Racism is a sickness, and as a disorder, it has consequences for the victim and the perpetrator. We learned about a bus driver and Peurssuomalaiset (PS)* politician called Gleb Simanov, who thought up the “bright” idea to videotape and insult Somalis while at work in three videos that he posted.
On Thursday Simonov’s fortunes changed when he was fired from Nobina, a bus company.
His sacking reminds me of what happened in 2015 to a woman called Martta Petman, who worked at the Tikkurila congregation. She was fired after she wrote on Facebook that she spat in the porridge that she served asylum seekers.
Petman might have raised some attention with her questionable actions, but she was quickly forgotten. Nobody came to her rescue never mind helped her find a new job. Sakari Timonen, one of Finland’s best bloggers, said that racists are the last people to come to another racist’s rescue.
The same is happening to Simonov. He may have caught the attention of the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS)* and other xenophobic groups, but he too like Petman will be forgotten and left without a job.
In the Facebook posting below, Simanov thanks his supporters. He even thanks a person for giving him 10 euros.
For a single father with two children, ten euros isn’t going to take you very far.
One of the interesting questions to arise from what happened is Paavo Tajukangas’ role. Tajukangas is a far-right white supremacist and a member of Suomen Sisu, an association that wants to keep Finland white.
Let’s take a look at what happened to Tajukangas’ posting in his blog about the videotapes taken by Simanov. In the first picture below we see the three videos, but today there were taken down with a message:
“Due to requests, we have removed the [three] videos from the site and from YouTube.”
Looks like the whole plan between Simanov and Taajukangas backfired badly.
Before…
