I hadn’t heard the statement, “I’m a racist,” for a long time. Even so, two middle-aged women were chatting in Mikkeli loudly about how bad migrants were.
I intervened because silence is a total cop-out.
“Are you a racist,” I asked one of the women.
“Yes, I’m a racist,” she snapped.
“You should be ashamed of yourself for being a racist,” I responded.
There is no need to write what they continued to say about migrants because it was straight from a Perussuomalaiset* playbook.
Racism is such a big issue in Finland that even white people are discriminated.
Another news story. Another example. You will lose out in the Finnish labor market if you don’t have a Finnish name. If there is overwhelming proof that this type of discrimination takes place, why does it continue? Why aren’t there any stories in the Finnish media that sued an employer for discrimination?
Why are we reading over and over again ad nauseam about labor market discrimination?
Instead of changing your name to a Finnish-sounding one, why isn’t enough being done?
The big issues isn’t exposing discrimination in the media and in studies, which is welcome, but not doing or doing very little about it is the problem. We don’t make a big fuss about discrimination because we don’t take it seriously enough.
Even if opposition politicians from parties like the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, National Coalition Party (Kokoomus), it’s sobering that the government of Prime Minister Sanna Marin is holding the line against their onslaughts.
It is surprising that how naive the PS and Kokoomus are. No border, no law, will bring a sense of security unless you deal with the root of the problem. Walls do not keep a country safe and at the end of the day they come down like in Berlin 1989.
Walls do not keep people out. Ask the millions of Latin Americans who crossed the US border.
If we gave a free hand to these two parties, the inalienable rights of asylum seekers, like seeking asylum, would be shelved indefinitely. The hateful rhetoric that would emerge from such a move would make every non-white person a target. First asylum seekers, who’s the next group?
By dehumanizing people, we risk going up the pyramid of hate. We saw this in Nazi Germany as well as in many other countries.
Let’s hold the line against the irresponsible onslaught that undermines our Nordic welfare state values enshrined in Human Rights and social justice.
The so-called migrant crisis with Belarus offers Lukashenko and Putin an opportunity and EU politicians tools to fearmonger and score brownie points with voters.
Isn’t it odd how one-sided the news is about the refugee crisis at the Belarus border? Most of the opposition politicians, especially from the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus), believe that harsh words, threats against vulnerable people and children, suggestions of building a 1,340 km fence on the Russian border will help us continue burying our heads in the sands comfortably.
The anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS)* are in an extremist league of their own. Even so, Kokoomus MPs sound like bullies out for a fight against vulnerable women, men and children.
Media coverage of the crisis is pitiful. I’m surprised that our media calls these desperate people “immigrants” when in fact, most, if not all, are fleeing war, political instability, poor economic prospects.
Thanks to Jussi Jalonen, an article in Al-Monitor gives us an in-depth view of the people trying to enter the EU via Poland and Lithuania.
Writes Al-Monitor: “Many of those at the border are from Iraqi’s Yazidi community, an ethnoreligious group long persecuted for its religious beliefs. ‘I haven’t eaten in three days,’ he said on Nov. 11 and claimed that two children died that day.'”
The scariest matter that Thursday’s documentary revealed about one of Europe’s most Islamophobic countrie was how far racist discourse promoted by politicians could lead a country. In a standard pyramid of hate (see below), where genocide is the final outcome, the apex of Denmark’s pyramid of hate is deportation, and physical elimination of whole groups like Muslims.
Watching the documentary and the comments by an Islamophobic Danish People’s Party (DPP)* MP Marier Krarup and Matias Tesfaye, minister of immigration and integration, showed the source of the country’s “racism is both cultural and legal,” according to Jonas Eika.
Tesfaye went on to say that Denmark was right in taking a more uncompromising stand against Muslims or people from the Middle East and North Africa. This statement was made by the son of an Ethiopian refugee who supports cooperation with the Islamophobic DPP.
According to Politico, the Social Democrats of Denmark supported confiscating the jewelry of refugees to pay for their asylum, forcing the children of immigrants to attend compulsory child care, and banning the niqab.
Michelle Pace, professor in global studies at Roskilde University, expresses dismay at how the ruling Social Democrats are drafting laws and using harsher Islamophobic discourse than the DPP.
“I can’t believe that I am saying this,” she continued, “[but] it is a reality, and that is because they [Social Democrats] want to please their voters. They want to be reelected in the next election.”
The message that come through loud and clear from Tesfaye and Krarup in the documentary is, apart from their Islamophobia, there is no room for diversity, especially Muslims, in Denmark.
How to describe Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Veikko Vallin’s tweet below? Vallin, who likes to be called the Trump of Tampere, likes posing with MAGA caps and often makes racist remarks about asylum seekers, who are mostly Muslims. He even brags on social media about how he was able to escape taxes in Finland by moving to Estonia.
One does not have to look too far into Vallin’s social media history stained with racist posts.
The PS MP now tries to show is “anti-racism” side with the following tweet:
“@jemustakalio of the Greens speaks about “brown” people. It is an odd word. If anything, it differentiates [people]. For me, skin color does not mean anything. We are all people irrespective of our skin color.”
Source Twitter
Everyone can see how disingenuous Vallin’s tweet is. What about if we substituted the term skin color with “religion” or “Muslim?”
I doubt that he’d ever claim that we “are all people irrespective of our religion.”
The hard truth about Vallin’s tweet is that it is typical of people who believe Finland is only white and that there is only one kind of Finn. It is a convenient way to close one’s eyes to racism’s harm to people in Finland.
The only appropriate time people like Vallin accept “brown Finn” is when it labels such groups as criminals.
Vallin believes that racist statements will get him reelected.
This week we learned about how widespread women in the rescue department are victims of sexual harassment and discrimination, according to Yle. We also learned about the ministry of justice’s plans to tackle discrimination and hate-speech awareness with a 52-point program with the help of training increased support for organizations racism and hate crime.
Writes Yle News: “In the future all Finnish police departments will undergo training on non-discriminatory police work while municipal councillors will take courses on hate speech,” reports Helsingin Sanomat.
As parties like the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus), Christian Democrats and Movement Now (Liike nyt), and especially the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* have encouraged and given a platform to racism and bigotry, in the same way, more have spoken out against discrimination.
Do we need to know the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP’s track record and what he has said about asylum seekers, Muslims, people of color, and other minorities in the past? His tirade against asylum seekers was so racist that the Left Alliance bloc threatened to leave the meeting if Vallin didn’t stop talking.
Vallin, an avid Donald Trump follower who boasts about how little taxes he pays in Finland because his money is in Estonia, likes to also take pictures of day-care children and women in Muslim attire and publish them without permission on social media.
There is an old saying that goes something like this: I was a liberal in youth so I would not be a fascist in old age.
What motivates a politician to twist and exaggerate facts to stigmatize migrants? National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) MP Heikki Vestman’s speech in parliament Wednesday is a prime example of how some politicians spread Islamophobia to attract attention and gain power.
His unsubstantiated talking points motivated me to write an email to him, which he has not yet responded to.
Moreover, the MP uses code to tell us what groups he is targetting. The term “asylum seeker” usually means Muslim.
“When I heard your speech and rationale Wednesday (20 October), I wondered how a young, apparently intelligent person could house such opinionated and unsubstantiated claims about migrants. If you are honest, would you want to [live and] grow up in a country where this type of discourse is ongoing by politicians seeking power and attention? Read some history and check out how the Finns were labeled in Sweden during the 1960s and 1970s.
Does the phrase “en finne igen” ring a bell?
After North America, the greatest number of Finnish immigrants, or about half a million people, moved to Sweden. In the 1960s and 1970s, Finns had a terrible reputation in the neighboring country. Whenever a crime occurred, Swedes usually responded, “it must be a Finn,” en finne igen.
Here is a question to Vestman: Why are you picking and bullying vulnerable groups of people who cannot defend themselves from your attacks?
National Coalition Party anti-immigration MP Heikki Vestman. Source: Kokoomus
Below are some unsubstantiated claims (that I translated and paraphrased) from Vestman’s speech. He was against loosening family reunification guidelines because the minors, whom he sadly referred to as “anchor babies,” could become a national security threat.
Vestman should know that having a family is a human right.
Islamophobia and other forms of racism are for some politicians their gateway to power and infamy.
Watching part of the firey debate Wednesday in parliament that led to a vote of confidence for the government, one wonders what some politicians, especially with the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party, have in their heads.
The saddest matter was the bullying and false claims about migrants, nothing more than storms in teacups.
Those politicians and parties who only think beyond their noses are doomed to hitting a wall.
They are heading towards such a fate because they believe that Islamophobic and other racist soundbites will help them to have and retain power and influence.
After launching an aggressive campaign and burning up a lot of money in themunicipal elections of June, the PS came in fourth place despite some polls, which showed it to come out on top.
The result was a huge disappointment and the party gasped for air.
If there is a crack line in the PS, their disappointing result in the municipal election is an indication that the public is growing weary of their broken-record scapegoat-migrant approach.
