Remember Charlottesville, when the far-right, which Donald Trump called in 2017 “very fine people,” marched yelling, “they will not replace us?” While in the US, this message was an anti-Semitic rant, in Finland, politicians like Jussi Halla-aho, Riikka Purra, and Simo Grönroos of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party are playing the same vile tune.
From left to right: Jussi Halla-aho, Riikka Purra and Simo Grönroos.
The Finnish Security and Intelligence Service (2020) annual report published Tuesday states that apart from radical Islam, the far right is another cause for concern.
Like in countries like the United States, when the Capitol building was stormed by white nationalists and Trump supporters on January 6, it has become a bitter pill to swallow that white people pose as much of a terrorist threat as Isis. Finland is slowly waking up to the same reality but how can you tackle the far right in Finland when the biggest opposition party in parliament is a breeding ground for such ideology?
One of the PS and politicians’ pet topics like Halla-aho, Purra, and Grönroos is deeply rooted in ethnonationalism and white supremacy. They don’t say, “we will not be replaced,” but politicians like Purra warn us how darker people will replace us.
Writes Supo: “One of the most noteworthy ideological motives of far-right terrorists is known as the Great Replacement conspiracy theory based on the idea of a fundamental threat posed by immigration and multiculturalism to the white population of Western countries. Views reflecting the idea of a Great Replacement have been highlighted in several far-right terrorist attacks.”
Far-right demonstrators in Charlottesville in 2017 and who President Trump called “very fine people.” Source: Inside Higher Ed.
The comment by Supo in the annual report, which equates ethnic replacement as a far-right conspiracy theory, has caused a swift reaction from the PS and its leadership, who are trying to back their claims as “scientific.”
Some foreigners, especially those who came to Finland seeking asylum in 2015 and got a work permit to stay, face a dire situation: either put up with the work or leave Finland.One such case is Majid*, a 24-year-old Iraqi national living in Rovaniemi for the past three years.
Apart from the near-constant bullying and poor treatment he says he experiences at work, it is doubtful that he will be able to raise his hourly wage of 10.88 euros an hour. According to him, the money he makes is not enough to live off.
Finding a job in Finland is a challenge for some. For some, like Majid, it means daily bullying and ridicule.
“I am bullied and treated without respect by my supervisors,” Majid said. “I have turned to the PAM union’s shop steward and spoken directly to the manager of the company about my situation. None of them take what I say seriously, and life at work continues the same way as before.”
The Iraqi national said that a recent bullying case that occurred at the company was with a supervisor. He saw him inside an empty train at work cleaning and asked him to turn off the music. “I told him that the music doesn’t bother anyone,” he said. “Since I didn’t do what he said, he locked me in a small closet for a few minutes.”
When I told a manager of the company about the incident, he didn’t do anything.
“As a low-paid employee and being a foreigner on top of it means that nobody listens or believes you,” he added.
Even if the Iraqi would do anything to change jobs, it isn’t that easy.
Jalkapallomaajoukkueen kapteeni sai myös kuraa niskaan, kun asettui näkyvästi rasismia vastaan.
Rasismin vastustaminen ja yhteiskunnan säilyttäminen demokraattisena ja elinkelpoisena onnistuu vasta kun jakamatonta ihmisarvoa ja tasa-arvoa vilpittömästi puolustavat ihmiset lähtevät mukaan.
Aika iso osa suomalaisista suhtautuu rasistisesti maassa oleviin ”ulkomaalaisiin”. Kirjoitin sanan lainausmerkkeihin, sillä eiväthän he ole ulkomaalaisia, jos ovat tähän maahan asumaan asettuneet. Enemmistö suomalaisista tunnistaa jo ongelman yhteiskunnassa, mutta vain harvat haluavat tai uskaltavat kunnolla asettua rasismia vastaan.
Juuri sinun, tavallinen, hyvinvoiva ihminen, jota politiikka ei juuri kiinnosta, mutta joka ymmärrät, kuinka vakavasta asiasta on kysymys, pitäisi olla aktiivinen tässä asiassa. Mukana olon ei tarvitse tarkoittaa lähtöä barrikadeille. Mutta siihen ei myöskään riitä ajattelu: ”Minä en koskaan toimi rasistisesti” tai ”Minulla on vaikka kuinka paljon ulkomaalaisia ystäviä”. Riittää, kun edes joskus painat tykkäyksen jollekin rasisminvastaiselle kirjoitukselle. Jos oma kaverisi jakaa sellaisia, mikä kumma on perustelusi sille, että et koskaan tukisi häntä näin tärkeässä asiassa? Yksityisviestillä, jos pelottaa, mutta mieluummin julkisesti – tykkäyksin, kannustavin tai kantaa ottavin kommentein. Tämä on asia, jota ei vain voi unohtaa ja jättää muiden hoidettavaksi.
Jos ajattelet, että politiikka on politiikkaa ja taloudesta huolehtiminen on järki-ihmisen hommaa, rasismista hölöttäminen vasemmiston ja ämmien touhua, et kuulu järki-ihmisiin. Jos missä, juuri tässä kohtaa on unohdettava jako vasemmistoon ja oikeistoon ja havahduttava vihdoinkin huomaamaan, että jokainen asia, joka liittyy arvoihin ja toisista ihmisistä välittämiseen, ei ole ”vasemmistolaista” eikä mikään sivuseikka, jonka voit tolkun ihmisenä unohtaa.
Jos taas ajattelet, että eihän siinä mitään väärää ole, jos pidetään vähän ”omien puolta” ja heitetään maasta pois väkeä, jolla on väärä kulttuuri, uskonto, sukupuoli tai ulkonäkö, olet jo – ehkä huomaamattasi – aika syvällä rasismin syövereissä.
Sellaisessa yhteiskunnassa, missä tuollainen ajattelu on yhtäkkiä valtavirtaa, ei piankaan ole ”meitä”. On vain toisiaan kyttääviä ryhmittymiä, jotka ilmiantavat toinen toisiaan pysyäkseen suosiossa ja välttääkseen putoamisen hylkiöiden kastiin. Vihapolitiikka johtaa aina siihen, että hyvää ei enää ole, on vain pelko ja ennakkoluulot, jotka pian yltävät kaikkiin läheisimpiinkin. Vihapoliitikko pysyy vallassa vain vihan ja pelon avulla. Vastakkaiset mielipiteet omassa puolueessa vaimennetaan – vaikka väkivalloin.
Kun puolisoni kanssa aikanaan läksimme vastustamaan perussuomalaisten rasistista marssia, persukonstit olivat monet. Puolisoni yritykseen saapui aivan lähipiiristämme kirjeitä, joissa kummasteltiin, kuinka on mahdollista, että yrityksen työntekijä ja tämän vaimo käyvät julkista kampanjaa perussuomalaisia kansanedustajia vastaan. Ajattelivat, onnettomat, pystyvänsä näin vaikeuttamaan puolisoni työuraa. Arvaattekin varmaan, kuinka esimies suhtautui: ”Oikealla asiallahan te olette”. Emme Suomessa vielä ole siinä vaiheessa, että Puolueen vastustajat menettävät työpaikkansa.
Nyt ovat äärioikeistolaiset otteet kuitenkin jo koventuneet. Jatkuvasti ovat uutisissa murhayritykset, henkeen ja terveyteen kohdistuvien rikosten suunnittelu, järjestelmällinen pandemian kieltäminen ja ihmisten usuttaminen hallituksen määräämiä toimenpiteitä vastaan. Toimittaja on tuomittu sakkoihin natsin nimittämisestä natsiksi. Tutkijat eivät uskalla tutkia tärkeitä aiheita vihakampanjoiden pelossa. Sekä perussuomalaisten että kokoomuslaisen äärilaidan kommentointi sosiaalisessa mediassa on yhä törkeämpää ja syrjivämpää.
Merkit ovat selvät. Yhteiskunnan koveneminen ja demokratian rapistuminen ovat kuitenkin pysäytettävissä.
Se on kiinni sinusta. Se on kiinni siitä, mille puolueelle äänesi annat, mitä vaadit kansanedustajaltasi ja kunnallisvaltuutetultasi. Kuinka kauan ajattelit sallia sen, että sinun puolueessasi saavat esteettä toimia rikolliset, kansanryhmää vastaan kiihottajat ja laiskat moukat, jotka käyttävät kansanedustaja-aikansa lähes pelkästään rasistiseen trollaukseen ja naisvihamieliseen häirintään sosiaalisessa mediassa? Niin kauan kuin sallit sen, olet yksi heistä.
Elizabeth Holmes built a 9-billion-dollar company called Theranos from scratch that promised to test blood with a single drop. One of the many deceptions she used to trick investors was her deep voice. As a woman, it gave her more authority.
Those who have watched Perussuomalaiset (PS)* chairperson Jussi Halla-aho for a few years will note that his voice has changed. He usually switches to a deep voice when he is answering questions from reporters and on talk shows.
Considering that Holmes is a woman and Halla-aho’s deficiency is that he lacks charisma, does he fake his voice to make up for his dull image?
Below is Halla-aho speaking in 2013 and the video below that is from last month.
Note the difference.
Just like Holmes, Halla-aho is marketing urban legends about migrants and minorities. He does so hellbent on polarizing and stigmatizing even more migrants and minorities in this country.
Even if about half a million people voted for the PS in the parliamentary elections of 2019, Holmes succeed as well at fooling investors of hundreds of millions of dollars on fake promises and deception.
A story published Wednesday in Politico exposed the misogyny against Finland’s woman prime minister, Sanna Marin, and the women members of her cabinet. Considering that Finland’s biggest opposition party, the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* which is also leading in opinion polls, hate speech has raised its head for many years.
Hate speech and the PS are like a perfect couple walking in the park with a rabid dog on a short leash. The dog, which is used to impress voters, eventually bites its owners, and hard.
A report from the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence concluded that Marin’s government is “overwhelmingly” targeted by sexist online harassment.
Politico writes: “The five most targeted ministers, all female, were overwhelmingly victimized by misogynistic abuse attacking their values, demeaning their decision-making skills, and questioning their leadership abilities.”
Uusi Suomi, an online publication that played a key role before the 2011 parliamentary elections in giving the racist rhetoric of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party a platform, published today an interview with a cultural researcher, Tuija Saresma, who concluded that Jussi Halla-aho and the PS are racist.
While these types of statements are a foregone conclusion about Halla-aho and the PS, the big question is why Finnish society appears so impotent in the face of these social ills.
How do you explain the rise of a party in 2011, which won 39 seats in parliament from 5 previously, became the most successful party in parliamentary elections during the last decade?
Some factors explaining Finnish society’s racist and exclusive disposition is its near-geopolitical isolation during the Cold War. The lack of cultural and ethnic diversity, and the whitewashing of this history, have also help feed racism and white nationalism.
Any sensible person will conclude that white Finnish nationalism and racism get their power from the PS. Attacking brown and black Finns and other minorities with the intent of polarizing society creates a dilemma for the party and the country.
How can we state with a straight face that we are for social equality and human dignity when we exclude in a hostile manner, other people?
An insightful Op-Ed article in The Guardian by David Bromell on the impact of the Christchurch killings, sheds light on some of the problems that countries like Finland face in tackling hate speech.
He writes: “There will always be idiots who shoot their mouths off – but in a democratic society we need to learn to live together.”
According to Bromell, public policy should focus on the “effect of harm” and not on the emotions of hatred or offence since you cannot regulate this in an open and democratic society.
But here comes the punchline: “Stirring up and inciting discrimination, hostility or violence against members of a social group, however, is and should be a crime. This may involve speech, but incitement can also be written, mimed, memed, graffitied, cartooned or tweeted.”
The rise of a racist party like the PS in Finland entrenched in white nationalism is not only shameful but reveals how vulnerable and unprepared society and institutions are in challenging such social ills.
Events after the storming of the Capitol building in Washington on January 6 exposed white nationalist terrorism as the biggest threat facing the United States. Since the events that took place at the Capitol did not happen spontaneously, are we going to see something similar in Finland’s ever-hostile far-right groups like the PS?
As with the United States, is there a blind spot to this threat if the people spreading violence are white Finns? Does Finnish law enforcement take this threat seriously?
There is a strong indication that law enforcement is not up to the job. One of the problems is that such institutions are white and run by men. With so little participation of minorities such as brown and black Finns in the police, newsrooms, and the halls of power, it is not surprising that the anti-racism debate in this country is one-sided and dominated by whites.
The best example of Finland’s racism blind spot is the rise of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party and other far-right groups, which have become more vocal in recent years. It is amusing in a negative light that a party like the PS, where the vast majority of its municipal election candidates are white Finnish males, are dead set on denying minorities equal rights.
Even if we give recognition this week to the UN Anti-Racism Day, behind the chatter we find extraordinarily little action to challenge those institutions that give racism and white nationalism its legitimacy. We don’t do enough as a society because we don’t want to.
Migrant Tales insight: Ogneslav Shevchenko, 36, is a Russian national with Ukrainian parents seeking asylum in Europe. Once you get to know him a little, you notice that he has traveled for many years, searching for a country where he is free from persecution. His story is like others seeking asylum and traveling in the sometimes unfriendly and cold corridors of Europe.
Ogneslav Shevchenko
“In February 2017 I flew to Finland by plane. The main reason for fleeing Russia was a criminal case against me. Against undesirable authorities of the opposition, the state fabricates criminal cases on fictitious charges and deal with such people with physical violence so they will leave the country. Torture and covert killings are routine in Russian prisons.
I had difficulties with Migri [Finnish Immigration Service] right away. When I was giving the first interview, I was provided with one translator; during the second interview the translator was changed, and he translated and distorted a little what I said. As a result, I had to correct my statement in the third interview. In general, I was dissatisfied with the quality of the translation and interpreters.
Migri responded to my asylum case after 2.6 years of waiting. This is a violation of the terms of consideration! I have repeatedly complained to Migri and other refugee rights organizations about this, but it was useless. By law, an asylum application must be considered within six months. That’s the time on the document of my interview. But I got an answer after 30 months. There was a well-known case that was reported in the media about an Afghan asylum seeker who committed suicide after four years of waiting for the first decision from Migri. The answer was also negative. Four years of waiting!…
As a result, and during those 2.6 years I waited, the criminal code in Russia, the one I was persecuted with, was softened and based on that change, I was refused asylum in Finland. There is no criminal case – there is no threat to my life. I have the impression that Migri purposefully waits and takes its time so that matters in the country of asylum seekers will improve so they can then deport them safely to their home country.
“We have too many refugees, and we can’t handle the job.” Such was the given to me by Migri to the question: “Why it took so long to have an answer about my case?”
Center Party chairperson and minister for culture, Annika Saarikko, is the type of leadership Finland needs today unless it wants to climb out of its deep xenophobic pit spearheaded by the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party.
Considering that her party is being targeted by the PS, which bases its support on spreading suspicion and anti-immigration sentiment, Saarikko’s was quoted as saying in Helsingin Sanomat that Finland needs 10,000 migrants a year to avert a labor shortage is bold considering the attacks by the PS and recent opinion polls.
In the face of Saarikko’s prediction, Finland will find it especially hard to get out of its xenophobic pit if politicians are silent, policymakers are silent, and the public is silent about how to make Finland a more inclusive country and to rid it of politicians who polarize society.
Too many Finns still think that turning our country into a more inclusive one means doing little or nothing.
In early March, an opinion poll published by Yle showed that the Center Party was hovering at around historic lows of 11% and trailing the PS by 5.9 percentage points.
One of the aims of PS leader Jussi Halla-aho is that the Center Party will suffer a stinging blow in the municipal elections of June 13. This would force the party to leave the government, leading to its downfall and new elections, where the PS would win and have Halla-aho as prime minister.
One matter is clear: If Finland is to shake off and challenge anti-immigration sentiment, politicians like Saarikko must say it clearly and loudly.
“Anti-immigration sentiment has spread so far that even today labor immigration is started to see in a negative light,” she was quoted as saying in Helsingin Sanomat. “Such an attitude isn’t possible because of what Finland’s dependency ratio [labor shortage and tax base] is. Many may ask what about Finns getting employed. Yes, but when that is not enough either.”
The party that is against bringing labor immigrants to Finland is none other than the PS.
Islamophobia in all of its forms is cancer that is spreading at this moment throughout Europe. People who attempt to stand up to this social ill are intimidated and attacked. Farid Hafez, whom I know personally and edits the European Islamophobia Report, the most comprehensive report published annually on the topic, is charged for alleged terrorism.
Apart from his activism and bringing attention to Islamophobia, he is a non-resident researcher at Georgetown University, was a Fulbright Professor at UC Berkeley and a leading scholar of Islamophobia Studies.
It wasn’t too long ago when I received an email from Hafez:
“[I] write you today in a personal capacity. I am sure, most of you are following the troubling news on the increasing attacks on academia in France and elsewhere. As you are also aware of, an attack happened killing four innocent people in the streets of Vienna on 2 November 2020. Officially unrelated to this event, but in an atmosphere of having to counter-terrorism, the Austrian government raided the homes of 30 alleged terrorists one week later. It was the largest raid since 1945. Unbelievable but true, I was amongst the targeted ones.”
The video below gives a glimpse of Hafez’ case.
Without bringing any formal charges except based on suspicion and hearsay, Hafez is suspected of terrorism by the Austrian authorities. A question: Is this what happens when you can organize your words and challenge state Islamophobia?
In Argentina, where over 30,000 vanished during the so-called dirty war (1976-83), the de facto government’s methods were seen as state-sponsored terrorism.
In the same light, all types of intimidation, promotion, and spreading anti-Muslim racism by legal and official means could be classified as state Islamophobia.
The search warrant alleges that Hafez is a member of an organization intent on overthrowing the Egyptian government regime of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, destroying Israel and creating a global caliphate in Jerusalem, its capital.
“Would it not be serious,” said Hafez, “this would sound like a joke.”
The political scientist and one of the editors of the European Islamophobia Report, is confident that all the charges brought against him will be dropped.
“I am very convinced that no single allegation will stay,” he added.
The cost of the raid and the action of the Austrian government:
The case will take three years in the courts and cost an estimated 100,000 euros.
Hafez’ bank account and assets are frozen and cannot sell his house.
The Austrian government is drafting a law that makes “political Islam” a criminal offense, which would make it easier to criminalize every kind of Muslimness.
The latest hijab ban ruling by the Austrian Constitutional Court is seen as a signal against political Islam by its lawmakers.
