Everything that puts Europe in harm’s way today is in some cases more challenging to Finland: geopolitical uncertainty in Russia ranks high on the list as does populism, anti-immigration sentiment, near-flat economic growth, high unemployment, rising poverty and nationalism.
It’s clear that when you have enough of the latter, people are going to get pretty edgy and angry. But since I’m an optimist that believes in Finland and the Finns, I’m hopeful that things won’t get too much out of hand politically and force us to commit the same mistakes of the past.
A man sets fire to an Islamic center in Copenhagen, Denmark, when it was full of people but the police don’t consider what happened a terrorist act, according to theCopenhagen Post. Fortunately there were no victims.
Muslim leaders in Denmark like Bashy Quraishy are extremely concerned about what happened. They are also asking why the attack isn’t treated as a terrorist act.
“Is it not strange that any minor incident where a Muslim is involved is automatically described by the politicians and media as terrorism…” he wrote on Facebook. “But sabotage, violence and arson against an Islamic centre is just an act of a mentally disturbed man.”
Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Olli Immonen is at it again after his xenophobic Facebook posting about “the nightmare of multiculturalism.” This time he is taking a swipe at asylum seekers. He uses terms like “uncontrolled” and “avalanche” to promote his brand of xenophobic and far right hostility not only against asylum seekers, but against Finland’s ever-growing culturally and ethnically diverse community.
Yes, right, Immonen is the PS MP who posed in June with members of the neo-Nazi Kansallinen vastarintaliike (SVL).
Immonen is also chairman of Suomen Sisu, a Finnish white supremacist association. In a Finnish context, the association is ideologically similar to the Ku Klux Klan and American Nazi Party.
Is it a surprise that Immonen is now pointing his xenophobic arsenal at asylum seekers? How could you not be surprised if his whole political career is based on racism, fascist and neo-Nazi ideology?
Or should we be equally surprised why a government party like the PS still hasn’t sacked Immonen from the party?
The longer the PS MP stays in the populist party the more incriminating will the evidence be that it has links to fascists and neo-Nazi groups like the SVL.
For those of us who have been anti-racism activists for many years, Tuesday, July 28, offered us something we hadn’t seen before in Finland: A spontaneous 15,000-20.000-strong demonstration against racism and fascism in Helsinki. Was that very important demonstration a Rosa Parks moment and an important watershed to make Finland a more inclusive country?
Was it a wake-up call that we have a racism and fascism problem in Finland and want to express our revulsion of such social ills?
“The reason why the I have a dream demonstration took place [of July 28] was because we Finns aren’t racists [and fascists],” a teacher told Migrant Tales.
Being a member of the migrant or visible minority community in Finland has been challenging to say the least during the past decade.
A party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, which rose from near-obscurity to become the third-biggest party in the 2011 parliamentary elections, successfully exploited xenophobia and Islamophobia.
Just like Islamophobia before Anders Breivik killed 77 people on 22/7, the PS too thought that it was unstoppable. It’s motto was a simple one: When the party’s popularity falls in the polls just add more xenophobic and Islamophobic juice in the campaign message to lure voters.
If the likes of some PS politicians like Jussi Halla-aho, Olli Immonen, Juho Eerola, James Hirvisaari, Teuvo Hakkarainen and a long list of others were to be believed, migrants and minorities in this country were being victimized by such politicians that we are a threat, social-welfare bums, criminals and rapists.
The headline in Iltalehti, a tabloid that has for years been responsible for spreading racism in Finland, writes on the front page that Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Olli Immonen has fled the country in the face of the hostile comments he made against cultural diversity.
Running away and hiding because of what he wrote shows once again that anti-immigration parties like the PS are inflicted with bravado and cowardice. They cannot be taken seriously.
Tuesday’s mass demonstration in Helsinki for an open and multicutlrual Finland was a clear rejection against Immonen’s declaration of war against what he called the “nightmare of multiculturalism,”
This week we heard Anders Breivik’s closing statements in his defense for killing 77 innocent victims. In his final tirade of how multiculturalism is responsible for fuelling the Islamization of Europe, the mass killer showed no remorse.
“The attacks on July 22 were preventive attacks to defend the indigenous Norwegian people,” he said. “I therefore demand to be acquitted.”
In a recent column, Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party MP Olli Immonen writes at the same time as the Breivik trial is ongoing: “…it is clear that current developments [concerning Islamization] will lead to a situation where our Western way of life in Finland and elsewhere in Europe will be threatened. The confrontation between Islamic and Western culture is one of the megatrends of this century.”
Shivers went up my spine when I read both quotes. While they convey the same message, there is a difference: Breivik went on a killing rampage while Immonen didn’t.
The Norwegian mass killer uses Islamization to justify what he did; Immonen uses the same arguments but to attract media attention and, crucial to his political career, future votes. One is being tried in a courtroom for mass murder while the other is in parliament spreading Breivik’s Counter-Jihadist views.
In many respects, the debate revolving around whether Breivik is insane or not when he carried out the killings speaks volumes about how we want to continue seeing ourselves as a people and society irrespective of 22/7.
The question is an exceptionally tough one: Are Breivik’s thoughts “sane” but what he did “insane?” In other words, is it ok to spread hatred, racism and prejudice of other groups as long as you don’t take the law in your hands and start killing people?
If Breivik were Immonen and Immonen, Breivik, the verdict would be clear: Breivik would be “sane” and Immonen “insane.”
No person has the right to rain on your dreams. Martin Luther King Jr.
As we distance ourselves from the horror of July 22, 2011, when a Anders Breivik killed 77 innocent lives, the more our collective memory begins to fail us. Islamophobia, xenophobia and anti-cultural diversity sentiment have strengthened their grip in the Nordic region after 22/7.
The political landscape is a rude reminder that we have started to forget: the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* of Finland are in government for the first time and the Islamophobic Danish People’s Party won the elections in June.
That´s not all. The Progress Party (FrP) of Norway, in which Breivik was a brief member, is today in government for the first time after its founding in 1973.
Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism will be updated separately. To see other examples of opinionated journalism in Finland about cultural diversity, please go to this link.
What else could have been said? While this story is pretty clear and to the point about a discrimination case of a bouncer who claimed there was a quota of how many non-white customers could enter the restaurant, it’s unfortunate there’s no editorial or opinion-piece condemning what happened never mind giving a solution on how to challenge this type of blatant discrimination. Finnish journalism, like YLE, needs more teeth to question the complacent journalism we too often see in this country especially when it comes to writing about our ever-growing cultural diversity. The latter was reinforced by Michael Haltzel, who wrote the following about Perussuomalaiset (PS)* chairman and foreign minister, Timo Soini, whenever members of his party make racist and outrageous statements. Haltzel wrote: “The domestic press corps seems content to question him once, receive an evasive answer, and leave it at that.”
* The Finnish name of the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The English-language 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.
Helsinki substitute councilman, Olli Sademies, the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* Helsinki substitute councilman who wrote that African men should be sterilized in Finland after having three children, now states that his so-called Muslim spray repellent is for rapists.
How do you know if the person attacking you is a Muslim?
What do you do with the spray if the attacker is a white Finn?
Could it be used against Jews?
Is there a market for such a repellent?
All of Sademies’ political shenanigans is not only a signal that his campaign for councilman has begun but a prank by the PS to slowly turn Finland into an Islamphobic country like Denmark today.
In states like South Carolina, where Dylann Roof mass murdered nine people on June 18 at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and after an ongoing debate the Confederate flag was taken down from senate house grounds today. Instead of starting a race war which Roof wanted to ignite, his killings awoke us to the oppression and suffering that the Confederate flag continues to represent.
This is not an essay about the Roof killings or the Confederate flag per se, but an opportunity to ask what are today the symbols of racism, hatred and white Finnish supremacy.
I wouldn’t be surprised if in the future an activist like Bree Newsome below, who took the Confederate flag down last month, would do the same thing to the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* flag.
The PS has not only victimized, ostracized and attacked migrants in a hostile manner in its climb to claw power, it has become for the majority of migrants and minorities in Finland a symbol of oppression just like the Confederate flag is to blacks in the United States.
Disagree? A recent example of this hostility is Olli Sademies, a PS substitute councilman, who wrote that Africans should be forcibly sterilized.
The PS may want to play down this incident but we won’t forget. We cannot forget because we love our children and grandchildren and want them to live in a country that is inclusive and respects them.
Bree Newsome takes down the Confederate flag on June 27. Read full story here.
