Even if parliamentary elections will take place on April 19, 2015, it’s clear that they’ve begun. Rumbles can be already heard from political parties such as the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, Muutos 2011 and the National Coalition Party, which are vying for media attention and voters. Who are they targeting? Who else but migrants and minorities.
National Coalition Party MP Pia Kauma is the one that claimed on Friday that migrant women were buying new baby carriages with social aid and that migrants were getting more welfare than Finns.
Kauma’s claims, which were based on hearsay, were disproven. Even so, the conservative MP continues to be in the media spotlight.
Any serious student of racism would ask the following question: Why does MP Kauma, who bases her claim on gossip and openly victimizes migrants, controls the narrative on migrants? Why doesn’t Pekka Myrskylä’s blog, which showed that the majority of migrants live in poverty in Finland, wasn’t even mentioned by the Finnish media?
Why in the last parliamentary elections did the media believe the narrative of the PS and politicians like Jussi Halla-aho and others even if it’s clear today that they were spreading lies about migrants?
The answer is in my opinion clear: The Finnish media isn’t only white but too many reporters have a challenging time thinking outside their ethnic box.
Migrants and minorities in this country have memory and we won’t forget. In the meantime as new lies are stacked over old ones by opportunistic politicians, the credibility of our institutions will be undermined. Who would believe in the police if the police are suspicious of you?
What is surprising in the Kauma affair is that not one migrant – except for mothers with baby carriages – were asked what they thought about the MP’s false claims.
On Monday’s A-Studio, a YLE host asked Kauma if she’d apologize for what she said. Social Democrat chairman Antti Rinne had said over the weekend that it’s clear that migrants don’t get more social aid than Finns and therefore talk about baby carriages should end and Kauma should apologize.
The MP said she wouldn’t apologize for bringing up a topic that had gotten the attention of white Finns.
Kauma did, however, apologize to those migrant mothers with baby carriages who have been harassed by Finns because of what she said.
Please read the last sentence again and ask:
Why did she make such claims in the first place if they aren’t true?
Politicians like Kauma and Timo Soini will find themselves in good company with MP James Hirvisaari of Muutos 2011, a xenophobic far-right party that believes racist sound bites to the media will help them get voters.
They are right but in the wrong party because there’s little media interest in Muutos 2011.
Hirvisaari, who got the boot from the PS after he posted a picture on social media of a friend making a Nazi salute in parliament, is a PS creation. Without the PS, Hirvisaari would have never got elected.
Here MP James Hirvisaari shows his Finnish machoism and narcism with his anti-immigration rhetoric, where he promises to get immigration under control. Social media has created many Frankensteins like Hirvisaari.
It’s highly likely that Hirvisaari will lose his seat in April.
We at Migrant Tales hope that he gets voted out of parliament.
* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The English names of the party adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings.