Category: Enrique Tessieri

Huffington Post: The PS of Finland is one of the nine scariest parties elected to the European parliament

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Is it surprising that The Huffington Post named the “True Finns,” or Perussuomalaiset (PS), in the same far-right league as the National Front of France, Danish People’s Party, Lega Nord, Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom and neo-Nazi Golden Dawn? Nigel Farage’s UKIP is not on the dubious list.   

Unfair? Not really if we look at PS MEP Jussi Halla-aho’s track record and his racist rambles about Muslims and migrants.

Finland’s other elected PS MEP, Sampo Terho, considers himself as a politician who is “critical of immigration.”

If you add both MEPs together, their message and rhetoric equal the following: We loathe cultural diversity and we are for social inequality.

Terho is chairman of the Suomalaisuuden Liito, a narrow-minded hate-mongering association that spreads hatred of cultural diversity because it believes the only “right” Finn is a white Finn.

Have any newspapers or journalists in Finland ever seriously questioned the PS’ strange bedfellows, starting from the anti-EU and anti-immigration Europe of Freedom and Democracy group in the European parliament? Why don’t they ask them how they can be part of the same parliamentary group as the Danish People’s Party and Lega Nord, of which one of its members stated that Anders Breivik’s ideas were “in defense of western civilization?”

Why would Europe, never mind Finland, vote for candidates who invest in spreading hatred and reinforcing racism against migrants and minorities? The answer to that question is pretty clear: Europe hasn’t done enough to challenge intolerance and its European “white” ethnic privilege issues.

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Read full story here.

 

If we look at the Huffington Post list of Europe’s nine scariest parties that were elected to the European Parliament, then we can see that all of them have major racism issues dating back throughout their history to the present.

About half of the countries on the list had colonies in Africa and elsewhere and were directly responsible for the slave trade and pillaging their former colonies of their wealth and committing systematic genocide with the help of eugenics. None of them have ever apologized for the atrocities they committed as former colonial powers.

Should we be surprised, then, that a country like France, the United Kingdom, Italy or Germany has a party that openly hates migrants?

One important question that none of these parties will ever answer clearly is how they plan to roll back the hands of time and restore their countries to their imagined ethnic “purity” of fifty years ago.

Geert Wilders tried that in March and unleashed a political scandal when he said he would make sure that there would be fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands, according to The Guardian.

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Are the PS a racist party? This cartoon was published by the PS and attempts to show that climate change is something that African medicine men predict.

 

For migrants and minorities, the EU elections on Sunday were a clear indication that matters will get much worse in Europe before they improve. Opportunistic politicians will target migrants and minorities to get elected and seek power.

They will speak and act like former colonial masters but in a twenty-first century context.

 

 

The EU elections are a call for migrants and minorities to raise their voices and take charge of their future in an ever-hostile Europe

Posted on by Migrant Tales

What does the election victory of anti-EU and anti-immigration parties reveal for the future of the EU, immigrants and minorities in Europe? The bad news is that matters will get worse before they improve, even if these parties didn’t get a clear mandate in the EU elections.

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Writes the Guardian:”But not by as much as they did in the past. This was in no meaningful or moral sense a victory for the pro-European parties or for the European project that they cherish and drive. These parties have no sure mandate now…That’s not to say that the popular uprising at the ballot box swept the board. It didn’t, and it is extremely important not to exaggerate it.”

One of the scariest matters concerning Sunday’s result is how anti-EU, anti-immigration and anti-Islam parties want to reform Europe. What credible answers if any do they have concerning our ever-growing cultural diversity?

For minorities and migrants in countries like France and the United Kingdom, the election is a clear wake up cal. Placing one’s hope that parties like the National Front and UKIP have credible solutions for our cultural diversity is foolish thinking.

The only ones who will improve the lot of migrants and minorities in Europe are migrants and minorities with sensible Europeans. For that Europe needs a civil rights movement like what happened in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s.

Thus not only was the EU political map redrawn, but a new clarion call could be faintly heard: participate and be active or suffer the consequences.

The euro elections have shown parties like the PS to be hostile to development aid, immigrants, minorities and gays

Posted on by Migrant Tales

It’s clear that if we allowed ourselves to be spoon-fed by the populism and anti-EU, homophobic and anti-immigration rhetoric of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party, minorities would always be threatened with social exclusion. PS MP Maria Lohela, who is said to turn into a Ms Hyde if you mention the word “Islam” to her, offered in parliament another one of her party’s “great” ideas on how to scrap development aid.

Lohela suggested a new development aide model for Finland that would be financed by taxpayers and that the role of the state would be to offer tax incentives so that people could give money to development aid out of their own pockets, according to Finland’s largest daily,  Helsingin Sanomat.

 

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Read full story (in Finnish) here.

 

While it’s clear that Lohela and the PS loathe helping less-fortunate people living in development countries, the most recent proposal is just as absurd as the one the MP made earlier this year concerning gay marriage. Lohela said that Finland didn’t have to pass same-sex marriage legislation since homosexuals could marry the opposite sex.

With euro elections ending on May 25, the party has made very public its anti-immigration and racist views, like with the publishing of a racist cartoon below denouncing climate change as a hoax predicted by African “medicine men.”

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Read full story on Migrant Tales here.

 

A poll by Helsingin Sanomat of Finnish MEP’s showed that the PS to be the most eager in wanting to restrict the free movement of people within the EU.

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PS MEP candidates were the most for limiting free movement of people in the EU. Read full story (in Finnish) here.

 

Taking into account the type of Europe the PS wants to forge, which is very similar to far-right Danish People’s Party and UKIP, people should get out and vote against these these types of anti-EU, homophobic, anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam parties.

Why? Because we are against the model they’re trying to create for Europe since it would polarize our society and bolster intolerance and hatred of migrants and other minorities.

Why do countries that have built  a model social welfare state in the Nordic region want to support parties like the PS? Shouldn’t they instead challenge the root of the problem, which is poverty, inequality, racism and intolerance.

 

Integration by perkele

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Some have heard of the expression of management by perkele, which means swift decision-making by management and where your opinion as an employee counts little. In Finland the goal is integration, or two-way adaption, but what happens on too many occasions is integration by perkele. 

Integration by perkele has a clear message: This is our country, perkele, and don’t forget it! Since this is my country, you are going to adapt to me. In plain English integration by perkele means assimilation.

The cartoon below offers a good example of integration by perkele.

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How do you recognize integration by perkele? Here are some good examples:

Is integration by perkele an effective way to adapt migrants and minorities? If you want an answer to the that question, why not ask Amerindians, who were victims of systematic genocide, the Roma, Muslims and gays in Russia, Poles in the UK, Turks in Germany, Moroccans and Latin Americans in Spain, Africans in France, asylum-seekers in Greece as well as other migrants and minorities?

Certainly they’ll tell you about the hostility they face daily thanks to integration by perkele.

* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The names adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings. 

 

Anti-immigration Europe: The fruits you harvest depend on the seed you plant

Posted on by Migrant Tales

In many respects, Europe looks like a region that is running scared with a notable part of its population seeking to support populist, anti-immigration and even neo-Nazi parties that offer no credible solutions to issues like rising unemployment, poverty and estrangement from our political institutions. 

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If students from a small town in Eastern Finland did a poster advertising Finland, what push and pull factors would they highlight for migrants?

 

In Finland, some politicians are learning slowly but surely that it’s a very bad idea to flirt with these right-wing populist parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) that are anti-EU, anti-immigration, homophobic and especially anti-Islam.

In many respects, those right-wing populist political forces they flirted with not only paved the way for a new political landscape in Finland after 2011, but marked their eventual political demise. A case in point is former Social Democrat party chairman Jutta Urpilainen, who flirted with the PS in 2010 with her infamous maassa maan tavalla statement, or in Rome do as the Romans do.

Taking into account the avalanche of bigotry at the time especially after 2008 thanks to the PS and many of its politicians like Jussi Halla-aho, James Hirvisaari and others, Urpilainen’s quote was seen as offensive to migrants living in this country. Instead of promoting Social Democratic values like social equality and inclusion, Urpilainen’s statement singled out and victimized non-ethnic Finns.

Another politician the PS should thank for helping them become one of Finland’s four largest parties is National Coalition Party Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen, who said before the 2011 parliamentary elections that “debating immigrant issues in this country doesn’t mean you’re racist.”

 

If politicians like Katainen or Urpilainen think it was fair game to victimize migrants, is it then ok to be a bigot, sexist or homophobic in Finland? Shouldn’t human rights, Nordic welfare state values like social equality, non-discrimination be defended by politicians? Why do they give with their silence and lack of leadership the green light to others to bully migrants and minorities?

A part of the answer to the latter question lies in the fact that migrants and minorities are vulnerable and easy targets with little power in their respective countries. Anti-immigration politicians get their inspiration from apathetic migrants and the mood swings of society that they help create.

The same mistake that the Social Democrats and National Coalition Party committed in 2010 is happening in other parts of Europe like in the United Kingdom. Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron has become more anti-immigration and anti-EU in order to appease UKIP. He has helped the anti-EU, anti-immigration, homophobic and especially anti-Islam party to grow into a formidable political force that is now threatening his party in the Euro elections.

This video clip UKIP’s Farage when effectively cross-examined by James O’Brien on LBC. Finnish journalists could learn a lot from this interview.

 

What have we learned from the UKIP and PS cases? One important lesson is not to suck up to the arguments of  populist parties that aim to polarize society. Instead of parroting their intolerance, politicians should take part in an open debate with them and expose them for what they are: a sham.

Politicians should answer simple questions like why are racism and prejudice hazardous to society?

One of the examples they could give is the stereotype that women don’t excel in math. How do you think a woman feels as a minority in an advanced math class with other males? Consider the pressure and stress she has to face daily to prove that she’s just as good, if not even better at math, than her male classmates. Think of the power and potential that would be released from that woman if she weren’t a target of prejudice.

Rubén Blades is a famous salsa singer from Panama, who said in one of his songs, Siembra (harvest), that Latin Americans everywhere shouldn’t allow their conscience to die and be careful with the seed they plant because the fruits they’ll harvest depend on that seed.

In the song, Blades states that the seed that needs to be planted are those of affection and humility. They are the ones that will give hope to future generations.

But with the rise of right-wing populist, anti-immigration and even far-right parties in Europe today, what kind of seed are we planting and what will be its fruits?

 

In the hands of white Finnish privilege, our ever-growing cultural and ethnic diversity is a pathway of good intentions and social exclusion

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Or is the saying: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions?”

One would think that the great amount of effort put into Finland’s educational system would help it to come to grips with social ills like racism and xenophobia. If we look at the political landscape of Finland, and how hostile this country has become for some migrants and visible minorities, it shows that something vital like tolerance and respect weren’t taught enough at school never mind at home.

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The #I, too, am Finland! campaign was a very successful way of promoting inclusion.

It’s ironic that all those things that made Finland into a successful country today, even like its military victories of the Winter War (1939-49) against a vastly outnumbered Red Army, are threatening us today.

Take for instance the Winter War, when Finland was attacked by the former Soviet Union on November 30, 1939. Not only do we know of the military exploits of the Finnish army during that gruelling 105-day war, but how it helped to unite a country by healing the wounds of the 1918 Civil War.

If the Winter War did a lot to unify the country, it reinforced as well our suspicions of Russia, which still exist today, and of the outside world.

Certainly living next to an autocratic state like the USSR can bring out the worst or the best in any nation.

The worst that our relationship with out giant eastern neighbor has fuelled is xenophobia and hostility to cultural diversity. With the help of negative attitudes of foreigners, building of social constructs and laws like the Restricting Act of 1939, were easy to keep in force for decades. For one they helped us as well to “forget” the over 1.2 million Finns that emigrated from this land between 1860 and 1999 and what they contributed to our diverse Finnish identity.

For these reasons and others, Finland was never a breeding ground for cultural diversity but a hostile place for it.

Since white Finnish-speaking Finland has monopolized this “privilege,” which gives it near-total control of political, economic and social power, it’s clear why some Finns are today so uneasy about our ever-growing cultural and ethnic diversity.

I for one am an optimist about Finland’s bright future as a culturally and ethnically diverse nation. I’m optimistic because our diversity as a nation is a fact, not a social construct like white Finnish privilege.

If we don’t succeed at challenging matters like intolerance, we run the risk of impoverishing ourselves.

It’ll be like be on a road to impoverishment where we’ll smile cordially at each other with the best intentions to the road to hell.

Pew Research Center survey: Anti-immigration and anti-minority sentiment runs high before Euro elections

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Pew Research Center, a Washington-based “fact tank,” reveals in a survey just before the European parliamentary elections on May 22-25 that anti-immigration and anti-minority sentiment runs  in countries like Poland, Germany, France, UK, Spain, Italy and Greece.

Euro MEP candidates like Jussi Halla-aho and Juho Eerola of the PS have used anti-immigration sentiment to attract voters. Halla-aho’s visit in February to Lieksa in eastern Finland is a good example of how he promotes anti-immigration sentiment by demonizing Muslims.

Some parties with strong anti-immigration campaigns include Britain’s UKIP, a close ideological ally of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) of Finland, France’s National Front, Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn.

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The Pew Research Center survey revealed that an average of 55% of respondents in the seven EU countries said they want fewer migrants. The strongest anti-immigration sentiment was found in Greece (86%) followed by Italy (80%).

If views of migrants was negative, so were attitudes of minorities like the Roma, Muslims and to a lesser extent Jews.

The survey revealed that the Roma are viewed as the most unfavorable (50%) minority with the Muslims (46%) trailing closely behind. While attitude towards Jews weren’t as negative as those towards the Roma and Muslims, they were especially high in Greece (47%), Poland (26%) and Italy (24%).

Still confused about how racist parties like the UKIP are? Check out this video clip below where the head of the UKIP, Nigel Farage, answers some hard questions in the same way that PS chairman Timo Soini did when he was interviewed on BBC’s Hard Talk in 2013.

UKIP’s Farage political views are very similar to Soini’s. Listening to the interview by LBC’s James O’Brien of Farage shows close similarities of how Soini speaks to the Finnish media. 

 

Healthy advice: Don’t flirt with racism, include don’t exclude, involve and we’ll learn to live together

Posted on by Migrant Tales

One of the matters one learns after answering thousands of comments on Migrant Tales and posting near daily on this humble site is the language and arguments used by anti-immigration groups, which are openly against a Finland that is international, multicultural and open. 

By multicultural I mean treating everyone in this country, irrespective of their background, with respect and equality.

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Those who are for “white power” can say it subtler terms like“we must find work for all of our jobless before we can think about migration.” In plain English it’s known as white privilege.

A common argument used by the anti-immigration camp in Finland, even by well-intentioned socialists, is that “we must find work for all of our jobless before we can think about migration,” or we can only think about migration “when matters for ethnic Finns are optimal.”

If we expose the red herring and decipher the code behind these arguments, the following dangerous message emerges: We don’t want any migration. We are against multiculturalism, cultural diversity and our global integration.

Apart from being a subtle yet dangerous declaration of war against migrants and minorities in Finland, it leaves is with the following critical questions:

  • What about those that live here, pay taxes and who aren’t white Finnish-speaking Finns? Do they have to wait for full employment before their situation improves?
  • Do you accept discrimination as an effective means to guarantee “that all white Finnish-speaking Finns will be employed?”
  • Are you denying who you are, your identity and history if  over 1.2 million people emigrated from Finland between 1860 and 1999?
  • Have you forgotten the suffering of refugees if we had 420,000 of them from Karelia after the last war?
  • Is the United States’ Civil Rights Movement (1955-68) an answer?

Don’t be fooled by the “we must employ ethnic Finns first” argument because such advocates believe in your social exclusion and keeping you, your children and grandchildren as a second- or third-class citizen in this society indefinitely. By denying you a rightful identity other than “migrant” or “person with migrant background,” is a dead giveaway of your social exclusion and unequal place in this society.

It’s crucially important that present and future generations of Finns, irrespective of their ethnic background, learn from an early age that all forms of intolerance is a threat to our values. There’s nothing Nordic or “patriotic” about being racist and socially excluding others.

What is our goal? To be treated with respect and as equal members of society. This is the best insurance of the survival of our Nordic welfare state. Bring in intolerance and you’ll destroy what took so long to build.

I believe in this country and its ability to tackle anti-Nordic welfare state values like social exclusion and racism. But if push comes to shove, we shouldn’t hesitate for one second to use every democratic means at our disposal to drive home our point. And that is what we are doing or should be doing at this moment.

Invovle everyone but especially those who are socially excluded and especially vulnerable.

Are politicians like Jussi Halla-aho and parties like the PS racist?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Jay Smooth offered in early March some good points on how to spot a racist by sticking to the that-sounded-racist conversation as opposed to they-are-racist conversation. The former conversation allows you to focus on what the person said and why what they said is unacceptable. The other one will take your focus away from the issue. 

Keeping this in mind, it’s easy to spot racist and unacceptable comments by politicians like Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Jussi Halla-aho and others.

Taking the question a bit further, what does it say about the media, our politicians and society when they forget these racist rants and treat politicians who made them as if nothing happened?

It sadly reveals that if you are a white Finn you can nearly say anything you want about refugees, visible migrants and Muslims and almost get away with it. Even if Halla-aho got sentenced for ethnic agitation, the national media continues to give politicians like him inflated respectability and importance.

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Searching for easy targets and scapegoats is a dangerous and slippery slope that some witnessed in last century in Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler and his henchmen were hostile to cultural diversity like some politicians and political parties in Europe today. The more they executed their plans “to make Germany Jewish and minority free,” the tighter the noose around its neck got until it snapped and become lifeless in 1945 with the fall of Berlin.

With European parliamentary elections (MEP) on May 22-25, there’s a danger that anti-immigration, far-right and nationalistic parties will make big gains.

No matter if these parties are from Finland or Italy, United Kingdom or Bulgaria, they lack credible solutions. Many voters will be shocked and disappointed if they ever get an opportunity to implement their policies.

Their negative and hostile stances on immigration and cultural diversity raise an eerie question as well. Considering that Europe already is culturally diverse, how are these parties going to make Europe white again? Are their actions and attacks against minorities going to get ever-merciless? Did Geert Wilders of the Islamophobic Party for Freedom give us a glimpse in March when he ensured supporters that there would be “fewer Moroccans” in the Netherlands?

The recognition we give people who spread racism, prejudice and hatred makes a big difference. Look at former PS MP James Hirvisaari after he was sacked from the party in October for taking a picture and posting on social media a person making a Nazi salute in parliament.

Hirvisaari, who was sentenced as well for ethnic agitation, became a political nobody and joke after he got the boot from the PS.

Contrary to Hirvisaari, Halla-aho has played his political cards differently. For Soini’s favor and protection, Halla-aho has toned down his racist rants without changing his views on “multiculturalism” and “runaway immigration.”

If you want to spot a politician who sounds racists look at what he or she said. What the person said is written in stone and can’t be denied with the usual “I’m not a racist” defense.

Here’s one of many quotes that got Halla-aho in hot water: “Robbing passers-by and living as parasites on tax money is the national, maybe even genetic characteristic of Somalis.”

In another blog post in June 2008, he wrote that the Islamic prophet Mohammed was a pedophile and that Islam was a pedophilic religion because its prophet had intercourse with his nine-year-old wife, Aisha.

Are these statements racist? Any sensible person can tell that they are because they single out, victimize and exaggerate a whole group of people. These statements weren’t made with the intention to foster healthy debate but to insult and insight ethnic and religious hatred.

Here’s another one by Halla-aho, who states that people from Africa live in the Stone Age and therefore should not live in Europe. One of the pet arguments of anti-immigration politicians is to stress how different people are in order to justify their racism of different groups. Here’s one he made in 2007:

An African who’s been brought to Helsinki from the savannah pollutes no less with his conspicuous consumption than an ethnic Finn. He will probably pollute more because moving from the Stone Age directly to the modern world, he lacks consumerism and eco-conscience, which Westerners have. 

If you still have doubts whether the PS makes racist and unacceptable statements, visit The Truth about the True Finns blog and Halla-aho’s quotes (in Finnish) on Wikiquote. Read a long list of racist, homophobic, fascist and neo-Nazi quotes by PS politicians here.

Juho Eerola, who is the PS’ third vice-president,  is another MP who has toned down his views. Check out what he said on Hommaforum, a hate site, on July 6, 2010:

I myself am attracted to Benito Mussolini’s fascism, and in particular the economic policy [the country] pursued. Entreperneurship was encouraged but it was under strict government control. Vital large corporations could not be owned by foreign investors but were firmly in government hands. Italy achieved during those times full employment and strong economic growth. We could learn a lot from such a model.

Apart from migrants, visible minorities or gays, the rise of the PS especially in 2011 was seen as a new and interesting addition to the Finnish political scene. Even if the PS are a knee-jerk reaction of voters to ever-growing poverty and social inequality in Finland, what is surprising is that some voters picked a party that is provincial, hostile and scapegoats migrants and minorities.

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It’s no secret that the UKIP and PS are close ideological allies in Europe. The Guardian of London published an opinion piece that gave ten reasons why you should not vote for the UKIP. The exact same reasons apply to the PS.

  • Its stances are bonkers
  • It has nasty friends in Europe
  • It’s a magnet for unsavory types here
  • It has rewarded offense (in the case of the PS it has rewarded party members who have been sentenced for ethnic agitation)
  • It hates the EU but cashes in
  • Its MEPs are not actually worker bees
  • It is vulnerable to special interest as any other party
  • It speaks with fork tongues
  • Its only plan is Nigel (or in the case of the PS it’s Timo)
  • It makes a sensible debate on Europe less likely

Another opinion piece on the conservative Telegraph explains how UKIP’s leader Nigel Farage has taken British voters for fools.

The PS are doing the same thing in Finland. Like their ally in the United Kingdom, both parties may have their victory in the upcoming MEP elections, “but then they will begin the long march back into political obscurity,” according to the Telegraph.