Tag: Perussuomalaiset

Suomen Kuvalehti.fi: Terrorismintutkija: Breivik selittää tekonsa vasta-jihadilla – tästä on kyse

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Comment:  The analysis on Finnish newsmagazine Suomen Kuvalehti gives us a gruesome picture of the new face of fascism if you will in the twenty-first century. It is the same ideology that drove Anders Behring Breivik  on his crusade to “save Europe” by killing 76 innocent victims. It is the same ideology used today by the far right and right-wing populist groups.

According to researcher Toby Archer of the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, the new ideology on found on the blogsphere is called the “Counter-Jihad,” which is not anti-Semitic nor does it associate itself with neo-Nazis. It is a sort of modern-day fascism without the heavy ideological baggage of its predecessor.

The new face of fascism is, in my opinion, the same beast but has aged eighty years from the 1930s.

Archer believes that Timo Soini’s Veikko Vennamo’s former Rural Party roots in the PS have weakened   since Halla-aho joined the party.

The researcher says that PS has become part of the international Counter-Jihad movement, of which the party’s rhetoric towards Muslims and immigration are very similar. 

You can read Archer’s full report here.

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Juho Salminen

Kun uhrit on laskettu, alkaa syiden pohdinta. Millaisella ajatusmaailmalla Anders Behring Breivik perusteli tekonsa itselleen ja yrittää tehdä niin myös muille? Breivik julkaisi perjantaina noin 1500-sivuisen manifestin, jossa hän muun muassa kuvailee valmistautumista terrori-iskuun. Hän kertoo vastustavansa islamia ja marxismia. Terrorismintutkija Toby Archer sanoo, että Breivik ei ole vain hullu. Hän on selvästi mielenvikainen, mutta hänellä on myös poliittinen viesti.

guardian.co.uk: The news coverage of the Norway mass-killings was fact-free conjecture

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Comment: Here is an interesting analysis on what happened in Norway and how some of us “experts” jumped the gun by pointing the finger at al-Qaida.

“Countless security experts queued up to tell me so,” Charlie Brooker writes. “This has all the hallmarks of an al-Qaida attack, they said. Watching at home, my gut feeling was that that didn’t add up. Why Norway? And why was it aimed so specifically at one political party? But hey, they’re the experts. They’re sitting there behind a caption with the word ‘EXPERT’ on it.”

What is most worrying according to the writer (and we have already noticed it on Migrant Tales) is a disturbing “but” appearing after we condemn the mass killings by Anders Behring Breivik. In other words, what this lunatic did was awful, but…

“These “but” commenters then go on to discuss immigration, often with reference to a shaky Muslim-baiting story they’ve half-remembered from the press,” continues Brooker. “So despite this being a story about an anti-Muslim extremist killing Norwegians who weren’t Muslim, they’ve managed to find a way to keep the finger of blame pointing at the Muslims, thereby following a narrative lead they’ve been fed for years, from the overall depiction of terrorism as an almost exclusively Islamic pursuit, outlined by ‘security experts’ quick to see al-Qaida tentacles everywhere, to the fabricated tabloid fairytales about ‘Muslim-only loos’ or local councils ‘banning Christmas.'”

Another disturbing matter are politicians like Jussi Halla-aho of the right-wing populist Perussuomalaiset (PS) party, whose writings appear to have inspired a deranged mass killer. Brevik mentioned how he agreed about Halla-aho’s views published in 2006 on “the cooperation of the left-wing and Islamists.”  

See Ossi Mäntylahti’s blog (in Finnish).

The PS appears to be the party that represented Brevik’s views the best in Finland.

Thank you JusticeDemon for the heads up!

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Charlie Brooker

I went to bed in a terrible world and awoke inside a worse one. At the time of writing, details of the Norwegian atrocity are still emerging, although the identity of the perpetrator has now been confirmed and his motivation seems increasingly clear: a far-right anti-Muslim extremist who despised the ruling party.

Read whole story.

HS.fi: Hommaforum suljettiin Norja-keskustelun takia

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Comment:  A popular website visited by one of Finland’s most notorious anti-immigration crowd was closed Sunday until 10 pm due to the tragedy that hit Norway, reports HS.fi.

When one reads the views of people who speak against immigration and cultural diversity in Finland like Hommaforum administrator Matias Turkkila or a Persussuomalaiset party MPs like James Hirvisaari, the gist of their message must be read between the lines of the text.

“We wanted to calm debate,” Turkkila was quoted ast saying on HS.fi. “I am certain that it won’t calm down (the debate) but we wanted to make it clear that we in no way accept what happened in Norway.”

One of the matters that Anders Behring Breivik’s killing rampage exposed in the raw in other Nordic countries like Finland was the relationship it had with the hate speech commonly found on Hommaforum and blog entries by PS MP’s like Jussi Halla-aho and his followers. 

While Turkkila showed the needed respect that any sensible person should show in the face of such a tragedy that took place in Norway, it doesn’t speak too highly of the bloggers that visit Hommaforum. This link will give you some idea (in Finnish) what bloggers at Hommaforum think about what happened in Norway.

JusticeDemon, who gave the heads up of this story, wrote: “Suddenly they are concerned at how foreigners feel, but this begs the question as to why this particular discussion forum should identify so closely with this particular incident.”

Hirvisaari, who is Halla-aho’s faithful follower in parliament and who has become infamous for his hate speech on his blogs, reveals what he really thinks about what happened in Norway: “With a sound immigration policy we could cool tensions and prevent many problems like such atrocities (that took place in Norway).”

Even though Hirvisaari condemns terrorism and acts of violence, he somehow wants to blame immigration policy when, in fact, he should look the other way at what he and others write provocatively about immigrants and Muslims. 

The political fallout of what happened in Norway has impacted Finland and especially the loud and offensively vocal anti-immigration crowd. Norway has torn their arguments wide open and put them on the stand where I am certain Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto would be a chief piece of evidence. In it he mentions how he agrees with Halla-aho’s writings in 2006.

See Ossi Mäntylahti blog on Uusi Suomi.

The monster that Halla-aho and his followers have sown has bit them hard.

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Maahanmuuttokriittinen keskustelupalsta Hommaforum suljettiin sunnuntaina. Sulkemisen syynä oli Norjan terrori-iskuista käyty kiivas keskustelu. Hommaforum aukeaa sunnuntai-iltana kymmeneltä.

Read whole story.

Norway is a watershed for Finland and the Nordic region

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 By Enrique Tessieri

The horrific carnage that took place in Norway on Friday at the hands of a far-right extremist is a watershed for our societies. Even if the mass killer, Anders Behring Breivik, is in police custody his outlandish deeds continue to bully some of us into denial. 

Former President Martti Ahtisaari showed the kind of leadership we should not only expect of our politicians, but of ourselves as well. He was quoted in Mikkeli daily Länsi-Savo as saying that our silence has fuelled the rise of far-right groups and their language of hatred towards minorities.

“I always remember what Martin Luther King said when (we) wondered why blacks got their (civil) rights so late and why did inequality last for so long,” continued Ahtisaari. “King said:  The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”

Silence is a powerful force. Even military regimes that commit grave human rights violations rely on silence and enforce it through censorship.

The role of silence, or the lack of leadership against intolerance, has been seen throughout history.  Ahtisaari said that the silence of the majority was the faithful servant of undemocratic regimes in the Balkans and Nazi Germany.

“There is no place in the Nordic democratic system for extremist groups or inciting hatred against (other) nationalities or that prejudice is acceptable in any form, even in our speech” said Ahtisaari. “Nordic countries are the most tolerant in the world, therefore this development (growth of intolerance) is foreign to us.”

A fertile breeding ground for this type of hatred and intolerance has been websites like Homma, associations like Suomen Sisu and political parties like the Perussuomalaiset, which gained 19.1% of the votes in the April election.

An anonymous blogger published (in Finnish) on Uusi Suomi the reaction of some Homma bloggers on what happened in Norway.Denial is lightly putting it. According to them, the horrific events in Norway had nothing to do with our culture, religion, anti-immigration stances and racism. It was the work of a single psychopath that was totally disconnected from our values and the hatred so commonly seen in our societies today.

Norway is a watershed against our silence and those hate groups that have grown politically in Finland in recent years.

They are a menace to our values and society. Like Breivik showed, when you leave hatred and racism out of the cage it can bite you back in ways you never imagined.

The PS and their culture of fear in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

If there is one matter that I would wish stopped in Finland it is the culture of fear being spread by the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party. We can all remember prior to the April election how some members of the right-wing populist party portrayed immigrants and refugees as gang rapists and social welfare shoppers as soon as they crossed the border into Finland.

The fear-mongering by the PS appears to have no end. It changes constantly according to the political situation. Yesterday immigrants were their favorite target and today it is the financially embattled European Union.

I was quite astonished when I read a letter to the editor published this week in Mikkeli daily Länsi-Savo. A prominent PS politician sounded the alarm bells claiming an apocalyptic end to Finnish culture and language if the EU ever became a federation.

He compared our fate as a “small nation” to other Fenno-Ugric tribes of Russia that numbered a few thousand at the most.

Certainly it is a sad matter that our Fenno-Ugric relatives were devoured by a bigger and more powerful Russian culture but to compare their fate to a nation of over five million is ludicrous.

If Finnish culture is so vulnerable as the PS politician wanted to show to outside encroachment, why didn’t it disappear when Finns formed part of the Swedish and Russian Empire for about 700 years?

What will be the next fear-mongering stunt by the PS?

That we are being invaded by Martians?

 

Nelonen: Hakkaraisten tulipalojen koettelema saha hoipertelee konkurssin partaalla

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Comment: This time Perussuomalaiset (PS) party MP Teuvo Hakkarainen is not being carried out drunk by two doormen from a bar or for his racist gaffes, well almost. At the end of the video clip he does make an attempt to  do his infamous imitation of a Muslim Minaret call to prayer.

This time it was his family’s sawmill business that is on life support.

One of the scoops that the Nelonen TV newsclip revealed was that Hakkarainen’s family business has received during the last decade 835,808 euros in subsidies, of which 284,292 euros came from the EU. On his personal website, some of the promises he vows to make is to get Finland out of the European Union.

Hakkarainen’s sawmill was reported previously of having got half a million euros in subsidies from the EU.

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Perussuomalaisten kansanedustajan Teuvo Hakkaraisen perheyritys on rämpinyt vakavissa talousvaikeuksissa kymmenen vuoden ajan. Lähes konkurssikypsälle sahalle on pumpattu yhteiskunnan tukia vuosikymmenen aikana yli 800 000 euroa.

Read whole story.

Iltalehti: Perussuomalainen eduskunta-avustaja levitti törkeää vitsiä

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Comment: Here is another example of how the PS cannot put a lid on their own racism. Tabloid Iltalehti reports that PS MP Juho Eerola’s aide, Ulla Pyysalo, posted a racist joke about Green Party MP Jani Toivola, who is black and gay.

Here is MP Toivola’s reaction to the “joke” on the Green Pary website. 

These types of “jokes” by people close to Eerola shouldn’t come as a suprise since the MP from Kotka belongs to the far right wing of the PS. If Eerola were Hungarian, Swedish or Danish, he’d find his ideological home in parties like Jobbik, Sweden Democrats or the Danish People’s Party.

A member of the Nazi-spirited Suomen Sisu, Eerola has praised in the past Benito Mussolini’s economic model. If he is really that lured by a corporativist model, he should take some time to study Juan Domingo Perón’s economic model for Argentina during the 1940s and 1950s.

Eerola, like his PS anti-immigration cronies, are responsible for inciting some Finns to adopt even more hardline and unrealistic positions when it comes to immigration.

Pyysalo regrets what she said on Ilatlehti: “It was dumb, I didn’t want to insult Toivola personally.” 

The tabloid asked if she considers herself a racist. “I don’t know. It depends how you define racism.”

How you define racism? What about a racist joke on Facebook?! The excuses by the PS on how to make their racism more acceptable takes stranger forms by the day. 

When contacted, Toivola expressed dismay at what Eerola’s aide had written on Facebook. 

One of the matters that far-right PS MPs like Eerola are trying to do in Finland is make something unacceptable like racism acceptable. At the forefront of this shift in values is nobody else but the PS.

Are you surprised?

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Linda Pelkonen

Kansanedustaja Juho Eerolan (ps) avustaja Ulla Pyysalo julkaisi rasistisen vitsin Facebook-profiilissaan sunnuntaina. Kirjoituksessa vitsailtiin Jani Toivolan ihonväristä ja seksuaalisesta suuntautumisesta.

Read whole story.

Iltalehti: Kansanedustaja törttöili kännissä – poistettiin ravintolasta

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Comment: Does it need any? Here is the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party MP, Teuvo Hakkarainen, whose racists gaffes  made him infamous in spring. On the campaign trail, Hakkarainen claimed he was a teetotaler but that was evidently a lie. According to the Iltalehti clip, the PS MP is being carried out by two doormen at a bar because he was too drunk to stand on his feet.

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Kansaneduataja Teuvo Hakkarainen sammui pöytään ja hänet jouduttiin poistamaan Mierontie -ravintolasta kahden miehen voimin.

See video clip.

Karjalainen: Kansa tahtoo muuta kuin perussuomalaiset

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Comment:  Joensuu-based Karjalainen is a daily that has done a lot of good work to promote good relations between Finns and immigrants living their community. This is commendable from a daily which serves a city that became infamous for its racism from the 1990s. Back then, some local inhabitants wouldn’t even accept that their local basketball team, Kataja, had black basketball players on its starting lineup. 

In the opinion-piece below, Karjalainen plays down the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party’s 19.1% victory in the April election.  It writes that despite the election victory, Timo Soini’s party is a minority when it comes to severing development aid. The majority of the Finns that voted for the traditional parties disagree with the PS line. 

I personally would hope that the Finnish media in the future would write more serious opinion pieces in order to understand what happened on and after April 17. They, if any, played a crucial role in the rise of the PS in Finland. 

Some important questions they should ask is if the April election result is a permanent change in Finnish politics or a sign of the times: financial crisis in Europe mixed with weak leadership? Will parties like the PS deflate when the financial crisis subsides? What would happen if Soini were prime minister? How would matters change? Would one term in government force the PS to implode?

Even if the PS have become the biggest party according to a recent poll, very little has changed.

Probably what has changed are people’s dread that Finland will return to the 1930s in a 2010s context.

Do you agree?

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Ulkoministeriön tuore tutkimus suomalaisten suhtautumisesta kehitysapuun on hyvin linjassa eduskuntavaalien tuloksen kanssa ja osoittaa poliittisessa demagogiassa tällä hetkellä vallitsevan harhan.

Read whole stor.

Is there racism in Finland (Part 2)?

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By Enrique Tessieri

The first time I wrote an entry on this question on Migrant Tales was in May 2008. Back then, a thread by Mikko claimed that racism wasn’t even on the top-five list of problems in Finland. Is racism a serious social problem that needs to be addressed vigorously? Where do we begin?

We can state pretty safely today that racism is not only one of the top five problems in Finland, but an ever-growing one that must be addressed.

Surprisingly, the main source of this problem haven’t been the most extremist anti-immigration wing of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party, but that of the mainstream parties such as Kokoomus, Social Democrats and others.  Even if there are outspoken politicians in these parties who speak out against racism, they are a minority and too quiet on this front.

If politicians do not condemn hate crimes, speak out for tolerance and acceptance, they will with their silence support this social menace threatening Finland today.

The appointment in April of PS MP Jussi Halla-aho as chair of the administration committee, whose responsibilities also include immigration policy, is a sad example of how Finnish politicians continue to vacillate and confront racism in our society.

Those who defend the appointment of Halla-aho believe that it will help let off steam from the most extremist elements of the PS. I believe it will let off steam, but in the wrong direction.

It was in 2008 when Finland was up in arms about the founding of the Finnish Islamic Party, which awoke some of the worst fears among some Finns. Contrarily, Halla-aho’s appointment tells us that we prize Islamophobia and bigotry but give a big thumbs down to other cultures and religions if they want to take part in our democratic process.

The rise of the PS in the April election and that of Nazi-spirited groups within Timo Soini’s party that are members of  Suomen Sisu, increased hate crimes never mind the adverse climate against immigrants and minorities, are clear indications that the strategy against right-wing populism has been a huge failure.

If I had to advise other countries about how to confront the rise of right-wing populist parties that are anti-EU, anti-immigration and anti-Islam, I would show them Finland as a sad example of what not to do.

All of this boils down to one crucial factor: Dear little leadership from mainstream political parties confronting right-wing populism and the social menace of racism.

As long as Finland is cursed by weak leadership, its future as a prosperous nation will be in jeopardy.