When does a person or group cross the magic line from right-wing populism to far-right? The tragic events that struck Norway on Friday should help us to distinguish better where that magic line is and what our reaction to it should be.
If Anders Behring Brejvik, the man who was responsible for the death of over 90 people on Friday, would have never carried out his outlandish deeds he’d be walking amongst us today visiting the numerous hate websites on the net.
What happened in Norway is a rude wake up call for us in Europe and Finland. It casts an eerie shadow on the role of those politicians, political parties and associations that spread a culture of hatred against immigrants and minorities and repackage it as patriotism.
Even though these groups are dazzled by the power of racism they soon notice that after the monster has been left out of the cage it can bite back at them.
Brejvik was chairman of the populist and anti-immigration Fremskrittspartiet party in Oslo West for about nine months and then on the local party’ board for about two years.*
Moreover, Brejvik was reported by TV1’s 20:30 news that he is an admirer of Perussuomalaiset MP Jussi Halla-aho, who is a mamber of the Nazi-spirited Suomen Sisu association.
The tragic events in Norway should embolden us to act and distinguish those groups and members in our society that want to change it at the cost of other people’s civil rights. Probably the reason why some of us haven’t branded some of them yet as far-right extremists is because we are in denial or dread admitting that there are these types of people and groups amongst us.
We need a serious debate in Finland about the role of associations like Suomen Sisu in our parliament and the racism that festers in the Perussuomalaiset party.
The tragic events of Norway should strengthen our resolve to defend our Nordic way of life, which is built on social justice and equality for all. We should stand firm and be especially vigilant against those who want to destroy our noble values.
It is the minimum we can offer to the victims in Norway.
Comment: The terrible events that hit Norway on Friday appear to be the work of a far-right extremist, according to a story by Reuters below. Taking into account the rise of far-right and right-wing populist parties in Europe due to anti-immigrant and anti-Islam sentiment fuelled by a shaky economic panorama, what happened in Norway can be a serious wake up call to countries like Finland.
Writes Reuters: “But violence, while sometimes fatal, has rarely escalated beyond group thuggery and the use of knives. That may have changed in Oslo and on the holiday island of Utoeya on Friday. Seven people were killed in a bombing in the capital — Western Europe’s worst since the 2005 London al Qaeda-linked suicide attacks that killed 52 people — and at least 10 (the number has risen to at least 80) in a shooting rampage by a lake.”
Migrant Tales and some bloggers who visit our blog have regularly expressed concern about how some far-right members of parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party have stoked the flames of racism with their provocative statments and blog entries.
If a terrible tragedy is possible in Norway could something similar happen in Finland? Certainly it could and it has happened before when lone gunmen have gone on shooting rampages in Jokela and Kauhajoki.
Why is tolerance and acceptance important in society? Why should we confront bigotry and fascism forcefully?
Oslo and Utoeya island, northwest of the capital Oslo, are probably answers and the tragic consequences.
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By William Mclean
A report that Norway’s bomb and gun rampage may be the work of a far-right militant confronts Europe with the possibility that a new paramilitary threat is emerging, a decade after al Qaeda’s September 11 attacks.
If there is one matter that I would wish stopped in Finland it is the culture of fear being spread by the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party. We can all remember prior to the April election how some members of the right-wing populist party portrayed immigrants and refugees as gang rapists and social welfare shoppers as soon as they crossed the border into Finland.
The fear-mongering by the PS appears to have no end. It changes constantly according to the political situation. Yesterday immigrants were their favorite target and today it is the financially embattled European Union.
I was quite astonished when I read a letter to the editor published this week in Mikkeli daily Länsi-Savo. A prominent PS politician sounded the alarm bells claiming an apocalyptic end to Finnish culture and language if the EU ever became a federation.
He compared our fate as a “small nation” to other Fenno-Ugric tribes of Russia that numbered a few thousand at the most.
Certainly it is a sad matter that our Fenno-Ugric relatives were devoured by a bigger and more powerful Russian culture but to compare their fate to a nation of over five million is ludicrous.
If Finnish culture is so vulnerable as the PS politician wanted to show to outside encroachment, why didn’t it disappear when Finns formed part of the Swedish and Russian Empire for about 700 years?
What will be the next fear-mongering stunt by the PS?
Comment: An African 40-year-old man was robbed and assaulted on Saturday in a Vaasa neighborhood, reports tabloid Iltalehti. The attackers, who were 5-6 white Finns between the ages of 20 and 25, started to call the man names like the n-word. After being threatened in public, one of the assailants threw a punch at the man, who then fell on the ground and was kicked.
Being verbally and physically attacked in public is horrible for anyone but what surprises me, if the report by Iltalehti is accurate, is that the police is treating the matter as a robbery.
Certainly we should not jump to conclusions until the police report is out and the perpetrators have been brought to justice.
However, it is common practice in countries where paramilitary groups roam freely to kidnap their victims at their homes and steal something to show that robbery could be involved.
Once again we must thank the Finnish media for bringing these types of crimes to light. It shows that sensible Finns will not accept this type of behavior in their country.
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Uhri kaadettiin maahan, ja häntä lyötiin ja potkittiin. Afrikkalaissyntyinen 40-vuotias mies ryöstettiin Ristinummella Vaasassa lauantaina klo 15 jälkeen. Miehen luokse oli tullut 5-6 suomalaista noin 20-25-vuotiasta miestä ja ryhtynyt nimittelemään tätä muun muassa neekeriksi.
Comment: This time Perussuomalaiset (PS) party MP Teuvo Hakkarainen is not being carried out drunk by two doormen from a bar or for his racist gaffes, well almost. At the end of the video clip he does make an attempt to do his infamous imitation of a Muslim Minaret call to prayer.
This time it was his family’s sawmill business that is on life support.
One of the scoops that the Nelonen TV newsclip revealed was that Hakkarainen’s family business has received during the last decade 835,808 euros in subsidies, of which 284,292 euros came from the EU. On his personal website, some of the promises he vows to make is to get Finland out of the European Union.
Hakkarainen’s sawmill was reported previously of having got half a million euros in subsidies from the EU.
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Perussuomalaisten kansanedustajan Teuvo Hakkaraisen perheyritys on rämpinyt vakavissa talousvaikeuksissa kymmenen vuoden ajan. Lähes konkurssikypsälle sahalle on pumpattu yhteiskunnan tukia vuosikymmenen aikana yli 800 000 euroa.
In 1984, a groups of foreign students published a critical book of life in Finland called Strange days – the experience of foreign students in Finland. Some claim that the content of a good book can withstand the unrelenting hand of time. How would the reflections of being a foreigner in Finland sound if we read Strange Days today?
The front cover of Strange Days published in 1984. The drawing shows former Aliens' Office head Eila Kännö inspecting a black person applying for a residence permit. The drawing is by Rabbah Boussuira..
Those who moved to Finland in the 1980s or earlier can appreciate that matters have improved a lot from those times thanks to EU membership and new laws like the Constitution (1999), Nationality Law (2003) and Non-Discrimination Act (2004). Even though there is no mention that we are a multicultural society in these laws, they do show greater sensibility to minorities and acceptance of cultural diversity.
Finland passed its first Aliens Act in 1983, or about 65 years after the country gained independence in 1917. Finland did not have immigrants at the time since foreigners were officially called aliens (muukalaisia).
Below are a few quotes picked from Strange Days published 26 years ago. Are they still valid? You be the judge:
The game of cultural politics remains heavily skewed against the “ulkomaalainen” (literally “from outside the country and in a deeper sense, from outside the world). Finnish culture is tight-knit, to be in Finnish society is vastly different from being inside Finnish borders among Finns. Quite appropriately, outsiders are administered by the Ministry of the Interior. Foreigners who live peacefully for many years here are usually outstanding individuals, and only gradually do they begin to grasp how literally the meaning of outstanding has been taken: they are required to stand outside, both in the abstract sense of social and cultural participation and often in concrete matters like housing and admission to restaurants. Greg Moore and Adrián Soto, pp. 5-6
How many times I have listened as my dark-skinned friends tell of the Finns’ awkward, insulting and violent behavior towards them. Almost every time I walk through the streets with one of my more “foreign” looking companions, some Finn figures out a way, more of less grossly, to emphasize our otherness, our foreigness. Therefore, the fact that I have white skin has definitely helped me survive here; however, my disillusion has definitely grown since I became aware of this. Steve Huxley, p. 9
But if you look deeper into Finnish society you will find a type of covert racism which is waiting to lash out as soon as the size of the foreign and minority population increases. Enrique Tessieri, p. 12
Even though Finland's immigrant population has grown by ten times since 1984, when Strange Days was published, the ongoing one-sided debate on immigrants makes this drawing still valid by Rabbah Boussuira.
…most of their history Finns have been dominated by foreigners. First the Swedes came over in the twelfth century and more or less bullied the Finns into accepting Christianity and fighting their wars against the Russians for them. Then the Russians took over and did more or less the same thing until 1917, when Finland ducked out the back door and declared independence while the Russians were distracted by revolution at home. The Finns had their own civil war in 1918 and one issue was whether the country should be run by foreigners in the future or the Finns themselves. The Finns compromised on democracy and independence, leaving foreign kings and international revolution to others. Ahti Tolvanen, p. 35
We Finns are not taught to express ourselves orally. Teachers have insurmountable problems in making their students speak. This is due in part to fear of exposing oneself to criticism. Thus, shyness, a strong faith in authorities, and the feeling of personal insignificance, result in emptiness in the head and an inability to speak after the long, silent years of infancy. Children should not receive too much attention, you know, as this would only spoil them and make them too self-confident. The best is to subdue it (i.e. the child) as thoroughly as you can, then it will eventually turn out to be a respectable, humble citizen. Maaria Seppänen, p. 47
Comment: Here is another example of how the PS cannot put a lid on their own racism. Tabloid Iltalehti reports that PS MP Juho Eerola’s aide, Ulla Pyysalo, posted a racist joke about Green Party MP Jani Toivola, who is black and gay.
These types of “jokes” by people close to Eerola shouldn’t come as a suprise since the MP from Kotka belongs to the far right wing of the PS. If Eerola were Hungarian, Swedish or Danish, he’d find his ideological home in parties like Jobbik, Sweden Democrats or the Danish People’s Party.
A member of the Nazi-spirited Suomen Sisu, Eerola has praised in the past Benito Mussolini’s economic model. If he is really that lured by a corporativist model, he should take some time to study Juan Domingo Perón’s economic model for Argentina during the 1940s and 1950s.
Eerola, like his PS anti-immigration cronies, are responsible for inciting some Finns to adopt even more hardline and unrealistic positions when it comes to immigration.
Pyysalo regrets what she said on Ilatlehti: “It was dumb, I didn’t want to insult Toivola personally.”
The tabloid asked if she considers herself a racist. “I don’t know. It depends how you define racism.”
How you define racism? What about a racist joke on Facebook?! The excuses by the PS on how to make their racism more acceptable takes stranger forms by the day.
When contacted, Toivola expressed dismay at what Eerola’s aide had written on Facebook.
One of the matters that far-right PS MPs like Eerola are trying to do in Finland is make something unacceptable like racism acceptable. At the forefront of this shift in values is nobody else but the PS.
Are you surprised?
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Linda Pelkonen
Kansanedustaja Juho Eerolan (ps) avustaja Ulla Pyysalo julkaisi rasistisen vitsin Facebook-profiilissaan sunnuntaina. Kirjoituksessa vitsailtiin Jani Toivolan ihonväristä ja seksuaalisesta suuntautumisesta.
Comment: Below is an interesting story on the Guardian with a link to the original OECD report on global immigration and emigration. According to the OECD report, the most popular destination for immigrants was the United States. The country with the highest amount of per-capita emigrants was Romania.
The figures are from 2008-09, a period when global markets slipped into deep recession triggered by the Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy.
Compared with preliminary figures for 2010, migration to Finland totalled 24,600, which is 7.9% lower than in the previous year (26,700). Compared with 2008, migration to Finland fell by 8%.
Irrespective of the global downturn, migration movements have not fallen as much as some would expect. This is partly due to demographic trends (aging workforce) in OECD courties. Moreover, humanitarian migration is less affected by economic downturns.
An editorial in the OECD report gives special mention to the rise of right-wing populist parties in Europe. It lists the following recommendations on how to deter this trend:
First,it is important to get the facts out in the public domain. Migration, both legal and irregular, cannot be considered to be out-of-control and governments have shown that slowly but surely, they can improve its management.
Second, labour migration management needs to be reinforced by a broadening of co-operation between OECD countries and origin countries, as well as between governments and employers. The latter need to respect the rules and recruit legally from abroad, rather than illegally off-the-street, if they cannot easily fill a job vacancy.
Third, integration efforts should be strengthened further. Although most immigrants are well-integrated, it would be false to claim that there are no problems.
Finally, it is important that everybody has a fair chance in society to make their way. Employers should not exclude candidates for employment who are immigrants or children of immigrants because of where they live or how their origin group is perceived.
While all of these points are important points, I give special mention to leadership by government officials, politicians and the local media to challenge urban myths being spread by anti-immigration groups.
Far-reaching words like “acceptance” and “equal opportunities” should form a common part of our daily vocabulary instead of words like “out-of-control immigration” and “immigrants fuel crime and steal our jobs.”
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The US is the top destination for permanent immigrants according to a report published today. The international migration outlook 2011 released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) highlights the top 25 countries with the highest number of immigrants into OECD countries and also shows where they come from.
Comment: Does it need any? Here is the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party MP, Teuvo Hakkarainen, whose racists gaffes made him infamous in spring. On the campaign trail, Hakkarainen claimed he was a teetotaler but that was evidently a lie. According to the Iltalehti clip, the PS MP is being carried out by two doormen at a bar because he was too drunk to stand on his feet.
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Kansaneduataja Teuvo Hakkarainen sammui pöytään ja hänet jouduttiin poistamaan Mierontie -ravintolasta kahden miehen voimin.
