MP Ano [1] Turtiainen’s tweet mocking the death of George Floyd sits together with Juha Mäenpää on Facebook. You may ask why?
Mäenpää is a member of the Perussuomalaiset party* and Turtiainen was expelled. One called Muslims “an invasive species” in parliament and the other mocked in a tweet George Floyd’s death.
Turtianen, like Mäenpää, are not only bound by chains in the Facebook picture below but by their racist posts and worldview.
There is one matter that is clear about Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Juha Mäenpää: he hates Muslims so much that last year he compared them to an “an invasive species.” He is also close ideologically with Ano Turtiainen, who mocked George Floyd’s death.
According to the National Geographic, “An invasive species is an organism that is not indigenous, or native, to a particular area. Invasive species can cause great economic and environmental harm to the new area.”
Mäenpää, are Muslims and migrants organisms?
In the interview below with MTV, Mäenpää appears to regret the negative publicity but not what he said. He stated that in his “invasive species” speech in parliament he did not mean any ethnic or religious group.
“Immigration is one factor that affects the economy and taxes,” he said. “I plan to be critical about these matters but choose my words more carefully.”
For those who have followed how Islamophobic parties like the PS speak of Muslims and asylum seekers, will note that much of it is in code. Rarely do they use the term “Muslim” but do refer to asylum seekers, which is code for Muslims.
On Wednesday, the constitutional law committee voted 12-5 to lift MP Mäenpää’s immunity from prosecution.
Three of the committee’s PS members (Olli Immonen, Sakari Puisto, Jukka Mäkynen) and two of the National Coalition Party (Wille Rydman, Heikki Vestman) voted against the measure.
The fact that an MP can label Muslims and migrants as “invasive species” speaks volumes about how disenfranchised these groups are in Finland. For the Mäenpää affair to take a year shows how slowly justice works in this country.
One of the first to criticize the measure was PS chairperson Jussi Halla-aho, who considered the constitutional law committee vote “shameful.” He said that the PS would vote against the measure in parliament.
To take away Mäenpää immunity, 167 our of 200 MPs would have to back the proposal. In theory, the PS could block the proposal with its 38 MPs.
What did other PS MPs comment about the committee vote?
MP Mauri “Perkele” Peltokangas, who appears close to exploding when giving monologue rants, slammed the decision as an example of the left-green and communist rot in parliament.
Source: Facebook
MP Sebastian Tynkkynen, who was convicted twice for ethnic agitation, wasn’t very imaginative. He stated that lifting Mäenpää’s immunity was another step in the degradation of free speech.
Statues are being toppled left and right, some with permission others without. TV shows and movies like “Gone with the wind” are taken down because of their racist content. All of this indicates that we have reached some sort of tipping point.
Long live #BlackLivesMatters!
In all this protest against racism, Finland appears as an innocent observer of what is happening in the US and other parts of Europe. MP Ano Turtiainen, who got expelled from the far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party, can tell you how much it cost him to underestimate his racist tweet that mocked George Floyd’s death.
It was a hard blow from the #BlackLivesMatter movement.
The fact that an MP can post such racist trash as a member of Finland’s second-largest party is the clearest indication yet that the #BlackLivesMovement is long overdue in Finland.
But let’s not kid ourselves, #BlackLivesMatter reached Finland in early June.
In Finland, too, we have learned very little or nothing about our culturally and ethnically diverse past. The reason why “we have not learned from our history” is that the whitewashing process is near-complete and systematic.
While some statues in Finland should end up in a museum or in a metal smelter, we need to raise new ones. One of these is of Rosa Emilia Clay. (1875-1959).
Read the full story (in Finnish) here, and more about Clay [in English) here.
Clay was a teacher and Finland’s first African who became a Finnish citizen in 1899. Her perseverance and her suffering as a black woman are proof of the challenges of our culturally and ethnically diverse society still faces.
In my opinion, Finland is such a racialized country and so obsessed with its whiteness that even white people from outside the EU, are othered.
Source: Twitter
Due to my Jewish background, which I was supposed to forsake due to whitewashing, I was fortunate to rediscover who my distant relatives were and why I was supposed to forget them.
Understanding that we are part of a hostile whitewashing process waged at us should bring guys closer to Emma Tubman’s words, “And I prayed to God to make me strong and able to fight, and that’s what I’ve always prayed for ever since.”
The #BlackLivesMatter movement is growing and getting stronger in Finland as well. It gives us courage, makes us stronger, and abler to fight.
The news continues to roll in for MP Ano Turtiainen, who was suspended from the Perusuomalaiset (PS)* parliamentary group for a tweet that mocked George Floyd’s death.
After the police carried out their investigation last week and decided not to charge Turtiainen for ethnic agitation or defamation, the police changed course Monday after Prosecutor General Raija Toiviainen got involved.
Toiviainen said that there is a strong suspicion that Turtiainen may be guilty after all of ethnic agitation.
George Floyd’s death could be compared with a modern-day lynching. Politicians, like Ano Turtiainen, who attempt to show their “dark humor” are members of the social media lynch mob. Source: Migrant Tales.
There are a lot of questions that Turtiainen’s case brings forth. One of them is how interested are the police in going after people who spread hate speech and racism? The police did not initially suspect Turtiainen’s tweet of ethnic agitation or of defamation since Goerge Floyd was dead.
The tweet is not only a slap in the face of George Floyd and to all the suffering black people are experiencing, but it is also a swipe at Finland black community.
Turtiainen’s “joke?” George Floyd’s wide-eyed face full of terror colored purple with the name of the 1960s rock band “Pink Floyd.”
Detective Chief Inspector Jari-Matti Marttala confirmed to Migrant Tales today that investigations are still ongoing concerning the assault by residents of Teuva of a Muslim and his four passengers.
“We are still interviewing people, and we have not ruled out the possibility of a hate crime,” said Marttala. “Everything is still at hand…let’s say that it will take at least weeks [before we conclude our investigation] so we can get a full picture [of what happened] and all the parties heard.”
Migrant Tales spoke with the victim, who ended up in the hospital after being attacked and beaten by locals.
“The police have come to my home three times and once in the hospital,” he said. “One older man said while they were beating me that I should ask Allah for help.”
The victim said that he and his friends were insulted because of their ethnic background.
“I told them [in Teuva] that is wasn’t nice what they were doing,” the victim said earlier. “I asked them why do you speak in [a racist manner] that way to us because we don’t want any problems.”
Teuva is a small town located in the southern Ostrobothnian region close to the city of Seinäjoki 80km away. Despite the welcomes and tourist information, Teuva showed its ugly racist face against five people. The driver, who is a Muslim, was rushed to the hospital after he was beaten by the locals.Read the full document here.
Below are the ugly footprints of a suspected hate crime.
“Mamu” is a derrogatory word for foreigner in Finland. Source: Facebook. The interior of the car that was attacied by Teuva locals. Source: Facebook.Soure: Facebook.
As the dust settles over this tumultuous week for the far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS) party, the question to ask if business will be back to “normal” in the PS?
The first scandal was MP Ano Turtiainen’s tweet that mocked George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police.
Apart from ending Turtianen’s short-lived career as a dark humor comedian, the MP got expelled from the PS parliamentary group until the end of the year, his racist tweet made him “famous” outside of Finland, and two weightlifting groups in the United States and Canada terminated their business relationship with his company.
Turtiainen’s tweet was even noticed by George Floyd’s family in the US.
“The message glorifies police violence and criminal behavior,” said Goerge Floyd’s family lawyer in Teller Report. “It seems that this not the first time MP Turiainen has published racist messages on social media. We believe that Turtiainen’s colleagues in parliament should be held accountable.”
Moreover, Prosecutor General Raija Toiviainen is planning to carry out an investigation concerning Turtiainen’s tweet, according to Demokraatti. The police announced earlier that it would not carry out an inquiry about the former PS MP’s tweet.
Equally disturbing but not surprising was PS chairperson Jussi Halla-aho’s excuses. He stated that spreading controversial opinions is “a team sport that requires certain table manners.”
I suspect that “table manners” in Halla-aho’s vocabulary means being racist without sounding racist, speaking in code so your followers can decipher your message’s racism, and avoid ethnic agitation charges.
Halla-aho’s and the PS’ hand has been exposed many times in the racist and misogynist cookie jar.
This week, Suomen Perusta, a PS-funded think tank, published a racist and misogynist book called “Truth incites” authored by Jukka Hankamäki. The book, which claims to be a serious philosophical study “of the information and truth crisis of the left-wing populist mainstream media,” is an embarrassment and insulting joke.
Hankamäki’s book was taken down from the Internet after two days of its publication leaving a lot of red faces and the PS pointing the finger at each other. One of the questions was who was responsible for the book’s publication? It appears that nobody or very few read the book before it was published.
Even Halla-aho had to step in and take responsibility even if the party attempted to distance itself from Hankamäki’s work. “This was our mistake, period,” he said. “We did not know that the book contained the kind of material that it did.”
Apart from its racist-eugenicist views on racial purity, Hankamäki did not spare any nice words for Finnish women. One of the claims he made was that Finnish women choose foreign men as partners because they are rejected by Finnish men.
Minister of Science and Culture Hanna Kosonen described Hankamäki’s views of women as “cruel and disturbing.”
The ministry had granted 120,000 euros to Suomen Perusta for the publication of Hankamäki’s book. It is presently reviewing whether to ask the think tank to return the money because of the book’s contents and views on gender and social equality.
Finnish Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Ano Turtiainen’s tweet mocking George Floyd’s death is a disgrace. Still, even a worse shame is that he has not apologized to George Floyd’s family, #BlackLivesMatter movement, and also People of African Descent in Europe and Finland for the tweet.
The only matter that appears to have concerned Turtiainen is that his tweet wasn’t good for the PS’ image and that his career as a dark humor comedian and politician came down in flames.
People like you are a threat to society and an even greater one in parliament.
Meanwhile, Prosecutor General Raija Toiviainen is planning to investigate Turtiainen’s tweet, according to Demokraatti. The police announced earlier that it would not carry out an investigation about the former PS MP’s tweet.
George Floyd’s death could be compared with a modern-day lynching. Politicians, like Ano Turtiainen, who attempt to show their “dark humor” are members of the social media lynch mob. Source: Migrant Tales.
[1] ”Ano” is a real name in Finland. The equivalent name for women is Anna. The translation of “ano” in Spanish is the anus.
A group of white Finnish men and women attacked on Saturday, a New Finn and his four friends in the Southern Ostrobotnian town of Teuva in western Finland. The police, which is treating the incident as suspected aggravated assault, has not ruled out a hate crime.
The big question is not if what happened wasn’t a hate crime, but will the police see it that way.
The interior ministry defines hate crime in the following way: “A hate crime is generally taken to mean any criminal act which is motivated by prejudice or hostility against groups of people that the victim represents.”
One of the matters that becomes crystal clear when I spoke to the victim was that his ethnic background was what motivated the suspects to act in such a hostile way.
At one point in the interview, the victim was at a loss of words trying to catch his breath from the horrible incident.
The victim’s car ended up in a ditch. The term mamu, which is the migrant’s n-word, was written over the car after the incident took place, according to the police. Source: Facebook.
“When they dragged me out of the car, one held me by the neck and another hit me yelled ‘let’s kill this foreigner (mamu),'” he said. “They hit me really hard. I still suffer from headaches and my body aches.”
In Teuva, where the attackers had notice and approached the victim and his friends, they started to pick a fight.
“I told them that is wasn’t nice what they were doing,” the victim continued. “I asked them why do you speak in that way to us because we don’t want any problems.”
The victim and the passengers decided to leave, but the attackers jumped on the hood of the care and would not get off until later.
“After that incident [in Teuva], I noticed that 4-5 cars were following us [on a country road],” he said. “They sped up and kept harassing us on the road until we noticed that they had blocked the road with another car. It was then when our car veered off the road That is when they attacked us.”
A friend of the victim had uploaded a Facebook posting of what had happened and started getting threats.
“The person who posted the comment said that we know your address and names,” he said. “I asked him if he is going to break the windows and spray [hate] graffiti on the wall. In the morning, he took down the post.”
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