Racism is like a Cadillac, they bring out a new model every year.
Malcolm X
Few these days deny that Finland has a racism problem against Muslims, people of color and Third Worlders, the Romany and Russian-speaking minority, the third largest after Finnish and Swedish speakers. The serious student of society does not only look at the surface of news but what is behind it.
The denial of racism by some sectors of Finnish society are one salient issue we can look behind the news. If racism and prejudice are ever-present, how does the media, politicians and society play down and deny the social ill?
When speaking of Muslims in Finland, the media rarely speaks up or defends the group since stereotypes about their “primitive culture” and our exceptiionalism permit us to look the other way.
Even if the above examples of racist journalism happened over thirty years ago, it still continues today.
MTV is the biggest private television company in Finland. It’s portrail of brown migrants had the same hateful narrative: migrant youths and non-white migrants are a threat to society because they are violent. The picture on the right was used to give a heads up that MTV was going to interview the Interior Minister Mari Rantanen about the government’s tightened migration policy. Why is there a threatenig picture of a person with a knife?
Finland’s Russian-speaking community, the third largest after Finnish and Swedish speakers. They are a category of their own how they are treated by the media and politicians.
One of the biggest suspicions that Russophobes have in Finland is that Russians-speakers in Finland are, like blind robots, manipulated by President Vladimir Putin. While I am certain that there are members of the Russian-speaking community who support Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, many are opposed. Every national group has dissenters.
This week we witnessed how the media and opposition politicians attacked in mob fashion SDP MP Kimmo Kiljunen for giving his frank opinons about the closing of the border and the anti-Russian racism in Finland. A column by Heikki Mulari highlights the issue to a tee: “Although the Alexander League categorically denies being a Kremlin pawn, it’s opinions partly repeat Russian propaganda narratives.”
In other words, when a Russian speaker complains about the discrimination he suffers and his opposisiton to the closing of the FInnnish-Russian border, he is automatically spreading Kremlin propaganda?
Could Mulari tell us how, then, are you supposed to criticize the Finnish government and its policies? Should you be silent? Is that the way to ensure the Finnish media and politicians that you don’t spread “Kremlin’s propaganda?
Ridiculous.
Moreover, the same arguments made y Kiljunen and Russian speakers were made by human rights experts and academics when they criticized the pushback law.
Why weren’t they branded as Putin’s stooges?