Atlantis, Eden ja Eldorado. Ihanneyhteiskuntien on uskottu perinteisesti sijaitsevan kadonneilla tai kaukaisilla saarilla. Siellä kaikille riittää tasapuolisesti töitä, vapaa-aikaa ja vaurautta. Realistit ovat aina tienneet, että mahdotonta ei kannata yrittää tavoitella. Mutta utopisteja on riitänyt maailman sivu, ja jotkut heistä ovat tarttuneet toimeen ja kulkeneet edellä. Jenni Stammeierin toimittama 8-osainen sarja käy läpi utopiayhteisöjen historiaa.
Osa 4/8 ma 22.4.2013 klo 12.15, uusinta su 28.4. klo 17.15
Uuden Suomen perustajat suuntaavat Amerikkaan
Venäläistämispaineiden alla Suomea ja suomalaisia suunniteltiin siirrettäväksi Amerikkaan. “Uudelle Suomelle” etsittiin 1800- ja 1900 -lukujen taitteessa paikkaa ensin USAsta ja Kuubasta. Etenkin suomenruotsalaiset kokivat olonsa ahtaiksi, ja monet oli jo karkoitettu maasta. Lopulta boheemi intellektuelli Arthur Thesleff löysi eksoottisen Argentiinan, joka houkutteli yli sata suomalaista liikkeelle. Joukko koostui pääosin suomenruotsalaisista kaupunkilaismiehistä, joita innoitti seikkailumieli. Matkaan lähdettiin myös rikastumistavoittein. Minkälaisen paratiisin eksotiikannälkäiset suomalaiset Argentiinan viidakosta löysivät? Asiantuntijoina professori Jussi Pakkasvirta, professori Marja Jalava sekä argentiinansuomalaisten tutkija Enrique Tessieri.
Abdulah, who has appeared in a number of postings on Migrant Tales, hasn’t yet rallied enough courage to speak without the veil of anonymity. Like many who are scorned in Finland because of their ethnic background, regaining one’s balance and healing the wounds inflicted by intolerance can be a long process.
“I have learned a lot from Migrant Tales,” he said. “One of the most important matters that has helped me is to accept who I am. It’s been an ongoing process.”
Accepting oneself can be easier said than done, especially for those that have been constantly reminded that their ethnic background is something they should be ashamed of, according to Abdulah.
He says before discovering Migrant Tales, he thought that there wasn’t a single forum in this country that cared about his situation.
“It was awful and I became paranoid every time I walked outside my home in public,” he continued. “All the chat forums that I followed overflowed with racism and hatred for who I am.”
Abdulah believes that the most racist forums in Finland are found on Iltalehti and Suomi24.
“[Tabloid] Ilta-Sanomat’s chat forum aren’t as bad as Iltalehti’s because they’ve cleaned up their act,” he said. “I haven’t visited Hommaforum. Maybe I should one day.”
Migrant Tales believes that visiting Hommaforum would be a waste of time for Abdulah.
Mediaseurantais another website that furthers what Hommaforum spreads but in a subtler fashion. While it attempts to give a balanced view of what is written about immigrants in the Finnish media, it’s a pro-Hommaforum site. This is apparent by the type of stories it publishes that attempt to show immigration, and espcially Muslims, to be a problem in Finland.
Abdulah has never heard of Mediaseuranta and considers Uusi Suomi to be a good online forum because it gives immigrants and visible minorities an opportunity to express their views.
Migrant Tales doesn’t totally agree with Abdulah.
Even if anti-racists publish blog entries on Uusi Suomi, the online publication is openly hostile, racist and a home for Finland’s anti-immigration community.
Uusi Suomi has tried to weed out openly racist writers from publishing on their site. Even so, the website is still a good breeding ground for spreading conservative, anti-EU, right-wing populist, anti-immigration, and especially anti-Muslim diatribe.
Moderation is poor and it’s unclear if the online publication conveniently turns a blind eye to some of its more racist and Islamophobic blog entries.
Comment: As the manhunt for one of the two suspects continues in Boston, what should our reaction be to the two Chechen killers? This blog entry written on the first anniversary of the horrific killings in Norway by Anders Breivik could shed light on that question.
____________________
What goes around comes around.
Exactly a year ago Anders Breivik carried out his mass killings, which ended up causing the death of 77 innocent victims. Have we learned anything from that tragic Saturday that shook the Nordic region and changed it permanently?
In order to answer that question, we’d have to travel back in time to see how things were prior to that day.
In Finland, the right-wing populist Perussuomalaiset (PS) had just won ahistoric election victory that enabled the party to increase the number of its MPs to 39 from 5 in 2007. While party leader Timo Soini played down anti-immigration sentiment as one important factor behind the PS’ election victory, others disagreed.
Before Breivik erupted on the stage, anti-immigration parties like the PS were the new political force to contend with in Finland. It seemed that nothing could stop them from adding new election victories in the future. The louder and cruder their anti-immigration and anti-EU stances were, the more supporters they’d rally to their cause.
In Norway, Denmark and Sweden, far-right populist anti-immigration parties had grown as well and were openly challenging traditional parties.
Everything changed, however, after July 22.
The first blow came in Norway to the Progress Party (FrP), which saw its support in the September municipal election plummet by 6.1 percentage points to 11.5%. In the same month, another anti-immigration party, theDanish People’s Party (DPP), suffered an election setback.
Since 2001, the Islamophobic DPP had supported minority right-wing government in exchange for tighter immigration policy.
In many respect, Breivik was a wake-up call that woke up for Finland and the Nordic region to the threat of intolerance and hate speech.
A recent supreme court ruling against Jussi Hall-aho is a case in point. The PS MP was not only fined for defaming a religion but for inciting ethnic hatred as well. The ruling wasn’t only a big blow to the PS but to the far-right Suomen Sisu wing of the party. Halla-aho was forced to resign as chairman of the administration committee, which, among other matters, sets immigration policy.
The presidential election was another important example of how Finland is distancing itself after 22/7 from the anti-immigration and populist rhetoric of parties like the PS.
Two conservative anti-EU candidates, Timo Soini of the PS and Paavo Väyrynen of the Center Party, lost to Green Party hopeful Pekka Haavisto in the first round of voting. Haavisto is openly gay and pro-EU.
The next test for the PS will come in the October municipal elections. If polls are anything to go by, the party will suffer another election setback.
In light of the above, can we claim that Breivik had had a direct impact on the popularity of the PS and other parties in the Nordic region that are anti-EU, anti-immigration and anti-Islam?
Your answer to that questions will probably reveal more than anything else your political views on immigration, Islam and cultural diversity.
But if we ask Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, Norway had become after July 22 “more tolerant, [and] more careful not to judge people” by ethnic origin.
Even if Stoltenberg has shown leadership on how a wounded society should react to intolerance, it’s still unclear what impact Breivik will have on our societies. We are still healing from the wound and can matters return back to “normal” in Norway after Breivik?
If we set aside politics and try to understand the impact Breivik had on the region, one matter is certain: We are outraged by what happened but dread even more the possibility that it could happen again.
Competing for the anti-immigration thunder and rhetoric of parties like the PS, DPP, FrP and Sweden Democrats are far-right groups like the Finnish Defense League, which are copy-and-paste clones of the English Defense League.
Breivk scared the wits out of some of us and proved that anti-immigration and Counter-Jihad rhetoric can convert itself into a monster that has the ability to wreak terror and change our societies for good.
That I believe is the real message and threat of 22/7.
As the twentieth anniversary of the murder of Stephen Lawrence approaches, the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) examines racial violence since his death in 1993.
In the twenty years since the death of Stephen Lawrence, we can report that 106 people have lost their lives in (known or suspected) racist attacks – five per year on average, that black people are twenty-eight times more likely than white to be stopped and searched by the police (using Section 60 powers), that in 2009/10 black people were over three times more likely than white to be arrested, that black and those of mixed ethnicity are over twice as likely as whites to be unemployed, that three quarters of 7-year-old Pakistani and Bangladeshi children are living in poverty compared to one in four whites, and that those classifying themselves as ‘Other Black’ are six times more likely than average to be admitted as mental health inpatients.
Yet as a society we are in denial about racism. Because the 1999 Macpherson report (into Lawrence’s death and subsequent policing), for the first time, acknowledged institutional racism and the Race Relations Amendment Act followed in its wake, politicians regard the issue as over, declare our society ‘post-racial’. But the kind of mechanistic, box-ticking equality measures being implemented leave intact the laws which discriminate, the power of the media in fomenting hatred and – the levels of racial violence.
Worse, multiculturalism itself is now held responsible for racial tension; think-tanks redefine ‘the problem’ in terms of individual attitudes, identity and willingness to belong; and local anti-racist structures are being decimated. Said IRR researcher Dr Jon Burnett, ‘The twenty years since the unprovoked murder of Stephen Lawrence reveals not the end of racism, but the fact that it is deeply entrenched and infinitely adaptable. What we fear is that as austerity measures begin to bite and politicians compete over restricting immigration and benefits, the fall-out will inevitably be an increase in racism.’
Ongoing research by the Institute of Race Relations shows that racial violence does not impact on all communities equally. As racism is shaped by factors such as military intervention abroad and the resort to nativism in social policy as austerity measures bite, its nature changes, as does its manifestation in towns and cities undergoing swift demographic change. At a time of growing anti-foreigner rhetoric, it is newly arrived migrants, asylum seekers and those identified as visibly or culturally different, who are more likely to be the victims of racial attack. And, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales, such attacks are running at the rate of 130,000 per year.
Tähän mennessä olen usein esitellyt itseni reippaasti Mikkeliin muuttaneeksi pieksämäkeläiseksi, koska kotikaupunki on ollut minulle tärkeä osa identiteettiäni.Paitsi että juuri nyt hävettää ihan saatanasti.
Pakolaisia ei voida ottaa, koska ne raukat alkoholisoituu ja hakkaa perheitään huostaanottotilanteisiin asti. Syntysuomalaiset perheethän ovat tietysti kuin suoraan OMOn tai Arielin mainoksista. Lapset leikkivät kivoja leikkejä, äidit pesevät pyykkiä ja isät ovat näkymättömissä, eli töissä, kaikilla suomalaisilla miehillähän on töitä.
Rakas kotikaupunki, nyt vittu oikeesti!
Se on kiva, että halutaan pitää yllä idyllisen maaseutukaupungin mainetta, varsinkin kun ollaan kärsitty parikymmentä vuotta Suomen väkivaltaisimman kaupungin ja muutenkin ankean mestan maineesta, mutta takapajuinen rasismi ei oikein sovi tuohon idylliin.
On eri asia sanoa, ettei ole rahaa tai resursseja, kuin todeta, että nämä pakolaiset ovat ongelmaihmisiä, jotka lähinnä riehuvat ja tuottavat kuluja ja pahaa mieltä.
Pakolaisuus ei ole kevyt, hetkessä tehty valinta, vaan pakon sanelema iso elämänmuutos. Koetut traumat aiheuttavat helposti mielenterveyden järkkymistä, mitä ei myöskään helpota uuden kotimaan torjuva ilmapiiri ja vaiettu, kuoliaaksi kielletty rasismi.
Maahanmuuttajille, erityisesti pakolaisille ei muutenkaan aina ole, tai osata kohdistaa oikeita mielenterveyspalveluita. Joko niitä ei osata vaatia, tai niiden toteuttaminen on hankalaa kielimuurin tai kulttuurierojen takia.
Uskallan väittää, ettei tasapainossa oleva ihminen ryyppää itseään hengiltä tai hakkaa perhettään sairaalakuntoon.
Ja sitten on tietysti nämä tyypit, joiden mielestä on kivaa, kun pizza ja kebab on niin halpaa ja että sitä saa ihan kulman takaa, mutta rapussa moikkaava outo tumma mies ja suomalaiseen suuhun vaikeasti sopivat nimet ovissa ovat aivan liikaa omalle mielenrauhalle.
Ihan vaan vinkkinä, jos Pieksämäki ei tahdo olla seuraavat pari vuosikymmentä “se rasistinen rautatiekaupunki Savossa”, niin nyt tartteis tehdä jotain ja aika livakkaan…
As we hold our collective breaths and await to know the identity of the bombings in Boston Monday, too many don’t see a suspect but a whole ethnicity or religious group. Tim Wise put it very well in an opinion piece where he makes some distributing revelations about the power of whiteness.
If we understand in Finland, the Nordic Region and Europe that white privilege in the United States means the same thing here, we can begin to understand the social ills that have inflicted us as well.
Being “white” in Europe means that you are a member and identify with the dominant ethnic group of a country. You can speak Italian, be a white Romanian, Estonian-speaking Estonian, or an Englishman or a white Englishwoman to enjoy white privilege over other groups that are visible minorities.
Wise affirms that the Boston bombings are another lesson about ethnicity, whiteness, and specifically of white privilege.
He writes: “White privilege is knowing that even if the Boston Marathon bomber turns out to be white, his or her identity will not result in white folks generally being singled out for suspicion by law enforcement, or the TSA, or the FBI…And if he turns out [the killer] to be a member of the Irish Republican Army we won’t bomb Belfast. And if he’s an Italian American Catholic we won’t bomb the Vatican.”
Anders Breivik, who killed in cold blood 77 victims on July 22, 2011, is a good example of white privilege in the Nordic and Europe. Despite his horrific act, nobody in this part of the world thinks that all white people are mass murderers.
On the contrary. Whites privilege and time make us forget such horrors. Wasn’t Breivik a deranged lone wolf?
We should start to speak more about white privilege.
Not talking about it shows another feat by white privilege: Playing down the issue.
I was shocked to hear about the twin bombs in Boston and my heart goes to the victims. Two days after the incident, however, speculation has been rife about the probable ethnicity of the perpetrator. The eerie silence of the killer suggests that this was probably carried out individually.
The latest story on the Boston Globe reveals no clues on who the killers could be.
The sense of dread that was mentioned in the tweet was felt by the small visible immigrant community in Finland after we learned about the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme on February 28, 1986.
I too hoped that the assassin that killed Palme isn’t an immigrant.
Not only was anti-immigration sentiment in Finland a fact of life back then, it was alive and kicking despite the fact that only 0.3% of the population (17,039 people) were immigrants.
Initial media coverage of the Boston tragedy revealed that US authorities suspected the killer to be a man who spoke with an accent. That man turned out to be a Saudi Arabian man who was later released by officials.
While the bombings were a cowardly act, the blowback from it proves even more devastating by revealing our prejudices and hatred of other groups.
You may have initially asked who could commit such a heinous crime in the US? It couldn’t be a white man, right?
The bombings raise an important question: If labeling, victimizing and generalizing of different groups are wrong, why do we persist in doing so?
The answer to that question should reveal the role that racism plays in our society and why the battle against this social ill is halfhearted.
Bhamra writes: ”The Oklahoma City bombing was a terrorist bomb attack in downtown Oklahoma on April 19, 1995. Initial news stories were quick to wrongly suggest Islamic terrorists were behind the attack. As a result, Muslims and people of Arab descent were attacked. Later, when the suggestions turned out to be incorrect and the suspect turned out to be a White man, the racial framework was quickly and conveniently dropped.”
On July 22, 2011, we suffered a similar tragedy when Anders Breivik went on the rampage in Norway and killed in cold blood 77 innocent victims. In the same way that initial coverage in Oklahoma pointed the finger at Muslims, some thought that the killer in Norway to be a Middle Easterner as well.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg showed exceptional leadership as Norway was mourning its victims. Contrary to Washington’s reaction to 9/11, the Norwegian prime minister said that his country’s response to the mass killings will be more openness and more democracy. According to him, Norway had become after July 22 “more tolerant, [and] more careful not to judge people” by ethnic origin.
Another tragedy that we are witnessing after 22/7 is how the media, politicians and public are collectively forgetting what Breivik did never mind its causes, which haver their roots in Islamophobia and anti-immigration sentiment.
While racism is an effective tool to divide and conquer other groups, we should never forget that it is a rabid dog on a short leash that can bite back and hard at its master.
March 9, 2013: Migrants and ethnic minorities contribute hugely to Europe’s economic, social, political and cultural life. But failing to recognise and value this contribution –or worse, setting barriers to migrants’ participation in society– results in a waste of these many talents. This has a damaging impact on Europe’s resilience to the economic crisis, its creativity, and on the well being of European residents.
ENAR’s publication: Hidden Talents, Wasted Talents? The real cost of neglecting the positive contribution of migrants and ethnic minorities’, launched today, provides evidence that migrants and minorities do contribute to Europe and that many talents go unrecognised. For instance, despite misconstrued myths of migrants as ‘welfare scroungers’, migrants are in fact contributing more to welfare states overall than the rest of the population. In France, a study found that migrants contribute 12 billion Euro annually to the state. Migrants are also playing a particular role in care work –a sector which is critically important to ensure high levels of labour market participation– and in sustaining healthcare systems across the EU. In the UK, migrant workers account for 19% of care workers and 35% of nurses employed in longterm care. In Ireland, 17.4% of health professionals identify themselves as migrants.
Yet Europe is not taking full advantage of its rich variety of cultures, traditions and languages. Rather, the fight for equality meets strong opposition, with widespread racism, xenophobia and discrimination. High unemployment across much of the continent has also led to an exacerbation of fears, with many blaming migrants. The notion that migrants are ‘stealing’ jobs from natives is unfounded, however. The reality is that migrants are needed to secure the future well being of Europe, particularly as populations grow older and birth rates decline. Moreover, in the midst of the economic crisis, one in four employers in Europe have difficulty filling positions due to lack of qualified individuals. Creating more opportunities for migrants would thus be to the advantage of everyone and would contribute to putting European economies back on track. European leaders must take mbitious measures to break down structural barriers and policies that do not make economic sense or ensure human rights protections, and that further limit migrants’ opportunities to participate fully in society.
ENAR Chair Chibo Onyeji said: “Imagine , how many more migrant ‘success stories’ would come to light if we ceased wasting talents because of discriminatory and exclusionary practices? How much better off would we all be? Diversity is part of the very foundation of Europe, and we can only build a strong and successful Europe by recognising on the value of our differences and revealing the hidden talents among us.”
There is an interesting news story on today’s YLE that raises a timely question: Not why there is so much misinformation spead about immigrants, but what does this reveal about us as a society?
Does it bring to light ignorance or a subtle conspiracy that permits us to have and eat our racist cake simultaneously?
While it is a welcome matter that Finnish officials speak out against prejudice and racism in our society, why has so little been done on this front in the past, especially by those who claim to be anti-racist and work to better the lives of immigrants?
You’ll probably find the answer to that question in the eerie silence and tacit approval of that misinformation being spread against immigrants. It is telling you as well that we must raise our voices and lead ourselves if anything is to change.
What kind of wise tales are being spread in public about immigrants?
According to what Pirjo Puolakka of the city of Kotka’s immigration office, they are the following:
Misinformation could be pictured in the following manner. It could be seen as the deadly mines up ahead of our path towards greater social equality and acceptance. Since clearing that minefield would be suicidal, it’s clear that few white Finns will do the job. This only leaves us.
But beyond those killing fields we’ll eventually confront the greatest foe of all: ourselves.
The term “illegal immigrant” (1930s- ) means an undocumented immigrant, one without papers to stay in the country. The older term was ”illegal alien”, common in English in the 1970s and 1980s, rare in American news stories since 2003.
An illegal immigrant can mean someone who:
crossed the border illegally,
overstayed a student or tourist visa,
was brought to the country as a child,
is waiting for a green card,
Etc.
It was first applied to Jews in Palestine in the 1930s. In America it first appeared in the Republican platform in 1986, in the Democratic one in 1996.
Since the 1980s there has been a push to get rid of it: actions are illegal, not people. Huffington Post got rid of it in 2008. The Miami Herald and MSNBC no longer use it. Then, on April 2nd 2013, the Associated Press (AP) stylebook got rid of it, saying in part:
illegal immigration Entering or residing in a country in violation of civil or criminal law. Except in direct quotes essential to the story, use illegal only to refer to an action, not a person: illegal immigration, but not illegal immigrant. Acceptable variations include living in or entering a country illegally or without legal permission.
That is huge: most American news reporters and editors follow the AP stylebook. The Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, two of the country’s biggest newspapers, are now thinking of getting rid of the term.
Why get rid of it:
It makes racism respectable. It dehumanizes not just the 11 million people in America who are without papers, who are mostly people of colour (3 million are black), but 52 million Latinos, whom many assume to be undocumented even though most are American citizens. It has become a slur: Just before Marcelo Lucero was killed in a hate crime on Long Island he was called a “fucking illegal”. Yet, as Touré points out, no one calls Martha Stewart an “illegal business woman” – even though she was found guilty of insider trading in a court of law.
It frames the debate on immigration: It pins the blame on immigrants, not those who employ them and often take advantage of them, whom no one ever seems to call “illegal employers”. Nor does it blame the American government’s immigration policy, which is at least 11 million cases behind in meeting the country’s labour needs. It makes it seem like the answer is to punish immigrants – even though some are undocumented through no fault of their own. It makes police raids on Latino neighbourhoods seem reasonable – as well as racial profiling (Arizona SB 1070). It makes it easy for Republicans to kill reasonable reform by calling it “amnesty for illegals”, as they did in 2006. And, worst of all, it makes it seem like undocumented immigrants should have no rights at all.
Linguist John McWhorter of Columbia University says in ten years “undocumented immigrant” will seem just as dismissive as “illegal immigrant”.
Linguist George Lakoff of UC Berkeley says that in debating and making laws framing is huge: words matter.
