Just like a junkie craving for a shot, the campaign by the far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)* showed revealed their immigration dependency problem. Like a gas pedal, the PS has stepped on the immigration topic to attract voters.
Immigration is a highly politicized topic in Finland as well and directly related to the success of the PS over the last decade. During all the last four parliamentary elections, the PS has successfully used an immigration crime topic to attract voters.
The European parliamentary election was a fiasco for the PS. Source: Yle
As a non-white Finn, the campaign by the likes of PS Chairperson and Minister of Finance Riiikka Purra, Interioir Minister Mari Rantanen, and Simo “Rwanda Model Now” Grönroos, was enough to make your stomach turn.
Migrant Tales does not usually publish candidates, but we do make exceptions. MEP candidate Paco Diop of the Left Alliance is that exception.
Diop, who hails from Turku and is a preschool teacher, states on YLE’s election compass three core values as an MEP candidate: “Human rights, respect for nature, and animal rights.” The rise of the far right in the upcoming European Election is his greatest source of concern, which threatens social cohesion, diversity, and inclusion, according to him.
Diop’s political awakening happened after the tragic death of his daughter. “I joined the Left Alliance in 2019 and it turned out to be the perfect home for me.”
Diop, who admires social fighters like Malcolm X, said that his aim as a politician is to be a voice for the voiceless and oppressed. “This is my lifetime goal,” he added.
Left Alliance MEP candidate Pacp Diop.
Diop, who has lived in Finland for 18 years, considers his second homeland a country full of contradictions.
“On the one hand we are supposed to be the happiest country in the world and then there are studies that show us to be the most racist country in Europe,” he said. “We have to ask for whom Finland is the happiest country.”
According to him, one of the biggest challenges of Finland’s growing culturally and ethnically diverse communities is for us to be aware of the toxicity of white supremacy and how it turns people of color, black people, and minorities like the Roma into victims. He said that society must take steps to challenge and address Finland’s racism problem.
Remember the last 2019 European election? Migrant Tales created quite a stir when it named the candidates who would allow asylum seekers to drown while coming to Europe.
We wrote in 2019: The Alma Median EU election compass shows that (85/234) MEP candidates of the Perussuomalaiset* and National Coalition Party (NCP) were the most eager to allow migrants to drown in the Mediterranean. Even a neutral, or “no opinion” answer, is problematic. Does it mean you look the other way when people drown?
Here is the question on the 2019 election compass: “Is it the obligation of the EU to save all those migrants who attempt to come to Europe and who are at risk of drowning in the Mediterranean?”
The same question is missing from the 2024 election compasses, but question 11 onYle‘s election compass is very similar. It asks: “A person trying to reach Europe can be turned back at the external border, even if it would put their lives in danger.”
Of those MEP that were elected in 2019, Laura Huhtasaari and Teuvo Hakkarainen (both “strongly agreed” that the EU should let people down in the Mediterranean) and Henna Virkkunen of the National Coalition Party “disagreed” that people drowning should be helped.
All of the above candidates were running in the 2019 MEP election and didn’t mind if people drowned in the Mediterranean. All of them, except for Eija-Riitta Korhola have moderated their radical stances. Virkkunen, Tynkkynen, Peltokangas, and Ruoho-Lerner would care less for a person’s safety and life if he or she were a victim of pushback at the border. Source: Yle
Don’t believe snow jobs like our tough stance is against smugglers, not people in danger of death. Such an explanation by Henna Virkkunen in 2019 makes no sense and is a cop out.
“When a clown moves into a palace he doesn’t become a king, the place becomes a circus.”
A Turkish proverb
Finland has turned into a show of lying politicians who no longer rely on facts but on prejudice and bigotry. Even if we mention the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party, National Coalition Party’s (NCP) Prime Minister Petteri Orpo is the ringmaster, saying one thing and meaning another.
The only conclusion I can come to after living decades in Finland is that the country’s racism problem is getting worse.
The government’s ignorance, lust for power, and neo-conservative economic policies are concerning. It suggests that the government has few problems in throwing under the bus the rule of law, Human Rights, and international agreements.
One part of Finlnad’s, or particularly the government’s, alternative reality is its migration policy, labor market, and changes to social welfare.
These are not changes but they are referred to by the government as paradigm changes:
changing the period of residence from five to eight years for citizenship;
tougher rules to get a permanent residence and citizenship;
prohibit asylum seekers from getting a work permit;
speed up deportations and asylum applications;
tighter family reunification requirements;
a person will be forced to leave the after being unemployed does not find employment in three (non-specialists) or six months (specialists);
imprison undocumented migrants;
temporarily suspend asylum rights at the Finnish-Russian border;
deny dual citizenship rights to Russian nationals.
Politicians from the PS and NCP will tell you with a poker face that the paradigm changes in migration policy have nothing to do with racism since “we are bringing to line out policy with the rest of the Nordic countries.”
Could we conclude that all the Nordic countries’ migration policies are then racist?
“The population changes, problems mount.” Let’s have a frank chat about the Great Replacement theory. How white Finns are becoming a minority and how Finland is being taken over by Muslims. “Let’s have a frank chat about the Great Replacement theory. How white Finns are becoming a minority and how Finland is being taken over by Muslims. Source: Facebook
Interior Minister Mari Rantanen and Finance Minister Riikka Purra before they were elected in 2023 and appointed ministers. Source: Facebook
The politicians leading Fnland in government leave a lot to be desired. Prime Minister Orpo has given them a platform to fulfill their xenophobic yearnings and racist antics.
Social Democrat MP Tytti Tupparainen said something that few in the media dared to ask. Eleven months of right-wing xenophobic policies have led us to even consider suspending the rule of law, Human Rights, and Constitutional rights through the pushback law.
Tuppurainen considered at A-talk the government’s pushback law as a Trojan Horse to spread the PS’ and NCP’s anti-immigration policies. She pointed her comment at Jukka Kopra (NCP) and Mauri Peltokangas (PS), two MPs who have made their career on spreading racism.
“Jukka Kopra has said that we should be able to turn back all asylum seekers. Mauri Peltokangas has spoken of them in very ugly terms as parasitic animals. With this attitude, we want to be careful that the government does not use this law as a pretext to drag Finland’s immigration policy in a more restrictive direction.”
The response by Kopra to Tuppurainen was an example of his and the NCP’s alternate state of reality. “I am in favor of a restrictive immigration policy precisely so that resources can be allocated to those who really need help,” he said.
Yleensä aina kun humalainen henkilö on paikalla, tiedän, että se tarkoittaa yleensä ongelmia. Rasmuksen julkaisemassa videossa päihtynyt mies paasaa rasistisesti naista ja hänen lastaan vastaan.
Jos tunnistat videolla esiintyvän henkilön, ota yhteyttä poliisiin.
Oheinen video saattaa sisältää voimakasta kielenkäyttöä, joka saattaa häiritä joitakin ihmisiä. Katsojien harkintaa suositellaan. Katso video täältä.
Plans to tighten the citizenship law expose a remarkable case of historic amnesia of Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s government. Did you know that Finland denied women, whom they proudly claim were the first to get suffrage rights in Europe, the right to give citizenship to their children? It was only the man who had such a right and privilege.
In 1984, about 66 years after independence, women were finally granted the right to give citizenship to their children underjus sanguinis.
Source: Valtioneuvosto.
It took about 66 years to change the law and still, 40 years later, there is no apology that upended many people’s lives. Instead, the government wants to make citizenship more difficult.
You may ask how the old law that did not allow women to pass on citizenship to their children, changed such people’s lives. The Finnish state should offer an apology for such an exclusive law.
Today’s A-studio with Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Mauri Peltokangas, head of the administration committee, and MP Tytti Tupparainen of the Social Democratic Party was disappointing when they spoke of the law on “refoulement,” also popularly known as the “pushback law.”
Source: Google
Even if Tupparainen said that human rights were a cornerstone of Finland’s rule of law, Peltokangas was willing to throw Finland’s human rights commitments under the bus because “national security overrode everything.”
Using the excuse of “national security” to trash human rights, internaiontal rights and the rule of law, is a flimsy argument. The media, and journalists like host Marja Sannikka, who treat this question as a given fact, is dangerous and irresponsible. Many dictatorships in have used the “national security” argument to undermine civil rights.
Apart from the Finnish-Russian border crisis, Finland is in deep demographic difficulties. An article in Helsingin Sanomat said that low birth rates would force Finland’s population to plummet in 90 years to just over a million from 5.6 million now.
“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”
Malcolm X
Day in and day out I see nothing more these days than hostile and negative news about migrants, especially asylum seekers, who are wrongly called “illegal” migrants. These news stories appear a lot in Yle, the state-owned broadcaster.
Even positive news, like the call from church leaders of the Finnish evangelical Lthern Church, Catcholic Church, Orthodox Church and others called for a more humane migration policy.
The call was criticized by government representatives of the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS)* and National Coalition Party. One of these, Joakim Wigelius of the PS, accused the church leaders of “left-wing policies” and for being “naive.”
A question: When did Yle publish something positive about migrants and asylum seekers? In Finland, xenophobia has poisoned perceptions to the extent that we are ready to ditch our human rights and rule of law obligations to satisfy our racist and myopic world view.
Looking at how much xenophobia has overtaken Finland, it is easy to understand how this country went to bed with Nazi Germany in World War 2.
Today, at the Mikkelin Klubi of Mikkeli, you can still find a picture of Heinrich Himmler and Marshal Karl Mannerheim drinking a schnapps together.
While the picture may portray “history” for some, it does so without context and without reminding us of the crimes against humanity carried out by Himmler and the Nazi regime. Himmler is the very person that set up the death camps for the total annihilation of the Jews and other enemies.
Mannerheim and Himmler at the Mikkeli Klubi, which sees this picture as “history.”
The picture was one of the main reasons why I resigned my membership from the Mikkelin Klubi.
It is surprising that Finland’s national broadcaster, Yle, spreads xenophobia and suspicion of asylum seekers via its news reporting. Yle, never calls people attempting to enter Finland via the Finnish-Russian border asylum seekers but people who are attempting to enter the country illegally.
The narrative spread by Yle reporters is a toothless stenographic copy of the government’s harsh stance against such people. The arguments are the same ones as the government’s:
These people aren’t “real” asylum seekers because Russia is using them as pawns. This may be the case, but does it allow a country to deny a person’s human right right to asylum?
These people, who are also women and children, cannot be considered real asylum seekers because they live in a safe country like Russia.
They point to the violent pushbacks of Poland but forget to mention that the country was back then run by a xenophobic PiS government.
“From the region of Vyborg have come more seekers to the Finnish border.
The people seeking to enter Finland illegally are from Africa and the Middle East.”
Apart from practicing stenography journalism, Yle‘s reporting of the issue is one-sided and opinionated. Instead of hearing human rights organizations, Yle offers only a simple view where the main sources are – surprise, surpsie – the national boarder guard and the government.
The reporting by Yle is one-sided promoting hatred of brown asylum seekers.
If there is a reminder on how bad Finland’s racism problem has got, take a look at the rise of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party since the 2011 parliamentary election and specifically its main motor, Jussi Halla-aho. Having him treated as “a normal” politician by the media and other politicians makes him look like a wretched politician in an intensive care ward.
His political life-saving support comes from his blog, Scripta, written in the 2000.
For many Finns, it is difficult to weigh how demeaning and racist his writings are and how they paint a capricious and greedy man who is a white supremacist desperately seeking recognition and approval. Halla-aho will never apologize for his racist writings because it would cut off his political life support.
Moreover, playing down and moving forward with a poker face concerning the damage he has caused on Finland and especially on minorities, would not be possible if he apologized for his racist writings.
There are many ways to skin the cat of an old racist who hides behind the cloak of democratic institutions. One of these methods is to reverse the roles of his victims in his writing to grasp how toxic the person is.
Example 1:
“I am thoroughly confused as to why muslims have such a great desire to inflict pain on those who are in a weaker position, such as animals, children and women. I think this pattern is pretty clear. Why do muslims jump around ululating with their dicks hard whenever heads get chopped off or someone gets whipped?
“I am thoroughly confused as to why muslims white Finnshave such a great desire to inflict pain on those who are in a weaker position, such as animals, children and women. I think this pattern is pretty clear. Why do muslimswhite Finns jump around ululatingdrunk with their dicks hard limp whenever a Russian’s head gets chopped off or someone gets whipped beaten to a pulp?
“It is hard for me to think about a lower reptile in the universe than a Scandinavian social democrat. The most slimy subscpecies of this reptile is the Swedish social democrat.”
“It is hard for me to think about a lower reptile in the universe than a Scandinavian social democrat a Finnish Perussuomalaiset. The most slimy subscpecies of this reptile is the Swedish social democratSweden Democrat.
