With the Örbero mass shooting, the worst in Sweden overtaken now by time and denial, a question remains: Who speaks up for migrants or New Swedes? The sad truth is few if any. What is even sader the silence has grown and is defeaning.
In a brilliant column, Mehdi Hasan writes about how DEI, which stands for diversity, equity and inclusion, and how the concept has been used to replace the n-word. “Today, more than four decades later, DEI has become the new n-word; the new rightwing abstraction deployed by Republicans to conceal their anti-black racism.”
In Finland too, DEI has been used by the likes of the xenophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS)* to mean anti-immigration and anti-migrant.
Silence is another racial slur that means approval of the existing order and institutions that oppress non-white people.
When a white person kills he is usually seen as a lone wolf. Behold if the killer is a Muslim or a racialized minority.
Apart from labelling racialized people and migrants, we are faced with the same issue: Let’s say as little as possible good things about migrants and minorities. Let’s speak in code and call them “asylum seekers.” You don’t even have to use the n-word anymore since everybody understands what your malicious labelling means.
Even if the media claims that the 35-year-old gunman Rickhard Andersson was a lone wolf with no ideological ties to the killing of 11 people, the Swedish Police confirmed that they are not ruling out the possibility of a racist motivation behind the killings.
As investigations progress on Sweden’s worst mass shooting, the police have been slow to make any sttements on the killer’s motives.
“Yet, even as we mourn, we must confront an undeniable reality: Sweden has a problem with white supremacist violence,& the state refuses to acknowledge it.
The police were quick to claim that the perpetrator had no ideological motive—yet, in the same breath, they stated that he left no digital trail. How can both of these claims be true? If there are no digital traces, no manifesto, no online discussions to analyze, then on what basis did they so swiftly rule out ideology as a factor?”
The fact that the killings is taking such a long time to investigate y the police raises some questions.
A good question is why the public’s fascination with far-right populism has caught on. US President Donald Trump is one sour example but so is the changing political landscape of Europe. In Finland, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s National Coalition Party (NCP) believes it can continue to do business with the anti-immigration Finns Party (PS) and form the next government with them and the Center Party.
A simple answer to the above question is that populist far-right parties like the PS and their NCP enablers have sold simple solutions to complex problems. Some of their favorite scapegoats are migrants and minorities. Tougher laws and fueling mistrust will make us a stronger nation.A good question is why the public’s fascination with far-right populism has caught on.
A simple answer to the above question is that populist far-right parties like the PS and their NCP enablers have sold simple solutions to complex problems. Some of their favorite scapegoats are migrants and minorities. Tougher laws and fueling mistrust will make us a stronger nation.
Behind such 1+1=2 answers by politicians lies the deepest fears of parties like the NCP and PS.That fear is that white Finns, the kantasuomalaiset, or ethnic Finns, will lose power in the face of plummeting birthrates and rising immigrants.
Trump’s racist rants in the US, the FPÖ in Austria, AfD in Germany and other far-right forces are a direct response to the fear that their white majority will become a minority. It explains why the US Supreme Court overturned abortion rights and why some politicians are so paranoid about immigration, especially undocumented immigration.
If there is one indication that will fuel xenophobia in Finland it is also the country’s birth rate. In 2024, the birth rate plummeted for the third consecutive year reaching the lowest level in the country’s recorded history, according to Statistics Finland, forcing the fertility rate to retreat to 1.25 from 1.26 children per woman.
Lower birthrates paint a somber demographic future for Finland and a bleak social one as well. As the PS and NCP have shamelessly shown, spreading hateful rhetoric and strengthening institutional racism has short-term political benefits but long-term wrecks.
Labeling a minority as a threat has been used by different groups over the ages to justify genocide. Such a crime hasn’t lost its shine. Take a look at the Native populations of the Americas, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Empire, the Muslim Rohingya by the military of Myanmar, Rwanda, Israeli war against Palestinians in Gaza, and the Holocaust just to name a few.
When given enough unchecked space, hatred takes on a life of its own and is difficult to put back into the bottle.
Governments are playing with fire when they play down racism and continue to subvert migrant and minority rights. It is the best way to lead us towards the peak of the pyramid of hate.
In Finland, the paradigm shifts in migration, social and labor laws will impact dearly migrants and minorities. According to European Islamophobia Report w023. “Although the government program speaks of a ‘strong and committed Finland’ that respects ‘human rights and other international conventions, obligations under EU law and the rule of law,’ some say the statement is misleading because of the 180-degree turn in immigration policy. The government’s policies and assurances have failed to reduce the climate of hostility towards migrants and minorities, which is likely to continue to grow.
Even so, we have the power to halt this perilous development.
Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson not only blamed migrants for the violence in Sweden, he sent a message to all of the Nordic region. It’s called the blame game. Blame is an excuse and a tool for attack that distorts reality and a way to avoid responsibility.
He reiterated Sweden’s about-turn in strict immigration policy as a way to control immigrant and minority crime. “We have globalised crime, which is very much linked to immigration,” he was quoted in Helsingin Sanomat quotting TV4. “We have had very high immigration into Sweden for a long time. We have now tightened it considerably.”
Kiristersson’s blame and denial are straight from the populuist anti-immigration songbook. The message is clear: Just tighten immigraton law and the problem is solved.
Much of the Swedish public, which voted for Sweden’s most anti-immigration government in a long time, is also filled with wishful thinking. If the PM gives such a simple solution, then it must be true, right? Dead wrong.
In Finland, too, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s government has blamed migrant youths for the rise in crime. A report published by us in 2023 showed how the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS)* have used the rise in youth crime in Finland as a way to gain voters and public support.
Migration to Finland in 2024 took a 13.9% dive to 63,049 from 73.236 in the previous year, according to Statistics Finland. Some of the biggest drops were in the number of Ukrainians seeking international protection. Their numbers plummeted by 53.02% 13,551 persons.
The number of work permits for specialists retreated to 1,224 permits from 1,604 permits. In 2022, Migri granted 2,995 permits for specialists.
Finance Minister Riikka Purra of the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party, welcomed the drop in immigration to Finland, according to Finnish News Agency STT. She considered the decline in immigration growyth to have a positrive impact on public finances.
The PS is the only party in parliament that openly oppses migration.
Poor economic growth and a hostile immigration policy are expected to continue to undermine immigration to Finland in 2025.
Migrant Tales insight:I stumbled upon this posting published over twelve years ago. I reposted it because it shows the fuel that I have used to push the blog ahead. Finland is a very different country than it was in 2012. We are slowly but surely awakening to the fact that racism is a dangerous social ill that robs us of our potential.
I write about racism and social exclusion in Finland because it affects me and those I care about. I should know because I used to live marginalized from this society for decades.
I didn’t live marginalized because I was maladapted. I was marginalized because I was well-adapted.
Too many didn’t consider me a “real” Finn for a number of reasons. Was it because I wasn’t white enough or was it because the name I carried made me stick out ethnically like a sore thumb?
But what could I have done in 1978, when I moved back permanently to this country? There were so few immigrants never mind people of my ethnic background that you were culturally and ethnically unimportant and out of the loop.
It is a paradox, but the very matters that I loved and admired the most about this country back then were the very things that marginalized and excluded me from this society.
The prototype Finn is a case in point. This social construct of the so-called model Finn that was taught and reinforced in the last century is being challenged as our society becomes more culturally diverse.
Finnish society’s lack of inclusiveness was and still is the main obstacle to equal integration and acceptance.
If you want to find where racism grows its roots in this society, you will find it in the arguments that some white Finns use to exclude you from society. If you want to challenge Finnish racism, the best place to begin is to contest the arguments and actions that reinforce white Finnish exclusiveness.
I write a lot about racism and social exclusion on Migrant Tales. I write about this topic because Finland is my home and because I want a better future for visible and invisible minorities. In cultural diversity we will find strength.
I am grateful that I have found such a platform and opportunity to be a part of an ever-growing national debate and social movement that aims to make our society inclusive to all groups.
Watching political events in the United States and the Donald Trump’s inauguration as the US’ 47th president, brought despair and forced me to dig deep for hopeand consolation. One of the matters that I will never forget is the last military dictatorship (1976-83) of Rafael Videla in Argentina.
His stranglehold over the country was near-complete. But then the years revealed his weakness: the first indication of his decline and loss of power when he believed he was invincible.
You don’t need an army are weapons of mass destruction to defeat your foe. There are many, many example below of people that ignited a spike at the right place and right time to begin a social movement. Trump, therefore, looks like a president in decline.
The list below is not complete of some who challenged a system and won with their bravery and suffering.
On the first of December 1955 Rosa Parks refused to give her seat on a bus to a white passenger. That moment of defiance was one of the sparks of the Civil Rights Movement.
Dedication and a love for freedom turned Harriet Tubman into ray of hope for many black slaves.
The Cuban Revolution is one of the best examples of being at the right place at the right time. It proved that you don’t need an army to defeat a large organized and corrupt army.
Even if Sacco and Vanzetti were falsely executed by the electric chair in 1927, they are still fondly rememberd. Their only crime was that they were anarchists. Their death led to protests around the world.
The October 17, 1945 demonstration, which freed Juan Domingo Perón from detention, showed a remarkable event where his charistmatic wife, Evita Perón, rallied the masses and changed history.
Deportation is one of the cruelest matters about migration.
Another deportation ruling hangs over an Iraqi family of five who has lived in Finland for ten years. Tragic is the fate of the children, aged 16, 14 and 7 years, who don’t read and write in Arabic and remember their parents’ former home country through tales and online meetings with their grandmother.
The deportation order was given on 7 January and can happen at any moment.
“We came in 2015 to Finland and our journey lasted 13 days from Iraq,” said the father with evident concern about their future. “My wife is sick and needs to be operated.”
Their eldest daughter, who is 16 years old and is a ninth grader, speaks perfect Finnish and saw the deportation order of her family as “an injustice.”
The family has received 10 rejections for asylum from the Finnish Immigration Service.
She does not remember the long trip from Iraq to Finland but remembered that Turkey was a beautiful country and that she slept a lot during the journey. “The four-hour trip on a [rubber] dinghy from Izmir [Turkey] to the [Greek] island of Lesvos was scary,” she continued. “We the children sat in the middle and the men on the side so nobody would fall overboard.”
The family’s future looks uncertain in Iraq.
“I don’t believe that Iraq is a good country,” the daughter continued. “Iraq has suffered from wars, people are mean and life is difficult. I will not be able to succeed at school because I do not know how to read or write in Arabic even if I speak the language.”
Despite all the uncertainty and hardship that the family has endured in Finland, the father said that he did not hold any grudges on Finland.
“We are still hopeful that we may stay in Finland,” he concluded.
Twenty-eight years ago I wrote in a Finland Bridge column about the greying of Finland. Even if Finland has the third-oldest population in the world after Japan and Italy. Has anything changed since 1997 and what are the solutions to our demographic woes?
Some far-fetched solutions I suggested back then was to raise the retirement age to over seventy and to cut pension benefits to near-starvation levels.
Isn’t that were we are heading?
The fact that Finland has opposed migration and cultural diversity tooth and nail, means that today we have one of the smallest migrant populations in the world, according to MoveHub. It’s clear that we are paying a high price economically and socially for doing nothing, or very little, to invite migrants to the country.
I wrote in the column that “turning Finland into a gerontrocracy will not benefit anyone. It will signify the demise of this nation.”
Setting aside our propensity to scapegoat migrants, especially Muslims and those from outside the EU, we have to rethink who we are and foster a new sense of citizenship and inclusion.
Here are my suggestions for an about-turn in citizenship and inclusion:
“Being” Finnish means being from a multitude of ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
Since all ethnic groups in Finland have a history, we must remove the whitewash they have undergone.
Teach anti-racism from comprehensive school.
Teach children not to hate and that difference is normal.
Draft new laws recommended by the European Commission Against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) to tackle social ills like racism and hate speech.
More studies are needed on racism and Islamophobia in particular.
Mainstream media should use minorities in stories about them.
Promote cultural and ethnic diversity in civil servant jobs, like the police, in a concerted effort to dismantle institutional racism.
Racism is a crime that and is punishabe by law. It is a shameful act.
Parties that promote racism, like the Perussuomalaiset,* and whose members have ethnic agitation convictions should be prohibited from holding office.
Do you like to sare some suggestions to the above?
Former Perussuomalaiset* and today Center Party councilperson Tanja Hartonen’s attack on me is a good example of political revenge aimed at silencing me and Migrant Tales. I am sure that all these made-up stories about what I said at city committee meeting will not stand the light of day.
The truth is that Hartonen became furious with me at the meeting and raised her voice and would not let me say a word. As she has fabricated with the blessings of the local newspaper Länsi-Savo, I never called her a racist. Länsi-Savo’s reporter Elina Partio, has shown her worst and most biased side in her reporting. Shame on her and the newspaper.
My mistake, of course, was to remind Hartonen that she once wrote some pretty offensive articles.
I founded Migrant Tales in 2007 and you can find a lot of writing there, over 5 000 posts. An important reminder to Länsi-Savo: when you leave out the context of news stories, you leave the door open to bias.
