Kari Harju, Finnish secret police Supo regional security chief, classified Suomen Sisu as an extremist organization. He made the statement Monday in Ylen A-studio.
As Migrant Tales readers know, there has been some debate about what kind of organization Suomen Sisu is. Citing Supo, Finnish Criminal Police (KRP) and an academic, the Council for the Mass Media (JSN), has called the association “Nazi spirited.”
Harju said that while he did not consider Suomen Sisu “Nazi spirited” but he did see it as an extremist group.
Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Juho Eerola, who is a member of Suomen Sisu, denied in Ylen A-studio that the association was extremist.
He played down on Uusi Suomi what Harju said about the association. “Some consider the police an extremist organization,” he said.
What would you describe an association that believes in “racial hygiene” and recommends against Finns marrying foreigners? Migrant Tales would call that racist, extremist and Nazi-spirited due to its racial views.
Nazism is the antithesis of cultural diversity.
– and recommends against Finns marrying foreigners?
I would like to hear your opinion: are people racist who think that their children’s shouldn’t date/marry people of “wrong” religion? Or is it cultural custom? I have been in the relationships couple of times in which the girls parents didn’t approve me because of my “race” or religion (they actually told this to my girlfriends).
Jaakko, everyone is entitled to their opinion. However, by pushing this idea that Finns should not marry foreigners is a big insult to those that do and especially to their children. Should I be ashamed that my father married my mother, a Finn, and they had me as their child? Should I live in shame all my life now? Certainly not!
Jaakko
There are many kinds of prejudice, but comparing one to another still makes none of them right.
Yes, I know, but that wasn’t my question. Is it acceptable to deny your children to date a person because of his/her religion? Or is this more acceptable than denying your child to date a person because of his/her race? Or is it equally bad?
There was still no answer to my question… oh, well.
Aren’t many other groups doing this same thing? American Jews are often recommend to marry other Jewish, but this “tradition” is perfectly acceptable (at least media portraits it that way). Most of the Muslims can only marry other Muslim people or at least the wife should convert to Islam if she is not not already, but this is also acceptable.
If some Finnish group says same thing about the race, it is somehow worse? Don’t get me wrong, I do support “mixed” marriages, but it is nothing away from me if some minor group called “Suomen Sisu” has opposite thoughts about it. As long as they don’t physically attack me or my girlfriend/wife, I don’t care about them.
Jaakko
There are practical problems when a couple of different religions marry. I know this because I had an engagement of 2 years eventually breakdown because I could not convert to her religion, and she was born into it, parents all in it, family and friends all in it. It was her life, and the teachings of that religion suggest that her children should also be born into it and the marriage was conditional on me being part of it too.
At the end of the day, we were still ‘free’ to decide, but culture and beliefs place enormous restrictions on that freedom. Is it bad? Yes. It showed a lack of understanding and compassion on the part of the religion that promotes itself as somehow an extension of the family structure. But likewise, the benefits of that religion, for her and her community are also there to see. So the answer is not so simple. They want to preserve their traditions.
I can see the similarity that you draw to race, but with race, there is even less choice for those unfortunate enough to be subject to prejudice based on it. While the situation for me was unfair, I see prejudice against race as even more unfair. And that really is the basis of this.
Also, i would say that the desire to preserve a religious continuity is in some way more justifiable than a racial continuity. Religion preserves the values, stories, traditions etc., though even these are subject to historical change. Racial purity is almost a fiction in comparison.
In that sense, its even more unfair and harder to justify.
Thanks, Mark. Excellent response.
I do have also experience of racial discrimination, even I’m a white Finn. My ex-girlfriends parents didn’t accept me, because I wasn’t the same race as their daughter. If the reason not liking me would have been something I could affect (having bad habits etc.) it would have been more acceptable, but I can’t change the way I was born. There has been also many other cases I have been discriminated abroad, because of the colour of my skin/race, but the best weapon against that has always been this: ignoring and humour.
By the way, if religion can be used as an excuse to discriminate people, then shouldn’t we follow Päivi Räsänen’s example and only have Christian refugees?
Jaakko
– “By the way, if religion can be used as an excuse to discriminate people, then shouldn’t we follow Päivi Räsänen’s example and only have Christian refugees?”
Räsänen makes me laugh. I presume for people who are not so religious, they tend on the whole to tolerate religious people. There are exceptions, but most atheists I’ve met have been very tolerant.
So, let’s assume that a good many of those that find it harder to tolerate another religion are themselves religious (Räsänen being an example), and almost certainly Christian, this being Finland.
So their logic goes – we cannot tolerate people of other religions (contrary to the teaching of our founder), which leads us to be prejudiced against them, and because of our prejudice, it’s better that they don’t come.
To quote another religion – man, that’s some bad Karma.
Jaakko
Article 3 of the 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention explicitly forbids religious discrimination in refugee policy.
Päivi Räsänen demonstrated quite fundamental ignorance with that remark in Ylioppilaslehti last year. The homophobia displayed in the same interview was no less politically embarrassing.
“Citing Supo, Finnish Criminal Police (KRP) and an academic, the Council for the Mass Media (JSN) has called the association “Nazi spirited.””
Lie and you know it, KRP havent ever said that its “nazi spirited” and JSN just believed “enrique type” journalist who claimed they have. http://hotfile.com/dl/134571361/bc3cfc8/SMDno-2009-404.pdf.html theres proof you decide to ignore.
And what Harju said was “I dont see Suomen Sisu as nazi spirited but they do “manifest” in certain way “far right” ideas”. And as we all know if you dont like immigration as how it is and happen to like idea of national countries you are far right.
He didnt say they are extremists.
Hannu
Don’t be naive. Extremism, while very difficult to define at the best of times, can safely be said to represent ideas far from the norm. Even democratic values can be viewed as extremist within an authoritarian regime.
As far as Suomen Sisu go, the very idea of advocating that immigrants and natives should not inter-marry is very far from the the norm. Perhaps in the olden days, you could have drawn a parallel with the stigma attached to Catholics marrying Protestants or Jews marrying non-Jews, but not today. The norm is very much that people marry who they want and no-one else is interested in your choice other than you do it out of love. Suomen sisu on the other hand advocate that for reasons of political ideology, there are certain people you should not marry.
That is extremism in this Western world. Not only that, but it’s very clearly fascist too, as the justification for it is a political ideology built around a national identity that is somehow advocated by an authoritarian state, which is the stance of Suomen sisu, who want to see the state sponsor ‘Finnish identity’ while rejecting anything that does not fit.
You might not like the labels Hannu, but there should be little controversy over their application to Suomen sisu – unless you want to refer to the Police as extremists, in which case, your sense of the ‘normal’ really is way way off kilter.
Everybody is allowed to their own personal beliefs and opinions. However, these should remain personal whenever they are to do with one segment of society being any better of different to another.
Those who do not wish to have relations with people who hold different religious beliefs to them cannot and should not be forced to do so, however nor should they be allowed to actively encourage others not to.
I am fully in favour of free speech, and any attempt to prevent it is not only dangerous, but also shameful given the fight made by our forefathers to achieve it. However, I do think that there should be restrictions on hate speech of anysort. This includes the type of statements frequently being made by Mrs Räsänen, by the perus Suomalaiset, by Suomen sisu and by the itsenäisus puolue to name but a few. As a government minister Mrs Räsänen should be told not to make those kinds of statements, she has to lead by example as do all other elected officials, and also she has to follow the line set by the government.
I am a British atheist and am married to a Finnish christian and together we are bringing up two agnostic children. My sister follows shamanistic American Indian beliefs mixed with a spot of Buddism, one brother is a born again christian and the other brother has some sort of strange (to me) new age mixed up beliefs. Oh yes, my mum believes that god was an astronaut. We all get along very well together and have meaningful realtionships despite the difference in beliefs. If we can do it as a family then I am sure that the rest of the world can do it as well if they really want to.
Hi Andi, Päivi Räsänen has been a huge disappointment for some. If these person considers homosexuality an illness, I wonder what she thinks immigrants are. She wants to tighten family reunifications despite the fact that we give asylum to minors. But her whole deal like with the FIS is to HINDER and make DIFFICULT the entry of people like Somalians because they have a prejudice against them. They will never say that in public but their deeds speak, in my opinion, louder than words. They reinforce racism, especially institutional, in this country. Their example is also a danger to Finland because at the end of the day we are going to get shot in the leg (and we already have).
Räsänen should know better but what can you say about an extremist association like Suomen Sisu?
Andi
– “We all get along very well together and have meaningful relationships despite the difference in beliefs. If we can do it as a family then I am sure that the rest of the world can do it as well if they really want to.”
And that really is it in a nutshell, Andi. Thanks for posting that.
Still, I think that your tolerance of the rest of your family members having quite different beliefs reflects a kind of humanism that often comes with atheism.
It might be (?) that your brother is not so comfortable with the smorgasbord of beliefs if he is true to the born-again ethos, where attempting to save one’s close ones is seen as a key activity in life. Having said that, many born-agains are pragmatic about their evangelism.
I loved the ‘Jesus is an astronaut’. 🙂 Respect to your mum!
Ricky
It’s some time since I have noticed in FIS the kind of direct incompetence and covert policymaking that we saw in the 1980s and previously, and the impression that i get nowadays is of a broadly competent government agency applying a moderately complex administrative system. The main repository of incompetence in immigration procedures nowadays is more likely to be found under your local blue lamp.
If you have issues with that system, then these should be addressed to its political and administrative architects, who are not in FIS. This means legislative policymakers, government ministers and the Interior Ministry immigration department. On the whole, I feel that FIS is nowadays an inappropriate target for complaints of this kind, and to the extent that such difficulties still arise, they are best dealt with through judicial review.
The idea of imposing practical, as opposed to legal, obstacles in immigration procedure is in certain respects dishonourable (though not unprecedented: the flow of Ingrian migrants from Russia and Estonia was very obviously controlled in this way). I already used the analogy of moving the panic button further away from the hospice patient’s bed in order to reduce the number of alarm calls to nursing and medical staff. However, immigration-related services are not the only area of public administration in which such obstructive practices occur.
The deliberate use of excessively complex or cumbersome application procedures in social welfare is another example that has been much debated in the UK recently. As an extreme case, we could greatly reduce the cost of unemployment benefits tomorrow by requiring all claimants to file their applications in person at an office in Ivalo between 08.00 and 08.15 on the morning of the first Tuesday of the month. The beauty of this approach to cost-cutting is that the applicant remains “entitled” to the benefit, but “failed to apply”. Therefore no decision need be made and the case cannot come to court. The political cost of such behaviour would be prohibitive, of course, but it is much more difficult to bring a concrete claim to, say, an international human rights court.
In theory such policies also represent a departure from the principles of proportionality and conformity to purpose, but these are hard to apply against the direct outcomes of deliberate national policy.
Hi JusticeDemon, good point and possibly I was being a bit simplistic about the issue, which is a much wider thing. All responsibility lies int he political and administrative architects as you mentioned. Here is what I was referring to when I wrote about the FIS
A question: do you like the term Polycultural Finns?
Ricky
Now you are guilty of propagating the other side’s propaganda. I refer you to my response of 13 April 2011 in the thread Iltalehti: Perussuomalaisten ehdokas: Holokaustia on liioiteltu and the more detailed analysis in my second response of 15 March 2011 in the thread An insult to over a million Finns.
Intercultural emphasises the bridge-building aspect of an individual.