A good question is why the public’s fascination with far-right populism has caught on. US President Donald Trump is one sour example but so is the changing political landscape of Europe. In Finland, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s National Coalition Party (NCP) believes it can continue to do business with the anti-immigration Finns Party (PS) and form the next government with them and the Center Party.
A simple answer to the above question is that populist far-right parties like the PS and their NCP enablers have sold simple solutions to complex problems. Some of their favorite scapegoats are migrants and minorities. Tougher laws and fueling mistrust will make us a stronger nation.A good question is why the public’s fascination with far-right populism has caught on.
A simple answer to the above question is that populist far-right parties like the PS and their NCP enablers have sold simple solutions to complex problems. Some of their favorite scapegoats are migrants and minorities. Tougher laws and fueling mistrust will make us a stronger nation.
Behind such 1+1=2 answers by politicians lies the deepest fears of parties like the NCP and PS.That fear is that white Finns, the kantasuomalaiset, or ethnic Finns, will lose power in the face of plummeting birthrates and rising immigrants.
Trump’s racist rants in the US, the FPÖ in Austria, AfD in Germany and other far-right forces are a direct response to the fear that their white majority will become a minority. It explains why the US Supreme Court overturned abortion rights and why some politicians are so paranoid about immigration, especially undocumented immigration.
If there is one indication that will fuel xenophobia in Finland it is also the country’s birth rate. In 2024, the birth rate plummeted for the third consecutive year reaching the lowest level in the country’s recorded history, according to Statistics Finland, forcing the fertility rate to retreat to 1.25 from 1.26 children per woman.
Lower birthrates paint a somber demographic future for Finland and a bleak social one as well. As the PS and NCP have shamelessly shown, spreading hateful rhetoric and strengthening institutional racism has short-term political benefits but long-term wrecks.
Labeling a minority as a threat has been used by different groups over the ages to justify genocide. Such a crime hasn’t lost its shine. Take a look at the Native populations of the Americas, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Empire, the Muslim Rohingya by the military of Myanmar, Rwanda, Israeli war against Palestinians in Gaza, and the Holocaust just to name a few.
When given enough unchecked space, hatred takes on a life of its own and is difficult to put back into the bottle.
Governments are playing with fire when they play down racism and continue to subvert migrant and minority rights. It is the best way to lead us towards the peak of the pyramid of hate.
Source: Etu
In Finland, the paradigm shifts in migration, social and labor laws will impact dearly migrants and minorities. According to European Islamophobia Report w023. “Although the government program speaks of a ‘strong and committed Finland’ that respects ‘human rights and other international conventions, obligations under EU law and the rule of law,’ some say the statement is misleading because of the 180-degree turn in immigration policy. The government’s policies and assurances have failed to reduce the climate of hostility towards migrants and minorities, which is likely to continue to grow.
Even so, we have the power to halt this perilous development.
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