Tag: Perussuomalaiset

By Enrique Tessieri

The Age of Chivalry died in the 2008 municipal election in Finland with the advent of “total words.” The ongoing war of words bring near memories of the former German concept of “total war,” which meant attacking undefended shipping, helpless civilians and breaking all the rules of wars prior to WW I.

The ongoing immigration debate in Europe and Finland bares close similarity to “total war” with one big difference. Those waging it usually hide their identity.

Some do not, however. One of these was Anders Behring Breivik, who went on the rampage in Norway killing 77 people intoxicated by total words and steroids.

All those that use words to wage total war against immigrants and minorities naturally distanced themselves from the mass killings in Norway. Even Perussuomalaiset (PS) party MP Jussi Halla-aho, whom Breivik cites in his 1,500-page diatribe, played down the impact of his words on Counter-Jihad websites like the Gates of Vienna and Scripta.

One matter that the Nuremberg Trials taught us when the members of the former Nazi regime were brought to trial for their crimes was that anything can be played down, even unimaginable acts of human cruelty.

It is difficult to say what causes greater alarm in a post-22/7 Europe: hate speech or playing down its impact.

It is remarkable that people who claim to have so much knowledge about their perceived threats of multiculturalism and Islam on Europe know so little about the impact of the message their words carry.  Any decent writer or journalist worth his or her weight can tell you that words are a powerful weapon. They can even move mountains.

But a consensus is emerging in our country about condemning the war of total words and drafting a law similar to the Geneva Conventions, which establish the standards of international law for the humanitarian treatment of the victims of war.

In light of what happened in Norway, a similar set of legal standards are urgently needed without hindering our inalienable right to freedom of speech.

It is commendable that understandably the Social Democratic Party is calling for Halla-aho’s head as chairman of the administration committee, whose responsibilities include immigration policy. Whether Halla-aho gets the boot or not is important but that more of us are becoming outraged by their views.

The ultimate danger of the war of total words is that it will linger on and pick up speed. That is why we must challenge it and those who cannot win by the rules of common decency.

That is why they wage a war of total words on our societies and attack its most defenseless members.

Comment: As Migrant Tales correctly predicted in a blog entry Saturday, one of the political casualties of the PS after Norway is none other than Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Jussi Halla-aho. Social Democratic Party  secretary Mikael Junger was quoted as saying on tabloid Ilta-Sanomat that he wants Halla-aho to resign as chairman of the administration committee, whose responsibilities include among other matters immigration policy.

Halla-aho’s position as chairman of the administration committee has become untenable after Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik cited him and other anti-Islam Counter-Jihadists in his 1,500-odd page manifesto.

Junger said that the SDP will discuss Halla-aho’s role on the administration committee in mid-August after the summer break.  “It would be good before that that Halla-aho considers his (future) role (on the committee),” he said.

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Sdp aikoo kyseenalaistaa perussuomalaisten kansanedustaja Jussi Halla-Ahon aseman eduskunnan hallintovaliokunnan puheenjohtajana. Asiasta kertoo Ilta-Sanomat.

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By Enrique Tessieri

It is clear that matters are no longer the same for the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party after the horrific events that shook Norway and the world on July 22. Migrant Tales  predicted a couple of days after the mass killings that they would cast a critical light on far right and right-wing populist parties like the PS, which have been riding the crest of the popularity wave thanks to their anti-immigrant and anti-Islam rhetoric.

That popularity that Soini saw no end to just over a week ago has now subsided and entered turbulent political waters.

An interesting article on the Norway killings on New York Times shows pretty well the culpability of Counter-Jihadists like Jussi Halla-aho, even if they want to distance themselves at all costs from the mass killings in Norway.

Writes the New York Times: Marc Sageman, a former C.I.A. officer and a consultant on terrorism, said it would be unfair to attribute Mr. Breivik’s violence to the writers who helped shape his world view. But at the same time, he said the counterjihad writers do argue that the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam “is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged. Well, they and their writings are the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.”

It is clear that if there is big political fallout from Norway to the PS, it will be to Soini’s decision to take under his wing Counter-Jihadists like Halla-aho and his followers. More people are asking why mass killer Anders Brehing Breivik’s 1,500-odd page manifesto cited Halla-aho together with other anti-Islam hardliners in Europe and the United States. What is the ideological connection and why was the PS Breivik’s ideological party of choice in Finland?

The political damage not only threatens to hit PS’ popularity and splinter the party in two, it could spell the end for Halla-aho as the chairman of the Administration Committee, whose responsibilities include among other matters immigration policy. Halla-aho’s situation as head of that committee will become untenable sooner or later for the PS and other political parties.

That is why Soini is waiting with manifest unease the next opinion polls and hoping that the political storm in post-22/7 will subside.

The shelving of Halla-aho and his follower to some quiet unnoticed corner of parliament may be easier said than done. Soini must be weighing what options will cost him and the party the least.

The PS leader gave his views on a recent talk show about how dangerous hate speech was. He said that at the end the same hate that one preaches destroys the person who spreads it.

Was he speaking in the back of his greatest fears of the  PS?

Comment:  Of all the hardliners in the Suomen Sisu wing of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party, MP James Hirvisaari is the spookiest when it comes to his views on immigrants and Islam. Last December he wrote that “it was time to clean the political playing field” and “to sentence national traitors by military trial.”  

Hirvisaari’s latest blog entry on Uusi Suomi, “Norway’s bloodbath,” gets noticed by Finland’s largest daily, Helsingin Sanomat.

After speaking of the horrors of terrorism and the tragedy that hit Norway, Hirvisaari shows his far-right colors by stating that “a sensible immigration policy could have lowered tensions and helped avoid many problems as well as the atrocity (in Norway). And we still can. In Finland as well.”

In a thread under his blog entry, Hirvisaari gives us more of his far-right sympathies: “I really am not surprised that something like this could happen in Norway. In the last years at least ALL (100%) of the tens of [people] accused of violent rapes have been done by immigrants/foreigners that have come from outside Europe.”

The HS.fi editorial writes that Hirvisaari’s and Breivik’s reasoning are similar. In Hirvisaari’s world, Breivik was a victim of poor immigration policy and failed multiculturalism and therefore something snapped inside of him.

The PS MP wrote that we should once and for all admit that multiculturalism has failed.

In the usual style of the PS, he does not give any solutions how he plans to “unfail” multiculturalism.  But we do not need to know because Hirvisaari, like Jussi Halla-aho, is a Counter-Jihadist who believes Europe and Finland will be taken over by Muslims.

Hirvisaari is also a strong believer of “ethnic hygiene.” He thinks it is a bad matter for Finns to marry foreigners.

Hirvisaari is by profession a Finnish State Railways train engineer. 

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Perussuomalaisten kansanedustaja James Hirvisaari löytää syitä Norjan verilöylyyn ja tappaja Anders Breivikin toimintaan. Hirvisaari kirjoittaa ajatuksistaan Uuden Suomen Puheenvuoro-palstalla 24. 7. aloittamassaan keskustelussa.

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Comment: The mass killings in Norway, which took the lives of 76 people, puts politicians like Perussuomalaiset (PS) party head, Timo Soini, in between a rock and a hard place. Even if he does not admit it, Soini knows that he has got a heavy problem with the Jussi Halla-aho faction of the party.

The problem is the following: If he denounces too strongly those that are strongly against immigrants and Muslims he will end up hurting his party’s popularity and in the worse case cause it to splinter. On the other hand, if Soini doesn’t denounce racism within his own ranks, he will be criticized for bowing to this social ill that has lifted its head big time in the Nordic Region. He and the PS will look especially awkward if something close to what happened in Norway occurs in Finland.

In the short interview on the Päivän-kasvo talk show, Soini was defiant. Without pointing the finger at anyone in his party but denouncing violence, it did not bother him in the least that Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik got his inspiration from PS MP Halla-aho’s writings on the Gates of Vienna, a Counter-Jihad website.

Soini’s answers were, in my opinion, full of political opportunism at its best sealed with denial, even if some claim that his party is the problem for spreading racism via hate websites like Hommaforum and Scripta. The low point of the interview was when he accused other parties of trying to score political points with what happened in Norway.

The PS leader said that supposedly those critics against immigration in his party were not spreading hate speech from their websites.

Here is something that I picked up from Halla-aho’s Facebook wall on Sunday, July 24: “Many Finns who didn’t reach an orgasm when it wasn’t a Hommaforum (follower) that did not burn the pizzeria in Tampere, are now demanding payback time with interest.  For you information I do not take back anything that I’ve written and do not take any responsiblity for what Breivik did; I plan to continue along the same path because bad immigration is bad and multiculturalism sucks ass irrespective of what Breivik did.”

Halla-aho writes on Facebook the following day:  “Reporters have called me insistently and their only question was how I felt that Breivik has quoted me (in his 1,518-page manifesto). It doesn’t feel like anything (about being quoted). Instead it feels awful that nearly one hundred innocent people have been murdered…”

Soini has made a big mistake by allowing anti-immigration and racism to attract voters to the PS. He already started this strategy in the 2003 parliamentary election when Tony Halme was elected.

As anti-immigration and anti-Islam continue to give the PS its political modus operandi as we saw in the last election, it could well become his political Waterloo since racism is never a humble servant but cantankerous and extremely violent.

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Ylen Päivän kasvo -ohjelmassa vieraillut perussuomalaisten puheenjohtaja Timo Soini sanoo, että Suomen poliitikot ovat käyttäneet hyväkseen Norjan murhenäytelmää yhdistämällä kaikki perussuomalaiset äärimielipiteisiin ja vihapuheeseen. Soini haluaa tehdä selväksi, että hän ei hyväksy väkivaltaa, ja katsoo, että viha on tuhoava voima.

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