Christian Thibault, an anti-racism activist, asks a good question: Will those that have a racist political agenda look like a horse’s ass in the future? Excellent question.
This Facebook posting was reprinted by Migrant Tales with permission.
Tag: fascism
The rise and fall of the Perussuomalaiset of Finland
As support for the Perussuomalaiset (PS)[1] wanes with parliamentary elections only a heartbeat away on April 19, we are seeing a very different party from four years ago. Back then, PS chairman Timo Soini was self-confident and campaigning confidently. He was the darling of the media, the new kid on the block, the underdog, the only credible anti-EU voice in the country romping opinion polls and sending political shock tremors.
Matters have changed radically from 2011. We no longer see a self-confident Soini but a party that has run out of populist arguments and is scrambling unsuccessfully to repeat its historic election victory. Moreover, Soini doesn’t look even youthful as before but his image is a cause for worry since he has aged prematurely and there are health issues as well.
Happy Flappy Soini is a popular game mocking the PS chairman. You can download the game (in Finnish) here.
The charismatic leader, who helped the PS rise from political obscurity to the third-biggest party in parliament in four years is now in retreat and on the defensive.
What happened?
An article in the New Statesman gives the following reason for the rise and fall of the PS:
In opposition, and rebranded as simply “the Finns”, the far-right revolution began to fade. The Finns soon found they outside of a coaliton, they were powerless. Meanwhile, they suffered a long string of very public controversies. In 2013, their MP James Hirvisaari was expelled for photographing of a friend posing in a Nazi salute outside [sic][2] Parliament, having previously been reprimanded for a series of Islamophobic and racist comments. Another high-ranking Finns Party MP, Jussi Halla-aho, has been investigated several times for inciting racial hatred.
Migrant Tales has always been critical of the PS and their motives. Their anti-immigration, homophobic and nativist nationalistic message is unsustainable politically.
PS MP Teuvo Hakkarainen is one of many good examples of the party’s fall from political grace. Here’s an MP that has issues with alcohol and racism. Hakkarainen has even sent on his work phone pictures of his phallus, among other scandals.
It is incredible that in the age of the Internet, relatively cheap travel and globalization that some extremist groups are still hellbent on excluding others from being equal members of society. Behind all the rhetoric and political malarkey of the PS is its underlying message: Keep Finland white.
Despite Soini’s repeated claims, that his party doesn’t even flirt with racism (sic!), the best example of how it uses a nativist nationalistic message in inciting nationalist fervor, which in turn fuels racism, was his decision to allow MEP Jussi Halla-aho to draft the party’s program on immigration policy.
Soini claimed in 2009 that he’d sack any PS member if they got sentenced for inciting ethnic hatred. Halla-aho did but nothing happened to him. Soini instead defended his decision not to sack Halla-aho on BBC’s HARDTalk.
Another problem with the PS is that it has lost crediblity among voters because it is a volatile mixed bag of ideologies ranging from neo-Nazis and fascists to former communists. It hasn’t done anything in the opposition except whine.
Even if the PS will suffer a defeat in the April elections and even if there is a big possibility that it will eventually splinter and implode, the big question is what will emerge from the wreckage of the PS? Will we see in Finland openly far-right parties like the Sweden Democrats and Danish People’s Party?
That is one of the fears that the demise of the PS raises.
[1] 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.
[2] Then PS MP James Hirvisaari, who was sentenced for ethnic agitation, took a picture of Seppo Lehto making a Nazi salute inside the parliament building.
Former PS councilman Risto Helin is a key suspect in an aggravated pimping case
Does anyone remember councilman Risto Helin of the western Finnish city of Vaasa, who resigned from the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party in August 2013 after he became a suspect in an aggravated pimping case? Remember when the councilman who, among other things likes to wear white power blood & honor t-shirts, gave a Hitler clock to a neo-Nazi group in Vaasa? Yep. That’s him: Risto Helin. His trial will begin on February 17. who is now on trial for pimping, according to MTV3.
Helin, who says he’ll continue to work as a councilman despite that he’s on trial, didn’t want to comment about the case.
One matter that surprises a lot of people about Helin is how a person with neo-Nazi sympathies and who is now on trial for aggravated pimping ever got elected to city council in the first place.
The answer is in the April 2011 parliamentary elections: How did a populist anti-EU, anti-immigration, homophobic and especially anti-Islam party like the PS win 39 seats from 5 in 2007?
For one it shows that there are a lot of people in this country who don’t feel uncomfortable with fascism and neo-Nazis.
Read full story (in Finnish) here.
* 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.
Michael McEachrane: Seeing Sweden’s race problem for what it is
Michael McEachrane*
Two things seem abundantly clear regarding the rise of ultranationalism in Europe today. First, it is symptomatic of a broader form of nationalism which all European states are steeped in. Second, it is this broader nationalism that ultimately needs to be confronted if equality is ever to become a reality in Europe.
Read full story here.
Even in a country like Sweden, an ultranationalist party with roots in neo-Nazism is now the country’s third largest party. Recently, the Sweden Democrats Party demonstrated its power by voting down the government budget. As a result, early national electionswill be held in March 2015. The party has declared that it aims to bring down any government that refuses to drastically reduce immigration.
Sweden is a poignant example of the problem of nationalism in Europe today. It seems fair to say that in Sweden nationalism is not deemed a mainstream problem. Rather, it is seen as something that either belongs to the past or is an expression of extremism. The Sweden Democrats may have 13 percent of the electorate, but all other parties in parliament treat them as a national anomaly, isolated and kept at a safe distance.
It also seems fair to say that neither race nor even racism is seen as a mainstream problem in Sweden. As longtime Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme summed it up in a Christmas speech in 1965: “Democracy is firmly rooted in this country. We respect the fundamental freedoms and rights. Murky racial theories have never found a foothold here. We like to see ourselves as open-minded and tolerant.”
Race is seen as a misguided belief, which is why it is not to be found in the country’s anti-discrimination legislation. And racism is a strong word reserved for extreme cases of prejudice and hostility. The majority, though, with good conscience can chant “No racists in our streets!”, a popular slogan in recent demonstrations against the Sweden Democrats and neo-Nazism.
The result is a compounded problem of denying the prevalence of nationalism and racism and the urgent need for political measures to eliminate them. Beyond its anti-discrimination legislation – which merely has led to a trickle of convictions – Sweden has few political measures in place against racism. Instead, the political focus tends to be on the “integration” of immigrants in the form of education, job training programmes, access to citizenship and so on.
Marginalisation and exclusion
The pressure is now increasing to heed to the politics of the Sweden Democrats and focus more on integration. What this does is ignore the social significance of a national “us” versus a foreign “them”. Like other European countries, Sweden is a nation-state with a long tradition of understanding nationhood in terms of ethnicity, race and culture. Like other ultranationalist parties across Europe, the Sweden Democrats capitalise on a growing sense of fear that this nation is under threat.
On the whole, judging from the patterns of discrimination and exclusion in European societies, it is all too clear that at the bottom of European divisions between a national “us” and a foreign “them” is race. In Sweden, traditional national minorities such as the Saami, Roma and Jews have a long history of being excluded from the Swedish nation. Today especially Saami and Roma are still highly marginalised. But like elsewhere in Europe, it is especially people of colour (the “visible minorities”, including Roma) that are most evidently discriminated against in every major area of society such as the housing and job markets.
The urban areas of Sweden are today spatially segregated along racial lines with people of colour concentrated to low-income housing projects. The country has the highest differences in employment in the West between native and foreign-born citizens and these differences are the most dramatic between ethnic Swedes and non-western born residents. People of African descent have a particularly hard time finding jobs, have the lowest educational payback in the country and are exposed to the most number of hate crimes.
To create a more inclusive society, counter such patterns and curb the rise of the Sweden Democrats, the traditional definition of the nation in terms of race and ethnicity needs to go. In addition, political measures against racism, and a consistent anti-discrimination perspective that includes race need to become mainstream.
Like the rest of Europe, Sweden prides itself in its constitutional tradition based on a “respect for the equal worth of all and the liberty and dignity of the individual”, as its constitution says.
But as the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent concluded on its visit to Sweden the same week that the Sweden Democrats forced the country into early elections:
“It is our view that the Swedish philosophy of equality and its public and self-image as a country with non-discrimination and liberal democracy, blinds it to the racism faced by Afro-Swedes and Africans in its midst. No country is free of racism and Sweden is not an exception.”
Read original posting here.
This piece was reprinted by Migrant Tales with permission.
*Michael McEachrane is a member of the Swedish NGO and anti-racist collective Fight Racism Now (FRN) and the editor of Afro-Nordic Landscapes: Equality and Race in Northern Europe.
PS claims it has sacked all of its racists and fascists from the party (sic!)
Matti Putkonen said at a press conference Friday that comparing the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* to the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats was spreading hatred against the party. He went as far as to suggest that the attack against its office in Helsinki had something to do with such stories, reports tabloid Ilta-Sanomat.
Putkonen, who was convicted for rape about 23 years ago, lost his temper when HBL journalist Susanna Ginman questioned his claim that all the racists and fascists had been sacked from the party.
Ginman asked why PS MEP Jussi Halla-aho, who was sentenced for ethnic agitation, wasn’t sacked from the party.
Putkonen snapped back and asked if she considered Halla-aho a racist.
The journalist answered in the affirmative.
Read full story here.
If Migrant Tales would have been present at the press conference, we’d respond in the same way as the HBL journalist did.
We don’t know what kind of a person Halla-aho is but if we check what he’s written, it’s clear that they are rife with racism.
I’d ask Putkonen as well about Suomen Sisu, a far-right association, about MP Juho Eerola, who admitted being attracted to Benito Mussolini’s fascism.
The chairman of Suomen Sisu, Olli Immonen, is a PS MP.
One of the reasons why the PS has been riddled by so many scandals is because too many of its members are racists and fascists.
* 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.
National Coalition Party and Perussuomalaiset lead anti-immigration drive in Finland
With parliamentary elections nearing in April, topping the anti-immigration rhetoric list are two parties with representatives in parliament: National Coalition Party and who else but the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*.
We’ve been reading almost daily about National Coalition Party MP Pia Kauma’s crusade against migrant women with baby carriages. The PS are another hostile party to migrants that will feed migrants to the dogs in order to get your vote in April.
While the PS wants to fool voters into believing that their rhetoric against migrants and minorities has something to do with patriotism and defending white Finnish rights, nothing could be further from the truth.
Migrant Tales has never been fooled by this type of chicanery and neither should you.
If there are warning red light over Finland, it’s to warn us of the PS, a party that has ties with extremist groups like Suomen Sisu.
Since the PS has made so many outrageous statements in the past about migrants, minorities and development aid, let’s look at the two most recent ones by MP Vesa-Matti Saarakkala and MP Juho Eerola.
If Saarakkala had his way, he’d get rid of dual citizenship and take away a person’s citizenship if he were sentenced for a serious crime like terrorism. Eerola, on the other hand, the MP that admitted liking fascism and Benito Mussolini’s economic policies, wants to scrap the right of migrants to use paid interpreters.
What’s wrong with these two proposals? For one they reveal that Saarakkala and Eerola, both lawmakers, are in the dark about our constitution.
One of the most important rights in our constitution is that everyone, irrespective if the person is a Finn or migrant, has the right to be treated equally before the law.
Here’s a question to Eerola: If you are going to take away the right to use a paid interpreter from migrants, how would that affect minorities such as the Sami, Roma and mutes?
These types of statements made by MPs just to get votes in next year’s election reveal the true face of the PS. It shows a party that is lost but led by the headlights of its opportunism and ignorance. The PS would end up feeding our laws and values to the dogs if it ever got power.
Should migrants, expats and minorities fear the PS? Not at all. We should challenge them and do everything possible to send them them back to where they came from: to the one-digit political minor league.
Let’s hope that this will happen sooner than later.
* 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.
Close your eyes and repeat: The PS of Finland isn’t a racist and fascist party…
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.
* 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.
Are Finns conservatives by nature?
Perussuomalaiset (PS) chairman Timo Soini was interviewed on YLE Saturday morning. Commenting on a recent opinion poll commissioned by YLE, Soini claimed that the good showing of the PS and Center Party proved that Finns are by nature conservatives.
The YLE poll, which was published Friday, showed big gains by the opposition Center Party (23.8%) and the PS (19.3%). The ruling National Coalition Party’s popularity slipped to 18.3% and the Social Democratic Party to 15%.
Read full story (in Finnish) here.
It’s nothing surprising that a politician like Soini, who will do anything to snatch as much power as he can in order to form part of the next government after the 2015 parliamentary elections, sees Finns as “conservatives.”
What does being a conservative mean in Finland in 2013? In general terms, it suggests having conservative values when it comes to marriage, work ethic and suspicion of cultural diversity.
Are Finns conservatives by nature as Soini claims? I have my serious doubts.
The reason why the PS is so popular, at least in the polls, is due to the lack of diversity and consensus-driven politics during the cold war era.
The rise of an anti-EU, anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam party like the PS in the 2011 elections would have never happened if Finland’s population would have been more culturally diverse.
When Soini speaks of Finns being “conservatives” by nature, he means that they are potential PS voters and in line with the party’s nationalistic name, the Finns Party, or the Perussuomalaiset as we call the party on Migrant Tales.
Our best insurance against populism and ideologies that have little respect for human rights is cultural and political diversity. More diversity coupled with social equality will help conserve our Nordic democratic way of life rather than undermine it.
Being too alike ideologically, culturally and ethnically is hazardous to our society.
The PS shamefully supports neo-Nazism with its silence
Finland is one of the few countries I know in Europe where you can openly support a neo-Nazi group and Nazism and be elected to city council. The only catch is that you belong to the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party and state that your are neither a racist nor a Nazi like Vaasa city councilman Risto Helin does.
Helin admits on YLE in English, which cites the original article on Image magazine, giving the clock with Hitler to an anti-immigration neo-Nazi group in Vaasa that calls itself Kerho, or The Club.
“I don’t see anything wrong with it,” Helin told Yle’s Swedish-language news on Thursday. “I’m not racist and not a Nazi.”
The Vaasa city councilman got elected in October. One of his campaign stunts was being pictured with a neo-Nazi blood-and-honor t-shirt.
PS MP Maria Tolppanen, who sits on the Vaasa city council, said she was “shocked and disturbed” by the news and would bring the matter up with the party leadership in Vaasa and Helsinki.
Should we hold our breathes?
Even if sensible people shun anything that comes close to Nazism, this appears not to be a problem for the PS leadership. Isn’t Timo Soini a Catholic?
Helin’s Hitler clock shouldn’t surprise us because two PS members’ names were uncovered by hackers in 2011 for applying for membership in Kansalinen Vastarinta, a neo-Nazi association. Both PS members, Ulla Pyysalo, PS MP Juho Eerola’s aide, and Tuomas Okkonen, who got elected to Lumijoki’s town council, are still members of the party.
How is this possible? Because fascism, counterjihadism and neo-Nazism are alive and kicking in the PS.
PS councilman Risto Helin’s Hitler clock, which he gave to a neo-Nazi group in Vaasa.
Far right and anti-immigration quotes in English by the PS
There’s a new site that publishes quotes by your favorite Perussuomalaiset (PS) politician in English. Those PS politicians are none other than Jussi Halla-aho, James Hirvisaari and Juho Eerola.
You can visit the site at truefinns.tumblr.com
The editors state the following: “Quotes by some leading politicians of the True Finns party. Note that we do no approve of the views they represent. Actually we just want to show what kind of crazies they are. Complaints about the opinions of the True Finns should be directed to the True Finns themselves.”
Here’s one quote by Hirvisaari: “A hate crime was committed in Helsinki some time ago. I believe it was a rare and unique event. It is not always racism if a skinhead beats up a black man, it can be just boys being boys. But if it was a typical case of molesting women, maybe it the black man deserved it.”
And another one by Juho Eerola: “I am attracted to fascism and especially (to) the economic policies.”
Let’s not forget Halla-aho: “What is relevant is that all terrorists are Muslim.”