Far-right parties Archives - Page 15 of 37

Post-Jyväskylä: Where do we go from here?

Posted on February 2, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Considering how the media treated before the April 2011 election racism and far right ideology and how social media sites were teeming with racist online lynch mobs, we are today waking up from the hangover of our state of social inebriation. The aftereffect will not go away in a day, week, or month but will take a very long time to wear off.

Instead of alcohol, Finland has been consuming and experimenting with racism, nationalism and far right ideology as answers to our ever-growing cultural diversity The more it drinks, the more we lose touch with reality and what is good for us.

Was it a coincidence that the attack in Jyväskylä marked exactly the eightieth anniversary when Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany as chancellor and transformed the country into a totalitarian state?

When speaking of far right violence and racism in Europe, we cannot avoid addressing social ills like intolerance.

Claiming that social exclusion of white Finnish youths is one of the main factors behind what happened in Jyväskylä is only addressing part of the problem without seeing the whole picture.

Reading a number of editorials about what happened in Jyväskylä, only one by Savon Sanomat cited racism as the real culprit. It wrote: “An even greater threat from organized extremist movements is a sort of daily racism that is targeted against immigrants and even to our [Swedish-] language minority. Attitudes in Finland have changed course, which isn’t anything to brag about.”

The Kuopio-based daily makes a valid point. Every day racism, xenophobia and attacks against our Swedish-speaking minority feed far right and populist-nationalist groups. They are the 98 octane fuel that permit it to spread their intolerance.

Bears hibernate in winter but so can countries for many years when they live in a state of denial. Finland is no longer a nation owned and controlled by just white Finns. It is a fact that we are an ever-growing culturally diverse nation.

Let’s not give an Andres Breivik the opportunity to commit murder on a mass scale before we understand that our response to intolerance was inefficient.

Everyone in Finland has the right to be treated as an equal member of society and with respect.

Some sectors of our society have a very hard time accepting this. They are not only white marginalized Finnish youths, but a far bigger group that extends to all sectors of our society.

PS’ second vice president doesn’t condemn but “gives advice”to Jyväskylä’s neo-Nazi attackers

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Perussuomalaiset (PS) second vice president, MP Juho Eerola, did not condemn the attacks in Jyväskylä by suspected neo-Nazi thugs but advised them how to do it more effectively, reports National Coalition Party’s online Verkkouutiset. Writes Eerola: “The next time don’t look like “patriots” when you plan to enter such an event. Don’t go as a group but be [inconspicuous] in the crowd.”

Eerola’s views are shameful if not worrisome. They reveal how some PS members hold rights rights like freedom of speech and the right to assembly in contempt.

The PS MP denied on Friday’s Helsingin Sanomat that he was giving advice on how to carry out the attack and should express his ideas more precisely the next time.

Eerola’s aide, Ulla Pyysalo, had applied for membership in the neo-Nazi Suomen Kansallinen Vastarina (SKV) but refused to resign from her post unless she found a new job by the end of the year.

Eerola, whose sympathies with fascism are well known, defended Pyysalo and did not see any reason for her to resign. He said he’d be more worried if his aide belonged to a far-left organization.

One of the matters that worries me about t people like Eerola and his band is they think they can rewrite history and put our way of life in cold storage in order to please their views, which are harmful to our society.

Interior minister: Far right isn’t “a big threat” despite what happened in Jyväskylä

Posted on January 31, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Christian Democrat Interior Minister Päivi Räsänen condemned the attack by three suspected neo-Nazi thugs in Jyväskylä as an assault against freedom of speech and the right to assembly, reports YLE. She didn’t consider, however, the far right to be a threat to Finland but said that the authorities aim to do more work to address social marginalization.

Whether the far right is a threat or not to Finland depends on your perspective. If you are a white interior minister and a member of the Christian Democratic Party, maybe the threat of the far right isn’t such a pressing issue.

The minister who is making such a statement believes homosexuality to be a sin, begging should be made illegal, and approves indirectly ethnic profiling by the police.

In many respects, it’s the same question if racism and discrimination are widespread or not in Finland. If you are white it’s more difficult to grasp the problem than if you are a visible minority.

While social marginalization may be one of the culprits that is fueling far right ideology in Europe and Finland, there are others like intolerance and prejudice taught at home.

Challenging far right ideology, and the 98 octane fuel (racism, xenophobia, prejudice, marginalization, among others) that feeds it, must be everyone’s priority.

The first important step is that our reaction to far right violence and its ideology should be first and foremost a reaction.

Räsänen’s views on what happened in Jyväskylä and its causes show a very meek rection.

Timo Soini and his pact with the devil

Posted on January 25, 2013 by Migrant Tales

The cracks in the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party are widening as the latest Kai Haavisto-James Hirvisaari scandal proves. The PS has reached a dead end with its present band of politicians. With the complicity of the near-silence of other parties, no other political group in modern Finnish times has created so much resentment and hatred towards others like the PS.

No matter what the PS does, it is a rambunctious party ready to die by the sword after living so eagerly by the sword.

If I could paint a cartoon that would depict the present situation, I’d draw Haavisto and Hirvisaari as a two-headed stick of dynamite joined by a lighted fuse. All around them would be PS members, including Soini, getting ready for the loud explosion.

Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja sheds light on a blog entry where the PS is today.

He writes: “The spirit that [Timo] Soini opportunistically freed from the bottle by accepting extremist [candidates] of the Suomen Sisu [association] to run for office will soon permanently tarnish the ability of the party to cooperate with other ones and may even soon threaten Soini’s position as party leader.”

EuroMP Sampo Terho, together with PS strongman Matti Putkonen, are another example of how lost the party is. Both proposed a plan how Finland could save 3.15 billion euros. While the usual culprit of development aide was mentioned, it was surprising that Terho and Putkonen suggested raising VAT, a PS policy no-no.

Soini has distanced himself from the proposal.

Terho is chairman of the Suomalaisuuden liitto, an association taken over by right-wing extremists which, like Suomen Sisu, see cultural diversity and immigration as a threat to Finland.

One matter I have never figured out is why politicians like Tuomioja and the media still see Soini as a “good guy” victim if he signed a pact with the devil? Soini is nothing more than the good cop but we mustn’t forget that he’s still a cop.

Finland’s stance on Soini reflects how out of touch it is with its immigrants, visible minorities and its ever-growing cultural diversity. It’s perfectly fine to socially exclude, bash and insult immigrants and visible minorities in this country as long as you don’t treat white Finns the same way.

The PS, with the blessing and silence of other political parties in Finland, blames immigrants and visible minorities for most if not all of the country’s problems. Sensible people understand that the issue is much bigger. Large multinational companies relocate to countries where they can exploit workers by paying lower wages.

Greedy corporations are the ones stealing jobs, not immigrants.

The PS cannot rid itself of its racists because it would commit political hara-kiri

Posted on January 20, 2013 by Migrant Tales

It’s been interesting to read how some Perussuomalaiset (PS) party members suddenly feel overwhelmed by the most recent racism scandal to rock the party. PS MP Tom Packalén asks in tabloid Iltalehti what should be done? Answer: For a start, why not sack them?

The other option is to defect from the PS like Kontiolahti councilwoman Mirva Hyttinen did on Sunday. She defected from the party after PS councilman Mika Hiltunen slandered refugees on Facebook by labeling them as social bums and rapists.

“I meet foreign people at work on a daily basis, and I cannot accept this type of intolerance,” she said.

How would any sensible person react if somebody labeled and victimized refugees as rapists that should chemically castrate such people as PS Uusimaa regional board member Kai Haavisto suggested? What about if like PS MP James Hirvisaari claimed that gang rape in South Africa was a genetic trait and a national pastime?

Here’s the million-euro question: Why doesn’t the PS sack those members who are openly racist (and there are many of them)?

The answer shouldn’t surprise us: Racism and nationalism give the PS its political strength. How do you think they rose from nowhere to become Finland’s third-largest party in parliament?

Do I believe that the PS regrets what Haavisto and Hirvisaari wrote? If they did, they’d sack both of them from the party.

But this won’t happen because sacking racists from the PS would be synonymous with committing political hara-kiri.

Even if the PS uses rape statistics to justify its racism, it forgets that one of its party heavyweights, Matti Putkonen, was sentenced to eight months in prison in 1990 for rape.

Racism, xenophobia, and intolerance are powerful political forces in Europe these days. PS head Timo Soini understands this perfectly well. That is why he will not sack Haavisto and Hirvisaari from the PS. If we look at Soini’s track record on racism, we’d see a very long trail of broken promises and outright deceptions.

Remember when Soini said that any party member sentenced for hate speech would be banned? Remember when he played down racism in the PS to “one, two or three” cases? Remember when he scolded the foreign media, especially from Sweden, for giving the “wrong” picture of the party?

So many scandals have hit the party since the April 2011 election that we’ve lost count on Migrant Tales. And so have many others.

The PS reveal a lot of things about Finland. For one, it exposes racism as a much bigger problem in this country that some have wanted to believe.

If we are fair, all Finnish parties have their fair share of racists. Even so, no party has capitalized and given a platform to racists as the PS.

Even after the Kai Haavisto-James Hirvisaari blows over, we’ll be back to square one: nothing will happen.

Why?

Because the PS will not commit political hara-kiri.

* 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. The direct translation of “Perussuomalaiset” is “basic” or “fundamental Finn.”

Migrant Tales in Greek

Posted on January 19, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Blog entries that are published on Migrant Tales get sometimes mentioned in some major publications like Time, Sveriges Radio, YLE’s Suora linja and others. One of the most recent reposts was by UNHCR in Greece, located in one of Europe’s hotbeds of xenophobia.

The work we do on this blog got mentioned (in Finnish) on Re Vera as well.

UNCHR of Greece reposted one of Migrant Tales’ posts about integration and diversity in Europe.

Sensible people understand that there is little time to pat oneself on the back in Europe these days when it comes to challenging the rise of racism, xenophobia and far-right parties that loathe cultural diversity.

When racists claim to want to “debate” cultural diversity issues, what they are really saying is “let’s talk about how to water down and justify outright discrimination and social exclusion of whole groups based on ethnic and cultural background.”

Are certain inalienable civil rights, like equal treatment before the law, “debatable?”

Look at what is happening in countries like Greece, Hungary and in other parts of Europe and the so-called “debate” taking place in such places.

The rise of far-right ideology, which bases its world view on prejudice, racism and social exclusion, is nothing more than our failure as a region staring back at us. It exposes how we have failed to come to grips with the horrors of our history and our darkest side.

The ideology that brought us mass wars like WW2, which cost the estimated lives of about 60 million people, still hides behind our racism, our prejudice and our xenophobia.

We must do more to nip this type of anti-social behavior in the bud.

If we fail in this important task we will be sowing the seeds of future wars that will end up consuming us without remorse.

Journalists should question instead of spread racism and prejudice

Posted on January 17, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Journalists are one group that have helped to spread and reinforce our prejudices and racism of other groups. There’s nothing surprising about this considering that journalists, like the media that employs them, mirror in part what the public feels.

Ilta-Sanomat is one tabloid resonsible for spreading racism in Finland during the 1990s. This billboard tells us that Somali refugees will stay put in Finland.

Even if this may be the case, the difference between a sharp and mediocre journalist is how well he or she can question and expose abuses in our society. The job of the media is to be a watchdog and ensure that our system of checks and balances functions properly.

Too many journalists and the media, however, forget what their primary role is. Instead of questioning social ills, they have helped to spread prejudice, racism and xenophobia in our society.

Closing one’s eyes to racism or going after such a social ill without teeth is unfortunate because we all lose. The spirit of our laws, like our Constitution, should be our moral shield and benchmark.

Check out section seven of Finland’s Constitution:

No one shall, without an acceptable reason, be treated differently from other persons on the ground of sex, age, origin, language, religion, conviction, opinion, health, disability or other reason that concerns his or her person.

Even if the highest law of the land tells us convincingly that discrimination is wrong, why do some journalists and the media have a difficult time figuring out what is intolerance and what should our response to such a social ill be?

One of the most racist papers in Finland is tabloids like Iltalehti and Ilta-Sanomat, which markets news like a used car salesman, who would even sell his or her mother if the price were right. Another publication is Uusi Suomi, which helped Perussuomalaiset (PS) politicians like Jussi Halla-aho, James Hirvisaari and a long list of others to become household names.

Online publications like Uusi Suomi and tabloids like Iltalehti are responsible for spreading stereotypes like that immigrants are lazy, rape and commit crimes in this country.

A good example of how prejudice and stereotypes of foreigners are maintained and spread by the media is a reent story on Länsi-Savo, teaching Russians how to use the toilet bowl.

Another example that fuels stereotypes and racism in this country is a non-story about banning in Finland the use of the burqa and niqab.

I have never seen a woman wearing such clothing in Finland. I wonder how many of the journalists at Iltalehti have never mind anti-immigration PS MPs, who want to ban the use of such clothes in our country.

Coverage of racism, hate speech and social exclusion has improved thanks to much better reporting by Helsingin Sanomat, Etelä-Suomen Sanomat, Keskisuomalainen, Savon Sanomat, Kainuun Sanomat, Karjalainen, Turun Sanomat, Kansan Uutiset and others.

These papers have done a good job at doing their job.

Why was Finland “tolerant” of Jews when it was an ally of Nazi Germany?

Posted on January 16, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Finns claim proudly – followed by an obvious sigh of relief – that even if we were an ally of Nazi Germany during World War 2, anti-Semitism never reached the same levels as in Hungary, Romania and in other parts of Nazi-dominated Europe.

While Finland offers an interesting case with respect to anti-Semitism in war-ravaged Nazi Europe, was tolerance the principal factor that kept Finns from persecuting Jews? Could the underwhelming size of the Jewish community and the fact that they were accepted as Finns offer us better explanations?

Memorial ceremony for Jewish soldiers who fell in World War II presided by Marshal Carl Mannerheim in Helsinki, Finland. Source: Flickr.

The size of the Jewish community in Finland has been small. In the 1870 census, there were 460 Jews and by 1883 they are said to have risen to 1,000. In 1929, it peaked to 1,763.*

Today there are about 1,500 Jews living in Finland.

The Jews were granted Finnish citizenship in 1918. Finland was the last country in Europe together with Romania to do so.

Even if there appears that Finland tolerated Finnish Jews in World War 2, former Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen formally apologized in November 2000 to the Jewish community for the extradition of eight Jews to Germany in 1942. Only one of the eight survived after they were sent to Auschwitz.

While the Jewish question never reached the same proportions in this country as elsewhere in Nazi-dominated Europe, would anti-Semitism have soared if the size of the Jewish community were many times bigger?

There seems to be a connection between the recent rise of racism, xenophobia and growth of far-right parties in Finland and the size of the immigrant community. Certainly factors like the economic recession and rising unemployment play important roles as well.

How can xenophobia grow if the immigrant community is minuscule? How can there be anti-Semitism if there are only a handful of Jews?

Sometimes size does not matter. In neighboring Estonia, an estimated half of the Jewish population, which totaled 4,000, died in the Holocaust. In countries like Poland 3 million Jews perished under Nazi rule.

If we look at history, Finland was far from being “tolerant.” The Restricting Act of 1939 is one of many laws that showed how Finland perceived the world as a threat.

The Jews were in part saved by their acceptance as Finns in the 1940s, but a very important factor must have been their underwhelming numbers.

* Migration Patterns among Jews – Finland. See following link.

Slandering immigrants and visible minorities is disgraceful

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Migrant Tales

A politician of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party has come under fire today for claiming on Facebook that all refugees and asylum seekers are social bums and rapists, reports YLE. Migrant Tales published on Sunday a blog entry citing a ministry of justice researcher, who claimed that certain anti-immigration groups in Finland distort crime statistics in order to attract voters and label immigrant groups.

While the PS city councilman, Mika Hiltunen, appears too lazy to use and exaggerate crime statistics as others from his party, he does show his racism with shameless gusto.

Osmo Kokko, a PS MP from Joensuu, located near Hiltunen’s home town of Kontiolahti, was quoted as saying on YLE that Hiltunen’s comments don’t represent the party’s policy on refugees.

Migrant Tales spoke earlier today to Hannu Niemi of the ministry of justice, who stood by what he said on Länsi-Uusimaa. He blamed indirectly journalists as well for using immigrant crime statistics to label some national groups.

Reija Härkönen writes a lot about the anti-immigration Counterjihadists of the PS. Two of these are MPs James Hirvisaari and Jussi Halla-aho.

Both MPs, who have been convicted for inciting ethnic hatred, have proven over and over again that they will go to any length to spread their wise tales.

Markku Huusko, editor of Uusi Suomi, wrote in 2011 about how both MPs accused a 17-year-old asylum seeker of raping a young woman in Lammi. All charges were later dropped against the asylum seeker.

Despite the social-media lynch mob instigated by Halla-aho and Hirvisaari, both have yet to apologize for what they wrote.

Niemi said that it’s not his job to raise debate since he is a researcher, but “it’s the journalists who do that.”

Not only do Hirvisaari and Halla-aho have racism issues to deal with like all political parties, but Finnish society, journalists and newspapers as well.

Promoting tolerance now and tomorrow

Posted on December 31, 2012 by Migrant Tales

In Migrant Tales’ Finland & Cultural Diversity 2012 review, it’s clear that a lot more work needs to be done to promote tolerance. Thanks to Umayya Abu-Hanna’s column on Sunday’s Helsingin Sanomat,* our collective complacency was once again shamefully revealed.

Racism, or the lack of acceptance of other ethnic groups as equals in our society, is a social illness that spreads unabated in Europe and in countries like Finland. It is empowered by our silence, fear, cultural myths, low self-esteem and mocks every day at our apathy.

How do you explain the historic rise of a party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS), which is hostile to immigrants and cultural diversity, in last year’s parliamentary elections?

What is even more shameful is the acceptance by the media and too many politicians that PS chairman, Timo Soini, is the good guy that is keeping openly hostile and racist party members in line.

Hate crimes rose in Finland by 7% in 2011 compared with the previous year, according to the Police College of Finland. Irrespective of the rise, few if any politicians raised the issue.

Mark wrote about how the police perpetuate hate crimes in Finland in one of the most commented and widely read blog entries of December.

He writes: “One effect of hate crime statistics being published in Finland is that it brings up once again the unwelcome question of whether Finns are more racist than other nations. This isn’t my question, by the way, but it is one that Finns tend to dwell on, as if there were an acceptable level of racism that a country is allowed to have!”

Are the police, like the rest of society, serious about hate crimes and racism?

Considering that the majority of hate crimes go unreported, it’s clear that these types of crimes reported to the police are only the tip of the iceberg.

The fact that one policeman in Mikkeli suggested to immigrant students that they should not report racist harassment cases to them shows that there is no common policy.

The Mikkeli policeman equated racist harassment to when he gets hassled in his hometown by the locals, who remind him that he is a policeman. “Just ignore them [if they harass you in a racist fashion],” he said.

If its evident that the police are part of the problem, part of the blame must go to the victim. It will be very difficult to challenge hate crimes in our society as long as immigrants and visible minorities don’t report such cases.

Ignorance of one’s rights, language barriers, fear of reprisals and lack of trust are some reasons why black and visible minorities don’t report racist harassment to the police, according to a Race Council Cymru study reported by Migrant Tales.

There’s a very good piece on ekathimerini.com on how hate crimes threaten our society.

Read whole story here.

Morten Kjaerum and Janez Lenarcic write: ”Hate crime offenders send a clear message that some of us are lesser human beings, lesser citizens who can be harmed with impunity. Their actions are, therefore, serious affronts to the fundamental right to human dignity and equal treatment.”

The key argument made by the authors, that our fundamental right to human dignity and equal treatment are breached, is the issue. When we permit such an injustice to happen, we undermine our civil rights. If it can happen to “them” it can happen to “us.”

Barbara Spectre, founding director of Paideia of Sweden, believes that the ongoing transformation of European societies from being “monolithic to multicultural” is at the heart of European anti-Semitism.

“I think there’s a resurgence of anti-Semitism because this point in time Europe has not yet learned to be multicultural…” she said. “It’s a huge transformation for Europe to make. They are now going into a multicultural mode. ”

While I disagree with Spectre that the issue is simply moving from being “monolithic to multicultural,” the issue goes much deeper. Anti-Semitism should not be seen as a threat to Jews but to all minorities living in Europe.

The foundations of Europe’s racism, which has brought terrible wars and enabled colonialism to spread globally, is at the heart of the problem.

Europe has always been culturally diverse. The problem is that we have used racism to hide our diversity through social exclusion. We only see ourselves in a racist society.

Finnish racism isn’t any different. Since we want to see only ourselves in this society, it explains why there’s so much opposition to cultural diversity.

Less social exclusion would make us acknowledge that there are other groups living amongst us.

_______________

*Erkki Perälä, a Green Party Helsinki city councilman, wrote a so-called sarcastic piece about Abu-Hanna’s column. I considered the use of the Musta Pekka Golliwog as offensive.

Why is it that I never get “great” ideas like Perälä when writing about a social ill like racism?

If I’m not the victim due to my ethnicity, I don’t try to write about it with sarcasm since I’d only be asking for trouble.

What do you think?

Tag: Far-right parties