Migrants, minorities, and Others must stand up to Finland’s hostile environment

A poll by Yle shows that the far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party enjoys the most support with 19.5%, according to Yle News. Since 2011, when the PS won its historic election victory, we have seen the party come and go in the polls.

Of all the Finnish parties in parliament, the PS is the most hostile to migrants and minorities.

I am pessimistic that white Finns and their parties could help rid the PS from the Finnish political map. They too are white like the PS. Why would they want to stick their necks out for migrants and minorities if there is no political gain in it?

Denmark offers a warning for us in Finland.

Even if some see the victory of the Social Democrats in Denmark in this weekend’s parliamentary election as a death blow to the Islamophobic Danish People’s Party, think twice.

Writes The Nation: “The Social Democrats, faced with waning support in the past two decades, have parroted the Danish People’s Party on immigration, backing hard-line policies they characterize as necessary to save the country’s prized welfare state.”

If the white political parties are to be believed, migrants are putting in danger the welfare state in a rich country like Denmark. Studies in that country show that strains on the welfare state hinge on an aging population.

The Nation continues: “While other social-democratic parties [in other countries] have adopted tougher immigration laws in times of ‘crisis’ and used anti-immigration and Islamophobic language, no party has so openly ran on a nativist and welfare-chauvinist agenda as the Danish Social Democrats,” said Cas Mudde, a political scientist at the University of Georgia who specializes on populism.

The big question that we should ask is how far will the Social Democrats in Finland go and will they jump on the anti-immigration bandwagon as they already have in some cases. It may be that the Left Alliance, Greens and Swedish People’s Party are keeping them in check fo the moment but for how long?

It would be naive to leave to chance the future of migrants and minorities in this country to political parties. When matters get tough, they will be the first ones to ditch us.

This leaves us with an option: migrants, minorities and especially people of color have to unite and work hard to get their voices heard and our grievances answered.

Watching and listening to parties like the PS constantly mock and undermine our rights are a constant insult to decency. Their anti-immigration rhetoric is an insult to our Nordic institutions.

What I can say with certainty is that their leaders, like other xenophobes from other parties, will not be forgotten. We will do everything possible to inform our children and grandchildren of Finland’s hostile environment so that we never return to this wretched place again.

* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13, 2017, into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. In the last parliamentary election, Blue Reform was wiped off the Finnish political map when they saw their numbers in parliament plummet from 18 MPs to none. A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Official translations of the Finnish name of the party, such as Finns Party or True Finns, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and after that the acronym PS.