies and distortion.”
I have explained earlier that my reason for reading this blog is to get a more balanced view.
“If you feel bad about having your views analysed and shown to be false, then you should interpret that feeling as a sign that it is time to revise your views.”
I feel perfectly OK if that happens and I am ready to revise my views when needed, but my tolerance for bad behaviour and disrespect has been exceeded. It should never be part of any debate, even in the Internet. It just makes it unpleasant for everyone and distracts the attention away from the actual topic. I have participated enough to such debates before (always trying not to give others any reason for such behaviour).
“the casual brutality of your attitudes and bogus reasoning causes real pain to real people.”
I think you are greatly exaggerating the effect of these discussions. You also make me sound like a very evil person, which I don’t think I am.
“You may now go off in a huff and maybe decline to respond in future”
No need to huff, but it is always better to avoid people with too aggressive and negative attitudes. Just leave the inappropriate part of your behaviour away and you will be much more convincing in future debates with others. I have seen enough of this blog anyway during the last few weeks.
-‘You can blather about picking and choosing all you like, but you can’t send people to places where they will be tortured or executed no matter what you think they might do, and least of all simply because you don’t like their social circumstances.’
Oh yeah I forgot Finland is the nearest safe country to all these humanitarian immigrants wanting to settle there. Just like the UK is safer than France for instance hence all the illegals clamouring to get in by hiding in lorries destined to cross the channel. Nothing to do with the increased social welfare allocation or networks. Some people really do live in denial.
Klay
All dogs have four legs. My cat has four legs. Therefore…
Check what you wrote again before talking about flawed logic.
It may help if you read the discussion from the start. This is a process of reductio ad absurdum that I have specially tuned to sting the PS mentality. If the PS argument that immigrants are more crime prone as such rests solely on an unweighted comparison of the crime rate of immigrants (or worse still, of foreign-born individuals including tourists, as above) with the crime rate of Finland as a whole (and worse still, specifically excluding offences committed abroad by the Finnish-born), then PRECISELY THE SAME METHODOLOGY equally shows that PS supporters are more crime-prone as such. If we locked up all the PS supporters, then the crime rate would fall, but only because we would be disproportionately incarcerating working class males aged 20-35 years.
The point (and I’m wondering why I have to keep repeating this for all you university graduates out there) is that both of these bogus statistical phenomena merely reflect the criminality of the selected population sample, which is substantially higher than the national average.
If you want to talk logic, then I am explaining that the quantifier in the major premise was merely “all” and not “only”.
This also and equally explains why Finnish immigrants were “overrepresented” in similarly bogus crime statistics from Sweden in the 1970s.
Your other comment is not practical unless you have some way of forcing those nearest safe countries to admit the same migrants. Blaming the migrant doesn’t help. When a person has nowhere to go, then you have to accept this. What, specifically, will you do with a Ugandan homosexual who you think “ought to” have gone to South Africa or wherever? In concrete terms, what will you do with such a person?
The challenge is there for you too, Klay. Show me what changes you would make to the Aliens Act.
Arto
Where did you get the idea that I wanted to convince you of anything? Conviction is a psychological state that depends on a wide variety of factors, and most particularly on what you need to believe in order to reinforce your preconceived world view. You don’t even need to accept modus ponens as a rule of inference, still less adjust your psychological state in response to a cunning order of words on my part.
All I have done here is use you as a stooge to refute certain bogus arguments. There is no need to convince you of anything, though I guess you will be a bit more circumspect about statistical conjecture in future. Let’s hope so.