Far-right parties Archives - Page 12 of 37

Sweden Democrats openly attack cultural diversity – will the PS of Finland follow their example?

Posted on December 15, 2014 by Migrant Tales

In a clear attempt to cash in on the anti-immigration sentiment, Sweden Democrat party secretary Björn Söder said that minorities like the Saami could never be Swedes and was willing to pay immigrants to leave the country, reports The Local.

The mere suggestion that Sweden is only a country of white Swedes reveals the racist and exclusive mindset of the Sweden Democrats. In a US context it would be something like encouraging Hispanics, blacks and other minorities to go back to where they came from because white USAmericans rule the country.

“Yes, and that is good,” Söder was quoted as saying on The Local. “We must make it easer for those considering moving back to their country. Then we’ll be in a better condition to create a society of common identity.”

Read full story here.

In Söder’s views, Jews, Kurds and the Sami are examples of groups that are Swedish citizens but cannot be considered “true” Swedes if they don’t assimilate into Swedish society.

Has anybody asked Söder who is a so-called “true” Swede? Why does he think he is a “true” Swede? Is there any such thing as a “true” Swede?

What Söder is claiming is what is exactly wrong in the Nordic region. White Nordic people think that this land is exclusively theirs. This is malarkey.

The language of the Sweden Democrat party secretary is regurgitated by parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) of Finland, Danish People’s Party and Progress Party of Norway. All four of them believe that only white Nordic people are the right people that should live in this region.

Willy Silberstein, chairperson of the Swedish committee against anti-Semitism disagrees with Söder.

“I am Jewish and born in Sweden,” he said. “I am just as much Swedish as Björn Söder. There is an us and them mentality which I think is a characteristic of the party.”

While the PS in Finland have distanced themselves from the Sweden Democrats, their success in the March elections will be watched closely by the PS. Finland holds parliamentary elections in April 2015.

* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The names adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings.

An effective way of putting racism in context in Finland

Posted on October 26, 2014 by Migrant Tales

There are many ways to understand ethnic hatred and racism in Finland. One of these is by substituting the word ‘migrant’ for your ethnic group and/or ‘woman’ in a text that’s aimed at fueling ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Let’s take the recent claims of two politicians, MPs Tom Packalén and Pia Kauma, to see how passions are fueled or can be smothered.

Original claim by Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Packalén.

Before: Gangs made up only of young people with migrant backgrounds said their motives are racist because their aim is to hurt white Finns.

After: Gangs made up of only young white Finns said their motives are racist because their aim is to hurt migrants and minorities.

Before and after. Racism is like the fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) mushroom. It looks beautiful when it fruits and may invite some to eat its hallucinogenic poison. Time, like racism, reveals the true face of this mushroom when it ages and dies.

As we all know, Packalén pulled a fast one on the media and public. The problem with the PS MP’s claim is that it just isn’t true and an inflated exaggeration. Even so, his claims have spread fear and labelled non-white Finns, encouraging even neo-Nazi groups like the Kansallinen Vastarinta and members of the PS to patrol the streets of Helsinki.

Here’s National Coalition Party MP Kauma’s claim.

Before: Migrant mothers buy new baby carriages with social aid.

After: White Finnish mothers buy new baby carriages with social aid.

Like with Packalén, Kauma’s claim is stuffed as well with lots of baloney.

Even if these two MPs made up these stories in light of the April parliamentary elections, is one point. But the other very important one is that they succeeded at getting a lot of media coverage, which was their original aim.

Check out the two postings below on how by just changing a few key words in a vengeful and racist text reveals the underhanded motives of the writer and brings the topic closer to home:

If you still are trying to grasp these two disgraceful examples, why not replace migrant or ethnic group with ‘woman.’

Remember how urban tales about women were and still may be rampant in Finland? Women can’t drive, they’re poor in math, all they know what to do is have babies and cook…This is the exact anatomy of racist discourse in Finland today. Migrants live off welfare, they’re lazy, sly and shouldn’t be trusted…

How many generations did such outright lies about women still continue to oppress them?

Ever figure out how it feels to be in a university math class and be the only women? Think about how much pressure there is on that woman and how much energy she must expend to prove that she’s just as good as her male classmates.

This exact feeling is what many migrants feel in society. They’re constantly trying to prove that they are just as good and worthy of being treated as equal members of society.

Thus there is nothing harmless when politicians reinforce prejudices about migrants. On the contrary – it is a violent act that aims through power to dominate others.

Add to the latter the near-silence of society and a bigger picture of the social ill emerges.

Racism is not only costly to society but especially to the victim.

* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The English names of the party adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings.

PS MP of Finland ready to patrol streets and take law into his own hands

Posted on October 14, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Remember what people said when the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* won their historic election victory in 2011? ”Nothing is going to happen you’ll see…they’ll soon implode like the Rural Party did in the 1970s…” some said playing down the whole matter. After almost four years, the PS continues to polarize society by instilling fear and fueling racism but has now opened a new terrifying chapter in its strategy to gain power: mob rule.

PS MP Tom Packalén, who falsely claimed on a blog entry that only migrant youth gangs in East Helsinki attack white Finns, has unleashed the darkest and most racist side of Finland. Not only are MP Pakclaén’s claims false, they have been disproven by the police.

And let’s not forget the publication, Uusi Suomi, where MP Packalén’s blog entry and many others by the PS have been published. They are just as responsible as the PS for spreading racism in Finland.

In this latest bout of xenophobia in Finland, it’s the silence of the political parties and the media that doesn’t surprises us once again.

Making racist claims and victimizing migrants and minorities has become such a “normal” activity in this country that not even the PS leadership cares what some of their members say or will do.

The aim of parties like the PS and far-right associations like Suomen Sisu is to keep Finland white like the graffiti above that reads “white power.”

Suomen Sisu is a far-right association chaired by PS MP Olli Immonen whose aim is to keep Finland white. In a statement, Immonen warned that “if officials don’t have the will or resources to protect the security of its citizens,” Suomen Sisu will take matters into its hands.

Yes, no translation mistake since what you read is correct. A PS MP, a lawmaker, of a far-right association is ready to patrol Helsinki’s streets against real or imagined youth gangs.

While the PS has always shown its ugly and hostile side to migrants and minorities, the suggestion by one of its MPs to patrol streets with others like neo-Nazi Kansallinen Vastarinta and other PS members, which MP Packalén’s blog entry has encouraged, is totally unacceptable in a democracy such as Finland and should be condemned.

The blog entry by MP Packalén shows the desperate state of the party, which needs a big boost to come close to their 2011 election victory since the last three elections have been disappointing.

Finland needs the PS, the silence of other parties and a media that is blind because it is white like a hole in the head. The lack of leadership that we are witnessing today in the face of such racism and hostility is shameful.

Far-right and nationalistic parties in Finland, as is Europe, have become a grave threat to democracy and to the right of minorities to live in peace. It’s clear that matters will get worse as these parties, like the PS, get more power since the scapegoating won’t stop but get worse. Such intolerance has the danger of destroying our society.

We must do everything to stop the menace that is placing Finland in harm’s way and that danger is the PS and our shameful silence.

Leadership is needed more than ever now.

What will the April 2015 elections of Finland reveal about ourselves as a country?

Posted on October 3, 2014 by Migrant Tales

It’s clear that the parliamentary elections of April 2015 in Finland will reveal a lot of matters about this country. In many respects it’s like strip tease joint where women or men, disguised as political parties, take off their clothes. Sexuality isn’t being shown in bare flesh but in political ideologies such as racism, whiteness, anti-cultural diversity, anti-EU and nostalgia of a Finland that only existed in our imagination.

The anti-immigration, far-right and populist winds blowing over Europe should concern us. But it is a good sign as well that there is a lot of opposition, thanks to social media, against such social ills. Pulling a 1933 political stunt on a country could be more difficult today than over eighty years ago, when Nazi Germany came into being.

As April 19 nears in Finland, it’s clear that anti-immigration voices are getting louder and more hostile. Should it surprise us then that the Perussuomalaiset (PS),* which claims to have sacked all of its racists and fascists, is leading the charge on this front?

Finland’s darkest political period in this century (2011-15) could be seen in the same light as the half-a-century old rants made by USAmerican racists of the South. What these Finnish politicians say today will make their great grandchildren’s faces turn red with shame. Racists always look ugly as time unmasks their lies.

There’s a very good column on City by Taneli Hämäläinen that summarizes, in my opinion, the way PS politicians switch the argument around. We’ve seen this on Migrant Tales on a number of occasions used by far-right anti-immigration voices. It’s like claiming that the Jews unleashed the Holocaust and the Nazis were their victims.

The issue is not asking how racist a country like Finland is, even though this is an important question, but what is our response as a society to such a social ill. Is there a response? If so, is it effective? If not, why?

You don’t have to be black or a member of an ethnic minority to understand how insulting and lowly some politicians will act to get votes and feed their narcism in the process.

But let’s go back to the main question of this posting: What will the April 2015 elections of Finland reveal about ourselves as a country?

It will reveal two things: If racism and fascism (1) are are growing or on the defensive.

(1) Tiina Rosenberg gives a good definition of fascism as a political ideology that want to exclude other groups. The aim of fascism in Nazi Germany was based on an argument that they had to kick out and/or exterminate other minorities like the Jews, Roma and their political enemies in order to become a super race. Nazi war criminal Alfred Rosenberg, who was sentenced and hanged for war crimes, is a good example of this type of ideology. He writes about it in The myth of the twentieth century.

Close your eyes and repeat: The PS of Finland isn’t a racist and fascist party…

Posted on June 29, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Harri Tauriainen, a Perussuomalaiset (PS)* councilman of the northern city of Kemi, is a good example of how racism and fascism have found fertile ground in the PS. Taurianen was elected by the region of Lappi as a PS candidate for the April 2015 parliamentary elections, according to Rovaniemi-based daily Lapin Kansa.

Tauriainen, a councilman of Kemi, got more votes than any other candidate in his city in the October 2012 municipal elections.

An interesting pattern emerges after having followed for some time the political antics of an anti-EU, anti-immigration, homophobic and especially anti-Islam party like the PS: Say outrageously racist things, fear-monger with gusto, get elected, and then start to appear mainstream but don’t forget to speak in code to your followers.

The PS has done a half-ass job with Tauriainen’s political facelift. He took some white power and “save our race” pictures down from his Facebook page below after the municipal elections. True, we haven’t heard him lash out at migrants like before. We haven’t heard him state:

“…it’s odd that we can’t put in line in Finland this colored human trash. Just put a stamp on their ass and deport them for good from Finland.”

In one picture greeting PS MPs this year in Kemi, Tauriainen has a White Guard emblem on the left of his coat.

While one of the aims of the White Guards was to contain the spread of communism and socialism in Finland, it was disbanded after Finland signed an armistice ending hostilities with the former Soviet Union in September 1944.

Those who wear White Guard emblems these days are considered far-right activists that long for the days of fascism of the 1930s.

Tauriainen”likes” the far-right Suomalaisuuden liitto association.

He denies that he’s a fascist but calls himself instead a nationalist.

Tauriainen’s Facebook page in October 2012.

Taurianen’s Facebook picture album today.

The PS facelift to make the councilman more mainstream only required taking down two pictures and some racist posts. There is, however, a second drawing in the first row that isn’t apparently considered racist by the PS. That picture states that Finland should guard its borders from foreign ogres like the one pictured in the drawing.

Despite the facelifts to become more mainstream, the PS has lagged behind its historic parliamentary election victory of 2011 in the presidential, municipal and euro elections.

If the PS attract around 12% of the vote in next year’s parliamentary elections, it means that about half of its 38 MPs won’t get elected.

This is good news for Finland but bad news for an anti-EU, anti-immigration, homophobic and especially anti-Islam party like the PS.

Marine Le Pen fails to form the far-right European Alliance for Freedom

Posted on June 25, 2014 by Migrant Tales

There was great news today when we read that far-right Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders failed to form a European Parliamentary group called the European Alliance for Freedom (EAF)., reports the euobserver.

After the gains that the far-right made in the Euro elections of May, Migrant Tales welcomes Le Pen’s and Wilders’ failure to form the EAF as the best piece of news in a long time.

National Front’s secretary general, Florian Philippot, played down on the Independent that it “would not real really be a disaster” but “an embarrassment” if the EAF didn’t materialize.

Far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen is all smiles until Tuesday, when her group failed to form a European parliamentary group. Read full story here.

Writes the Guardian: “The plans of Europe’s extreme right to try sabotage the EU from within were hit…failed to gain enough allies to qualify as a single caucus in the new European parliament – denying them precious funding, speaking time and committee positions.”

While the EAF was able to muster at least 25 MEPs, it wasn’t able to get seven countries as required to form a caucus. The five parties that were in Le Pen’s group were including the National Front: Wilders’ Freedom Party (PVV), FPÖ of Austria, Italy’s Lega Nord, and Belgium Flemish separatist Vlaams Belang.

A sixth possible candidate, Poland’s Congress of the New Right (KNP), was cited but the views of its leader, Janusz Korwin-Mikke were too extreme even for Wilders.

One of Korwin-Mikke’s aims is to deprive women voting rights.

Meanwhile, Nigel Farage’s of the UKIP announced that it has formed a new anti-EU Europe of Freedom of Democracy group with 48 MEPs from 7 countries led by the UKIP (23 MEPs) and Movimento 5 Stelle of Italy (17).

Two far-right Sweden Democrat MEPs were admitted into the group.

The political record and chicanery of the PS of Finland is what has estranged so many voters from politics

Posted on June 6, 2014 by Migrant Tales

While some are still scratching their heads about the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* joining the European parliament’s European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group this week, it shows why so many voters have become estranged from politics.

Read full story here.

Before the historic 2011 parliamentary elections for the PS, when 39 of its MPs got elected from 5MPs previously, the party had a solid anti-EU, anti-immigration, homophobic and especially anti-Islam message.

It’s party leader, Timo Soini, watered down the PS’ stand on Europe recently by stating that he’s now against Finland leaving the EU. While its anti-immigration and anti-Islam rhetoric are still strong and lurking in the sidelines patiently waiting to stir voter emotions, its most outspoken enemies these days are homosexuals and gay marriage.

Hoping to become the biggest party in Finland after next year’s parliamentary elections, the PS has, however, tried to give a more moderate and mainstream image of itself. This is understandable considering that it wants to be a member of the next government and the disappointing showing of the party in the presidential, municipal and euro elections.

In all three elections, the PS hasn’t come even close to its 19.1% showing of 2011.

But after criticizing and riding the wave of voter discontent and mistrust of mainstream parties, the PS is trying to look more like them. Is this a good matter or is it another trick by the party to lure voters?

While at Migrant Tales we have spoken out repeatedly against the PS’ racism, provincialism and nativist nationalism, what is happening inside the party resembles the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm.

The last paragraph of Orwell’s book says it all with respect to the revolution at Manor Farm and what the PS did in 2011:

Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Green Party politician Ozan Yanar asks a very valid question on his Facebook page. He states with evident dismay that here’s the “labor party without socialism” that has joined David Cameron’s conservatives in the European parliament. The absurdity of the situation is further highlighted by the fact that AKP, the political moderate voice of Islam in Turkey, joined the ECR [through the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists], according to him.

Moreover, the ECR is in favor of Turkey’s membership in the EU. PS MEP Jussi Halla-aho, who has declared war on Islam in the same way as the worst Islamophobes in Europe, is now a member of a political group that approves Turkey’s membership in the EU.

In anyone’s book a criminal record isn’t a good matter to have in your records. Even so, and in the conservative spirit, where social and economic inequality are acceptable because people aren’t equal, the membership of the PS and Danish People’s Party in the ECR proves that it’s politically worse getting arrested for shoplifting than ethnic agitation.

UK Prime Minister Cameron, the leader of the ECR, isn’t too bothered by racism and prejudice since it was his government that launched the “Go Home” campaign against undocumented immigrants and spread fear to Britons that the country will be overrun by swarms of Romanians and Bulgarians on January 1.

Cameron has been playing political catchup with dismal luck against his rival Nigel Farage of the UKIP. If the UK prime minister would have taken the time to see what happened in Finland when mainstream political parties started to flirt with the anti-immigration message of the PS before the 2011 elections, he would have learned an important lesson: Don’t try to compete against xenophobic parties because you give legitimacy to them.

While the PS’ leader Timo Soini wants to show that his party is “normal” and “mainstream” these days, we should never forget what the party said and did to get where it is today.

In that message and in their actions is concentrated the poison that has estranged so many Europeans from politics.

* The English name of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) is officially the Finns Party. The names adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings.

The PS of Finland is named again on a list with other far-right and neo-Nazi European parties

Posted on May 30, 2014 by Migrant Tales

On Monday the Huffington Post listed the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* as one of the nine scariest parties to be elected to the European parliament in the “good” company of xenophobic and neo-Nazi parties like the National Front of France and Golden Dawn of Greece, respectively. On Tuesday, PolicyMic listed the PS as “one of the reasons we should be terrified about the people who just took power in Europe.”

Read full story on PolicyMic here.

On Wednesday, the PS’ name popped up again when the Simon Wiesenthal Center named it as one of ten parties it will monitor closely for spreading xenophobia, nativist nationalism, anti-immigration rhetoric and anti-Semitism.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center listed the PS with neo-Nazi parties like the NPD of Germany, Golden Dawn and Hungary’s Jobbik.

Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s largest daily, published on Wednesday citing the Huffington Post’s story on the nine scariest parties elected to the European parliament.

The PS has members who are Holocaust deniers and who play down the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany.

One of these is newly elected PS MEP Halla.aho.

This picture by one of Halla-aho’s close allies in parliament, James Hirvisaari, caused the MP to be sacked from the party in October. Read full story here.

* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The names adopted by the PS promote nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We therefore prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings.

Disingenuous Finnish PS MEP-elect Jussi Halla-aho fears image would suffer with parties like far-right National Front

Posted on May 27, 2014 by Migrant Tales

In an interview on YLE, Perussuomalaiset (PS) newly elected MEP Jussi Halla-aho said that it was doubtful that the anti-immigration party would form part of a parliamentary group with far-right parties like the National Front of France “because the party’s image would suffer.”

What a disingenuous statement by a politician who has based his career together with the PS on spreading racism and hatred of Muslims and migrants. Moreover, hasn’t he considered that the only group where the PS will be accepted is the present one, or the Europe for Freedom and Democracy?

If put in the right context, Halla-aho is saying that the PS’ image would suffer ever-greater damage if it grouped with parties like the National Front.

The French xenophobic party’s leader, Marine Le Pen, has said that she would like the PS to form part of her new group in the European parliament.

Read full story here.

Without naming the National Front or Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom, Halla-aho said that far-right anti-immigration parties in Europe were in the same ideological ballpark as the PS.

In the face of Halla-aho’s comments, what then is the difference between the Lega Nord of Italy, which praised Anders Breivik after he murdered 77 victims on 22/7, and parties like the National Front?

The PS can blame itself and its actions for its right-wing populist, far-right and nationalistic anti-immigration, homophobic and especially anti-Islam image.

The PS forms part to the same European parliament group as the Lega Nord, Danish People’s Party, UKIP and others in the Europe of Freedom and Democracy group.

The anti-immigration menace in Europe and Finland is real and we must do something to challenge it

Posted on April 29, 2014 by Migrant Tales

Migrants were very active in the early 1980s and on October 19, 1982 we marched for the first time since a group of East Pakistanis, today Bangladesh, marched from Helsinki to Turku in the early 1970s demanding work. The march by the East Pakistanis may have been the first by foreigners in Finland.

Migrants and Finns should join hands as they did in 1982 and the early 1970s demanding civil rights and jobs.

According to a blog by Pekka Myrskylä, Statistics Finland development manager, the majority of migrants in Finland live in poverty. If this is true, shouldn’t this worry us? Shouldn’t we begin to do something about the ever-growing inequality and poverty among migrants as well as Finns?

The likelihood that anti-immigration and populist political parties will make significant gains in the European parliamentary (MEP) elections on May 25 is other disturbing writing on the wall. Finland’s anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset are expected also to do well in next month’s elections.

The question is what do we do if Europe makes a deeper turn to the populist anti-immigration right. Should we stand idle and silent and see how our rights are being watered down or act?

If we look at the marches of the early 1970s and 1982, the answer is clear: unite and challenge the beast.

Tag: Far-right parties

Sweden Democrats openly attack cultural diversity – will the PS of Finland follow their example?

Read full story here.

What Söder is claiming is what is exactly wrong in the Nordic region. White Nordic people think that this land is exclusively theirs. This is malarkey.

An effective way of putting racism in context in Finland

Before and after. Racism is like the fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) mushroom. It looks beautiful when it fruits and may invite some to eat its hallucinogenic poison. Time, like racism, reveals the true face of this mushroom when it ages and dies.

PS MP of Finland ready to patrol streets and take law into his own hands

The aim of parties like the PS and far-right associations like Suomen Sisu is to keep Finland white like the graffiti above that reads “white power.”

Finland needs the PS, the silence of other parties and a media that is blind because it is white like a hole in the head. The lack of leadership that we are witnessing today in the face of such racism and hostility is shameful.

What will the April 2015 elections of Finland reveal about ourselves as a country?

Close your eyes and repeat: The PS of Finland isn’t a racist and fascist party…

“…it’s odd that we can’t put in line in Finland this colored human trash. Just put a stamp on their ass and deport them for good from Finland.”

Tauriainen’s Facebook page in October 2012.

Taurianen’s Facebook picture album today.

Marine Le Pen fails to form the far-right European Alliance for Freedom

Far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen is all smiles until Tuesday, when her group failed to form a European parliamentary group. Read full story here.

A sixth possible candidate, Poland’s Congress of the New Right (KNP), was cited but the views of its leader, Janusz Korwin-Mikke were too extreme even for Wilders.

The political record and chicanery of the PS of Finland is what has estranged so many voters from politics

The PS of Finland is named again on a list with other far-right and neo-Nazi European parties

Read full story on PolicyMic here.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center listed the PS with neo-Nazi parties like the NPD of Germany, Golden Dawn and Hungary’s Jobbik.

This picture by one of Halla-aho’s close allies in parliament, James Hirvisaari, caused the MP to be sacked from the party in October. Read full story here.

Disingenuous Finnish PS MEP-elect Jussi Halla-aho fears image would suffer with parties like far-right National Front

Read full story here.

In the face of Halla-aho’s comments, what then is the difference between the Lega Nord of Italy, which praised Anders Breivik after he murdered 77 victims on 22/7, and parties like the National Front?

The anti-immigration menace in Europe and Finland is real and we must do something to challenge it

According to a blog by Pekka Myrskylä, Statistics Finland development manager, the majority of migrants in Finland live in poverty. If this is true, shouldn’t this worry us? Shouldn’t we begin to do something about the ever-growing inequality and poverty among migrants as well as Finns?

A flyer distributed for the October 19, 1982 march demanded hunan and civil rights for migrants.

A poster asking migrants and Finns to take part in the October 19, 1982 march.