The US owner of Eskimo Pie ice cream will change the product name and marketing because it is derogatory, according to CNN. Foneri Finland, the Finnish company that makes Eskimo ice cream, is expected to follow suit.
“We are committed to being a part of the solution on racial equality, and recognize the term is derogatory,” Elizabell Marquez, head of marketing for parent company Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream, was quoted as saying in a statement.
Foneri Finland, which produces Eskimo ice cream, said that a name change under consideration for the Finnish ice cream brand name, according to Yle.
“We have identified the issue very thoroughly and it is presently under study [to change the brand name],” said marketing manager Minna Brunberg, who added that social equality is an important value of the company.
While the term “Eskimo” was substituted for Inuit a while back, we don’t go around in Finland, calling the Sámi, “Lapps.”
It’s common respect and such old names that are the product of colonialism and racism.
White supremacy is a bully to put it lightly and does not care if you like what they may call a group. They always do so without permission because they have no respect for the group.
In Finland, we should not be surprised that the Islamophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party are the ones crying foul about the issue.
PS parliamentary group leader Ville Tavio tweeted that there are also plans in Finland to change the name of the ice-cream brand because it is derogatory.
“The green-lefts are for certain elated,” he tweeted.
Who are the most “notable” figures of Finland’s Islamophobic network in 2019? In the list below, 13 are members of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party, 3 are National Coalition Party (NCP) members, 2 are Christian Democrats (KD), and three others are political “freelancers:” Marco de Wit, Junnes Lokka, and Tiina Wiik.
The list, which is far from complete, was published in the European Islamophobic Report 2019, the most comprehensive report on anti-Muslim racism in Europe.
So who are they?
Source: Eduskunta
Jussi Halla-aho: an old-timer Islamophobe convicted in 2012 for ethnic agitation and for breaching the sanctity of religion. Halla-aho recently said that nobody would have no reason to masturbate if there were no news about migration and asylum seekers. He aims to end Muslim immigration to Finland. He has referred to Muslims as “the dregs of society.”
Riikka Purra: An Islamophobe who commonly blames all of the country’s problems on migrants and especially Muslims. Her political career relies strongly on Islamophobia. She commonly uses the term “harmful” immigration to describe Muslims and other people of color but doesn’t understand that she is a “harmful” MP to Finland’s growth and health.
Sebastian Tynkkynen: Convicted two times for ethnic agitation, he is usually the first one to cast the Islamophobic stone at Muslim victims. Tynkkynen was one PS politician who profited from the Oulu sexual assault cases and got a ticket to parliament.
Ville Tavio: One wonders if this politician is a lawyer or not when he talks about Muslims. One of the many things he has proposed is changing the Finnish Constitution so that Finns would have greater rights over foreigners. He has a hard time accepting that everyone, irrespective of one’s background, is equal before the law.
Sources: Euroopean Parliament and Eduskunta
Laura Huhtasaari: The far-right Islamophobic rhetoric of this MEP appears to have supercharged in Brussels. Like Purra and other PS women politicians, she too sees Muslims under her bed and believes we will all be reading from the Koran soon. She commonly praises US President Donald Trump and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán.
Juha Mäenpää: It’s evident that this MP does not like Muslims. In 2015, he said God had answered his prayers when an asylum reception center was razed to the ground. In 2019, he got in trouble by comparing migrants to an “invasive species.” The PS politicians usually speak in code. Mäenpää meant asylum seekers and Muslims when he mentioned invasive species.
Ano Turtiainen: This politician has gained national and international notoriety for a tweet that mocked the death of George Floyd. Before the tweet, Turtiainen has published a lot of racist posts on social media.
Jari Ronkainen:Is a politician who loathes Muslims and multiculturalism. It’s no surprise that he, therefore, lobbies for tighter migration laws and faster deportations of migrants. A racist video that denigrates migrants in a video is only a part of his Islamophobic repertoire. He supported in 2018 an initiative to prohibit young girls from using veils.
Sources: City of Helsinki, Eduskunta, and the PS
Matias Turkkila: If there is a person in Finland who has facilitated and given Islamophobes a platform to voice their racism, that person is without a doubt Matias Turkkila. In a recent Tweet, he cried about Katie Hopkins’ permanent suspension from Twitter. Editor of the PS’ Suomen Uutiset and Halla-aho’s former campaign manager.
Sanna Antikainen: This MP’s Islamophobia from Outokumpu (population 6,803) resembles the town’s name, which means “strange hill.” Even if her hometown has hardly any foreigners, Antikainen is a fervent Islamophobe and supporter of US President Donald Trump. She is a trained nurse, but would she attend to Muslims or people of color if she were working at a hospital? One of her favorite lines is that Europe “isn’t the social welfare office of the world.”
Asseri Kinnunen: The PS Youth politicians is a member of the far-right and Nazi-spirited Suomen Sisu association. He likes to wear fascist shirts and ties of the Lapua Movement of the 1930s. Does Kinnunen house Islamophobic views? Guess.
Sources: Facebook, Eduskunta, National Coalition Party
Johannes Sipola: After the Christchurch massacre in March 2019, Sipola tweeted: “The New Zealand case show ever-convincingly that multicultural society does not work. When other people [of other backgrounds] rape and kill enough [people], it is only a question of time when there will be a reaction from the opposite side. First and foremost, everyone defends their own kind.”
Wille Rydman: For some in his party, Rydman is considered the Halla-aho of the National Coalition Party due to his Islamophobic and far-right views. He warned last year that the ethnic composition of Europe is changing due to low birth rates and that such ethnic diversity is harmful to the region.
Atte Kaleva: Selfies with Jussi Halla-aho and spreading Islamophobic soundbites is what Kaleva does in the belief they will get him elected to parliament. The good news is that such tactics haven’t worked. Like Rydman, Kaleva would be more at home in the PS. An Islamophobe populist opportunist.
Kai Mykkänen: The Oulu sexual assault cases in 2018-2019 that caused hysteria to spiral out of control in Finland, Mykkänen, who was then interior minister, lobbied for stricter laws, faster deportations, and even tests to asylum seekers to prove that they understood Finnish values. Mykkänen forgot to mention that Finnish men are also guilty of sexual assault and violence.
Sources: Eduskunta, SKE, City of Oulu
Sari Essayah: This conservative politician is a strong supporter of Israel’s settlement expansion in Palestine. Under her leadership, the Christian Democrats have moved politically closer to the PS’ and NCP’s on immigration and asylum issues. She has demonized Muslims and blamed sexual crimes on cultural factors. In one election compass, Essayah had “no opinion” whether it was the EU’s obligation to save asylum seekers from drowning in the Mediterranean.
Päivi Räsänen: This homophobic politician does not usually have kind things to say about Muslims from the Middle East unless they are Christians. As interior minister, she denied that ethnic profiling was carried out by the police even if studies proved the contrary. In January, she spread a rumor that a school in Helsinki had substituted Mohammed for Jesus Christ at a Christmas celebration party.
Marco de Witt: A loudmouth Islamophobe who desecrated the Quran in public last year. He was so obnoxious that he was kicked out of the Finland First (Suomen Kansa Ensin) political party and movement.
Junnes Lokka: A Moroccan-born Islamophobe who hates Muslims and asylum seekers. During the Oulu sexual assault cases last year, Lokka and Wiik were Katie Hopkins’ hosts in Oulu. Hopkins was recently banned permanently from Twitter because of her “hateful conduct.”
Soure: Twitter
Tiina Wiik: She hosts with Lokka Vihapuhe FM or Hate Speech FM. During these transmissions, you will hear the views of Finland’s most questionable far-right politicians and Islamophobes. The couple organizes far-right events in Finland as well.
MEP Laura Huhtasaari is a white supremacist politician from Finland. Her tweets are schizophrenic: for English readers, she has one message and for her Finnish followers another.
What would people who can’t read Finnish think about her tweets in that language? In Finnish-language tweets, Huhtasaari commonly praises US President Donald Trump, and Hungary’s strongman, Viktor Orbán.
I doubt she would publish the tweet below in English.
“There is a strange habit in the world to hate people you don’t know. For example, Trump. What bad has he done except kept his campaign promises? Does hating make you a better person?”
MP Ano [1] Turtiainen’s tweet mocking the death of George Floyd sits together with Juha Mäenpää on Facebook. You may ask why?
Mäenpää is a member of the Perussuomalaiset party* and Turtiainen was expelled. One called Muslims “an invasive species” in parliament and the other mocked in a tweet George Floyd’s death.
Turtianen, like Mäenpää, are not only bound by chains in the Facebook picture below but by their racist posts and worldview.
There is one matter that is clear about Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Juha Mäenpää: he hates Muslims so much that last year he compared them to an “an invasive species.” He is also close ideologically with Ano Turtiainen, who mocked George Floyd’s death.
According to the National Geographic, “An invasive species is an organism that is not indigenous, or native, to a particular area. Invasive species can cause great economic and environmental harm to the new area.”
Mäenpää, are Muslims and migrants organisms?
In the interview below with MTV, Mäenpää appears to regret the negative publicity but not what he said. He stated that in his “invasive species” speech in parliament he did not mean any ethnic or religious group.
“Immigration is one factor that affects the economy and taxes,” he said. “I plan to be critical about these matters but choose my words more carefully.”
For those who have followed how Islamophobic parties like the PS speak of Muslims and asylum seekers, will note that much of it is in code. Rarely do they use the term “Muslim” but do refer to asylum seekers, which is code for Muslims.
On Wednesday, the constitutional law committee voted 12-5 to lift MP Mäenpää’s immunity from prosecution.
Three of the committee’s PS members (Olli Immonen, Sakari Puisto, Jukka Mäkynen) and two of the National Coalition Party (Wille Rydman, Heikki Vestman) voted against the measure.
The fact that an MP can label Muslims and migrants as “invasive species” speaks volumes about how disenfranchised these groups are in Finland. For the Mäenpää affair to take a year shows how slowly justice works in this country.
One of the first to criticize the measure was PS chairperson Jussi Halla-aho, who considered the constitutional law committee vote “shameful.” He said that the PS would vote against the measure in parliament.
To take away Mäenpää immunity, 167 our of 200 MPs would have to back the proposal. In theory, the PS could block the proposal with its 38 MPs.
What did other PS MPs comment about the committee vote?
MP Mauri “Perkele” Peltokangas, who appears close to exploding when giving monologue rants, slammed the decision as an example of the left-green and communist rot in parliament.
Source: Facebook
MP Sebastian Tynkkynen, who was convicted twice for ethnic agitation, wasn’t very imaginative. He stated that lifting Mäenpää’s immunity was another step in the degradation of free speech.
Statues are being toppled left and right, some with permission others without. TV shows and movies like “Gone with the wind” are taken down because of their racist content. All of this indicates that we have reached some sort of tipping point.
Long live #BlackLivesMatters!
In all this protest against racism, Finland appears as an innocent observer of what is happening in the US and other parts of Europe. MP Ano Turtiainen, who got expelled from the far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party, can tell you how much it cost him to underestimate his racist tweet that mocked George Floyd’s death.
It was a hard blow from the #BlackLivesMatter movement.
The fact that an MP can post such racist trash as a member of Finland’s second-largest party is the clearest indication yet that the #BlackLivesMovement is long overdue in Finland.
But let’s not kid ourselves, #BlackLivesMatter reached Finland in early June.
In Finland, too, we have learned very little or nothing about our culturally and ethnically diverse past. The reason why “we have not learned from our history” is that the whitewashing process is near-complete and systematic.
While some statues in Finland should end up in a museum or in a metal smelter, we need to raise new ones. One of these is of Rosa Emilia Clay. (1875-1959).
Read the full story (in Finnish) here, and more about Clay [in English) here.
Clay was a teacher and Finland’s first African who became a Finnish citizen in 1899. Her perseverance and her suffering as a black woman are proof of the challenges of our culturally and ethnically diverse society still faces.
In my opinion, Finland is such a racialized country and so obsessed with its whiteness that even white people from outside the EU, are othered.
Source: Twitter
Due to my Jewish background, which I was supposed to forsake due to whitewashing, I was fortunate to rediscover who my distant relatives were and why I was supposed to forget them.
Understanding that we are part of a hostile whitewashing process waged at us should bring guys closer to Emma Tubman’s words, “And I prayed to God to make me strong and able to fight, and that’s what I’ve always prayed for ever since.”
The #BlackLivesMatter movement is growing and getting stronger in Finland as well. It gives us courage, makes us stronger, and abler to fight.
The news continues to roll in for MP Ano Turtiainen, who was suspended from the Perusuomalaiset (PS)* parliamentary group for a tweet that mocked George Floyd’s death.
After the police carried out their investigation last week and decided not to charge Turtiainen for ethnic agitation or defamation, the police changed course Monday after Prosecutor General Raija Toiviainen got involved.
Toiviainen said that there is a strong suspicion that Turtiainen may be guilty after all of ethnic agitation.
George Floyd’s death could be compared with a modern-day lynching. Politicians, like Ano Turtiainen, who attempt to show their “dark humor” are members of the social media lynch mob. Source: Migrant Tales.
There are a lot of questions that Turtiainen’s case brings forth. One of them is how interested are the police in going after people who spread hate speech and racism? The police did not initially suspect Turtiainen’s tweet of ethnic agitation or of defamation since Goerge Floyd was dead.
The tweet is not only a slap in the face of George Floyd and to all the suffering black people are experiencing, but it is also a swipe at Finland black community.
Turtiainen’s “joke?” George Floyd’s wide-eyed face full of terror colored purple with the name of the 1960s rock band “Pink Floyd.”
Detective Chief Inspector Jari-Matti Marttala confirmed to Migrant Tales today that investigations are still ongoing concerning the assault by residents of Teuva of a Muslim and his four passengers.
“We are still interviewing people, and we have not ruled out the possibility of a hate crime,” said Marttala. “Everything is still at hand…let’s say that it will take at least weeks [before we conclude our investigation] so we can get a full picture [of what happened] and all the parties heard.”
Migrant Tales spoke with the victim, who ended up in the hospital after being attacked and beaten by locals.
“The police have come to my home three times and once in the hospital,” he said. “One older man said while they were beating me that I should ask Allah for help.”
The victim said that he and his friends were insulted because of their ethnic background.
“I told them [in Teuva] that is wasn’t nice what they were doing,” the victim said earlier. “I asked them why do you speak in [a racist manner] that way to us because we don’t want any problems.”
Teuva is a small town located in the southern Ostrobothnian region close to the city of Seinäjoki 80km away. Despite the welcomes and tourist information, Teuva showed its ugly racist face against five people. The driver, who is a Muslim, was rushed to the hospital after he was beaten by the locals.Read the full document here.
Below are the ugly footprints of a suspected hate crime.
“Mamu” is a derrogatory word for foreigner in Finland. Source: Facebook. The interior of the car that was attacied by Teuva locals. Source: Facebook.Soure: Facebook.
As the dust settles over this tumultuous week for the far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS) party, the question to ask if business will be back to “normal” in the PS?
The first scandal was MP Ano Turtiainen’s tweet that mocked George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police.
Apart from ending Turtianen’s short-lived career as a dark humor comedian, the MP got expelled from the PS parliamentary group until the end of the year, his racist tweet made him “famous” outside of Finland, and two weightlifting groups in the United States and Canada terminated their business relationship with his company.
Turtiainen’s tweet was even noticed by George Floyd’s family in the US.
“The message glorifies police violence and criminal behavior,” said Goerge Floyd’s family lawyer in Teller Report. “It seems that this not the first time MP Turiainen has published racist messages on social media. We believe that Turtiainen’s colleagues in parliament should be held accountable.”
Moreover, Prosecutor General Raija Toiviainen is planning to carry out an investigation concerning Turtiainen’s tweet, according to Demokraatti. The police announced earlier that it would not carry out an inquiry about the former PS MP’s tweet.
Equally disturbing but not surprising was PS chairperson Jussi Halla-aho’s excuses. He stated that spreading controversial opinions is “a team sport that requires certain table manners.”
I suspect that “table manners” in Halla-aho’s vocabulary means being racist without sounding racist, speaking in code so your followers can decipher your message’s racism, and avoid ethnic agitation charges.
Halla-aho’s and the PS’ hand has been exposed many times in the racist and misogynist cookie jar.
This week, Suomen Perusta, a PS-funded think tank, published a racist and misogynist book called “Truth incites” authored by Jukka Hankamäki. The book, which claims to be a serious philosophical study “of the information and truth crisis of the left-wing populist mainstream media,” is an embarrassment and insulting joke.
Hankamäki’s book was taken down from the Internet after two days of its publication leaving a lot of red faces and the PS pointing the finger at each other. One of the questions was who was responsible for the book’s publication? It appears that nobody or very few read the book before it was published.
Even Halla-aho had to step in and take responsibility even if the party attempted to distance itself from Hankamäki’s work. “This was our mistake, period,” he said. “We did not know that the book contained the kind of material that it did.”
Apart from its racist-eugenicist views on racial purity, Hankamäki did not spare any nice words for Finnish women. One of the claims he made was that Finnish women choose foreign men as partners because they are rejected by Finnish men.
Minister of Science and Culture Hanna Kosonen described Hankamäki’s views of women as “cruel and disturbing.”
The ministry had granted 120,000 euros to Suomen Perusta for the publication of Hankamäki’s book. It is presently reviewing whether to ask the think tank to return the money because of the book’s contents and views on gender and social equality.
Finnish Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Ano Turtiainen’s tweet mocking George Floyd’s death is a disgrace. Still, even a worse shame is that he has not apologized to George Floyd’s family, #BlackLivesMatter movement, and also People of African Descent in Europe and Finland for the tweet.
The only matter that appears to have concerned Turtiainen is that his tweet wasn’t good for the PS’ image and that his career as a dark humor comedian and politician came down in flames.
People like you are a threat to society and an even greater one in parliament.
Meanwhile, Prosecutor General Raija Toiviainen is planning to investigate Turtiainen’s tweet, according to Demokraatti. The police announced earlier that it would not carry out an investigation about the former PS MP’s tweet.
George Floyd’s death could be compared with a modern-day lynching. Politicians, like Ano Turtiainen, who attempt to show their “dark humor” are members of the social media lynch mob. Source: Migrant Tales.
[1] ”Ano” is a real name in Finland. The equivalent name for women is Anna. The translation of “ano” in Spanish is the anus.
