Kristian Sheikki Laakso, or Sheikki Laakso, is a Finnish MP for the Islamophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party who is, as with his 38 PS MP colleagues, is filibustering the EU rescue package. One of the most “interesting” speeches before parliament was by Laakso, who read excerpts of Little Red Riding Hood.
Laakso begins his speech: “Once she gave her a little cap of red velvet, which suited her so well that she would never wear anything else. So she was always called Little Red Riding Hood…Oh, grandmother,” she said, “what big ears you have. The better to hear you with, my child,” was the reply.
The MP, who suffered bankruptcy and ended having 84 foreclosure orders and receivables to the tune of 219,000 euros, cuts short his speech by excusing himself to the madam speaker of the house. “I accidentally read the evening fairy tale to my grandchildren.”
He continues by stating that it is difficult to distinguish between “a fairy tale and reality” concerning the EU rescue package, which would be approved if voted on.
How much is the Covid-19 pandemic impacting in a positive manner the far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party? This is not a trivial question considering that the party, which has built its voter base and message on racism, leads in the polls. What future does the PS have when the Covid-19 pandemic subsides?Will it be a painful day of reckoning for it?
Covid-19 has uprooted our lives for over a year. We have faced lockdowns, fear, and our generous share of conspiracy theories like the lie about the great replacement. In such a backdrop, the PS is leading in the polls.
But not to worry. The PS is a tinderbox that will implode due to its own making.
Disagree?
Look at the PS candidates in the municipal elections. All white people, mostly men except for one black person, tell us how they want to take Finland back and do everything possible to continue excluding migrants, especially Muslims and people of color. The white nationalism soundbites are mentally nauseating.
The only reason a party like the PS has grown, and why their politicians can continue to spread racism and hostility against migrants and minorities with near impunity, is because Finland has issues with its racism. I am still confident, however, that we can push back the far-right threat and save our country from turning into a Hungary and Poland.
In the face of such challenges, it is clear that the PS will not make Finland a more socially equal country but exacerbate such social ills.
If you study the history of the PS, it has done everything possible to label and stigmatize migrants and minorities as useless human beings. It even calls some migrant and minority groups as “harmful.”
Isn’t it surprising that after they have tarred and feathered us in public for at least three decades, they wonder why certain groups face high unemployment in Finland?
The PS and its followers are responsible for the hostility, violence, and exclusion that migrants and minorities are presently suffering in Finland.
When the pandemic subsides and when we return to what was normal, that is when the PS will begin to retreat in the polls. People will be able to get out of their four walls and computer screens and interact with the world as they did before.
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.
It took a while, but, in the end, it came: MP Ano Turtiainen got sacked Friday from the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party after being expelled in June from the PS parliamentary group. The interesting question that the PS board’s decision offers is what it means for the party and Turtiainen’spoliticalfuture.
An incident between PS Speaker of Parliament Juho Eerola and Turtiainen after a session was the stick that broke the camel’s back. Eerola had asked Turtiainen, who believes that Covid-19 is a conspiracy, to wear a mask while in a parliamentary session.
Ano Turtiainen. Source: Facebook
The comment by Eerola angered Turtiainen, and he started to insult the speaker of parliament in the hallway.
For the PS, the incident shows how little due diligence they do on their party members. If you hate migrants, gays, and feminists, that’s ok.
By kicking out a member, who is an MP, is already a serious matter. The PS board made its decision to save the party’s skin and dubious reputation. There are no ethical considerations except for the fear that Turtiainen can undermine the party’s popularity.
Some studies claim that vote share for Eurosceptic parties has more than doubled in two decades, according to the Guardian. This problem has many answers. One of these is that Europeans have not done enough to root out all forms of racism.
Our colonial legacy still hangs as an onerous shadow that encourages us to delay and deny our history and who we are today.
Alan Kurdi who washed ashore after drowning in 2015. During 2014-2019 there were a total of 18,328 people (2019 410, 2018 2,299, 2017 3,139, 2016 5,143, 2015 5,054, 2014 3,283) who died attempted to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.
Millions of Europeans emigrated in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century to other shores. Ever asked why? Social inequality, nationalism, ethnonationalism, and war.
Let’s return for a moment another factor that characterizes the Marine Le Pens, Matteo Salvinis, Boris Johnsons, Viktor Orbáns, Geert Wilders, Jussi Halla-ahos and a long list of others.
Captain Gustave Mark Gilbert, the US Army psychologist at the Nuremberg trials (1945-46), said what the Nazi war criminals on trial had an incapacity to feel with their fellow men. That fellow men and women are today Muslims, among other groups.
“Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy,” he said.
Any sensible person, irrespective of his cultural and religious background, does not condone sexual harassment. Even so, the police and Iltalehti continue full steam ahead to blame Muslims for these types of crimes.
The blame game is so potent that we forget that most of the sexual harassment cases are committed by Finns. It is not a question of being a white Finn or a foreigner, but a serious issue that men have concerning women.
Moreover, the Iltalehti story does not tell us if these are convictions or how many tourists are suspects. It is all written in code: foreigner + sexual assault means Muslim in Finland.
In countries like Finland, publishing and spreading sexual harassment stories will get you far. If we look at the Oulu sexual harassment cases alone, they were like a lifesaver for the Islamophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS)*.
Jussi Halla-aho, the chairperson of the far-right Perussuomalaiset party, tweets: “Yeah, really in the Perussuomalaiset party wants a mutliethnic or cultural Finland, which is consistently in our party’s program and in our practical activities.” Source: Twitter.
The media and the police gave a lot of support to the PS’ fear-mongering in Oulu as did government parties like the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) by spreading the same anti-Muslim racism. Today, Finland is being held hostage by a far-right party in parliament that is set on destroying our institutions and because it feels invincible.
The trick? Yell rape out loudly as you and blame migrants for all of the country’s problems.
Why doesn’t the media and society, in general, get fed up with racist wise tales on a topic like sexual harassment?
One reason may be that our society has failed in challenging our racism and hatred. These types of social ills are fueled by our ignorance and fear, which in turn are spoon-fed populist quantities by parties like the PS.
If we look at our society, the forces of the far-right are challenging and mocking at us. It is a good matter that Finland is starting to wake up to this threat and slay the ogre back to where it came from, the gutter.
The snap elections in Austria saw the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) suffer a blistering defeat with the number of MPs plummeting by 37.3% to 32 from 51. Sebastian Kurz of the conservative Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP) was the biggest winner getting 38.4% of the popular vote and gaining 11 MPs to 73 MPs.
FPÖ vice-chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache and his ministers were forced to resign in May after a video published by two German newspapers offered damaging evidence of him allegedly offering government contracts in return for political support from Moscow.
Austrian election result. Sebastian Krutz’ ÖVP is the clear winner with the Social Democrats (SPÖ) coming in second place and in third the FPÖ. The Greens (Grune) did well in the election as well. Source: Austrian interior ministry.
Even if the FPÖ got clobbered in the election, minorities such as Muslims are worried about Kruz’ anti-Muslim rhetoric. “He did not understand that repeating hardline anti-immigrant rhetoric in a nicer tone does not defeat far-right populists,” said Nina Horaczek, an investigative reporter at Falter, who was quoted in NPR. “It makes them stronger.”
Even if 2019 was supposed to be the year when far-right parties break down the election door, the Danish People’s Party, which is a close ideological ally of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, lost 21 of its seats in July to end up with 16 seats in that country’s parliamentary elections.
The PS, in which the Danish election result sent shivers up the party’s spine, its political message under the leadership of Jussi Halla-aho is entrenched in far-right and radical-right ideology.
Copying the tactics of Lega Nord’s Salvini in giving firey Islamophobic messages, the PS has used the same rhetoric to gain support. Such violent language against minorities is like a flat bicycle tire: You must pump it constantly for air to remain in the tire.
The ever-Islamophobic and racist language of the PS not only continue to fuel the hostile environment but directly incites and legitimizes violence against migrants and minorities.
* The far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13, 2017, into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. In the last parliamentary election, Blue Reform has wiped off the Finnish political map when they saw their numbers in parliament plummet from 18 MPs to none. A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Official translations of the Finnish name of the party, such as Finns Party or True Finns, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and after that the acronym PS.
Perussuomalaiset (PS)* chairperson Jussi Halla-aho gave us on Yle Ykkösaamu his usual anti-immigration blah blah and why Finland should relax its hate speech laws.
In the interview, Halla-aho, who was convicted of ethnic agitation and breaching the sanctity of religion in 2012, defended the Nazi-spirited Suomen Sisu association and played down PS MP Juha Mäenpää’s description in parliament that asylum seekers are a non-human “invasive species.”
Mäenpää is the same politician who stated in 2015 that “God had answered his prayers” after an asylum reception center was razed by fire.
While these types of counterarguments by Halla-aho, who has steered the party in into the far-right ideological lap of leaders like Lega’s Matteo Salvini and Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, have no significance because the PS leader would even find arguments to justify the rise to power of the Nazis and Adolf Hitler in 1933.
Helsinki University criminal law professor Kimmo Nuotio threw some cold water on Halla-aho’s claim that hate speech laws have no place in an open society. Apart from pointing out that the PS’ proposal is political, he did not consider the ongoing debate healthy for democracy.
Moreover, the number of ethnic agitation cases that reach the courts are still modest as the table below shows.
Ethnic agitation cases that were taken to court in 2018. Even if such cases rose by 138.5% last year to 31, it is still a tiny amount. Source: Justice Ministry.
“Personally, I find this type of discussion harmful,” Nuotio said, “it’s an attempt to undercut the basis for these laws.”
One matter that the Ykkösaamu journalist should have asked is why do we have laws against hate speech? The answer is obvious. Without them, it would be open season for racists and parties like the PS openly harass, attack, label and socially exclude vulnerable groups like Muslims for their political gain.
The argument used by Halla-aho to not open Finland’s labor markets to outside the EU is equally deceiving. Adding the usual fear-mongering that outside the EU there are half a billion people who could come to work, he claimed that such workers would drive down salaries.
Possibly valid to some extent, such people in our labor market like now would force our authorities to do a much better job in regulating markets and ensuring that exploitation does not become the norm.
* The far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13, 2017, into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. In the last parliamentary election, Blue Reform has wiped off the Finnish political map when they saw their numbers in parliament plummet from 18 MPs to none. A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Official translations of the Finnish name of the party, such as Finns Party or True Finns, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and after that the acronym PS.
Migrant Tales does not usually publish opinion polls. However, the latest one published by Yle warrants a quick response.
White Finnish newspapers headlined the news as, “Support for the Perussuomalaiset* party surpasses 20%.” I and many of my friends see it differently: “Support for the PS shows that Finland has a serious untreated racism problem. Watch out brothers and sisters and get ready for more hostility and violence.”
Politicians like PS Vice-President Riikka Purra may ask how can one insinuate that half a million voters could be racist.
My answer: How many millions of Nazi Germany were indirect or direct complices in the Holocaust? How many millions of white Europeans and USAmericans were involved in slavery and the slave trade?
Yes, the PS is a racist party that exposes Finland’s untreated social ills like racism.
* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13, 2017, into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. In the last parliamentary election, Blue Reform was wiped off the Finnish political map when they saw their numbers in parliament plummet from 18 MPs to none. A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Official translations of the Finnish name of the party, such as Finns Party or True Finns, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and after that the acronym PS.
The Finnish police have at the most 10 Internet police officers who monitor hate speech, reports Yle, citing police inspector Måns Enqvist of the National Board of Police of Finland.
The news was published after the far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party claimed that too many police resources are being wasted to monitor the Internet for hate speech.
At most, ten officers working on monitoring the Internet is too little, and Finland should allocate more police resources.
Moreover, we should not forget that crimes like ethnic agitation and hae speech and hate crime exist because they protect vulnerable groups like migrants and minorities. Scrapping such laws, like the PS is demanding, is to leave migrants and minorities open to hostility and aggression.
Despite the small number of police officers monitoring the Internet, one of the problems in tackling hate speech in Finland is that too few are charged and brought to justice.
Is this because there are too few police resources?
* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13, 2017, into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. In the last parliamentary election, Blue Reform was wiped off the Finnish political map when they saw their numbers in parliament plummet from 18 MPs to none. A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Official translations of the Finnish name of the party, such as Finns Party or True Finns, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and after that the acronym PS.
