Helena Eronen announced Monday on Uusi Suomi her resignation as Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP James Hirvisaari’s aide. Eronen suggested in a controversial blog entry in April that foreigners should start wearing sleeve badges to help police hunt criminals.
Even if Eronen claimed that her controversial blog entry was satire and not intended to insult anyone, it did just the opposite.
There is some unconfirmed speculation that one factor behind Eronen’s resignation was an affair with Hirvisaari, which the latter’s wife wasn’t too happy about.
Hirvisaari got suspended for five months by the PS parliamentary group for not sacking his aide.
Even if Eronen isn’t a member of the PS, she used to advertise on Uusi Suomi as belonging to Muutos 2011, a far-right anti-immigration party.
While the PS has not said a word about Eronen’s resignation, it’s clear that the party is releived because she was a liability.
While the choice of hiring aides by some PS MPs raises some questions, Ulla Pyysalo is another aide that is still working at parliament after her name appeared on a Suomen Kansalinen Vastarinta (SKV) membership list. SKV is a neo-Nazi association.
Some Exceptional Finns with so-called immigrant backgrounds are Husein Muhammed, Nasima Razmyar, Arman Alizad, Tino Singh, Abdirahim Husu Hussein and Ali Jahangiri. All of them have one thing in common: They are exceptions to the stereotype but have immigrant backgrounds.
But how can you call a person who has lived most of his or her life in Finland “a person with immigrant background” if he speaks Finnish or Swedish as his main language or is near-perfectly bilingual? For how long must that person carry that extra label, immigrant background, before he or she is accepted?
You know that there is something fishy about the whole term, Exceptional Finns, since anti-immigration parties like the Perussuomalaiset, speak in favor of these types of immigrants and Finns.
Exceptional minorities permit racists to be racists. You are an exception and therefore you can get your shoes shined. Only exceptional people count from your ethnic group. Let’s not dwell on the problem: Why are people shining shoes and living in poverty in the first place? Answer: They are not exceptions. Source: Flickr.
The fact that these exceptional people are not considered full-fledged Finns (because they have that drop of immigrant background) not only reveals a lot about our racism but our views of cultural diversity.
Cultural diversity is not a social illness. It not colorblind as well. It is a lifestyle-identity choice that we make personally and which society should protect and encourage. Whether we want to hyphenated our identity or not is a personal choice. It is our choice.
The existence of the Exceptional Finn with immigrant background reveals how some want to eat their racist cake and have it at the same time. It permits them to feel like they are not racist even if they are. This line of thinking in a white Finnish world would work in the following way: Those who do not succeed at becoming exceptions are failures.
In many respects, and in a Finnish context, all these cases represent what Julian Abagond calls in the United States Exceptional Negroes.
“Exceptional Negroes are those who are ‘no like other blacks.’ They do not fit the stereotypes. Sometimes they achieve great things, rise to the top of their field,” writes Abagond. “They become sports heroes, film stars, tokens, black best friends, beloved servants and so on. Some even have white fans, lovers or admirers.”
Language plays an important role in Finland and is an important factor fueling discrimination. Finland’s large white Russian community is a case in point.
I have sent a complaint to the Council for Mass Media in Finland (JSN) concerning the A-Studio program that gave, in my opinion, a one-sided view of a problem that has an impact on all immigrants living in Finland. A-Studio claimed that a quarter of all rape convictions in Finland during the first five months of the year were by foreigners.
What the A-Studio report forgot to stress enough was that the total number of rape convictions by foreigners totaled 25 during the period under review.
Rape statistics are commonly used by far-right and anti-immigration groups to fuel ethnic hatred.
The Anti-Defamation League of the U.S. singles out a number of ways to recognize hate speech. One of these is the use of crime statistics incorrectly to drive home their claim: men from certain groups rape and therefore are a danger to our society.
The question that the A-Studio reporter, Tuomas Kerkkänen, should have asked is if 25 convicted rape convictions constitute a problem never mind a documentary to highlight the issue. Moreover, very little is said in the story about the majority of rape convictions, which are by Finnish men.
A number of similar storied like the one by A-Studio were published after the story was aired on August 1. What is surprising, however, is that many of these stories use only percentage figures. They don’t mention that rape convictions totaled 25 cases.
While everyone has a right to express himself or herself in our society, such a right should not be misused by a state-owned broadcaster like YLE to reinforce a reporter’s apparent prejudices of certain ethnic groups in Finland.
Fairness is an important aspect of any good news story. The A-Studio story wasn’t fair to the viewers or to those immigrant groups that it unfairly labelled.
You know there is something fishy whenever any person starts to use percentages to drive home the point that immigrants are rapists. If anything, rape statistics do reveal a problem: racism and prejudice.
One blogger on Uusi Suomi writes: ”In April, Finns were told that men from xxxx are guilty of committing rape alarmingly often.” Using a tabloid story as a source, he states that in 2006-09 34% of all convicted rapes were by foreigners.
There are some serious problems with the conclusions of the tabloid never mind the writer:
How many foreigners were convicted of rape?
Are we speaking of an ”alarmingly high” amount?
In the Uusi Suomi blog entry, Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP James Hirvisaari, who was fined in December for inciting ethnic hatred, believes that 25 rape convictions during the first five months of the year is enough proof to close our borders.
Hirvisaari writes: “We don’t need ‘free movement’ since it only brings too many problems and forms part of the left-wing agenda to undermine the nation-state. ’Let’s do away with borders and mix different nationalities.’ Border control and immigration policy should be contrarily tightened.”
Here is some of Hirvisaari’s latest double-talk on his latest blog entry: “Multiculturalism is a destroying politicial ideology, which does not fit in a [culturally] diverse society.”*
Yes, that’s right, such a comment was made by a Finnish MP based on 25 rape convictions during the first five months of the year!
If anything, rape statistics reveal a serious problem: a society’s racism and prejudice.
If I belonged to a certain anti-immigration party in Finland, how would I use the following information to score brownie points with the voters: 700 out of 1,200 suspected drunk-driving cases in Finland are by Estonian nationals, according to tabloid Ilta-Sanomat.
Even if such a high number of Estonians were caught driving under the influence of alcohol during the first half of the year – 60% of all DUI cases by foreigners – you don’t hear any politicians demanding that Estonians should be barred from driving in Finland.
Remember a A-Studio documentary that insinuated that the “high” amount of rape convictions in Finland were by immigrants who came from war zones? YLE based its claim on 25 convictions during the first five months of the year!
Why isn’t anyone labelling Estonians with the same enthusiasm as the A-Studio documentary if we are speaking of a much higher 700 suspected DUI cases?
The answer is obvious: Estonians are white, certain non-EU immigrants in Finland aren’t.
Holmes demonstrates the extraordinarily naïveté and role in systemic gendered racism of key white commentators, in this case the famous Bob Costas. Costas interviewed Douglas and asserted this:
“You know, it’s a happy measure of how far we’ve come that it doesn’t seem all that remarkable, but still it’s noteworthy, Gabby Douglas is, as it happens, the first African-American to win the women’s all-around in gymnastics. The barriers have long since been down, but sometimes there can be an imaginary barrier, based on how one might see oneself.”
As you might expect, this type of white racial framing, in its colorblind Pollyanna-ism, was Holmes’s
main target:
In a political and cultural environment in which the patriotism—the very Americanness—of people of color (including the current president…) is often called into question, Costas’s scripted deep thought .. . was at worst dishonest . . .. What leveled barriers … was Mr. Costas referring to? Who, excepting the most Pollyanna-ish or cloistered … would believe the assertion that Gabby Douglas’ challenges were primarily psychic, a statement that can be contradicted by … the undeniable whiteness of being that is high-level American gymnastics?
Holmes then picks up on the Costas point that our view of ourselves does makes a difference. But, she adds, structural situations often create that problem for people of color:
Douglas’ triumph seems extremely remarkable, both because of the commonality of her situation—the big dreams, the economic hardships, the one-parent household—and its unusualness: A minority in a historically “white” sport. . . . a 2007 diversity study commissioned by USA Gymnastics, the national governing body for the sport in the U.S., said that just 6.61% of the participants in American gymnastics programs were black.
Numerous members of USA Gymnastics, the mostly white coaches and other leaders in the field, often had a negative reaction to this honest report. Many whites there and elsewhere have tended, as they often do, to blame everything but white agents and white decisionmakers for this systemic-racism condition.
Holmes concludes by accenting how powerful the Douglas achievement was, especially for girls and young women around the globe, most of whom are girls and women of color. It will be interesting to see how the mainstream media treat Douglas, and the general white (and other) public too, when this great gymnast and her fine team return to the United States. Holmes concludes with this fine sharp point:
The 16-year-old’s triumph—not to mention her poise, her maturity, her focus, her elegance—will help recalibrate what young females of color believe is within their reach, while also influencing Western ideas and concepts of black womanhood, strength, agency and femininity—which has been historically objectified, sexualized and, it should be noted, feared.
It is way past time for these negative images of black women in the common white racial frame to be attacked for the mythological and racist framing they have always been–and indeed attacked constantly in the mainstream media until they are eliminated in the heads of way too many white (and some other) Americans.
This week’s A-Studio report on the ”high” number of rape convictions of foreigners in Finland, and another one published by Tampere-based daily Aamulehti in April, not only shed light on “a problem” in Finland but expose the prejudice of the media and Finnish society concerning immigrants.
The exact arguments that the above-mentioned stories use to drive home their point are eerily similar to those spread by Finland’s anti-immigration groups.
A-Studio uses 25 rape convictions during the first five months of the year to suggest that there is a ballooning rape problem in Finland by foreigners.
While rape, like any crime, must be strongly condemned by society, such statistics should not be used to reinforce our prejudices of certain groups. This I believe is the underlying problem of both reports by A-Studio and Aamulehti.
Migrant Tales found out in spring that the author of the Aamulehti story, Toni Viljanmaa, is a freelance journalist. Did he offer the story to the daily on sensationalist grounds in order to get it published? We don’t know.
Whenever journalists begin to editorialize their news stories in order to drive home their personal views, it’s the credibility of the story that is undermined. Taking into account that a lot of journalist at YLE are card-carrying members of different political parties, we do not know what sympathies the journalist of the A-Studio report, Tuomas Kerkkänen, may have for the Perussuomalaiset (the Finns Party).
After the A-Studio report was published on Wednesday, tabloids such as Iltalehti picked it up and asked if sex education shouldn’t form part of the immigrants’ integration program.
While new information is always essential for a newcomer in order to read more effectively the cultural codes of a group, these types of stories, which were even published by Joensuu-based daily Karjalainen, are just as offensive as the A-Studio and Aaamulehti stories. They imply that foreign men are prone to rape due to their ethnic background.
While most rapes are committed by white Finns in this country, why aren’t the backgrounds of these convicted rapists revealed with the same enthusiasm? Are men in Eastern Finland more inclined to rape than, say, in Western Finland?
Making such a claim would be preposterous especially when there are so few cases to begin with.
Lee Walton (@eclat521) retweeted this blog entry. He writes: “ridiculous- as an immigrant should I have been “taught” that rape is wrong? It’s against the law in UK, & ALL other countries!”
In light of the municipal elections of October 28 and the Perussuomalaliset (PS) party’s poll standings, it’s no surprise that MPs of the right-wing populist party like James Hirvisaari are leading the charge against different minorities in Finland. In a comment on Hommaforum, the PS MP considered homosexuality to be “a disability in sexual development.”*
Hommaforum is an unofficial PS website used to spread intolerance of minorities in Finland.
Of the Counter Jihadists in parliament, Hirvisaari is in the same league with other Suomen Sisu association fellow members like Jussi Halla-aho, Olli Immonen and others.
“In my opinion there is a good reason to ask if homosexuality is some sort of disability in sexual development if a person cannot develop in the natural order [being able to reproduce] of things,” he is quoted as saying on Hommaforum. “It’s not [homosexuality] a sickness but only a disability.”
Hirvisaari, who got fined for hate speech in December, is a good example of the negative passions and political forces that social media has unleashed in this country.
The decision by the Kouvola Court of Appeal to fine Hirvisaari for hate speech was upheld in June by the Finnish Supreme Court.
The PS MP’s near-constant rants against different minorities are a wake-up call for us on how some politicians like Hirvisaari are breathing life back into intolerance and polarizing our society.
There is a clear connection between xenophobic and homophobic behavior. In order to promote tolerance in a society, we must challenge both of these social ills.
Conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen expressed such concern recently on YLE. He said that the actions and comments of parties like the PS have hurt Finland’s international image.
”What is clearly causing harm [to our society these days] is the racist, near-fascist, xenophobic old way of thinking that is propagated by certain sectors…” he said.
*Taking into context what James Hirvisaari said, and trying to understand it, probably “disability in sexual development” is a better translation of kehitysvamma in this context than sexual disorder.
Human zoos (1500s- ), also known as ethnological exhibits, peoples shows (Völkerschau) or Negro villages, showed native peoples at zoos and fairs. They have been common in the West since the time of Columbus, butreached their height from the 1870s to the 1930s – back in the days of Joseph Conrad, Gauguin, minstrel shows and the birth of National Geographic.
They showed people from:
the Middle East,
Africa,
Sri Lanka,
the Philippines,
Java,
New Guinea,
the Pacific,
the Americas and
the Arctic.
They were especially common in
Germany (huge),
France,
Britain and
America.
Tens of millions saw them.
Examples:
1896: the Cincinnati Zoo showed Sioux Indians.
1899: “Savage South Africa” in Britain showed Zulus, complete with spears, shields and staged battles.
1904: the St Louis world’s fair showed a “parade of evolutionary progress” with Filipinos and American Indians ranked below whites and with Pygmies just above apes.
1906: the Bronx Zoo showed a Pygmy, Ota Benga, in the same cage as an orangutan.
Iroquois at a 1905 exposition dressed as Plains Indians. Probably in Belgium.
Ever since Columbus natives brought back by sailors were shown to the public, especially at fairs. Few ever made it back home and many did not last long in disease-ridden Europe. A well-known example is Sarah Baartman of South Africa, who was shown in a cage in Britain and part of an animal show in Paris.
“Native villages” were built so white people could see how they lived. Montaigne reported one in Rouen, France in 1533 of Tupinamba Indians from Brazil. Such villages became especially common at zoos and world fairs starting in the 1870s.
To succeed as a native:
Play to stereotype;
Fit Western ideas of beauty – or go completely against them;
Be at ease with audiences;
Have a special skill, like ivory carving.
This favoured those who were artists or entertainers in their own land.
The whole thing was staged and played to Western stereotypes:
Arabs were like in “Thousand and One Nights” from the 1300s.
American Indians were like in the cowboy-and-Indian books of the time.
South Sea Islanders were bare breasted and carefree – even though, as Gauguin discovered, that world was long gone if it ever was (but painted it anyway).
Black Africans were shown as savage hunters, spears and all, just a step above wild animals – even though most Africans of the time were herders and farmers. One show was called “Gorilla Negroes”.
The Pygmies at the St Louis fair, on the other hand, liked to smoke cigars and wear top hats, which screwed up the show’s racist evolutionary ranking.
Some feared for the safety of white women. In both Victorian England and Nazi Germany, some opposed the shows out of fear of race mixing between black men and white women.
At least as late as 2005 you could still see “African tribesmen” in grass skirts at a Western zoo (in Augsberg, Germany). Butsince the 1930s such things have become uncommon: film, and later television and cheap air travel, were able to give Westerners a much richer-seeming (but not always truer) experience of native peoples.
…hate groups have used conflicts over immigration to advance their White Supremacy, their hate, their stereotypes…Anti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in the United States was founded in 1913 to address anti-Semitism and ”to secure justice and fair treatment of all.” ADL’s Stacy Burdett reveals in an interview below the code words of hate used in the U.S. to dehumanize and victimize immigrants and visible minorities. The same speech is rampant today in Finland and Europe.
Below are four ways to recognize the code words of hate:
Immigrants are an army of invaders
Dehumanization
Immigrants bring crime and disease
Conspiracy theory
While Hispanics are singled out as a danger to the United States, anti-immigration groups in Europe point their finger at Muslims.
Let’s look at Burdett’s points and see if they apply to Europe and Finland.
Immigrants are an army of invaders. With this claim, anti-immigration groups drive home the point that immigrants, or Muslims in the case of Europe, are an ”army” or “horde” invading our values and way of life.
There are many examples of people and groups using this argument. One of them is Aalto University senior lecturer Kyösti Tarvainen, who claimed, using a pocket calculator, that Muslims would outnumber Finns this century due to their high birthrates.
Pet adjectives used by these groups to describe immigration are “uncontrolled” and/or “mass.”
Dehumanization. Immigrants are talked about as swarms, hordes or in worse terms. Burdett says: “…when you teach children at school to think a person is animal-like, less than human, you teach them that this group is less-deserving of their basic civil rights.”
Former Interior Minister Kari Rajamäki (Social Democrat) once labelled refugees as “welfare shoppers” that come in groups to this country to live off our generous social welfare system. The claim implies that since they come here as “welfare shoppers,” they should be treated as second-class members of our community.
The Nuiva Manifesto, an immigration policy endorsed by the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS) party, points out what basic civil rights should be taken away from immigrants.
Immigrants bring crime and disease. This is a common argument used by anti-immigration groups with the help of inaccurate statistics.
PS MPs like James Hirvisaari have used rape statistics and social welfare payments to single out and attack certain immigrant groups and minorities in Finland. One of his most incredible claims was that Norwegian mass killer, Anders Breivik, carried out his massacre because of “uncontrolled immigration” and because 100% of all rapes committed in the country were by foreigners.
Conspiracy theory. In the United States, anti-immigration groups claim that Mexicans that come to the U.S. do so to reconquer the Southwest and take back land that once belonged to Mexico.
In the same way, these groups in Finland and Europe claim that ”multiculturalism” is a conspiracy to permit Muslims and blacks to take over Europe ethnically and culturally.
Concludes Burdett: “When people all over the country are trained to think of immigrants as invading our way of life, trying to rip apart our civilization and undermining our values, when we are trained to think that they are a little less than, less-deserving of rights, less human, animal-like, almost…good people will be inculcated to hate.”
…”words have consequences. There is a direct connection between the policies we have in our societies, the words of leaders, daily lives of minority communities and immigrants and unfortunately we have seen hate crimes against Latinos, Asians and other immigrants on the rise.”
Sounds eerily familiar, even if Burdett is speaking about the United States.
