Category: Enrique Tessieri

Financial Times: Finnish and Danish MEPs “with criminal records” join Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron’s group

Posted on by Migrant Tales

While some speculated that the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* and the Danish People’s Party (DPP), both with MEPs with criminal records, would be given the cold shoulder by UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group,  the opposite happened, writes the Financial Times. 

The two MEPs with criminal records are PS MEP Jussi Halla-aho and DPP’s Morten Messerschmidt, who was convicted in 2002 for claiming that cultural diversity was linked to rape, violence and forced marriages.

Writes the Financial Times quoting Mats Persson of the Open Europe think-tank said:

This will raise the eyebrows of many in Europe who thought the Danish People’s party in particular wouldn’t pass the Tory party’s blush test…The good news for the Tories is that they’re on course to become the third largest party in the European Parliament. The risk however is that they drive reform-minded liberal parties straight into the arms of the big federalist block in the EP [European parliament].

PS chairman Timo Soini expressed satisfaction about being accepted into the ECR.

“Fifty-five MEPs have joined so far this group [ECR],” Soini was quoted as saying on YLE. “This group is in practice bigger than the Left and Green group [European United Left-Nordic Green Left].”

The PS and DPP used to belong to the Europe for Freedom and Democracy (EFD) group, with far-right parties like the  Slovak National Party, whose leader said that the best policy for dealing with the Roma is “a long whip in a small yard.”

With parties like the Lega Nord – formerly an EFD member – joining Marine Le Pen and the PS and DPP the ECR, the interesting matter to watch is if UKIP’s Nigel Farage will be able to get the seven parties and 27 MEPs are needed to form a group in the European parliament. 

 

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Read full story here.

 

Another interesting question to ask is why Cameron permitted two anti-immigration parties with MEPs with criminal records to join the ECR?

One answer is that Cameron and his fellow conservatives in the group don’t care too much if a politician has been sentenced for ethnic agitation or has issues with racism. Taking into account the Tories’ anti-immigration rhetoric that has grown recently due to  the growth of the UKIP, this is nothing strange.

The PS’ entry into the ECR puts the party well into the conservative, populist and far-right camp.

* 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. 

 

Der Spiegel International interviews National Front leader Marine Le Pen

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Der Spiegel International published an interview with Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right  National Front. While her views on the EU and cultural diversity don’t surprise us, what she says should concern us. One matter shines through in Le Pen’s message: France must leave the EU and stop immigration to realize her greatness as a nation. 

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 Read full interview here.

The same logic that Le Pen uses was used by many autocratic nations like Nazi Germany, which blamed the Jews and other minorities that lived in the country for keeping Germans from becoming the “super race.”

While in a different context, Le Pen is basically saying the same thing: France has been destroyed by the EU, immigration and minorities.

One has only to look at Berlin in April-May 1945 to understand the destruction and terror that the Nazi regime brought on Europe came back like a boomerang to its doorsteps. In today’s world, you don’t build greatness with racism and nativist nationalism. You do it with global integration and values that promote cultural diversity through mutual acceptance, respect and equal opportunities.

Some of her answers dodge the question completely, like the one when the reporter asks her about xenophobia. Her answer: “Xenophobia is the hatred of foreigners. I don’t hate anyone.”

If you read some of the statements she’s made against Muslims and migrants, we could easily argue the contrary. She’s no friend of Muslims, migrants and minorities like gays.

As you read the interview, pay special attention if she offers viable solutions to issues like unemployment, competitiveness and global-EU integration. What you’ll see is a lot of scapegoating without any credible solutions except for leave the EU and stop immigration to France.

It’s too bad that the reporter didn’t ask Le Pen what she’d do with the millions of migrants and visible minorities living in France. Would she make a similar promise like Geert Wilders did in spring, when the Dutch politician said he’d reduce the number of Moroccans in Holland?

Read full interview here.

Counterpoint: How to compare European populist parties

Posted on by Migrant Tales

There’s been a lot of talk as of late in the media about far-right and populist parties that were elected to the European parliament. One way to assess these parties is a chart by Counterpoint, a research group. Gathering from the chart below, European populist parties are mostly racist, xenophobic, Islamophobic and sexist.

Their democratic contribution to healthy debate is questionable and it’s unclear if they’ll become more radicalized in the future.

A good example of radicalization is the UKIP, which apart from being more anti-EU before, took a strong anti-immigration stand in the European parliamentary elections. In Finland, there is concern that the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* may take a more vocal stand against immigrants as next year’s parliamentary elections near.

Migrant Tales disagrees with Counterpoint’s classification of the PS as a party with “low danger of racism.” While the party leadership may not make racist comments, they are rife among its members. Read racist quotes by the PS here.

If you are going to challenge intolerance, it’s a good matter that you know those who spread racism and prejudice.

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Read full Counterpoint report here.

While the Finnish media hardly ever calls the PS a far-right party, the populist party was placed on such a list this week by the Huffington Post, Simon Wiesenthal Center and PolicyMic.

 

* 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. 

Migrant Tales insight on EU elections: Win some, lose some

Posted on by Migrant Tales

As the political dust settles after the Euro elections last Sunday, can we claim like the media that the hard right made important gains?  How did anti-EU, anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* of Finland fare compared with the previous elections in 2009? 

Apart from the UKIP and National Front of France’s impressive election victories, there were some setbacks as well. The most notable of these were the defeat of Geert Wilders Freedom Party (PVV), which gained 16.97% of the vote in 2009 with 4 MEPs but saw its support plummet to 13.2% (4 MEPs). Other big losers were Vlaams Belang of Belgium (4.14%/1 MEP from 10.88%/2 MEPs) and Italy’s Lega Nord (6.15%/5 MEPs from 10.21%/9 MEPs).

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See original posting here.

 

If I were the PS’ chairperson, Timo Soini, I’d be concerned about the poor showing of the party despite the fact that the party got  two MEPs elected.

Ever since the impressive victory of the Finnish anti-EU, anti-immigration, homophobic and especially anti-Islam party in the 2011 parliamentary elections, when it raised the number of MPs to 39 from 5 previously, it has been downhill ever since. In all of the elections after 2011, the PS has remained a low-teens party and not been able to match its 2011 election victory (see table below).

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While 70% of the EU MEPs elected throughout Europe on Sunday are pro-EU, parties like the PS with MEPs like Jussi Halla-aho are finding out rapidly that the European media has a better memory than the Finnish media.

After bashing migrants and victimizing other minorities in Finland, the PS wants greater respectability by leaving the anti-EU and anti-immigration Europe for Freedom and Democracy (EFD) for the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) bloc. The Financial Times reported this week that the PS’ membership in the ECR would be a liability because of Halla-aho’s sentence for ethnic agitation.

Even if Halla-aho tallied about a third (80,772) of the PS vote, he did so mainly on an anti-immigration message, traveling as far as Lieksa, where a PS councilman demanded a “Somali-free” meeting room, to spread his diatribes against Muslims and cultural diversity.

Taking into account the disappointing results of the PS in the past three elections, the big question is if the party will ratchet up its anti-immigration and anti-Islam rhetoric as the April 2015 parliamentary elections near. If the PS loses half of its half-a-million votes next year, it means that it will send the party back to the minor political leagues.

Of the anti-EU and anti-immigration parties that were clear victors in the EU elections, two emerge: UKIP and the National Front.

The most impressive of the two is Marine Le Pen’s National Front, which won the election with 24.95% (24 MEPs) from 6.3% (3 MEPs) previously. Nigel Farage’s UKIP became the first party since the early twentieth century to beat the Conservatives and Labor in an election. It gained 26.77% (24 MEPs) of the vote versus 16.09% (13 MEPs).

Other anti-immigration parties that did well in the  elections were the Danish Folk Party (26.6%/4 MEPs from 14.8%/2 MEPs), Freedom Party of Austria (19.7%/4 MEPs from 14.8%/2 MEPs), Sweden Democrats (9.7%/2 MEPs from 3.27%/-), and neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic parties like the Golden Dawn of Greece (9.38%/3 MEPs), Hungary’s Jobbik (14.68%/3 MEPs from 14.77%/3 MEPs), NPD of Germany (1.00%/1 MEP).

HOPE not hate European Editor Graeme Atkinson put the EU elections in the following words:

So just where is this generalized, much talked-about, media-hyped rise of fascism, rise of right-wing extremism etc [except in France]? Because even with the huge increase in FN [National Front] support, the overall far right vote in the EU grew only by 1.57 million over the 2009 score with an additional country Croatia in the mix. Indeed, apart from in the UK [if we include UKIP], Denmark, Hungary and France, the far right lost votes everywhere and only won 34 seats.

It’s unlikely that the two largest anti-EU and anti-immigration parties in the European parliament, UKIP and the National Front, will form an alliance.

As far as the far right, anti-EU and anti-immigration MEPs are concerned in the new European parliament, they continue to be a small minority but with a louder voice.

 

* 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. 

The PS of Finland is named again on a list with other far-right and neo-Nazi European parties

Posted on by Migrant Tales

On Monday the Huffington Post listed the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* as one of the nine scariest parties to be elected to the European parliament in the “good” company of xenophobic and neo-Nazi parties like the National Front of France and Golden Dawn of Greece, respectively.  On Tuesday, PolicyMic listed the PS as “one of the reasons we should be terrified about the people who just took power in Europe.” 

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Read full story on PolicyMic here.

 

On Wednesday, the PS’ name popped up again when the Simon Wiesenthal Center named it as one of ten parties it will monitor closely for  spreading xenophobia, nativist nationalism, anti-immigration rhetoric and anti-Semitism.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center listed the PS with neo-Nazi parties like the NPD of Germany, Golden Dawn and Hungary’s Jobbik.

Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s largest daily, published on Wednesday citing the Huffington Post’s story on the nine scariest parties elected to the European parliament.

The PS has members who are Holocaust deniers and who play down the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany.

One of these is newly elected PS MEP Halla.aho.

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This picture by one of Halla-aho’s close allies in parliament, James Hirvisaari, caused the MP to be sacked from the party in October. Read full story here.

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

Simon Wiesenthal Center will monitor the PS as one of ten parties for spreading xenophobia and anti-Semitism

Posted on by Migrant Tales

After being named one of the nine scariest parties to be elected to the European parliament by Huffington Post, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the  global Jewish human rights organization that challenges anti-Semitism, issued a statement where it names the Perussuomalaiset (PS) as one of ten parties it will monitor closely for  spreading xenophobia, nativist nationalism, anti-immigration rhetoric and anti-Semitism.

Placing the PS in the political company of France’s National Front, the neo-Nazi and far-right NPD of Germany, Greece’s Golden Dawn and Jobbik of Hungary, shouldn’t come to a surprise. What is, however, surprising how uncritically the Finnish media has treated the PS, especially when it comes to its anti-immigration and anti-Islam views.

Concerned by the rise of xenophobia and anti-Semitism in Europe, the Simon Wiesenthal Center called on in early May EU Vice President Catherine Ashton to condemn the entry of “hatemongers into the European Parliament, launch an investigation into their source of funding” and “urge the parliamentary faction blocs to ostracize them.”

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Read full statement here.

The interesting question we should be asking is why have publications like the Huffington Post and now the Simon Wiesenthal Center listed the PS? Why has the Finnish media been more “understanding” and commonly let off the anti-EU, anti-immigration, homophobic and especially anti-Islam party easily off the hook for its hostility against migrants and visible minorities?

The answer is pretty clear since the Finnish media is part of the problem. It gives too often racists inflated respectability and importance.

Opposition to the PS and politicians who spread racism and hatred, and who have been sentenced on top of it for ethnic agitation, should never be considered “normal” politicians but outright extremists that are a threat to our way of life.

The PS has members who are Holocaust deniers and who play down the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany.

One of these is newly elected PS MEP Halla.aho.

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In October, PS MP James Hirvisaari got sacked from the party after he took a picture of a friend making a Nazi salute in parliament.

 

 

 

 

Financial Times: MEP Jussi Halla-aho racist track record leaves PS out in the cold

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Success comes with a high political price especially if you base that success on spreading racism and prejudice. That is exactly the case of the Perussuomalaiset (PS),* who are hoping to join the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) in Brussels but have been rejected by them because they see PS MEP Jussi Halla-aho as too racist, according to the Financial Times.

The Financial Times writes in another story that the freshly elected MEP, who was convicted in 2012 for “stirring ethnic tensions,” said “…something about the prophet Muhammad that we dare not repeat on a family blog. The True Finns [PS] also briefly suspended him from the party after he suggested that Greece’s debt problems could only be solved by a military junta [he retracted the comments].”

What is interesting to note is that the same anti-immigration and anti-Islam message spearheaded by Halla-aho and his cronies that was decisive for the PS’ historic victory in the 2011 parliamentary elections, is turning into its political epitaph to ever becoming a credible and mainstream political party.

The 12.9% showing of the PS on Sunday is still a long way off from the 19.1% it won in 2011. The PS’ showing in the presidential (9.4%) and municipal elections (12.3%) were equally disappointing.

If the same trend continues, it means that the PS will face a big upset in next year’s parliamentary elections.

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Read full story here.

Knocking at the ECR’s door is another close ally of the PS, the far-right Danish People’s Party (DPP), which won the euro elections in its country by doubling the number of MEPs to 4 from 2009.

According to the Financial Times, both the PS and DPP both have MEPs that were convicted for ethnic agitation and therefore carry a lot of political baggage.

I find it very difficult to believe that [David] Cameron’s Conservatives, with whom we work closely to promote innovative, open and competitive societies, would team up with the True Finns whose rise is to large extent based on xenophobia and backward-looking 1980s nostalgia, writes the Financial Times, quoting one senior Finnish official.

While it’s clear that the PS is eyeing next year’s parliamentary elections and therefore is keen on joining the ECR group in order to get greater respectability, the big question is where they’ll end up in Brussels.

Moreover, even if the PS wishes to make its anti-EU, anti-immigration, homophobic and especially anti-Islam stand mainstream, it’s another question if Europe’s mainstream parties will permit them to join their club.

PS leader Timo Soini says that joining Marine Le Pen’s is out of the question even if the National Front leader has courted the PS to join the European Alliance for Freedom, a new hard-right group spearheaded by the French politician.

That leaves the PS with Nigel Farage’s UKIP and the Europe Freedom and Democracy group (EFD), where members like the Lega Nord of Italy, which praised Anders Breivik for murdering 77 innocent victims on 22/7, are defecting.

Will Farage and Le Penn join forces? Will the PS be part of that new political group?

Time will tell.

Even if anti-EU and anti-immigration groups made gains in countries like France and the United Kingdom, 70% of the European parliament’s 751 MEPs belong to pro-EU groups in the center-left and center-right.

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

Disingenuous Finnish PS MEP-elect Jussi Halla-aho fears image would suffer with parties like far-right National Front

Posted on by Migrant Tales

In an interview on YLE, Perussuomalaiset (PS) newly elected MEP Jussi Halla-aho said that it was doubtful that the anti-immigration party would form part of a parliamentary group with far-right parties like the National Front of France “because the party’s image would suffer.”

What a disingenuous statement by a politician who has based his career together with the PS on spreading racism and hatred of Muslims and migrants. Moreover, hasn’t he considered that the only group where the PS will be accepted is the present one, or the Europe for Freedom and Democracy?

If put in the right context, Halla-aho is saying that the PS’ image would suffer ever-greater damage if it grouped with parties like the National Front.

The French xenophobic party’s leader, Marine Le Pen, has said that she would like the PS to form part of her new group in the European parliament.

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Read full story here.

 

Without naming the National Front or Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom, Halla-aho said that far-right anti-immigration parties in Europe were in the same ideological ballpark as the PS.

In the face of Halla-aho’s comments, what then is the difference between the Lega Nord of Italy, which praised Anders Breivik after he murdered 77 victims on 22/7, and parties like the National Front?

The PS can blame itself and its actions for its right-wing populist, far-right and nationalistic anti-immigration, homophobic and especially anti-Islam image.

The PS forms part to the same European parliament group as the Lega Nord, Danish People’s Party, UKIP and others in the Europe of Freedom and Democracy group.

 

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.