Tag: Olli Immonen

Finland and the PS: The face of racism becomes uglier as it ages

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The Perussuomalaiset (PS)* in general and specifically MPs like Juho Eerola, Olli Immonen and Teuvo Hakkarainen are, together with MEP Jussi Halla-aho, examples of the worst kind of extremism and racism we can find in Finland today in the halls of our parliament. They are permitted to spread their racist and bigoted views because they have white Finnish privilege. 

Disagree? Ask yourself what would happen if a Muslim spoke of white Finns in the same way as these politicians do about Muslims.

The Charlie Hebdo attack exposed a lot of things about us. Apart from our shock and grieving, it also unmasked our hypocrisy.

In Finland it exposed once again the opportunism of some PS politicians but also their extremist ideas and declaration of war against those migrants and Finns they loathe, like Muslims.

Racism in its most extreme forms has a goal: the annihilation of whole groups through genocide. We saw this when Europeans colonized the Americas, Africa and other regions like Australia. With the help of pseudo scientific “theories” like eugenics, Europeans were able to justify genocide or the displacement, exploitation and death of millions of non-Europeans.

What are we to make out of the following statements below by PS politicians before and after the Charlie Hebdo attack?

  • Eerola, who admitted being attracted to Benito Mussolini’s fascism and economic policies, states in a letter to the editor below that Finland can still be saved from Islam;
  • Immonen wants immigration from Muslim countries to end to Finland and Europe. Those Muslims that live here should be given incentives to return back to the countries they came from, according to him;
  • MEP Halla-aho states on his blog that the world view of the majority of Muslims is no different from those that carried out the Charlie Hebdo attack;
  • Hakkarainen claimed in 2013 that Europe is being invaded by millions of Muslims in a Trojan horse.

Näyttökuva 2015-1-18 kello 10.03.00

This tweet by Saska Saarikoski of Helsingin Sanomat says it all about Halla-aho and his cronies. “Halla-aho is worried about terrorism. Let’s not forget that the worst terrorist act [Anders Breivik on July 22, 2011] committed in the Nordic region was by a person who admired Halla-aho.”

 

How are we supposed to read these types of statements by members of Finland’s third-largest party in parliament? Should we shrug them off as populism or something more diabolical?

What do these politicians aim to gain from their extremist statements? More votes? Maybe. Media attention? Maybe. Keep Finland Christian and white? Absolutely.

Näyttökuva 2015-1-18 kello 6.46.48

Read full story here.

 

What can you say about a politician and a party whose aim is to socially exclude whole groups of people with the help of those high walls of racism?

Probably one matter that we can conclude is that Finland is still in deep denial. It hasn’t yet awoken to the perils of intolerance and doesn’t have a clue why spreading such hatred is hazardous to our society.

Since too many in this country don’t see intolerance as a serious enough social ill, it requires a lot more leadership from Finns and migrants of all backgrounds. It would be naive to believe that the ugly face of racism will leave quietly and peacefully.

Time has the ability to expose our stupidity and ignorance. How do you think future scholars and common people of our culturally diverse society will interpret the statements of politicians that aim to keep Finland white at all cost? Will the faces of their grandchildren and great grandchildren turn red with shame?

This is exactly what happened to the worst racists in the US Civil Rights Movement (1955-68).

Most USAmericans want to forget what was done and said during slavery and the Jim Crow era.

The same fate awaits these politicians.

 

* 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. 

PS MP of Finland ready to patrol streets and take law into his own hands

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Remember what people said when the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* won their historic election victory in 2011? ”Nothing is going to happen you’ll see…they’ll soon implode like the Rural Party did in the 1970s…” some said playing down the whole matter. After almost four years, the PS continues to polarize society by instilling fear and fueling racism but has now opened a new terrifying chapter in its strategy to gain power: mob rule. 

PS MP Tom Packalén, who falsely claimed on a blog entry that only migrant youth gangs in East Helsinki attack white Finns, has unleashed the darkest and most racist side of Finland.  Not only are MP Pakclaén’s claims false, they have been disproven by the police.

And let’s not forget the publication, Uusi Suomi, where MP Packalén’s blog entry and many others by the PS have been published. They are just as responsible as the PS for spreading racism in Finland.

In this latest bout of xenophobia in Finland, it’s the silence of the political parties and the media that doesn’t surprises us once again.

Making racist claims and victimizing migrants and minorities has become such a “normal” activity in this country that not even the PS leadership cares what some of their members say or will do.

Valkoinen valta-2_edited-1

The aim of parties like the PS and far-right associations like Suomen Sisu is to keep Finland white like the graffiti above that reads “white power.”

 

Suomen Sisu is a far-right association chaired by PS MP Olli Immonen whose aim is to keep Finland white. In a statement, Immonen warned that “if officials don’t have the will or resources to protect the security of its citizens,” Suomen Sisu will take matters into its hands.

Yes, no translation mistake since what you read is correct. A PS MP, a lawmaker, of a far-right association is ready to patrol Helsinki’s streets against real or imagined youth gangs.

While the PS has always shown its ugly and hostile side to migrants and minorities, the suggestion by one of its MPs to patrol streets with others like neo-Nazi Kansallinen Vastarinta and other PS members, which MP Packalén’s blog entry has encouraged, is totally unacceptable in a democracy such as Finland and should be condemned.

The blog entry by MP Packalén shows the desperate state of the party, which needs a big boost to come close to their 2011 election victory since the last three elections have been disappointing.

Finland needs the PS, the silence of other parties and a media that is blind because it is white like a hole in the head. The lack of leadership that we are witnessing today in the face of such racism and hostility is shameful.

Far-right and nationalistic parties in Finland, as is Europe, have become a grave threat to democracy and to the right of minorities to live in peace. It’s clear that matters will get worse as these parties, like the PS, get more power since the scapegoating won’t stop but get worse. Such intolerance has the danger of destroying our society.

We must do everything to stop the menace that is placing Finland in harm’s way and that danger is the PS and our shameful silence.

Leadership is needed more than ever now.

* 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.Thank you Pia Grochowski for the heads up! 

MP Olli Immonen reinforces that the PS is a xenophobic and racist party

Posted on by Migrant Tales

After the EU election victories of the National Front of France, UKIP and the Danish People’s Party, Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Olli Immonen lashes out against Muslims on a blog entry, claiming that Europe is being overtaken by Muslims. 

This latest attack by Immonen against Muslims, migrants and non-white Finns, is a good example that the PS is a xenophobic party with deep far-right roots that loathes cultural diversity. Immonen’s stance is no different from the ethnic war drums that politicians like Marine Le Pen’s National Front and Geert Wilders’ Party of Freedom are beating.

Näyttökuva 2014-6-12 kello 10.43.28

While Immonen’s racist rants don’t surprise us, the silence of the PS, who claims not to be a racist party, the media and politicians is equally worrying.

There is very little value in what Immonen writes except that it exposes that racism is the same ogre in Finland as elsewhere in Europe.

* 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. 

Two anti-immigration politicians “doing their hate thing” in Finland: One former, one present PS MP

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Has anyone asked what the election in 2011 of 39 MPs of the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS) party has done to poison the political atmosphere for immigrants and visible minorities in Finland? To show how much in denial we still are in a country, take a closer look at some former and present PS MPs.

Where’s the denial?

In the fact that the media and public sees individuals – not the PS never mind its good-cop leader Timo Soini – responsible for the party’s racist and Islamophobic remarks.

One former member of the PS, MP James Hirvisaari, who is now a member of the far-right Muutos 2011 party, and one present member, MP Olli Immonen, are making headlines again.

MP Hirvisaari, who has already been sentenced for ethnic agitation, writes on his blog that the state prosecutor is carrying out a preliminary investigation on charging the MP for the same crime.

Hirvisaari, who commented on a blog entry by PS politician Kai Haavisto, wrote that rape was a “national pastime” of countries like South Africa. The Muutos 2011 MP wrote as well that the genetic makeup of certain ethnic groups, like black Africans, encouraged a culture of rape.

Hirvisaari made the comment on a blog written by Haavisto where he suggested that those groups that are prone to commit rape should be chemically castrated before being allowed to live in Finland.

Kuvankaappaus 2014-1-10 kello 10.10.24

Not only does PS MP Immonen’s blog entry is close to 3,000 words long! The length and the topic show clearly the MP’s hatred for Muslims and cultural diversity.

MP Immonen, who is the chairman of the far-right association Suomen Sisu, which discourages white Finns from marrying foreigners, claims in his latest blog entry that gays, green-left groups, and the Finnish Lutheran Church are helping Islam to spread in Finland.

Immonen sent in December a written question to parliament that Finland should start classifying people according to their ethnic background.

As in previous cases, the PS and Soini haven’t said a word about Immonen’s racist views. The PS leader said that Immonen’s suggestion to classify people according to their ethnic background “doesn’t concern him.”

One matter that baffles me about the PS is that they are usually ready to label whole groups as rapists and criminals, but when some Finns look at the anti-immigration party, they are seen individuals.

This reveals, I believe, that deep state of denial that Finland is in concerning intolerance.

 

Finland is a highly racialized country

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Racialization, or ethnicization, is a sociological concept that ascribes racial or ethnic identities to a relationship. In simple terms it is the way that a dominant group ascribes an identity on minorities in order to dominate them. In Finland this is so common that our nationality is mentioned on our drivers license even if we’re Finnish citizens. 

Image1-42_edited-2(4)

On the third line of my drivers license after name and surname, there’s my date of birth and place of birth. In my case it’s ARG, or Argentina.

I was born in Argentina but grew up in California and lived in cities like London and Helsinki when I was a minor. Why aren’t these reflected on my drivers license?

This practice smells of Helena Eronen’s suggestion that immigrants should start wearing sleeve badges and what the Nazis did when they obliged Jews to sew the Star of David on their clothing.

The question is why do we have to have this information on our drivers license?

Does the information give the police who stop you more information about your background? Does it encourage ethnic profiling and make the difference whether you’ll get off with a warning or a ticket?

Why is it anyone’s business to know where I’m from? What about if I show my drivers license to a shop keeper as ID? Why should he or she know where I was born?

The Finnish state and its employees like the police, who are paid to serve us, appear to be obsessed by race and blood as well as ethnicity. Since this information appears to be crucial to them, why not include sexual preference? Why not classify Finns according to the region they were born or which ethnic group they belong to?

Instead of encouraging inclusiveness, these types of practices are one of many ways that the Finnish state continues to remind you that you aren’t an equal member of this society.

 

 

 

 

How does the PS plan to keep Finland “white?”

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Even if an anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) is trying its hardest to look as mainstream as possible with the Euro MP and parliamentary elections of 2014 and 2015 approaching, respectively, a crucial question is being left out of the picture: How do they plan keep Finland white and undermine our ever-growing cultural diversity?

Since we’ve known perfectly well for years the answer to that question, the reason why we haven’t taken it onboard is because we haven’t connected the dots.

If you are a visible migrant or minority in Finland, connecting those dots is fairly easy.

Kuvankaappaus 2013-12-18 kello 7.31.46

PS MP Olli Immonen as seen by Ville Ranta. The anti-immigration and anti-Islam PS MPwishes  Muslims, Jews, blacks and other immigrants and visible minorities for Christmas. He promises to behave especially good in 2014 so he can wish for boxcars from Santa Claus.

The connection between the PS’ big picture of what it thinks of multicultural Finland was revealed recently by PS MP Olli Immonen, who sent a written question to parliament requiring that people in Finland should be registered by ethnic origin. Certainly the question that begs an answer is why do we need such a register in the first place.

The answer is obvious: It would be an effective way to maintain alive the perception that white ethnic Finns are superior and privileged in this society while labeling the other as “them.”

Parties like the PS understand perfectly well that they are walking in a minefield when they flirt with racism. Their shameful political opportunism and greed for power enables them to make pacts with the devil.

Even if some may argue correctly that the PS doesn’t have a master ethnic plan to keep Finland white, all the variables are in place to create one instantly whenever the time is ripe.  

In order to clean the stains of their racist rhetoric, the PS has substituted different terms and arguments for original ones: Muslims for Jews; our white way of life is under threat; undermine cultural diversity by criticizing immigration policy; globalization-internationalization for International Jewry.

Even if the concepts used to defend white Finland are different from the past, the aim is the same: To hinder and undermine as much possible Finland’s ever-growing cultural diversity.

Like far-right parties throughout Europe, the PS feel the same urgency to defend white Finland from mutlicultural Finland.  The only matter that doesn’t make some of the members of the PS as extreme as Immonen, Halla-aho and others, is that they may accept some ethnic diversity. Those that they accept must be white from the inside even if they are non-white from the outside.

Despite the threatening clouds rumbling over minorities in this country due to an outright hostile party to them like the PS, the question of questions that isn’t being asked by journalists of anti-immigration parties and politicians is if repatriation is their solution to our ever-growing cultural diversity.

Some of the PS have already ansered that question clearly. Some of them want to deport from Finland convicted immigrants, Romany beggars, undocumented migrants and those that haven’t been granted asylum in our country.

Fortunately there are some healthy signs that we are  waking up to the menace of intolerance being spread wholesale by parties like the PS.

This is a positive sign but a lot more work must be still done to turn back the beachhead that landed in Finland in April 2011.

 

How Kirkko & kaupunki sees far-right anti-immigration PS MP playing with fire

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Ville Ranta’s cartoon below published on Helsinki Lutheran Church weekly, Kirkko & kaupunki, of Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Olli Immonen, is a good example of how Finland is waking up to racism and to a party that preaches intolerance. Immonen is in the same anti-immigration league as MP Jussi Halla-aho, Juho Eerola and many others who have no other agenda except to spread racism in this country. 

Hate forums and racism exist wherever we can find “the silence of our friends,” as Martin Luther King Jr pointed out.

Ranta’s cartoon not only is sobering but offers hope but that more people are speaking out against intolerance with a clear voice.

It’s not surprising that for far-right white anti-immigration MP like Immonen, who wants to register people by ethnic origin and being president of an association like Suomen Sisu that discourages Finns from marrying foreigners, that he sees nothing wrong with his racist views.

The problem with racism is that those that spread it aren’t immediately affected by it in the same manner as their targeted victims.

Kuvankaappaus 2013-12-18 kello 7.31.46

A cartoon of PS MP Olli Immonen. His Christmas wish is for Muslims, Jews, blacks and other immigrants and visible minorities. He promises to behave especially good in 2014 so he can wish for boxcars so he can transport these people to concentration camps.

Ranta published a similar cartoon in December 2011 like the one below that had a number of prominent PS politicians wishing the country a “white Christmas.

KirkkoKaupunki

Timo Soini’s silence in the face of PS MP Olli Immonen’s proposal reveals that he has always been the wolf in sheep’s clothing

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Timo Soini, the chairman of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party, was quoted as saying on YLE in English that PS MP Olli Immonen’s written question to parliament, that Finland should start classifying people according to ethnic background, doesn’t concern him. 

What do you think such a statement by the head of an an anti-immigration party reveals? What does it say say about the present state of this country about promoting mutual acceptance?

It shows all along that Soini is not only an opportunist who would sell out Finland to amass more political clout and power, but the wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Jussi Halla-aho, James Hirvisaari, Olli Immonen and others of the PS aren’t the so-called bad guys, Soini is by a mile.

Kuvankaappaus 2013-12-12 kello 23.53.00

Read full story (in Finnish) here.

While such an admission by Soini shouldn’t surprise us, it shows that Finland is still in deep denial and ignorance about racism. It shows that too many politicians in Finland would care less about immigrants and minorities.

Why are we still in the present stage where we deny racism as opposed to challenge it as we should? The answer is clear: We deny racism as a real problem in our society because intolerance gives some status and power over other groups.

We also deny it because the behavior of some shames us.

Immonen’s proposal is racist, but Soini’s silence  sends a dangerous message to the wrong people.

 

PS MP wants Finland to classify people according to ethnic background

Posted on by Migrant Tales

As the European Parliament elections near in May 2014, the attacks against immigrants and visible minorities in Finland by the Perussuomalaiset (PS) are getting stronger and more relentless. The latest one is by none other then PS MP Olli Immonen, who gave parliament Wednesday a written question that Finland should start registering people according to their ethnic background.

PS’ chairman Timo Soini was silent about Immonen’s plans when approached by the Finnish media.

Soini continues to deny that there are racists in the populist party even if some of its members like MP Jussi Halla-aho have been sentenced for ethnic agitation.

Kuvankaappaus 2013-12-12 kello 7.25.46

Read full story (in Finnish) here.

Even if we speak in Finland of a society that prizes education and Nordic values, MP’s like Immonen show that the education they received at school and at home on racism was too little and deficient.

The term “race” is generally used in the US while “ethnic group” is used in Europe to mean the same thing. In the US, blacks consider themselves “a race” while some Hispanics refer to themselves as la raza, or “the race.”

According to Immonen, who is chairman of the ultra-nationalist anti-immigration Suomen Sisu association, ethnic classification of people in Finland is necessary due to its ever-growing cultural and ethnic diversity.

I personally believe it’s none of Immonen’s or the general public’s right to pry and classify me into a group they think I should belong to.

Immonen said that Finland could copy the same ethnic-classification system used in Britain. Some ethnic groups that people could be classified into are Finnish Finns, Finnish Swedes, Saame, Roma, other European, African, Asian, diverse ethnic background and other ethnic group, according to the PS MP.

Finland does classify people according to their nationality, mother tongue and place of birth.

Taking into account that race or ethnicity is a social construct to begin with, classifying people into groups is difficult especially in an age when we move and travel with greater ease from country to country and where we adopt complex multicultural identities.

To show how difficult it would be to classify people along ethnic lines, the system we use presently in Finland is fraught with problems. Nationality, mother or father tongue, place of birth don’t shed light on a person’s ethnic identity since that it a personal choice.

US American sociologist Yehudi Webster at the California State University, Los Angeles, believes that classifying people by race actually worsens racial strife.

“It is not ‘race’ but a practice of racial classification that bedevils the society,” he writes.

Writes the American Anthropological Society:

“In the United States both scholars and the general public have been conditioned to viewing human races as natural and separate divisions within the human species based on visible physical differences. With the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in this century, however, it has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups.”

Countries like England and the United States, which classify people into ethnic groups, have a questionable history since both practiced slavery and had oversea colonies. Ethnic classification played a crucial role in enabling whites in these countries to exploit other groups by classifying members of their population  into superior (whites) and inferiors (other groups).  

 

 

The story behind “Finland is a racist country” is in the comments

Posted on by Migrant Tales

There were quite strong reactions among some Finns and immigrants to Maryan Abdulkarim’s interview on Helsingin Sanomat. Those who strongly objected to the article, appear to want to deny Abdulkarim’s right to express herself on a touchy subject like racism. 

It’s ironic, but those who want to deny Abdulkarim her right to speak out are the very people who spread hate speech and claim there’s mass censorship in this country.

You can read Abdulkarim’s full interview in English here.

White Finns, which include some white immigrants as well, control and jealously guard the high ground over the debate in the media whether there is racism in Finland or not. Some cry murder when a black woman, who is a Finn born in Somalia and is a Muslim on top of it, speaks out against racism.

One of these is from the anti-immigration camp, Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Olli Immonen, who is president of the ultra-nationalist and and anti-immigration  Suomen Sisu association. He wrote on his Facebook wall that as “a native-born Finnish citizen,” he is ashamed that the country’s largest daily published the story on Abdulkarim a day before independence day celebrations.

Note how he stresses “native-born Finnish citizen.” With such a lowly punch, Immonen tries to undermine Abdulkarim’s right to voice her narrative by trying to show that she’s not a so-called “real” Finn like him. Since she’s not a real Finn, her arguments aren’t as valid as his.

Immonen takes another punch at Abdulkarim on his Facebook wall: “The article forgets to mention the view that while over 50% of Somalis [in Finland] are unemployed and are overrepresented in crime statistics of a certain sort, they are still treated in our country in a very friendly manner and offered generous social assistance, municipal housing as well as a host of other benefits from taxpayers’ pockets.”

I get it. Abdulkarim’s arguments aren’t supposed to amount to much because she’s not a real Finn and because she belongs to a group where there is a high crime and unemployment rate, according to Immonen.

The PS MP recently blamed immigrants for Finland’s poor Pisa result.

Immonen claimed on Facebook: ”The long-term work of immigration and multicultural fanatics to make Finland more ‘diverse’ has bore fruit. Immigrants played a signifiant role in [the worse] Pisa results even if consensus politicians and officials claim the contrary. The differences in reading, science and math between immigrants and Finns in the Pisa test are mind-boggling.”

Kuvankaappaus 2013-12-8 kello 10.19.36

Anti-immigration politicians like Immonen, who enjoy bashing immigrants who can’t defend themselves because they aren’t white and don’t have the same political and ethnic clout as him, must be stunned and devastated by Abdulkarim.

Weren’t all those Somali women supposed to be exploited and docile servants of men?

Who should we be ashamed of? Immonen, who makes up Islamophobic tales and spreads them, which in turn fuel prejudice and social exclusion, or Abdulkarim who has the courage to speak out?

Immonen and the Finns he represents aren’t the only problem. There are white immigrants, and those who think they are white, in this country who feel the same way  about blacks, Muslims and other visible minorities.

Just because they are immigrants doesn’t mean they automatically have empathy for those who are victims of racism and discrimination. Just like Immonen capitalizes on the anti-Islam message, some immigrants seek to climb the social ladder by bashing other immigrants.

Shameful but true.

Abdulkarim’s interview on Helsingin Sanomat is one matter but the most revealing aspect of her story are the reactions to it on social media.

They confirm without a doubt that what she says is true.