hate speech Archives - Page 6 of 9

Two words that shed light on what the Perussuomalaiset party is: racist bravado

Posted on August 31, 2016 by Migrant Tales

If there would be two words that define what the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party is all about, it would racist bravado. By the way, the PS is no common racist party but a member of the government. It shares power with the Center Party and National Coalition Party, which usually look the other way when the PS has one of its racist fits.

These parties usually look the other way because they too have issues with racism among its ranks.

Disagree about my description of the PS?

PS MP Teuvo Hakkarainen, whose racist antics we’ve read during the past years, is one of many examples of the type of racist bravado that the populist anti-immigration party spreads.

Apart from the MP’s numerous posts, like gays, Swedish-speaking Finns and Somalis should be sent to the Åland Islands, Hakkarainen reveals his bravado in an interview with Kankaanpään Seutu, where he defies a possible sentence for hate speech.

Hakkarainen wrote in a Facebook posting that “all Muslims aren’t terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims. Finland should not accept any Muslims from the Middle East and Africa to Finland,” according to him.

The PS MP is under investigation by the police for hate speech. His bravado is quite evident in Kankaanpään Seutu.

“Bring it on if I get sentenced [for hate speech]. I’ll take care of this in my own way,” he was quoted as saying. “Of course [one should follow the law]. But this [possible sentence for hate speech] is like a speeding ticket. Everything is today seen as hate speech.”

Hate speech is nothing more than a speeding ticket?

Read the full story (in Finnish) here.

Hakkarainen’s bravado not only shows how much disregard an MP of the PS has for cultural diversity, but how toothless the law is when it comes to challenging such a social ill.

Continue reading “Two words that shed light on what the Perussuomalaiset party is: racist bravado”

Former PS deputy councilman of Helsinki to be charged for ethnic agitation

Posted on August 22, 2016 by Migrant Tales

Former Perussuomalaiset (PS)* deputy councilman for Helsinki, Olli Sademies, who suggested last year on Facebook that Africans should be forcibly castrated will be charged for ethnic agitation, according to Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s largest-circulating daily.

Sademies, who is a retired policeman, was sacked from the PS in September.

Read the full story (in Finnish) here.

The former PS local politician denied any wrongdoing and claimed he was innocent.

“Freedom of speech and expression also includes saying things that may even upset some population groups,” he was quoted as saying in Helsingin Sanomat. “I hope that the district court [of Helsinki] acquaints itself with the decisions made by the European Court of Human Rights on this matter.”

During 2009-2014, only 27 people have been sentenced for ethnic agitation, according to MTV, which cites Statistics Finland.

The greatest number of sentences for ethnic agitation were given in 2012, which was 12.

Ever wonder how people like Sademies were ever accepted in the police service and the PS?

It says a lot about how much denial there is in Finland about racism.

* 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.”

Finance Minister Petteri Orpo and his disingenuous statements about racism and bigotry

Posted on August 9, 2016 by Migrant Tales

National Coalition Party (NCP) chairman and Finance Minister Petteri Orpo was quoted as saying on YLE News that he won’t tolerate racist speech. The comment comes after two Perussuomalaiset (PS)* politicians, MP Teuvo Hakkarainen and PS youth leader Sebastian Tynkkynen, are being investigated by the police service for ethnic agitation.

“If we are in government, then we are in government,” said Orpo. “We can’t be in government and in opposition at the same time.”

Is having a party like the PS that has a questionable record on spreading racism and bigotry in Finland only an issue of being “in government and in opposition” simultaneously?

Is Finance Minister Orpo disingenuous? What has he done, apart from offering words of assurances that he’s against hate speech, to guarantee the safety and rights of migrants in Finland? Under his watch as interior minister, the government has tightened immigration policy.

A recent Facebook posting on July 26, NCP MP Wille Rydman reveals the hypocritical stand of the government concerning racism and bigotry.

Rydman has the dubious reputation of being the “Jussi Halla-aho of the NCP.”

PS MEP Halla-aho was sentenced for ethnic agitation in 2012.

MP Wille Rydman defends Tynkkynen for his Islamophobic comments by asking if it’s a taboo in Finland to talk about Islam as a threat to Europe?

The stand of some politicians and parties like the NCP concerning the rise of racism and bigotry in Finland is shameful characterized by inaction and near-silence.

Will Orpo’s statements against what Hakkarainen and Tynkkynen said change anything?

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Finland’s blind spot of racism and the incitement of violence against migrants and minorities

Posted on August 8, 2016 by Migrant Tales

July was a busy month for hate speech with the usual bunch of politicians from a particular party hurling insults at migrants and minorities. If we look at the pyramid of hate below, we can see politicians like Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Teuvo Hakkarainen and PS youth leader Sebastian Tynkkynen venturing with their comments to the bias-motivated-violence phase, which openly incites violence against migrants and minorities.

“We’ve got to stop pussyfooting,” Hakkarainen wrote on his Facebook wall in mid-July after the Nice killings. “Muslims out of this country! Not all Muslims are terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims. We shouldn’t accept Muslims from the Middle East and Africa to our country.”

Even if fearmongering, demagoguery, xenophobia, pandering and raw hatred are the norm in today’s Finland against migrants, it is a a slippery slope were already on. The faster we slide down that slope the more hateful our attacks become.

Source: Newspaper Rock

A recent example of an anti-immigration rally in East Helsinki during the weekend, a French-speaking person threatens on a YouTube video that Muslims “should be banned from any civilized society.”

Continue reading “Finland’s blind spot of racism and the incitement of violence against migrants and minorities”

PS MP Kike Elomaa’s response to the party’s racist statements is disingenuous and insulting to Finland

Posted on July 26, 2016 by Migrant Tales

It’s not only disingenuous but insulting to Finland, migrants, and minorities that an MP and vice chairperson of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party parliamentary group, which has been on the racist rampage in July, states publicly that we shouldn’t be so touchy about comments that don’t intend to be “really racist.”

From July 15-21, a number of PS politicians like MP Teuvo Hakkarainen, Matias Turkkila and Sebastian Tynkkynen have gone out of their way to target migrants, especially Muslims. Hakkarainen and Tynkkynen have suggested, among other things, that Muslims should be kicked out of Finland.

The PS share power in government with the Center Party and National Coalition Party (NCP).

On Monday, NCP MP Ben Zyskowickz reacted in tabloid Ilta-Sanomat to what Tynkkynen said.

“The question is for how long the Perussuomalaiset party, which is a member of the government and has agreed to oppose racism [while in government], continuously offers the opportunity to political figures who incite people’s views against Islam and who are guilty of outright racism,” he said.

Antti Kaikkonen, chairman of the Center Party parliamentary group, echoed Zyskowickz’ concern in Helsingin Sanomat.

“Racist writings must once and for all end,” he said. “It’s high time that we must put a stop to hate speech.”

Elomaa’s response to Kaikkonen’s remarks is quite incredible: “One shouldn’t be so touchy,” she said. “Each of us must stand certain things. It was certainly nobody’s aim to be really racist.”

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PS MP Kike Elomaa tells Center Party MP Antti Kaikkonen that he shouldn’t be so touchy because it wasn’t anyone’s aim to be “really racist.”

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PS MP Elomaa’s respons shows again how parties like the PS play down racism and why such a social ill has grown instead of retreated in Finland.

It shows as well that the debate on racism in Finland is very much a discourse between white Finns and where’s there little to no room for migrants and minorities.

Read full story here.

Turning Finland into a post-Brexit United Kingdom mess where xenophobia, privilege and disunity are the rules

Posted on July 15, 2016 by Migrant Tales

It was yesterday when I tweeted with a person who expressed extremist views about immigration as Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Teuvo Hakkarainen does on a Facebook posting stating that as a result of the carnage we saw in Nice, France, we should close our borders and prohibit people from the Middle East and Africa from entering Finland.

UPTDATE: According to Yasser Louati, a French human rights activist, claims that the attack that took place in Nice is a failure of the French government and that the state of emergency imposed by it hasn’t helped to make people in France more secure.

Louati states in an interview [1]: “You have a person from Nice killing people from nice [so] why would bombing Syria and Iraq give us more security?”

Certainly PS MP Hakkarainen sees an opportunistic chance to score brownie points with the blood of victims only a few days after PS MP Leena Meri made a bigoted statement together with two homophobic ones by MPs Mika Hartikainen and Laura Huhtasaari. The statements made by the three MPs were played down by PS chairman Timo Soini as something “funny” and “eccentric.”

In light of these politicians and Hakkarainen’s suggestion that Muslims and black Africans should be kept out of Finland, there’s no other conclusion that is reinforced: The PS is a racist and extremist party. They are not just any extremist and racist party but one that shares power in government together with the Center Party and National Coalition Party (NCP).

Who’s to blame for xenophobia? Not migrants.

Anonymous multiculturally challenged people making a point.

As long as you have a party like the PS and a government that permits racist statements with silence, xenophobia will continue to grow and devastate Finland.

Like the United Kingdom with Brexit, we too are playing with fire when our wishful thinking encourages us to search for empty nationalism in dark places like when we stick our heads in the sand.

The reason why the United Kingdom is in a colossal mess today and became, thanks to the referendum a divided and impoverished nation, is because of the lame response of those who should know better.

PS MP Hakkarainen’s post on Facebook.

The PS has not only revealed our denial of social ills like racism, but it mocks simultaneously at our most noble Nordic values as a nation. It tells us that we are the victims of hypocrisy because those values like social equality don’t apply to us.

If the government lasts until the parliamentary elections of 2019, it’s clear that by then Prime Minister Juha Sipilä will hand over a divided country inflicted by social ills that will search for itself with its head in the sand.

[1] Thank you Michael McEachrane for the heads-up.

The role of the Finnish media and politicians who spread their racist statements

Posted on April 17, 2016 by Migrant Tales

The Perussuomalaiset (PS)* is a horrible party for migrants and minorities. They have the dubious “honor” of being the first modern party in Finland to capitalize on voters’ racism and bigoted views. Certainly they couldn’t have done it alone. All the major parties have the same type of politicians who state and write the same kind of things.

Some politicians are pretty straightforward about their bigotted views while others speak in code.

PS foreign minister, Timo Soini, is a politician who usually speaks in code and acts as the “good cop” of racism.

For bigotry and racism to bloom in any society, you need a complacent media, which thinks no differently from such politicians. How else are you going to get your racist and bigoted message to your followers?

The whole so-called debate in Finland on asylum seekers, migration, and migrants is a colossal lie by parties like the PS and others. Its only aim is to scapegoat and shift blame from politicians, who are inept, to migrants and minorities.

Even the president of Finland, Sauli Niinstö, doesn’t get it. He makes wishy-washy statements like the government about racism in Finland. He acts like many closet anti-immigration politicians who play down social ills like racism because he believes it won’t affect him directly.

Wrong.

Ask the Norwegians what happened on 22/7.

Racism is a cancer that spreads in our society with 1 + 1 = 2 arguments. It won’t create jobs, bring innovation, and foster peace in our society but impoverish us and force us to fear even our own shadows. Listening to racists pitch their bigoted arguments is like listening to sexist things said about women. Is it acceptable?

There are some faint positive signs that the media and the Finnish Immigration Service (FIS) are tired of being rubber stamps to such politicians.

This week, PS MP Maria Tolppanen’s blog was taken down for inciting hatred against migrants with misinformation. Even FIS put out a statement rebuffing her false claims that white Finns get less social aid than migrants.

Tolppanen is such an arrogant politician that she’s even threatened to go to the police.

PS MP Pentti Oinonen is another example of how facts are cooked. In January, he claimed that a fifteen-year-old was raped in his hometown of Kuopio by an asylum seeker.

Other masters of deception and bigotry are PS MEP Jussi Halla-aho and former MP James Hirvisaari, both who have been sentenced for ethnic agitation. In 2011 that an asylum seeker had raped a teenage minor that never took place.

But not only PS politicians make up stories about asylum seekers, migrants, and minorities; the National Coalition Party does this too.

Former MEP Eija-Riitta Korhola, who apparently doesn’t like wind power, claimed that she’s heard about “a lot of” animals like sheep and chicken that have died under mysterious circumstances around wind farms. In the tweet below she asked for an independent inquiry into the matter.

Korhola has a Ph.D. Her dissertation, which was defended successfully in 2014, was on “Climate Change as a Political Process: The Rise and Fall of the Kyoto Protocol.”

National Coalition Party former MEP Eija-Riitta Korhola suspects that wind farms cause animals to die.

Continue reading “The role of the Finnish media and politicians who spread their racist statements”

We are all responsible in Finland for feeding the ogre of racism and hate speech

Posted on March 27, 2016 by Migrant Tales

Those groups that are responsible for the rise of populism, racism and hate speech in Finland aren’t those that promote it but by those who stand by with their silence. They are the ones Martin Luther King Jr referred to as “the good people,” or “the silence of the good people is more dangerous than the brutality of the bad people.”

Not only is the silence of the so-called good people a factor but their expectation and hope that racism and hate speech can be kept on short leashes.

Parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, who openly promote racism and want to make permanently migrants and minorities second- and third-class citizens, could never become such big parties without the tacit support of the “good people.”

Scores of asylum reception centers were targets of arson attacks. While we don’t know the motives of Saturday’s arson attack against a church in Ylivieska, mixed statements, silence and indifference have played a role in promoting such acts. Source: Ilta-Sanomat.

Violence and hostility towards people who aren’t white Finns have become more public in recent years. The so-called “good people” have let out this monster from the cage in the form of vigilante street gangs, fear-mongering and by encouraging, directly and indirectly, racism and hate speech.

Some “good people” I could mention are the Finnish police service, President Sauli Niinistö’s disingenuous and mixed statements about our ever-growing cultural diversity, and politicians who make careers by being racist and promoting hate speech. Others include the national media interested in its power and ethnic narrative, and an education system that still doesn’t promote enough cultural diversity at schools to reflect better the diversity of Finland in the 21st century.

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The Perussuomalaiset and hate speech, hypocrisy and red herrings

Posted on March 21, 2016 by Migrant Tales

Why wasn’t a member of a high-ranking government party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* sacked after she said on Facebook that she didn’t have condoms to give Muslim children tricker-or-treating?

The PS politician, Terhi Kiemunki, who is the chairperson of the party in Tampere, apologized for what she said.

PS party secretary, Riikka Slunga-Poutsalo, didn’t ask for Kiemunki’s resignation even if what the PS politician said was unacceptable.

All of the above is fine but here’s the million-euro question: Why wasn’t Kiemunki sacked?

Read full story here.

The fact that the PS politician didn’t get ejected from the party reveals what is wrong with Finland today concerning racism and hate speech. Too many politicians, the media, and public officials don’t take racism and hate speech seriously enough. That’s why Kiemunki wasn’t ousted from the party.

By not challenging social ills like racism and hate speech not only puts in question our society’s values but destroys their credibility in the eyes of migrants and minorities.

Finland’s deputy state prosecutor to investigate Sademies’ Facebook post on sterilizing Africans

Posted on July 2, 2015 by Migrant Tales

Perussuomalaiset (PS)* Helsinki substitute councilman Olli Sademies’ post on Facebook at the end of May, where he wrote that Africans should be sterilized after three children, is going to be investigated by the deputy state prosecutor, according to Tampere-based daily Aamulehti, citing Finnish News Agency (STT).

Using such violent language against any minority by anyone never mind a politician belonging to Finland’s second-largest party is unacceptable. Sadmies’ claim on Facebook is, in our opinion, tantamount to inciting ethnic agitation and violence against black people in this country.

Apart from his political credentials, Sademies is a retired policeman. I wonder what that says about the Finnish police service.

No action was taken by the PS against what Sademies posted about African men.

When confronted last month by YLE’s Swedish language service, Seppo Kanerva, who is head of the Helsinki PS city council group, said that they hadn’t had time to discuss what Sademies wrote on Facebook. “We had so much to talk about that we didn’t have time for such nonsense,” he said.

Kanerva did say, however, that if Sademies continues to write similar posts he could be sacked from the party.

Sadmies’ Facebook page was taken down Tuesday after he posted a “business idea” about an aerosol that would spray pig’s blood on Muslims.

The substitute councilman claims that he was taken down because of an identity check but we know that Migrant Tales’ associate editor Marshall Niles filed a complaint to Facebook about his racist and disgraceful posting.

Read full story here.

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