By Enrique Tessieri
Here is a story published Sunday on Savon Sanomat of Kuopio that shows members in the right-wing populist Perussuomalaiset (PS) party giving the thumbs down to racism. Jukka Kotimäki, PS organization secretary of Siilimäki near Kuopio, states that he does not want openly racist people to be a part of his party.
Even though we are speaking of a small community in Eastern Finland, it shows that there is already debate in the PS on this important issue. We should applaud a member of the PS, who states that racism has nothing to do with his party.
While this is a very good sign, the PS still has a lot of work and issues to resolve concerning its stand on discrimination and racism. One of the persons we’d be happy to hear and make a break with this type of anti-social behavior is PS head Timo Soini.
Migrant Tales wrote recently about how most parties in Finland are giving the thumbs down to racism.
In my opinion, the mere idea that Finland could turn into a Denmark or that some politicians believe that they could become a Finnish Geert Wilders or even a modern Arthur Seyss-Inquart exposes not only their delusional opportunism but their ignorance on immigration.
While there is still a lot of work to do on the anti-racism front in Finland, there is hope especially for our children and grandchildren so they may live in a country where racism and hatred of other groups are shameful and rare.
Shortly after this latest blog entry was published, @HelsinkiObs tweeted the following:Please also note that @anon_finland have taken a very strong stance. #anti-racism.
Thank you for the heads up!
The reader’s attention comes to rest on that little word avoimesti. Presumably it’s acceptable to be salakähmäisesti racist – and indeed we see plenty of examples of this.
The problem is that this kind of duplicity requires a degree of wit and effort that is alien to the epähiket.
Justicedemon
Do you really think you are so much better than the people you hate in PS? How is your rhetoric of “epähiket” and constant remarks about PS voters intellectual/academic abilities any better than Hakkarainen’s remarks about “neekeriukot” and such?
Yossie
The betterness and hatred are your interpretations and say a great deal about how you see the world. My references to epähiket are in no way rhetorical; they are an observation of a certain type of person who is attracted to simplistic solutions and lacks the interest and intellectual apparatus to appreciate anything more complex than a one-line refutation. This is the type of person who thinks that immigrants cause unemployment and persists in this view even when we point out that the areas of the country with the highest unemployment have the lowest number of immigrants. Such a person sat at the back of the school classroom and is reflexively suspicious of anything and anyone who is more genuinely reflective and analytical.
There is no sense of superiority or ill-will here, any more than you might feel superior to a person with a chronic disease or seek to harm such a person. The notion of feeling superior and seeking to blame and damage the supposedly disadvantaged is part of the fascist mentality.