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Racist propaganda during Finland’s Winter War (1939-40)

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

Consequently, racial prejudice and discrimination are nonexistent (in Finland).                                                                                                          

Heikki Waris, An introduction to Finnish Society (1965), p. 2

Finland was also denying in the 1960s that racism did not exist because there weren’t any foreigners living in the country. Racism has, however, been part of our culture for a very long time: Kongo shoe polish, Neekeripusu (n-word kiss) chocolate,  the Fazer licorice Gollywog are some examples of how this social ill had implanted itself in the national culture.

If Waris and other researchers wanted to find out if racism existed in our culture, all they’d have to do was study Finns that emigrated to Africa, North and South America. I once asked a second-generation Finn in Argentina how many races there existed in the world. “There are three,” he said. “White, black and pitch-black.”

We can even see racism prevalent in a Suomen Kuvalehti Easter 1940 issue: “In the East Indies Islands there appears a strange form of sudden mental disorientation that is called ‘running amok,’ or being taken over by horror and then reacting in a mad fashion. Even while running away from battle with a dagger in hand, the inflicted person rushes here and there striking anyone dead (that gets in his way).”

And then on the next page of the story is a picture of two Finnish solider representing the “civilized” world who know how to keep calm in the face of shocking situations. “Can somebody imagine for example that these Finnish soldiers would “run amok?” the caption reads.

The gist of the story by PhD Jan Gästrin, headlined “Spiritual discipline,” is that blacks are uncivilized and Finns civilized. In battle Finnish soldiers don’t “run amok” but can withstand the most rigorous tests of war: rats, lice, poisoned air etc.

The first page of a Suomen Kuvalehti article published in 1940 that attempted to show how the European white man was superior to blacks.

Note: The author apologizes for the racist content of the Suomen Kuvalehti article and wants to make clear that he does not play down the valiant fight the Finns put up against the former Soviet Union in the Winter War.

HS: True Finns renounce racism, discrimination, and favouritism

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Comment: I got acquainted with the public statement made against all forms of racism by the Persussuomalaiset (PS) through PS MP James Hirvisaari’s blog. For those who do not know who Hirvisaari is, he’s probably the most eccentric in his attacks of immigrants, especially Muslims. But after he got elected he appears to have turned into Dr. Jekyll from his pre-election Mr Hyde-mode.

Another question mark of the PS’ statement is that it was drafted by Hirvisaari’s political soul mate, Jussi Halla-aho.

Kristiina Kouros, the secretary general of the Finnish League for Human Rights, considered the PS  statement awkwardly drafted and not clear because it differs from the UN and EU Declaration of Human Rights, where there is no mention of the discrimination of the majority population by the minority.  “It’s very rare that a minority (group) can exclude the majority by discrimination,” said Kouros in Iltalehti. “Minorities do not have that type of power.”

Even though it is a good matter that a party like the PS is speaking out against all forms of racism and violence, how seriously do they take such a statement especially when it was drafted after PS MP Teuvo Hakkarainen went on another of his outbursts against blacks this week on Jämsä Seutu?

What do you think?

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True Finns MP Teuvo Hakkarainen was chided by his Parliamentary group on Wednesday for recent racist comments. The group also made public a statement condemning all types of racism, discrimination, and violence.

Read whole story.

If you want to read a strong critique of the PS’ statement against racism visit Ossi Mäntylahti’s blog (in Finnish).  He is a member of the Kokoomus party.

Denying racism is rejecting Finland’s cultural diversity

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

When one looks at some topical issues being debated in Finland, like the role of cultural diversity and tries to understand them, it is essential to dig deeper behind words. What do the most anti-immigration voices of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) say when they are against multiculturalism?

Anyone who has attempted to understand what multiculturalism is knows that it isn’t an easy concept to grasp. If we are speaking of the Canadian social policy that came about in the 1980s, there are only three countries in the world (Canada, Britain and Australia) that are officially multicultural, according to researcher Peter Kivisto.

Multiculturalism as a social policy works differently in all three of the above-mentioned countries. There is no same-size-fits-all when it comes to multiculturalism as a social policy.

What do anti-immigration groups like the PS tell us when they express their loathing for multiculturalism? Is it a last-ditch attempt to keep Finland white and hinder the development or, worse, deny our cultural diversity as a society?

What do anti-immigration groups like Suomen Sisu and PS MP Jussi Halla-aho reveal to us when state that they are against multiculturalism and find some basis for their arguments in the writings of  Alfred Rosenberg, David Duke and Michael Levin?

All of these persons have one matter in common: they are against cultural diversity, or are the antithesis of multiculturalism. Rosenberg, a Nazi war criminal who went to the gallows after the Nuremberg trials, believed that the ”Aryan race” would find greatness after it kicked out the Jews from Germany.

David Duke is a former Klu Klux Klan leader who believes whites should live separated from blacks. Levin is another controversial figure who sees whites at the top and blacks at the bottom of the ethnic totem pole.

When anti-immigration representatives in Finland tell us that they are only against certain groups moving to this country, they are stating us the same thing: we loathe people who strengthen cultural diversity.

The present debate taking place in Finland goes much deeper than what meets the eye because it is about the inevitable future of our society. One group, like some in the PS, are denying it by living in a Finland of the past century, while others have already accepted it.

What, then, is a person telling us when he claims there is no racism in Finland?

It’s the same side of the sinister coin: denial that Finland is already culturally diverse.

HS: Ilta-Sanomat: Soini ottaa Hakkaraisen taas puhutteluun

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Comment: Perussuomalaiset MP Teuvo Hakkarainen, who became known nationally and internationally for his racist gaffes, has done it again. PS chairman Timo Soini was reported by tabloid Ilta-Sanomat to “be enraged” upon reading about Hakkarainen’s latest racist slurs in Jämsän Seutu.

The MP from Viitasaari was quoted as saying in the Central Finland local paper that “niggers” should be sent to work in the forests because the market squares in Helsinki are crowded with these type of people.

Black and gay Green MP, Jani Toivola, was naturally one of many Finns who was taken aback by Hakkarainen’s comments, according to MTV3.

“I belong to the same group (that Hakkarainen is referring to) and I have heard these types of words all my life,” said Toivola. “In my opinion it’s strange that not even grown-ups can shake off such words from their language.”

MPs like Hakkarainen have become a liability to the PS because they erode credibility from the party. For one, it has kept far-right Suomen Sisu MPs like Jussi Halla-aho from making provocative statements against immigrants.

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Perussuomalaisten puheenjohtaja Timo Soini joutuu taas puuttumaan kansanedustaja Teuvo Hakkaraisen (p) ulkomaalaispuheisiin, kertoo Ilta-Sanomat.

Read whole story.

Finland has been challenged by an anti-EU, anti-immigration and anti-Islam party

Posted on by Migrant Tales

If I were the head of Finland’s secret police, Supo, I would have sent a long time ago my best agents to investigate whether there is a connection and well-orchestrated plan by far-right groups in Europe and Suomen Sisu to the Perussuomalaiset’s (PS) election victory in April.

If  Supo decided to leave many stones unturned on this front or keep such information to itself, I would as head of a large Finnish daily send my best investigative reporters to find the tensions and links between Timo Soini’s SMP wing of PS and the MPs that belong to the Suomen Sisu association.

Here are some of the matters I’d ask my reporters to investigate: (1) Is there a greater-than-known link between Suomen Sisu/PS and other right-wing populist parties in Europe like the Danish People’s Party (DPP)? What level of consultancy work have the DPP given to Suomen Sisu/PS to spread more effectively the Islamophobic message in Finland? (2) Is one of the attack strategies of such a sinister plan overwhelming the net with Islamophobist websites like Hommaforum, which have close links to Suomen Sisu?

Apart from Migrant Tales, groups like Hommaforum have inhibited researchers, common Finns and bloggers to speak out against their xenophobic and nationalist message. Our blog was attacked by over 800 Hommaforum supporters in September 2008.

As head of Supo or of a major daily, I would look at the reaction of the politicians and society towards rising xenophobia in Finland. Did politicians cave in to the Islamophobia and reacted too late and with too little firepower? Or did the message of people like PS MP Jussi Halla-aho appeal and serve the interests of some like Kokoomus and the Social Democratic Party?

The biggest loser of the election was the Center Party. That party under the leadership of former Prime Minister Mari Kiviniemi lost the most votes due to her pro-EU and outspoken stance against the PS.

Sometimes you need to cash in defeat in order to become stronger in the future. President Barak Obama is a good example by being one of the few senators that opposed the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Thanks to his leadership, he was able to reap lots of advantages against his Republican rival John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.

Nothing happens by chance never mind getting 19.1% of the votes from 4.05% four years earlier. Certainly outside factors like the global financial meltdown of September 2008 and the EU bailouts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal played crucial roles that benefited the PS. Even so, living in denial and playing down such a threat and lack of leadership by political parties probaby played an even bigger role in boosting the PS.

Despite the good fortunes of the Soini’s party, there is one lesson that can be learned: If you don’t stand up to right-wing populism it will end up challenging your power base. Why? Because it is a message of hatred that divides our societies and impoverishes us in the end economically and socially.

That is why we need today more than ever leadership concerning the menace that has challenged our society with its anti-EU, anti-immigration and anti-Islam message.

Jealous and spiteful behavior towards immigrants in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

The jealous and spiteful behavior of some Finns and especially politicians belonging to the Perussuomalaiset (PS) is nothing new.  Even after Finland ceded for the second time Karelia in 1944 to the former Soviet Union, some Finns were very hostile and spiteful of the over 400,000 Karelian refugees that were relocated here.

After the war, some Finns not only blamed the Karelians for all the hardship the country endured during those difficult years, but were especially angered by the money the government gave them to buy land and start life anew.

A typical gripe of the anti-immigration groups in Finland is pretty much the same. They blame immigrants and refugees for getting preferential treatment and are especially angered because they get social welfare.

An interesting editorial in Kajaani-based Kainuun Sanomat states two factors propelled the PS vote in April: anti-EU sentiment, which is understandable in light of the bailouts, and immigration, which is incomprehensible.

A quote that caught my eye a while back on Twitter was by @sabergato. He put the anti-immigration sentiment in Finland in perspective from the Civil Rights era in the US:  “The most racist, rural, uneducated southern whites were very jealous & spiteful of Blacks.”

Here is a good example (in Finnish) of how the PS is fuelling the same type of jealousy and spite towards immigrants and refugees in Rovaniemi.

Unless major political parties like Kokoomus and Social Democrats consider Teuvo Hakkarainen’s Viitsaari in Central Finland a key battleground for votes, Finland needs today more than ever leadership on the anti-racist front.

Cultural diversity is guaranteed in our constitution and it is the obligation of all parties, including the PS, to defend minorities.

Let’s not make a mockery of our values and let Finland go on a free-for-all Internet lynching mode against minorities.

Finland’s Hommaforum fuels much of the anti-immigration sentiment on the net

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Enrique Tessieri

On Friday’s Pressiklubi hosted by Ruben Stiller there was an interesting talk on the rise of racism in Finland. Columnist Kaarina Hazard and Saska Saarikoski, the head of Helsingin Sanomat’s culture section, threw some hard questions at Matias Turkkila, head of Homma ry and PS MP Jussi Halla-aho’s campaign manager. 

When looking at the rerun, see how Turkkila looks and feels uncomfortable as he is slouches in the seat throughout the show. Even his hand movements express edginess.

Some consider Homma ry a place where stereotypes and suspicion of immigrants and refugees have a home.  For me it is like a sprinkler that waters much of the racism we find on different chat and websites in Finland.

Some of the posts on Migrant Tales have been debated, or discected,  on Hommaforum.

Scripta, Halla-aho’s blog like Hommaforum, operate as an army of faithful bloggers that would attack other sites if they did not like what they were reading.  One of of these was Migrant Tales’ in September 2008, which got over 800 hits from Scripta.

Turkkila claimed on the show that Homma ry represents 60% of the Finns’ opinion of immigration and immigrants.

While Turkkila is stretching it quite a bit with such a claim, the website is the humble servant of the hostile message to immigrants and refugees of politicians like Halla-aho.

One of the matters that surprised me most on the talk show was his explanation why Homma ry was born. According to Turkkila, the media always exaggerated and glorified immigrant but never bothered to report on the negative matters.

I have lived in Finland on and off for over thirty years and there has been very little of what Turkkila states of the Finnish media. If there have been human-interest stories on immigrants it has been more on what a great country Finland is to live in.  Rarely have they treated seriously the social problems and exclusion that some immigrants may suffer in this country.

If immigrants were “glorified” as Turkkila wants us to believe, why are so few taking part in the ongoing immigration debate in this country?

One of the biggest problems with websites like Hommaforum is that most of those giving their opinions of immigrants are Finns. It’s like a groups of only male chauvinists giving their unchallenged views on women.

Post-April 17 Finland: A protest vote against whom?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Enrique Tessieri

One reads and hears less these days about the reasons why the Perussuomalaiset (PS) scored such a big election victory in April. While casting a protest vote is a positive signs that our democracy functions, what did the voters actually contend? Political corruption? Immigration? Refugees? Mandatory Swedish? Ever-growing income gaps and social inequality?  

Since politicians and political parties have the most to gain from an election and the voters the least, some campaigns are carried out like aggressive used-car salesmen. The newer the party the more exaggerated its promises, while the more traditional ones give different sales pitches.

The PS, which is the new kid on the big party block, did a good job because it instilled fear and awoke passions so you’d buy its used car.

What the PS salesman won’t tell you are the real problems of the vehicle you purchased. Some of these are that the car has had ten owners, the mileage meter has been tampered, sawdust has been mixed with the oil and that he is charging you 80% more than the real price of the car.

Apart from the anti-EU, anti-immigration and anti-Islam sales pitch of many PS MP candidates, some voters are already noticing that they purchased a lemon.

One does not have to be a political scientist to understand that Finland will never find effective solutions to its challenges in Timo Soini’s simplistic sound bites and by polarizing our society between “true Finns” and “untrue Finns.”

Like a person that attracts bad company, the most unfortunate and questionable side of Soini’s PS has been its far-right wing led by MPs who are members of Suomen Sisu. Almost every week there is a worrisome revelation by the media about Jussi Halla-aho, who we now know disliked human rights in 2001 because they encouraged tolerance between black and white people.

The worst lemons of the PS are Halla-aho and his PS MP followers like James Hirvisaari, Olli Immonen, Juho Erola and others. They are selling you a car that runs on the ideology of Nazi war criminal Alfred Rosenberg, David Duke, former head of the Klu Klux Klan, and Michael Levin. All this, of course, in an early twenty-first century Finnish context.

If Soini’s party was incapable of capitalizing on such a big election victory by entering government it is doubtful that they’ll be given a second chance by the voters.

Voters do protest but they want results as well.

MTV3: Seiska: Raittiuttaan mainostanut kansanedustaja umpihumalassa

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Comment: Perussuomalaiset MP Eero Hakkarainen, who became a household name during his first week in parliament by insulting blacks and Muslims, is getting more publicity but for all the wrong reasons.

The latest revelation about him was made by 7 päivää-lehti, which wrote that Hakkarainen drinks and has been known to be drunk by the locals in Viitasaari despite his claim of being a teetotaler for 20 years.

Hakkarainen is also highly critical of the EU but a sawmill owned by his family has received 460,000 euros in subsidies from Brussels.

Hakkarainen is one of the actors in the PS´tragic-comic play that began after April 17.

What other skeletons will the media uncover about him and the PS? 

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Raittiudestaan avoimesti kertonut perussuomalaisten kansanedustaja Teuvo Hakkarainen oli tavattu humalassa vesantolaisessa ravintolassa. Asiasta kertoo kuvien kera uusin 7 päivää -lehti.

Read whole story.

A voice was sounding: This Finland is your Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

A few weeks before the election in April, I visited a group of second-graders at a local elementary school in eastern Finland. Like many schools in this country, the class was made up of a few kids with African, Middle Eastern and other European backgrounds.

One girl sitting in front of the class surprised me with an emphatic statement:  “I don’t want to be a Finn because I’m Arabic.”

A boy sitting a row from the girl gave a knee-jerk response: “I don’t like where you’re from!”

The argument between the two started to gain momentum until it came to an abrupt end. I told the class that an important lesson could be learned from the incident: The importance of acceptance.

I tried my best to tell the class that some of us are fortunate because we have two home countries. Accepting one does not wear off your feelings for the other.

On that day I noticed something else missing at Finnish elementary schools. There weren’t any songs where everyone, irrespective of their background, could feel included in Finnish society.

I told them about Woody Guthrie’s song, This land is your land.

“This is a nice song we used to sing at my elementary school when I was a kid in the United States,” I said. “Why would a song claim that this is your land and this is my land if everyone knows that Finland is our land?”

I explained to the class that the United States is a country that has a lot of immigrants and people of different ethnic backgrounds. Some of them feel excluded from society. That’s why Guthrie’s song was sung at our school so people from all walks of life could feel at home.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaI5IRuS2aE]

One worrisome questions that the April 17 election has raised is whether Finland will become a more hostile country to visible newcomers, minorities and multicultural Finns?

Apart from greater euroskepticism, one of the most regrettable consequences of the election is growing nationalism, anti-immigration and anti-refugee sentiment in Finland.

While it would be unfair to claim that all Perussuomalaiset are against immigration and accepting our ever-growing cultural diversity as a society, some don’t hesitate to make a case about how “white” Finland is coming under threat. Immigrants and multicultural Finns are not the only ones feeling the adversity but our Swedish-speaking minority as well.

It is surprising, if not shocking, that in 2011 some politicians are making a case for racial “hygiene” in Finland, a concept that was prominent in the Europe of the 1930s and with the rise of fascism. It was the smoking gun that unleashed World War 2.

Those that make such a ludicrous case conveniently forget our history and that over a million Finns emigrated to other lands in the last two centuries. Those that left these shores have prospered as well as mixed with other cultures and people in many forms and ways. Thanks to them Finnish culture is more diverse today.

Talk of tougher immigration laws, fuelling myths and suspicion of immigrants, refugees and minorities rarely affect those that may want to move to Finland. It spills over like poison on the whole community.

I sometimes think about that Arabic girl in the class who was adamant about not wanting to be a Finn. Was it because she felt unwelcome?

No child or person who comes to our country should ever feel unwelcome by our society because it’s not the way we treat our own.

Taking into account the election result, Finland needs today more than ever its version of Guthrie’s famous song.