Four years ago, I wrote about the surprise US presidential election, which elected Donald Trump. I compared the election outcome to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous words after the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. He said that the surprise attack on December 7, 1942, was “a date that will live in infamy.”
Four years of Trump’s administration have been days in infamy covered with thousands of lies, misleading statements, and hostility towards minorities.
Even if it looks like Trump will lose the election, we should not be that naive to believe that Joe Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, will change everything.
The fact that the United States could vote for a corrupt and autocratic president reveals a lot about the sickness that the country is presently suffering for a very long time.
I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.
James Baldwin (1924-87)
Ir, there is one matter that the killings in France have reinforced, it is the disenfranchisement of the Muslim community of France. How is it possible that two deranged persons that caused tragic deaths to end up with the Franch state placing a gun at the Muslim community’s head?
The short leash that Prime Minister Emanuel Macron wants to place on France’s 5.7-million-strong Muslim community speaks volumes about the racism in that country.
Not only is the French state aiming to educate its own Muslims under the new anti-separatist law, but it plans a crackdown on more than 50 Muslim organizations. One of these includes anti-racist organizations such as the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF).
In these troubled times for Muslims, there is a good matter to remember:
In a bid to gain voters, the National Coalition Party’s (Kokoomus) MP Antti Häkkänen and possibly the next chairperson of the conservative party spreads his anti-Islamic rhetoric, again.
For those who don’t know Häkkänen, he comes from a small town called Mäntyharju in Eastern Finland and has expressed before his extreme distaste for non-white migration and especially Islam.
During 2011-2013, he was president of the Youth League of the National Coalition Party, which idolizes US capitalism and the Republican Party. His predecessor was Wille Rydman, a well-known anti-immigration hardliner, and his successor was Susanna Koski. Under Koski’s leadership, the Youth League of the National Coalition Party aimed at doing away with legislation that prohibited hate speech and that would make redundant the then Ombudsman for Minorities Office.
As councilperson for Mäntyharju, a small town in Eastern Finland, he is reported to have declined to offer, as a show of solidarity, his small meeting fee to newly-arrived quota refugees.
His tweet below of the horrific deaths in France is no surprise.
He tweets: “The enemies of an open society try to change Europe’s way of life and destroy our values. We should not bow to such pressure. Neither bowing to Islamic terrorism nor to that of an authoritarian state. Human rights and freedom must be defended by a united Europe.”
I’m certain that such a statement gave Häkkänen and Kokoomus a lot of brownie points with voters and, possibly, their future partners in government, the Islamophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS).*
Here are some questions that I’d ask Häkkänen about his pugnacious tweet:
Anyone who has followed Perussuomalaiset (PS)* chairperson Jussi Halla-aho’s political career will easily conclude that it was done on the fuel of racism and bigotry, and generous chunks of it.
Racism had become such a normal matter for the PS that on the same day when Halla-aho claimed on Marja Sannikka’s talk show that he “resents people being treated differently” due to their skin color, the party’s vice president lashes out against people of color.
On Marja Sannika’s talk show (in Finnish), Halla-aho was incapable of condemning racism.
States Purra (who calls, like Halla-aho on Sannikka’s show, asylum seekers “harmful” migration) stated on the same day of Halla-aho’s interview: “Wouldn’t it be high time to think that the mixing of people, religions, and cultures in the West is such a good matter? The development of mass migration and violent cultures is A PROBLEM. Beheading a person is only one example.”
Sannikka asks Halla-aho in the interview if he resents racism.
His response: “Yes, I resent any thinking that treats people differently because of their skin color. I do resent this.”
Affirms Riikka Purra: “Wouldn’t it be high time to think that the mixing of people, religions, cultures in the West [not] IS SUCH A GOOD MATTER? Mass immigration from the developing world and violent cultures ARE A PROBLEM. Beheading is just one example.”
One of the biggest challenges of Finnish journalism is follow-up. You throw a question to the person you are interviewing, and if he tries to wiggle his or her way out of it or speak in code to his followers, you hit the person with another question until you get the answer.
Halla-aho’s response if he resented racism was a half-ass job.
Diagree? Check out one of his tweets:
Nobody in the Perussuomalaiset [party] wants a multiethnic or culturally [diverse] Finland, which consistently mentioned in our program and in everything that we do.” Source: Twitter
Halla-aho’s answer could mean anything. It could be seen as a statement against affirmative action, equality but not equity.
“Another underlying message also becomes clear in the meantime: ‘Muslims pose a threat to our society and have to be tamed,’ which is reminiscent of the ‘civilizing’ mission of the French colonial conquerors.“
Any sensible Muslim or person will condemn what happened in France concerning the beheading of a teacher. As Hafez points out, the incident is being used by President Emmanuel Macron to push through his anti-separatist bill and load his guns for the presidential elections of 2022.
Guess who he is facing in the presidential election? Right. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen who has, like her father, built her whole political career Islamophobia.
An old blame-game-the-whole-group emerges.
”The state needs to understand that those who provoked chaos and terrorism did not attend mosques they were not integrated into the Muslim community, they were repeat offenders, criminals, who came and went from prison,” said The Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF). “They had a path in violence, and because of this we stigmatize a whole population?”
Should we be surprised that Finland’s Perussuomalaiset (PS) party,[1] which, like Le Pen, uses Islamophobia to gain voters and political power, is crying murder?
PS MP Leena Meri threw some Islamophobic punches at the government last week and had difficulty pronouncing Black Lives Matter, which she considered a violent association.
“Honorable government,” she asked in last Thursday’s session of parliament, “why haven’t you condemned what happened [in France]? Are you numb?”
We can rephrase the question back to Meri: “Has your Islamophobic rhetoric and racism shown an alarming trend in Finland?”
Apart from the political brownie points, Macron is trying to reap, and we see the same disturbing pattern of how we label the whole Muslim community for the outlandish deed. We see this happening with the PS.
“The crackdown on more than 50 Muslim organizations, including anti-racist organizations such as the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF), is the best example of what the state aims to do with this [anti-separatist] legislation,” writes Hafez in aa.com. “While the human rights advocacy group CCIF is collecting data to create awareness on anti-Muslim racism and helps the victims of anti-Muslim discrimination, the singling out of this organization reveals a very worrisome dimension of Macron’s policies: Erasing Muslim visibility from the public space altogether.”
No more PS BS and politicking from Macron.
*Hafez is a political scientist at the University of Salzburg. He is also a non-resident senior research scholar at Georgetown University’s The Bridge Initiative, and the co-author of the European Islamophobic Report.
In a recent debate with Center Party chairperson Annika Saariko, the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party head, Jussi Halla-aho, was put on the hot seat after asked about his anti-Semitic blog writings.
He denied being an anti-Semite and said that the claim was a popularity stunt by Lauri Nurmi, who recently published an unofficial biography of him and made such an observation.
Why didn’t the reporter at the debate ask two questions: “Are you, Halla-aho, an anti-Semite and an Islamophobe.”
The PS and how it treats minorities, especially Muslims, expose the power and privilege white Finns have. It is like living in a near-perfect world. You can eat your racist cake with impunity and have it at the same time.
While Finland’s 100,000-120,000-strong Muslim community has little to no political power and is constantly reminded that they can never be equal members of society, the smaller Jewish community is a different story.
The Jewish community in Finland has historically suffered from anti-Semitism. A characteristic of this form of racism is that you silence the victim and plug your ears to their objections.
Matias Turkkila is the editor of the PS party’s newspaper who confirmed Halla-aho’s anti-Semitism and that of the party’s as well.
Turkkila claims that the “fierce” attack made by Yle against Kärkkäinen is part of a plan to destroy Juha Kärkkäinen’s businesses. He claims that one of the journalists that did the radio program is a member of the Left Alliance. Turkkila asks in the tweet: “@yleuutiset why do you allow a Left Alliance activist to use your platform to aim [at Kärkkäinen]?” He adds that Yle should follow its own rules and not publish material to advance the world view of others. Source: Twitter.
In the tweet, Turkkila overlooks or believes that we do not know who Juha Kärkkäinen is. For starters, he was fined in 2014 for publishing anti-Semitic writings of Adrian Salbuch, Ted Pike, David Duke, and others, as well as cartoons that bear a striking resemblance to the former Nazi tabloid, Der Strümer (1923-45).
The anti-Semitic writings were published in Magneettimedia, a publication of his stores that continues to be rife with anti-Semitism, xenophobia, and Nazi glorification. It is today no longer edited by Kärkkäinen but by neo-Nazis.
If there is somebody to blame for Finland’s Perussuomalaiset (PS)* problem, a big part of the blame falls onthe media. In that group, you will find politicians and about 17% of Finns who vote for an openly hostile party to Muslims, people of color, and minorities.
A good example of the media’s power was seen on Monday when PS chairperson Jussi Halla-aho was questioned about his anti-Semitic blog writings. The question put Halla-aho momentarily in the hot seat, forcing a knee-jerk response. He denied (surprise, surprise!) being an anti-Semite and said that the claim was a popularity stunt by Lauri Nurmi, who recently published an unofficial biography of him.
The question took Halla-aho by surprise, and the only defense he could put up was to answer by hitting below the belt.
Halla-aho’s response and anger showed that he is vulnerable and that the media can ask politicians tough questions if it wishes. It is called having teeth or journalistic grit.
Why do we see so little tough questioning by the Finnish media when it comes to topics like racism, Islamophobia, and the PS.
Keitä ovat Perussuomalaiset? Elävätkö he rinnakaistodellisuudessa tai peittelevätkö keitä he ovat todellisuudessa, eli vihaamielisia islamofoobisia, etnonastionalistisia ja maahanmuuttovastaisia?
Tässä muutamia väitteitä. Totta tai tarua?
Keltainen ei ole pelkurein* väri. Se ei ole myöskään lumenväri.
It is dreadful what happened in France when a man beheaded a teacher for showing students caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad. Any sensible person, irrespective of his or her background, would condemn what happened. Even so, Islamophobes from the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party were already spreading racism and trying to score political points.
Having lived in Argentina during a terrible dictatorship 1976-83, young people had three choices to change society: remain silent, move abroad, join a guerrilla group, and kill people.
Killing anyone for his or her ideas should be condemned strongly without labeling whole groups as terrorists.
One of the matters that racist parties like the PS forget is that they blame the whole group like @sallykohn tweets so eloquently.
I answered PS MP Sebastian Tynkkynen’s Islamophobic tweet.
Tweet: “Remember what happened has nothing to do with Islam, because Islam is a religion that promotes peace.”
Tynkkynen hits back at my tweet and asked what was racist about it?
