Perussuomalaiset Archives - Page 122 of 161

Finland’s tolerance for cultural diversity is being tested to the limit these days

Posted on April 7, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Finland’s tolerance to Otherness is being tested to the limit these days. If we look at it from a political perspective, the knee-jerk reaction is clear. Denying that there isn’t a connection between the stellar rise of an anti-EU, anti-immigration and anti-Islam party and our ever-growing cultural diversity is understanding a little or erroneously the issue at hand.

It would be wishful thinking to believe that the Perussuomalaiset (PS), which won 39 seats in the 2011 election versus 5 in 2007, that there is a return to the past when the political landscape was dominated by three major parties: National Coalition Party, Social Democrats and Center Party.

Returning back to the political good old days without Timo Soini’s PS is just as unrealistic as stopping Finland’s ever-growing cultural diversity. Intolerance and cultural diversity are here to stay and will set the pace of things to come in Finland in the future.

As far as intolerance is concerned and the rise of parties like the PS appear to throw sand in the gears of cultural diversity, the good news is that history and our sheer numbers will have the final say. We will one day have the power to tell our own narrative as Finns.

Professor Jeremy Gould spoke to Otava Opisto Folk High School students and staff on Friday.

Professor Jeremy Gould of Jyväskylä University gave us the big picture in a recent talk he held near Mikkeli. According to him, there is very little narrative coming from immigrants and visible minorities concerning our ever-growing cultural diversity.

“Nearly everything written about ethnic relations in Finland is by researchers with no personal experience of racism,” said Gould. “Obviously, this limits the depth and relevance of their insights.”

It would be too simplistic to blame only the PS for Finland’s ever-growing intolerance. Such a social ill has been fueled as well by the silence of other political parties, the media and general public.

Not only is silence and lack of leadership a problem, associations that claim to further the rights of immigrants and visible minorities are just as guilty as those who decide to remain silent to the threat of intolerance.

If we accept white Finns, or visible minorities who speak like Uncle Toms, to champion for our rights and to our narrative, we have nobody else to blame but ourselves for our failures.

The big challenge in this century for Finland is deconstructing its twentieth century national identity. In its place there will be a more inclusive Finland where there is a lot of room for everyone to embrace this country as their home.

Maaseudun Tulevaisuus: Soini sees himself forming government after the 2015 elections

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Migrant Tales

What are we to think and believe about Timo Soini’s opinion piece on Maaseudun Tulevaisuus, where he claims that the next government formed after the 2015 parliamentary elections will comprise of three major parties? Certainly Soini sees his party emerging as the victor and Finland’s next prime minister.

Read Maaseudun Tulevaisuus news story on Timo Soini here.

It’s clear that if Soini’s Perussuomalaiset (PS) party wins the 2015 elections, the National Coalition Party will not be in government due to that party’s big differences with the PS concerning the European Union and the euro.

Moreover, Soini has said in the past that he could never work with neither the Greens nor Swedish People’s Party.

The interesting question we should ask is why is Soini creating waves about elections that are two years off? Since the PS leader doesn’t have anything significant to show to voters after being two years in the opposition, he is apparently forced to play for high stakes: It’s government in 2015 or bust.

Even if opinion polls have shown the PS to be breathing down the necks of the National Coalition Party and Social Democrats, it’s still a question mark how well they will do when elections arrive. After the historic victory in April 2011, the PS’ showing in the presidential and municipal election was a clear disappointment for the party.

It’s a good matter that Finnish voters have not fallen for the PS’ rhetoric and populism. Two years in the opposition have not helped the party’s credibility, which has been undermined by near-constant scandals, bursts of racism, ethnic agitation sentences, and anti-EU rhetoric without solutions.

If we are honest about the PS, voters have little idea what the party would actually do if they led the next government.

If the the PS is able match its historic result of 2011 and if any party, especially the Social Democrats, went to bed with Soini, it would be a kiss of political death.

Certainly that day would be one of the darkest days especially for immigrants, visible minorities, Swedish speakers and cultural diversity in general if the PS is able to match its 2011 result in 2014 EuroMP and 2015 parliamentary elections.

While such a threat may remain, some analysts believe that despite Soini’s popularity, most Finnish voters would not trust him as prime minister.

They like to see the PS as a sort of a show and a thorn in the traditional parties’ side.

Finland’s response to extremism should be more openess and democracy

Posted on April 4, 2013September 10, 2023 by Migrant Tales

An editorial on Thursday’s Helsingin Sanomat comments about Anjem Choudary’s visit to Finland last week. It points out correctly that hate speech should be condemned irrespective who makes it. Living in a culturally diverse society requires more mutual acceptance, not less acceptance and respect.

Some of the controversial statements made by the cleric was that it was only a question of time when the flag of Islam would be waving on our parliament building. It was an interesting coincidence that on the same day of Choudary’s visit, Image magazine exposed a Perussuomalaiset (PS) councilman from Vaasa who gave a clock with Adolf Hitler and swastikas to a neo-Nazi club in that city.

Which of the two are the greatest danger to our democracy? Choudary or the Vaasa councilman who appears fascinated by a dictator who dragged Europe into World War 2, unleashing mass war that claimed an estimated 60 million lives?

How seriously should we take Choudary’s threats? If we react to them violently by censoring them, or as PS youth leader Simon Elo suggested that the cleric should be banned from coming to Finland, we’d do a favor to their causes.

It’s unfortunate that too many editorials like the one in today’s Helsingin Sanomat sideline the big picture: Why does radical Islam exist? If we look at the West’s colonial history with the Arab World as well as in other parts of the world, there are a lot of arguments and grievances to justify radicalism. Even so, our democratic system offers us the opportunity to challenge and correct those past and present injustices.

Just like radical Islam, we have to look at the causes of far right and right-wing populist anti-immigration sentiment in Europe these days. On this front, we have a lot of historical and sociological information on their causes. One of the most frightening of examples is the rise and fall of Nazi Germany.

We were horrified by 9/11 but some of us were even more alarmed by our reaction to it. Former President George W. Bush’s so-called war on terror fueled greater radicalization among Muslims. If anything, the attack on the WTC Twin Towers showed the United States as a perpetrator of violence and not as a victim of terrorism.

Our reaction to terrorism and radicalism should be the total opposite to Bush’s. Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg showed the way after Norway was mourning 77 victims murdered in cold blood by Anders Breivik. Contrary to Washington’s reaction after 9/11, the Norwegian prime minister said that his country’s response to the mass killings will be more openness and more democracy.

We must be on our guard against those politicians and groups that demand less democracy during these difficult times, when far right anti-immigration radicalism is raising its head throughout Europe. What is especially worrying is that such opinions are being echoed by the mainstream media as well.

The repackaging and marketing of hate by anti-immigration parties and groups in Finland

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales has shown on a number of blogs how neo-fascist groups like Golden Dawn of Greece, Hungary’s Jobbik and our own Finnish version of the latter, the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party, are examples of the growing intolerance in Europe. Any sensible immigrant, visible minority and European should be worried by the situation.

In Finland, our collective denial of racism is so deeply rooted that even in our history we deny being allies of Nazi Germany during the Continuation War (1941-44). Officially, we were a co-belligerent of Nazi Germany, but not minor allies like Hungary, Bulgaria or Romania.

Instead of going around in circles with such nuances that aim to hide the real fact, that we were at war with Nazi Germany against the former Soviet Union, we must find the courage to look at the issue closer at hand so we can free ourselves from the chains of the past.

Why were we allies of Nazi Germany? The explanation that you’ll hear boils down to revenge for the Winter War (1939-40) and our deep hatred of our old foe and master, the Russians. We went to bed with Germany in 1941 because Finland believed the Nazis would win the war.

What kind of world would we live in today if Nazi Germany would have triumphed in Europe? For one, this writer would not be here today because part of my family was Jewish.

We can already see how extremist groups like Suomen Sisu and parties like the PS have changed their tactics on how they attack immigrants and our ever-growing cultural diversity. Many don’t have to make inflammatory racist statements as before because they have today much more power than before.

A good example is a Suomen Sisu statement, where the far right anti-immigration association, which holds pretty much the same ideas about cultural diversity as the Ku Klux Klan and the U.S. American Nazi Party, calls for immigrants to integrate by learning Finnish, getting an education and a job.

Should we believe them? Certainly not. It’s only a red herring to hide their hate agenda, which is now being repackaged and marketed for a wider audience.

Two videos below of skinhead, neo-Nazi and anti-immigration groups throws back a disturbing question at our faces: Would this be possible on a much greater scale in Finland?

Certainly there’s such a danger and potential for our intolerance to escalate into further violence. The PS and the silence of other political parties are the best indication of our xenophobia and our opposition to cultural diversity. Certainly there’s also the euro crisis that brought voters to the the PS, but how do you explain its April 2011 election victory, when it received 19.1% of the vote (39 seats in parliament) versus 4.05% (5 seats) in 2007?

Such a major shift in the political paradigm in Finland doesn’t happen by chance. It comes from somewhere and buds at the right time.

Matters will unfortunately get worse in Finland before they improve.

The only way that immigrants, visible minorities and Finns can challenge the menace that Finland faces today is by reacting to it.

Complacency and silence to intolerance is waving a white flag at those who seek to not only defeat you but change our society permanently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLUxuq-E9yA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&v=IuOVgx3Zh6E&NR=1

Bachmannstein: or, The Modern Icarus

Posted on April 2, 2013 by admin

A Finnish friend recently asked me why I chose to take an American angle with my inaugural post here on Migrant Tales, “Of Birds and Feathers: The PS, the Sweden Democrats, and Their American Bedfellows. What could political trends in America tell us what we don’t already know about the phenomenon of the PS and their counterparts across the European Union?

I submit that American (and foreign) political goings-on, especially in recent times, can help anti-racists and immigrants defeat forces such as the PS with the right amount of cunning and patience. And being an American who has studied the far-right in my home country since my teenaged years, I know a lot more about the PS’ Yankee friends there than Finland-centric contributors at Tales. Not that the other contributors aren’t knowledgeable themselves in their own right. But if you want to understand people like the PS, you may have to look at outside of Finland to succeed in doing so.

As you may recall, at the start of Obama’s presidency, the United States went through a wave of right-wing populism engineered by a collective movement called the Tea Party. With its uncompromising rhetoric, xenophobic hostility, and politics of resentment, it was something of an inspiration to the far-right parties that sprung up in Europe at roughly the same time. I have often heard European populists, sometimes during personal interactions, compare themselves to the Tea Party. And vice versa. Which may be problematic soon, the Tea Party is not doing so well.

Despite the Tea Party’s projected successes in the 2010 mid-term elections – big enough that they inspired left-wingers to write excessively pessimistic op-eds like, say, this – those successes were somewhat limited in the final result, and nothing has gone right for the Tea Party since. Obama was re-elected. Gay marriage, something the Tea Party staunchly opposes, is poised to become legal, or at least more likely, in the U.S. The constantly changing racial makeup of the American electorate threatens the relevance of the Tea Party’s “angry white male” power base.

Fox News and Glenn Beck, the Tea Party’s main cheerleaders in the media, have destroyed their mainstream credibility and, in Beck’s case, have migrated to the outermost fringes of American political discourse. Most Tea Party candidates were either defeated or unseated in 2012. Sarah Palin is about to disappear as a national figure, as is Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), whose disastrous presidential campaign and subsequent public appearances have exposed the extent of her avarice. The doom and gloom among the American left has proven premature in the case of the Tea Party.

If we chart the decline of the Tea Party with the decline of European populists, a pattern emerges. Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician who in many ways inspired Islamophobia to take root in parliaments across the continent, saw his party lose half its seats in the Dutch parliamentary elections last year, not long before the Tea Party defeats of 2012. Since April 2011, the PS has consistently performed poorly in elections despite its high poll numbers. Remember how the PS’ polls went as high as 19% before the municipal elections, yet they only got 12% of the vote – half of both what the pollsters predicted and the 2011 election result?

If the Tea Party and European populists have anything in common besides rhetoric, it’s the fact that they are banal and self-destructive. I could compare both to the Greek mythological figure Icarus, who got nifty artificial wings but was too arrogant not to fly too close to the sun. The Tea Party had a chance to set the U.S. agenda after the 2010 elections, but they were so self-absorbed and uncompromising and narrow-minded that they squandered it. The PS is in the same position, and may (and likely will) go out the same way. Same with the Sweden Democrats, which is in a more precarious position than it lets on.

So if you are an immigrant or ideological opponent of the PS, I don’t think you should fret quite yet. The PS looks powerful now, but like the Tea Party before it, it does not truly appreciate the democratic process and thus cannot adequately function within it – the party’s poor election returns are partly a testament to that. The worst enemies the PS has are not the immigrants or the leftists, but the egos of its own members.

It’s two-and-a-half years until the next election. Two-and-a-half looooooooong years. Long enough for the PS to make a mistake that it cannot sweep under the rug.

Could Finland and the Nordic region see Golden Dawn-like fanatics in the future?

Posted on April 2, 2013 by Migrant Tales

The news from Greece is getting more distressing as Golden Dawn neo-Nazi thugs continue to terrorize sensible Greeks, immigrants and other minorities with the collusion of the police. An investigative report by The Guardian exposes how bad things are in Greece at present and why matters will get far worse. Could we see something similar happening in Finland and the Nordic rgion?

A policeman wearing a Golden Dawn t-shirt under his uniform. See original post here.

Writes the Independent of London: “Actual fascists in actual black shirts are actually marching around Athens waving swastikas and burning torches, and maiming and murdering ethnic minorities, and world governments appear frighteningly relaxed about it as long as the Greek people continue to pay off the debts of the European elite.”

For a person who saw military dictatorships come and go in Latin America in the 1970s like I did, the ever-worsening situation in Greece is a cause for concern.

The fact that up to 50% of the police is some districts of Greece voted for Golden Dawn, shows how volatile and dangerous the situation is in that country. Taking into account that many Greeks have lost confidence in their rulers and democracy, a blow to the credibility of the police is another straw on the camel’s fragile back.

Migrant Tales wrote in September about the round up of 16,836 foreign nationals were brought for questioning during the first month that Xenios Zeus was instigated. Xenios Zeus means “god of hospitality” in Greek.

Here’s one recent case of those many beatings taking place in Greece daily by Golden Dawn thugs and the police on I can’t relax in Greece blog.

Just like the Jews were persecuted by the Nazis after Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, the same is going in many parts of Europe and especially in Greece. Apart from Jews, refugees, immigrants, gays and Muslims are the new scapegoats.

While we erroneously believe in scapegoating the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society because they have no political and economic power, we will end up the losers. How? By watering down and putting into cold storage our civil rights to deal first with imagined menace x and then menace y.

The political culture in the Nordic region is different from Greece. Even so, it doesn’t mean that we couldn’t have our own Nikolaos Michaloliakos running amuck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4AXJx3IzdY

While some far-right politicians may not speak like Golden Dawn leader Nikolaos Michaloliakos, they hold the same thoughts on immigration, minorities and anything too foreign or non-European for their tastes.

Without a doubt, one of Michaloliakos’ political soul mates in a Nordic context is Pia Kjærsgaard of the Danish People’s Party (DDP). Other ones include the Suomen Sisu faction of the Perussuomalaiset (PS): Jussi Halla-aho, James Hirvisaari, Olli Immonen, Juho Eerola and other hardliners, who are openly neo-fascists or flirt with neo-fascism.

Taking into account the election successes of anti-immigration parties in the Nordic region before, there was one person that stopped them on their heels for the time being: Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 victims on his crusade to save Europe from Muslims.

With the economic crisis worsening and the election victories of anti-immigration parties in the Nordic region before 22/7, parties like the DDP, Progress Party of Norway, Sweden Democrats and the PS would have been riding the crest of a wave of popularity.

Without Breivik, they would today reveal their same racist arrogance in the same way as the Golden Dawn does in Greece.

The attack by neo-Nazis of a book event on the far right in Jyväskylä in January, the rise in hate crimes in 2011, police indifference to racism, the political rise of the Perussuomalaiset in the 2011 election are just a few signs that matters are heating up in this part of Europe as well.

It’s official: The PS doesn’t mind racists, Nazis and neo-Nazis among its ranks

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Migrant Tales

A Perussuomalaiset (PS) party statement, giving Vaasa councilman Risto Helin a warning about a Hitler clock he gave to a neo-Nazi club in Vaasa, is a good example of political deception. If you read the statement carefully, it says that the party doesn’t mind racists, Nazis and neo-Nazis among its ranks as long as you do this dirty stuff before becoming a party member.

Read full statement here.

The PS states: “According to Vaasa’s Perussuomalaiset, racism, Nazism or neo-Nazism have not place in the values of the Perussuomalaiset. The association has given a warning to Helin for what he did two years ago.”

The PS are quite an incredible group. The fact that they become the third-largest party in parliament after the 2011 election from relative obscurity, reveals that they too are capable of Superman feats. Some of their members like Helin become “in a single bound” model politicians and examples to the rest of the community.

The PS could stand for PerusSuperman. Look up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s PerusSuperman!

Risto Helin: The PS says it’s ok to hang around neo-Nazi groups

Posted on March 30, 2013 by Migrant Tales

As Migrant Tales correctly predicted on Thursday, Vaasa Perussuomalaiset (PS) councilman Risto Helin got away with a warning from the party for giving a clock with Hitler to an anti-immigration neo-Nazi group, reports tabloid Ilta-Sanomat.

The PS sends a loud and clear message with this decision: It’s ok to hang around neo-Nazi groups and even have the same racist ideas as them concerning Jews, undesirable minorities, real and imagined enemies of the Third Reich.

What the Nazis did was ok.

Vaasa city councilman Risto Helin posing with his neo-Nazi “blood and honor” t-shirt during the municipal elections. Source: Facebook.

Helin was quoted as saying that he was happy with the decision from the party leadership.

“I have given as a present said clock but it happened way before I was a candidate for councilman,” he said. “You can give Nazi clocks to Nazis and to Stalinists Stalin clocks.”

What kind of message does the PS send when it approves members who openly support neo-Nazi groups? The answer is simple: We don’t have an issue with Nazism and it’s perfectly fine to give Nazi clocks by PS members to neo-Nazi clubs.

Considering the terror and mass-murder that Hitler’s Germany brought on Europe between 1933 and 1945, the decision by the PS to do nothing to Helin is like a slap in the face to the victims that perished under Nazism.

What separates our counterjihadists from jihadists?

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Migrant Tales

Anjem Choudary took part in a talk in Helsinki Thursday about freeing Muslim hostages. The Muslim cleric has said a lot of controversial things in the past like Islam will overrun Europe and that Prime Minister David Cameron and U.S. President Barack Obama should be killed. He’s even predicted that a “tsunami” of Muslim immigrants will sweep Europe.

While the national media gave ample space to the cleric’s visit, Finland’s notorious Islamphobists like Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP James Hirvisaari, Olli Immonen and Juho Eerola were eerily quiet and didn’t invest a word on their Facebook pages to Anjem Choudary.

Even PS MP Jussi Halla-aho, who was sentenced for ethnic agitation, was silent about the visit.

The only Islamophobic association that tried without luck to stir up some controversy was the Finnish Defense League. Two posts with a few “likes” and the usual nutcase comments was all that they could muster.

It’s easy to figure out why Finland’s counterjihadists are so quiet: Asking the authorities to ban Anjem Choundary from attending the talk would be synonymous to shooting themselves in the foot. If they [PS] can spread hate speech and intolerance why can’t others?

Fortunately we have strong democratic institutions in Europe that are under siege not by people like Anjem Choundary necessarily but by counterjihadist groups like Suomen Sisu, Suomalaisuuden liitto and the PS, which has given a platform to people to spread intolerance.

Who is the biggest terrorist to have struck recent times at the heart of our European democratic societies? His name is Anders Breivik, a white Norwegian who admired the Islamophobia of the English Defense League, the PS and mentioned Halla-aho in his manifesto before murdering 77 innocent victims.

If we ask Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg what our reaction to intolerance should be after 22/7, he said that the country had become “more tolerant, [and] more careful not to judge people” by ethnic origin.

What unites our counterjihadists from jihadists?

Intolerance.

Finland’s and the PS’ three mentors: See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil

Posted on March 29, 2013 by Migrant Tales

The latest scandal in the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party concerning a councilmen who gave a clock with Hitler and swastikas to a neo-Nazi club in Vaasa, is another worrying example of how low we have stooped as a nation since the April 2011 election. Contrary to what some populist anti-immigration politicians may claim, we are not being threatened from abroad but from our own backyard.

See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil are quite popular in Finland these days. Source: Flickr.

Even if Finns speak proudly about the courage they showed during the Winter War (1939-40) when they were vastly outnumbered against the Red Army, some show remarkable cowardice when our society comes under attack from social ills like racism, prejudice and intolerance in general. Finland is not being led by a marshall like Carl Mannerheim, but by three monkey generals: See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil.

Hear No Evil is not only a good buddy of the PS, it’s a close friend of Finland’s political parties, the media and general public. Whenever anyone plays down racism, most likely that person or group has had a chat with Hear No Evil.

The one that should know better but prefers to be quiet is See No Evil. Instead of bringing out our good side and courage, Speak No Evil humbles us into opportunistic silence. It’s a bit like your executioner who chops your head off. Since your good manners constrain you from speaking your mind, the only thing you can say after they behead you is, “Thank you, thank you!”

The third monkey, See No Evil, is probably the leader of the pack. This character brings out our cowardly behavior.

See No Evil was most likely responsible for Finland’s political earthquake in April 2011, when the PS won its historic election victory.

There were many factors that brought the PS to power. Two important watersheds,however, were Prime Minister Jyrki Katainenn infamous “debating immigrant issues in this country didn’t make you a racist,” and Social Democratic Party (SDP) Economy Minister Jutta Urpilainen’s maassa maan tatalla (In Rome do as the Romans do) statement.

Since the National Coalition Party and the Social Democrats feared the rise of the PS would rob them of votes, they decided to flirt with their populism instead.

That was a huge mistake that Finland is paying high price today.

Reading about Hitler and swastika clocks in Vaasa is a part of that political blowback.