It is justified to consider the Nürnberg trials a farce. Guilt was decided in advance, and the justifications for the sentences were absurd.[1]
Perussuomalaiset* (PS) chairperson Jussi Halla-aho (2010)
Isn’t it incredible how PS Youth second vice president Toni Jalonen put himself in the eye of a political storm when he admitted over the weekend that he is “an ethnonationalist, traditionalist, and a fascist?”
Not only admitted these words in public is one matter but doing it with his Finnish fascist black shirt and blue tie adds more light to the hypocrisy of the Finnish political system and specifically on the PS.
Halla-aho was quoted as saying in Helsingin Sanomat that the PS doesn’t tolerate nazism or fascism. These assurances are as empty as Halla-aho admitting that the PS isn’t a racist party.
Jalonen used MP Juha Mäenpää, who is suspected for ethnic agitation over his invasive species remark of asylum seekers, as an example of why it would be injust to sack him from the party.
“I understand that if the party sacks me, but I do not see it as just if you look at what others have said [publicly] in the party,” he was quoted as saying in Helsingin Sanomat, pointing the finger at Mäenpää.
What makes the whole we’re-going-to-possibly-sack Jalonen farce by the PS leadership is itself and its track record. Jalonen’s case shows that it is fine being a fascist in the party as long as you don’t say it too loudly in public.
Halla-aho was, for example, convicted in 2012 for ethnic agitation and breaching the sanctity of religion. He was also suspended a year earlier from the party for two weeks for supporting a military regime in Greece.
“What is needed in Greece right now is a military junta, which would not need public approval and could use tanks against strikers and demonstrators,” he wrote on Facebook.[2]
The PS has, under the leadership of Halla-aho, become more radicalized. Racist concepts like ethnonationalism, ethnic replacement, fascism, and other ones are today the norm.
The same challenges former PS leader Timo Soini had with the racists in the party, which was nothing more than a power fight between him and Halla-aho, is now taking place in the party but with fascists and ethnonationalists.
Let’s not fall for the hypocrisy of the PS, but continue to focus on challenging a party that wants to turn Finland into a country like Victor Orbán’s Hungary.
[1] For an example Alber Speer (an architect) got a long sentence since he knew about the holocaust but didn’t try to prevent it. As if a person living in a dictatorship should fight against the dictatorship even if it costs his life. Source: Wikiquote (Hommaforum).
[2] Wikiquote
