The myth of an ideologically unified Finland isolated from the attitudes and practices of its ally, the Third Reich…the insensitivity toward these silenced histories provides a condition of continued racism and antisemitism.
Finland’s Holocaust: The silence of history (2015)
Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Mauri Peltokangas is a racist hothead who has rage issues when opening his mouth. Like most PS politicians, he keeps to tradition by hating Muslims, mainly Somalis, as in the Facebook posting below.
In a 2:35-minute video clip monologue in February, he used the following cuss words every 20 seconds:
- Shit (paska): 2 times
- Fucked (perseestä): 2 times
- What the hell, hell (mitä helevetti, helevetti): 2
- The devil (perkele): 2
In his most recent racist diatribe, Peltokangas writes:
“Have good weekend friends, followers, and those who hate me. I was thinking with my wife in the garden department of the Kärkkäinen department store of Ylivieska. I thought why do I feel so at peace with myself. It just dawned on me that it is because you don’t hear any Mogadishu [Somalia] dialects, the yelling of goat-herders, and you cannot spot one camel or flying carpet in the parking section.
Finnishness is a virtue.”
Peltokangas communicates directly with his racist and Islamophobic followers, who appear to like what they are reading. He is also giving the thumbs up to antisemitism.
Should the PS MP’s toxic views surprise us about Somalis and Jews? Not really, since Peltokangas feels at home with neo-Nazis and is a member of the far-right Suomen Sisu association.
Juha Kärkkäinen is the owner of a company that bears his name in the background. Kärkkäinen has shopping centers in Ylivieska, Lahti, and Oulu. Apart from his stores, the owner has earned a dubious reputation for being one of the most prominent anti-Semites in Finland.
An appeals court in 2014 upheld a Ylivieska-Raahe court ethnic agitation ruling against Kärkkäinen for publishing anti-Semitic opinion pieces on Magneettimedia, reported YLE. Kärkkäinen was fined the previous year 45,000 euros for publishing anti-Semitic writings of Adrian Salbuch, Ted Pike, David Duke, and others as well as cartoons that bear a striking resemblance to the former Nazi tabloid, Der Strümer (1923-45).
As the quote above by the editors of Finland’s Holocaust: The silence of history state, it offers once again proves how a social ill like racism sees another day in Finland.
Like MP Ano Turtiainen said, getting a criminal conviction as a PS politician is like having a feather in one’s cap.
Other important factors that make the “feather shine in defiance” is the attitude of some Finns, who never stand up to racism but state hypocritically that they are against racism.
