Former Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Ano Turtiainen has become a real thorn in the side of the far-right Islamophobic party. Apart from hisracist postings of George Floyd, encouraging violence against asylum reception centers, assaulting a fourteen-year-old, wishing that asylum seekers would drown at sea,inciting civil war, anti-vaxxer buffoonery, and other issues.
His latest tweet states that he would be ready to kill people if a friend of his was forced to use a mask.
People who are suspected and later convicted for ethnic agitation defend themselves in the following manner: my free speech rights are being infringed; it is prohibited to debate immigration topics and that “I am innocent…”
Oulu Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Sebastian Tynkkynen has made a name for himself as an avid Islamophobe who mixes hate speech from the earnest debate. For some strange reason but in the same way as a junkie, he cannot lay off the (Islamophobic) stuff.
“If making immigration-critical policies is deemed illegal by the judiciary,” Tynkkynen was quoted as saying in Yle News, “then it can be said that the judiciary is in a very weak position. The opportunities for one party to take practical action are deprived.”
What is wrong with the above statement?
Note that he uses the term “immigration-critical” which is just a sugar-coated word for Islamophobic and xenophobic. Moreover, he is falsely claiming that “one party” is being deprived of acting against Muslims.
One party? That one party, the PS, spreads Islamophobic diatribe constantly.
You are not being censored, Tynkkynen, you are being told that there are ways to debate matters without victimizing, spreading hate and labeling whole groups of people.
The Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (Supo) 2020 report laid bear how ethnic replacement claims are the usual mix of far-right conspiracy theories and the smoking gun of terrorism from this fringe group. Should we be surprised that the far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, which leads in opinion polls, is spreading this malarkey?
If we look at the PS leadership, there are three prominent members who are pushing this conspiracy theory: its chairperson Jussi Halla-aho, its first vice-president Riikka Purra and party secretary Simo Grönroos.
From left to right: Jussi Halla-aho, Riikka Purra, and Simo Grönroos are the most avid promoters of spreading the ethnicreplacement conspiracy theory.
Most recently, PS MP Olli Immonen, who was a security guard before being elected as MP and who proposed an ethnic register for Finland, defended the racist lie of ethnonationalists.
How much is the Covid-19 pandemic impacting in a positive manner the far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party? This is not a trivial question considering that the party, which has built its voter base and message on racism, leads in the polls. What future does the PS have when the Covid-19 pandemic subsides?Will it be a painful day of reckoning for it?
Covid-19 has uprooted our lives for over a year. We have faced lockdowns, fear, and our generous share of conspiracy theories like the lie about the great replacement. In such a backdrop, the PS is leading in the polls.
But not to worry. The PS is a tinderbox that will implode due to its own making.
Disagree?
Look at the PS candidates in the municipal elections. All white people, mostly men except for one black person, tell us how they want to take Finland back and do everything possible to continue excluding migrants, especially Muslims and people of color. The white nationalism soundbites are mentally nauseating.
The only reason a party like the PS has grown, and why their politicians can continue to spread racism and hostility against migrants and minorities with near impunity, is because Finland has issues with its racism. I am still confident, however, that we can push back the far-right threat and save our country from turning into a Hungary and Poland.
In the face of such challenges, it is clear that the PS will not make Finland a more socially equal country but exacerbate such social ills.
If you study the history of the PS, it has done everything possible to label and stigmatize migrants and minorities as useless human beings. It even calls some migrant and minority groups as “harmful.”
Isn’t it surprising that after they have tarred and feathered us in public for at least three decades, they wonder why certain groups face high unemployment in Finland?
The PS and its followers are responsible for the hostility, violence, and exclusion that migrants and minorities are presently suffering in Finland.
When the pandemic subsides and when we return to what was normal, that is when the PS will begin to retreat in the polls. People will be able to get out of their four walls and computer screens and interact with the world as they did before.
Un humilde mensaje en una postal mandada en pleno dictadura, en el año 1978.
“Esta tarjeta es una realidad para que siempre te recuerdes de estos pagos tan lejanos, prácticamente en el fin del mundo pero que es tan querido por nosotros. Ya va a llegar un día en que el sol saldrá realmente para todos en estas latitudes, el asunto es seguir siendo como somos y formar a la gente, educarla para que comprenda y comience a despertar, a abrir sus ojos.”
Claudia
Casa de Gobierno – Bs. As. – Argentina. Diseño de Anikó Szabó.
Elizabeth Holmes built a 9-billion-dollar company called Theranos from scratch that promised to test blood with a single drop. One of the many deceptions she used to trick investors was her deep voice. As a woman, it gave her more authority.
Those who have watched Perussuomalaiset (PS)* chairperson Jussi Halla-aho for a few years will note that his voice has changed. He usually switches to a deep voice when he is answering questions from reporters and on talk shows.
Considering that Holmes is a woman and Halla-aho’s deficiency is that he lacks charisma, does he fake his voice to make up for his dull image?
Below is Halla-aho speaking in 2013 and the video below that is from last month.
Note the difference.
Just like Holmes, Halla-aho is marketing urban legends about migrants and minorities. He does so hellbent on polarizing and stigmatizing even more migrants and minorities in this country.
Even if about half a million people voted for the PS in the parliamentary elections of 2019, Holmes succeed as well at fooling investors of hundreds of millions of dollars on fake promises and deception.
A story published Wednesday in Politico exposed the misogyny against Finland’s woman prime minister, Sanna Marin, and the women members of her cabinet. Considering that Finland’s biggest opposition party, the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* which is also leading in opinion polls, hate speech has raised its head for many years.
Hate speech and the PS are like a perfect couple walking in the park with a rabid dog on a short leash. The dog, which is used to impress voters, eventually bites its owners, and hard.
A report from the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence concluded that Marin’s government is “overwhelmingly” targeted by sexist online harassment.
Politico writes: “The five most targeted ministers, all female, were overwhelmingly victimized by misogynistic abuse attacking their values, demeaning their decision-making skills, and questioning their leadership abilities.”
Uusi Suomi, an online publication that played a key role before the 2011 parliamentary elections in giving the racist rhetoric of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party a platform, published today an interview with a cultural researcher, Tuija Saresma, who concluded that Jussi Halla-aho and the PS are racist.
While these types of statements are a foregone conclusion about Halla-aho and the PS, the big question is why Finnish society appears so impotent in the face of these social ills.
How do you explain the rise of a party in 2011, which won 39 seats in parliament from 5 previously, became the most successful party in parliamentary elections during the last decade?
Some factors explaining Finnish society’s racist and exclusive disposition is its near-geopolitical isolation during the Cold War. The lack of cultural and ethnic diversity, and the whitewashing of this history, have also help feed racism and white nationalism.
Any sensible person will conclude that white Finnish nationalism and racism get their power from the PS. Attacking brown and black Finns and other minorities with the intent of polarizing society creates a dilemma for the party and the country.
How can we state with a straight face that we are for social equality and human dignity when we exclude in a hostile manner, other people?
An insightful Op-Ed article in The Guardian by David Bromell on the impact of the Christchurch killings, sheds light on some of the problems that countries like Finland face in tackling hate speech.
He writes: “There will always be idiots who shoot their mouths off – but in a democratic society we need to learn to live together.”
According to Bromell, public policy should focus on the “effect of harm” and not on the emotions of hatred or offence since you cannot regulate this in an open and democratic society.
But here comes the punchline: “Stirring up and inciting discrimination, hostility or violence against members of a social group, however, is and should be a crime. This may involve speech, but incitement can also be written, mimed, memed, graffitied, cartooned or tweeted.”
The rise of a racist party like the PS in Finland entrenched in white nationalism is not only shameful but reveals how vulnerable and unprepared society and institutions are in challenging such social ills.
Events after the storming of the Capitol building in Washington on January 6 exposed white nationalist terrorism as the biggest threat facing the United States. Since the events that took place at the Capitol did not happen spontaneously, are we going to see something similar in Finland’s ever-hostile far-right groups like the PS?
As with the United States, is there a blind spot to this threat if the people spreading violence are white Finns? Does Finnish law enforcement take this threat seriously?
There is a strong indication that law enforcement is not up to the job. One of the problems is that such institutions are white and run by men. With so little participation of minorities such as brown and black Finns in the police, newsrooms, and the halls of power, it is not surprising that the anti-racism debate in this country is one-sided and dominated by whites.
The best example of Finland’s racism blind spot is the rise of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party and other far-right groups, which have become more vocal in recent years. It is amusing in a negative light that a party like the PS, where the vast majority of its municipal election candidates are white Finnish males, are dead set on denying minorities equal rights.
Even if we give recognition this week to the UN Anti-Racism Day, behind the chatter we find extraordinarily little action to challenge those institutions that give racism and white nationalism its legitimacy. We don’t do enough as a society because we don’t want to.
Center Party chairperson and minister for culture, Annika Saarikko, is the type of leadership Finland needs today unless it wants to climb out of its deep xenophobic pit spearheaded by the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party.
Considering that her party is being targeted by the PS, which bases its support on spreading suspicion and anti-immigration sentiment, Saarikko’s was quoted as saying in Helsingin Sanomat that Finland needs 10,000 migrants a year to avert a labor shortage is bold considering the attacks by the PS and recent opinion polls.
In the face of Saarikko’s prediction, Finland will find it especially hard to get out of its xenophobic pit if politicians are silent, policymakers are silent, and the public is silent about how to make Finland a more inclusive country and to rid it of politicians who polarize society.
Too many Finns still think that turning our country into a more inclusive one means doing little or nothing.
In early March, an opinion poll published by Yle showed that the Center Party was hovering at around historic lows of 11% and trailing the PS by 5.9 percentage points.
One of the aims of PS leader Jussi Halla-aho is that the Center Party will suffer a stinging blow in the municipal elections of June 13. This would force the party to leave the government, leading to its downfall and new elections, where the PS would win and have Halla-aho as prime minister.
One matter is clear: If Finland is to shake off and challenge anti-immigration sentiment, politicians like Saarikko must say it clearly and loudly.
“Anti-immigration sentiment has spread so far that even today labor immigration is started to see in a negative light,” she was quoted as saying in Helsingin Sanomat. “Such an attitude isn’t possible because of what Finland’s dependency ratio [labor shortage and tax base] is. Many may ask what about Finns getting employed. Yes, but when that is not enough either.”
The party that is against bringing labor immigrants to Finland is none other than the PS.
