Category: Enrique

Nazi salutes and the growth of far-right ideology in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

In two weeks, two Perussuomalaiset (PS) politicians got their fingers burned badly after one made a Nazi salute with a Hitler mask while another took a picture of another one who made the same salute in parliament. One of the reasons why some Finns can do this in public is because they have a blind spot for the Holocaust and the atrocities committed by the Nazis in World War 2.

Turku University historian Markku Jokisipilä agrees. He was quoted as saying on Iltalehti that some people in Finland don’t see Nazism the same way as elsewhere in Europe because they don’t grasp its connection to the Holocaust.

It’s been quite a week for the PS but what can you expect if too many of its members have a fascination with Nazi Germany.

In the first case, Kangasala councilman Jani Viinikainen, resigned from the PS after it became clear that it was him wearing a Hitler mask and making a Nazi salute below.

Viinikainen, a far-right politician who has a close ideological ties with Hirvisaari, first denied he was in the picture. He tried to play down his role by stating that the Nazi salute he made wasn’t at a 45° angle and done with his left arm.

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Former PS councilman Jani Viinikainen on the right with Seppo Lehto on the far left.

Finland still has a problem with Nazism because it has never debated openly its role with Hitler’s Germany during the Continuation War (1941-44). Debating it would be opening a can of worms that would put into serious question the credibility of some of our most important historic leaders like Marshal Carl Mannerheim.

The excuse, which impairs our understanding and condemnation of the atrocities committed by the Nazis in World War 2, is our hatred of the former Soviet Union and the Russians.

The same reasoning we used to go to bed with Nazi Germany works to promote far-right ideology today in Finland. Since we loathe Muslims, the new enemy, it’s fine to join and vote for a right-wing populist party like the PS and make Nazi salutes.

This ideological juggernaut that conditions our world view usually gets the last say and permits some to be tolerant of intolerance. It has given birth to far-right politicians like Hirvisaari, Jussi Halla-aho, Juho Eerola, Olli Immonen and many others. How do you explain a party like the PS that rose from relative obscurity to the country’s third-largest in parliament in 2011?

You can belong to a legally registered party in Finland and still wear a brown shirt under your suit. It’s not shameful and permits you to come to terms with “jokes” like the one below by Lehto.

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Seppo Lehto, who was sentenced to a 2.5-year prison sentence for ethnic agitation, gave a Nazi salute in parliament on Friday. He was PS MP James Hirvisaari guest.

Analysis: Is sacking MP Hirvisaari the beginning of the end for the PS?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

One of the interesting questions that the sacking of MP James Hirvisaari raises is if it is the first visible crack that will force the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party to implode, eventually. Is Timo Soini’s PS a ticking time bomb and Hirvisaari a time counter indicating that we’ve got ten seconds to seek cover before the bomb explodes?  

Even if it is still too early to say, the Hirvisaari episode is an indication of the festering ideological sickness that the party suffers.

Miska Rantanen of Helsingin Sanomat believes that while its still to early to say if the party will suffer the same fate as the Rural Party in the 1970s, the PS looks like a tired team of players that are fouling out.

The Rural Party, which evolved into the PS in the 1990s, won the 1970 election with 17 seats from one in the previous election. The party, however, imploded due to internal bickering and differences.

Since intolerance, xenophobia and prejudice exist thanks to hot air comprising of inflated exaggerations and gross generalizations, anti-immigration politicians like Hirvisaari need to continually raise the bar to keep their followers entertained. Like dictators, they eventually lose touch with reality and fall from political grace.

While politicians like Soini are trying to wash their hands of Hirvisaari, we shouldn’t forget that it was he who helped Hirvisaari to get elected. Not only did Soini help Hirvisaari he left the PS door ajar for other far-right nationalists and racists.

Like Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja wrote, Soini made a pack with the devil when he brought them on board.

 

 

 

 

The Perussuomalaiset plan to sack MP Hirvisaari from the party

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Inviting Seppo Lehto to parliament, where a picture of him making a Nazi salute, was the last straw for Perussuomalaiset(PS) chairman Timo Soini, who was quoted as saying on MTV3 that PS MP James Hirvisaari will be sacked from the party. 

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Read full story here.

The decision to expel Hirvisaari was made by the five-member working committee of the PS governing board.

PS party secretary, Riikka Slunga-Poutsalo, said that Hirvisaari had hurt the party’s credibility and therefore would be expelled, writes Helsingin Sanomat.

Following Hirvisaari’s rocky and controversial political career, where he doesn’t hide his far-right credentials, Migrant Tales asked in July when the PS would sack the MP, who was convicted for ethnic agitation.

Even if this is a step in the right direction, it’s too little too late.

Hirvisaari has not only damaged the credibility of Finland’s legislature, but spread hatred and suspicion of immigrants and minorities living in this country.

He will not be missed.

A guest of the Finnish PS gives a Nazi salute in parliament

Posted on by Migrant Tales

We all know how a political party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) has declared war against immigrants and other minorities in this country. The latest attack by the PS was against the Finnish parliament by a guest of MP James Hirvisaari, who was pictured giving a Nazi salute. 

UPDATE: Hirvisaari confirmed Thursday that it was him who took the picture of Lehto below.

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Seppo Lehto, a guest of PS MP James Hirvisaari, gave a Nazi salute on Tuesday in parliament.

The picture of Seppo Lehto,* a far-right anti-immigration activist who was sentenced to a 2.5-year prison term for ethnic agitation, to support Jussi Halla-aho’s Euro MP candidacy, was widely distributed in social media and reported by the national media.

Halla-aho, who was sentenced for ethnic agitation like Hirvisaari, said that he had nothing to do with what Lehto published on his blog.

Dailies like Helsingin Sanomat speculate that the picture of Lehto making the Nazi salute could have been taken by Hirvisaari. The PS MP refused to confirm or deny this to Finland’s largest-circulation daily. 

Hirvisaari described Helsingin Sanomat’s attempts to get in touch with him as ”bullying.” As a general rule, the PS MP only answers journalist’s queries by email.

In an odd style of journalism, Helsingin Sanomat refused to publish Lehto’s name in the story.

What is probably the most incredible matter about the whole affair is the silence of the PS leadership.

Why is it so difficult for Finland’s third-largest party in parliament to openly condemn such publicity stunts? Is there silence a reinforcement of their declaration of war against immigrants and minorities in this country?

Absolutely.

*Seppo Lehto has visited and commented on Migrant Tales a number of times. His views are pretty clear: anti-Islam and anti-multiculturalism. Since we believed that it would be useless to have a meaningful debate with a person like Lehto, we decided to ignore him. The comments by him stopped and we never heard in writing from him ever again.

PS MPs like Juho Eerola don’t know how closed Finland used to be to the outside world

Posted on by Migrant Tales

 Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Juho Eerola wrote in 2010 that he was attracted to Benito Mussolini’s fascism. He argues that it is a model that we could learn a lot from. Such a statement not only shows his fascist political credentials, but his ignorance of Finnish history. The Restricting Act of 1939 (law 219/1939), which was in force until 1995, kept Finland closed to foreign investment.  

The Restricting Act of 1939 prohibited foreigners from owning real estate and acquiring a majority stake in Finnish companies – limiting this to 20% normally and 40% under special permission. The Act stipulated that foreigners could not own shares in sectors such as forestry, securities trading, transportation, mining, real estate and shipping.

So what gives, Eerola? Didn’t you know that Finland was a near-closed country to foreign investment during most of the last century?

There were very few immigrants that moved to Finland during the cold war era as well. The country’s tiny immigrant population peaked in 1928 with 29,685 foreigners but started to retreat after the 1930s, plunging to 5,483 in 1970, according to the Migration Institute.

Why did the number of immigrants, which was small to begin with, plummet? Just like the Restricting Act of 1939, which aimed to restrict foreign investment, it was Finland’s aim as well to restrict and make it as hard as possible for immigrants to move to this country.

Finland got its first Aliens Act in 1983, sixty-five years after its independence in 1917.

Apart from not being able to own land, organize demonstrations never mind start a publication, immigrants didn’t have the right to appeal deportation decisions.

The Finnish Security Intelligence Service (Supo) spied on immigrants as it does today. Even if one of their worries was finding out who were working for the KGB, they kept close tabs on many immigrants, recording things like how many demonstrations you attended.

Finland wasn’t, however, a fascist state like Mussolini’s Italy although it was a geopolitically isolated country during the cold war era.

Eerola forgets to mention the dark side of Mussolini’s fascist state. Il Duce was an autocrat that took his country to war and brought great destruction and ruin to his people.

Mussolini was executed with his mistress, Clara Petacci, on April 28, 1945.

His lifeless body was strung up by his heels with other fascists in Piazzale Loreto in Milan.

Few Italians long for his style of politics never mind his economic model. Kuvankaappaus 2013-9-29 kello 14.23.40

 Juho Eerola Hommaforum July 6, 2010: I myself am attracted to Benito Mussolini’s fascism, and in particular the economic policy [the country] pursued. Entrepreneurship 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.

Thank you Christine Bergström for providing the link where Eerola made his quote about Mussolini.  

Abde Hussein shows there is more than one way to put racism on the defensive

Posted on by Migrant Tales

There’s more than one way to put intolerance on the defensive. Abde Hussein wrote on Thursday an encounter he had with a young unemployed white Finn, who said in public that he was a “monkey” and “living off welfare.” A discussion ensued but to make a long story short, the young white Finn turned out to be the monkey (no insult intended to these primates).  

Without getting hot under the collar, Hussein turned the insults hurled at him against the young man, who was ignorant of Finnish grammar, unemployed and living off welfare.

The encounter, published on Abde Hussein’s Facebook wall, has attracted over 9,440 “likes” and 1,565 votes.

Just like Ricky Ghansah’s encounter with a racist, who insulted him at a bus stop but forced him to apologize in public after paying his bus ticket, Hussein’s posting shows that we can beat the crude racists at their own game.

If there were a school to learn how a social ill like intolerance happens in our society, Ghansah’s and Hussein’s cases would be discussed in the elementary course.

Exposing intolerance in the intermediate and advanced levels of the course, however, would be more complicated.

At the advanced level, you’d study institutional racism, politicians, public officials and common people expressing their intolerance but in such a way that it is difficult to make out. At this level you learn that intolerance exists because there is a system that is maintained by our prejudices and fear of losing power and privilege.

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This post on Abde Hussein’s Facebook wall had over 9,440 “likes” on Sunday.

Just like social media brought some Perussuomalaiset (PS) politicians  to the attention of the media and public before the 2011 parliamentary elections, we can beat intolerance with the same tools.

While there may be many ways  to beat a social ill at its own game, silence is one method we should avoid at all costs.

If financial market suffer from bursting bubbles, like we saw with the Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy of 2008, so do political bubbles fed by xenophobia, anti-immigration and populism.

Political bubbles burst when we discover they are based on the opportunistic hype of politicians.

Hussein’s posting encourages us to believe that Finland’s darkest period in modern times isn’t invincible.

Thank you Amir Hassan for the heads-up.

Why doesn’t Timo Soini make a clear split with its PS racists? Answer: political hara-kiri

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Columnist Yrjö Rautio of Apu magazine writes that if Perussuomalaiset (PS) chairman Timo Soini doesn’t make a clear split with PS MP racists like Jussi Halla-aho and his followers, the party should make official that it supports the following values: “paranoia, hatred and human evil.” 

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Read full story (in Finnish) here.

Rautio makes a valid point. The real question, I believe, is why Soini hasn’t rid its party of its racists, especially those that have been sentenced for ethnic agitation.

The answer to the latter question is self-evident and clear: The PS would commit political hara-kiri if it rid its party of its racists.

We all know that intolerance is learned and based on ignorance, lies and prejudice.

Another PS MP, James Hirvisaari, who was convicted for ethnic agitation like Halla-aho, posts a story written by Aalto University lecturer Kyösti Tarvainen. He’s the person, who using a pocket calculator, predicted that the Muslims would become a majority in Finland due to their high birth rates.

Since many of these type of arguments are exaggerated lies whose aim is to fuel hatred against certain groups like Muslims, it’s not clear when Tarvainen posted the blog entry. Hirvisaari doesn’t give us a clue either because his aim may be to show something that was written last year is still topical and new.

Tarvainen expressed concern in February 2011 by sending an email to prominent Green Party politicians protesting Hussein Muhammed’s candidacy. He said that the Greens have made a mistake by allowing Muslims to stand as candidates in the Green Party.

Just because a person has a PhD or is a lecturer at a university doesn’t mean that he doesn’t house racist ideas.

If you disagree, check out the academics that were member of the Nazi party and SS.

 

 

Saving one life, one refugee from Syria, IS important

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Arguing that accepting a few hundred refugees from Syria is not important because it is a drop in the bucket, is an outrageous statement made by Jussi Halla-aho, Vesa-Matti Saarakkala and others. The other point they are trying to drive home, that these people will be a burden on Finland, exposes their loathing and ignorance.

How many refugees can you name in history that fled to other countries and became model members of their new home countries? One of these was Albert Einstein, who fled Nazi Germany, a racist regime that rose to power by scapegoating minorities like Jews.

The argument, that refugees are a burden, is an insult to all the refugees of the world. Only an extreme egoist, who lacks feelings for the suffering of others, can make such a point.

These types of intolerant arguments are the same as those made constantly by anti-immigration and far-right politicians to drive home their point.

If you dissect their arguments, they are nothing more than typical anti-immigration sound bites spread with the help of the Finnish media, which gives them inflated respectability and importance.

Using such arguments to influence refugee and immigration policy, we could similarly ask why did Raoul Wallenberg or Oscar Schindler save tens of thousands of Jews if millions were murdered in Nazi concentration camps?

Stating that saving lives is futile because there are so many and makes no difference is similar to a racist trying to convince you that it is useless to oppose intolerance because nothing can be done.

If you accept that ludicrous argument, you have lost the war.

Saving one person is valuable and important.

If you disagree, why not ask the victims fleeing war and death.

PS MP Jussi Halla-aho put on the hot chair after his ridiculous arguments against Syrian refugees are exposed

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Jussi Halla-aho was put on the hot chair on A-Studio, when he was asked about his and PS MP Vesa-Matti Saarakkala’s written question to parliament opposing government plans to give asylum to 500 refugees from Syria. 

A good question to ask is why accepting 500 refugees from Syria is in the national spotlight? Sweden plans to accept around 16,000 Syrian refugees. Moreover, why do we give airtime to an MP who has been convicted for ethnic agitation? Why are Halla-aho’s anti-immigration views important?

If we had answers to these questions, we’d understand the nature of the xenophobic beast that has inflicted Finland.

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Halla-aho and his band of PS anti-immigration followers have gotten this far in their political careers thanks to journalists and officials who have done little to nothing to question their inflated exaggerations and outright xenophobia.

Finnish Red Cross manager Kalle Löövi showed that we don’t need to sit back in silence and can question and expose Halla-aho’s ideas.  He calmly but firmly told Halla-aho that his stance was wrong and said that Finland was accepting 500 needy refugees that are in danger of dying.

And  what’s wrong with helping people fleeing war? We should be proud that our country has the opportunity to help others who may repay us one day in kind.

Arguing that accepting a few hundred refugees doesn’t mean anything is probably the most outrageous statement made by Halla-aho and Saarakkala. Saving one person from a terrible conflict like in Syria is valuable and important.

Why then does Halla-aho oppose bringing Syrian refugees to Finland?

If we uncover the red herrings, the real reason lies in the fact that Halla-aho loathes Muslims, is vehemently against cultural diversity and is running for Euro MP.

 

Why did a Finnish court absolve two policemen of apparent racist conduct?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

When reporting some stories, denials and what is not said are the spotlights that reveal the real story. A flat denial by the police that ethnic profiling doesn’t occur suggests that it is probably more widespread than we think.

A court ruled on Monday that the actions of two Helsinki policemen, who used excessive physical force to detain a Roma, calling the man “stupid,” “do things like a monkey” and that “you [the Roma] are always guilty [of something],” were not racially motivated.

On top of this, the evidence from the CCTV cameras at the gas station were lost after they were transferred to a memory stick.

The two policemen were, however, fined for using excessive force, according to an MTV3 story.

OK, fine. What constitutes a racially motivated crime or conduct by a public official in Finland? I’m certain that this is clearly spelled out in the law. How it is applied is another story.

In some stories that we’ve covered on Migrant Tales, there is the feeling that the police are sometimes more keen on playing down the role hate crime. Black February is a case in point.

But what can you expect from the latest court ruling? All the judges that made the ruling are white. So were the two policemen, who belong to a service that is 99% white. Pitted against these two power institutions is a member of the Romany minority, which has endured social exclusion, prejudice and racism in this country for five hundred years. 

Add to the backdrop a classified internal investigation made public in August into the behavior of the Helsinki Court of Appeals, which showed some judges sexually harassed women at parties, used racist and sexist language during recesses and in meetings outside of the courtroom.

While we’re not suggesting that there is a connection with the classified internal investigation and the latest ruling, the report raises more questions than answers.

If judges in the internal investigation were guilty of discriminatory and unprofessional behavior, what about others like teachers, policemen and other public officials?

While I believe that Finland has the resources to put intolerance and discrimination on the defensive, our response to these types of social ills is still meek. Kuvankaappaus 2013-9-24 kello 8.26.40

Read full MTV3 story here.

Why is our response to intolerance so mild?

We could shed light on that question by asking why do leading newspapers like Helsingin Sanomat still give so much space to the opinions of MPs that have been convicted for ethnic agitation?

The answer is simple: Institutional racism, which we defend consciously because we agree with the present ethnic order of things or subconsciously, because we don’t know better.

Some may ask how can some members of the Finnish police service be racist. Read about the Stephen Lawrence case and others in Britain. They offer disturbing proof of how ethnicity plays a key role in resolving “white” justice in the police service.

We’re missing the point when we close our eyes to racism and justice. Not only do we have the ability to destroy a person’s life because of his or her ethnic background, we miss an important opportunity to strengthen our values and institutions.

The police is a service that serves everyone in this society.

When the police service forgets this important fact, as it did in the MTV3 story, it does great damage to its credibility. If the Roma and other visible minorities mistrust the Finnish police because they consider their conduct racist and unprofessional, we ‘d have to agree that they have a valid point.

The fact that they are doing too little to address this issue reinforces the fact that intolerance is an issue.

Absolving policemen for making racist and derogatory remarks to a member of a minority in Finland sends the wrong message to those who are policing.

Thank you JD for the heads-up!