Since the 2011 parliamentary elections, which saw the Islamophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party win 39 starts from 5 seats previously, it has systematically tarred and feathered migrants, especially Muslims, people of color, and specific minorities.
Should you be surprised that all PS MPs elected in 2019 based their campaign on an anti-immigration message.
The PS demands that Finland should strive for zero asylum seekers (code for Muslims). Those that remain in Finland must endure the constant racism, labeling, and bombardment of their group.
PS MP Minna Reijonen epitomizes this toxicity in a question to the government during a session of parliament.
Source: YouTube
MP Reijonen parrots the PS’ populist and racist stance of migrants and minorities, planting the seeds of future social strife.
It should not surprise us that anti-Semitism is also on the rise in Finland. An article in Kirkko ja kaupunki revealed the cost of security needed at the Helsinki Synagogue has soared between 2017 and 2021. Yaron Nadbornik, president of the 1,100-strong Jewish community of Helsinki, was quoted as saying that the cost of security at the synagogue has jumped from 200,000 euros in 2017 to 450,000 euros in 2021.
Personal donation targets have also risen sharply, from 15,000 euros to 50,000 euros.
He said: “The purpose of our community is not to maintain security, but to maintain Jewish life in Finland and especially in Helsinki. In the past, it was not known precisely how much money was spent on security because it was not a meaningful metric that we followed closely.”
Nadbornik added that the accounting system to monitor security was changed three years ago giving a more precise view of such costs.
In an interview last year, the president of the Jewish community of Helsinki said that only recently the police have acknowledged that there is an anti-Semitism problem in Finland.
“The authorities have recognized during 2018-2019 that there is an anti-Semitism problem in Finland,” he said. “Before, it was [for them] pretty unclear if such a matter existed.”
In 2017, Nadbornik blamed the government and police of Finland for not doing enough to clamp down on hate speech, which was directly linked to anti-Semitism.
In the interview with Kirkko ja kaupunki, he stated that the police understand the threat of physical harm, but if somebody paints a Nazi symbol on the synagogue’s wall it is not treat it as a hate crime.
In many parts of the world, racist graffiti is considered a hate crime.
We recommend that the Jewish Community of Helsinki ask the police why they don’t treat racist graffiti like a swastika a hate crime.
I hadn’t heard the statement, “I’m a racist,” for a long time. Even so, two middle-aged women were chatting in Mikkeli loudly about how bad migrants were.
I intervened because silence is a total cop-out.
“Are you a racist,” I asked one of the women.
“Yes, I’m a racist,” she snapped.
“You should be ashamed of yourself for being a racist,” I responded.
There is no need to write what they continued to say about migrants because it was straight from a Perussuomalaiset* playbook.
It is ok to utter the full n-word on Finnish television, as we saw on Friday on the Marja Sannikka show, which turned out to be a fiasco revealing how little homework the host had done and how polarized and ignorant Finnish society is of racism.
Apart from not telling the host Esko Valtaoja that he shouldn’t use the n-word because it is offensive and next to a racialized Finn, Valtaoja exposed his prejudices further when he was quoted in Iltalehti.
Trying to justify his use of the n-word, he stated that the other guest “was white.”
“I don’t understand why an apology is needed. If I had known what this other white person’s [Ebrahimi] reaction would be, I would have used a different way [of expressing myself]. But I couldn’t have known then. We must remember that Ebrahimi is as white as me (sic!). According to my understanding, she is of Iranian-Kurdish background, and her skin color is white.”
Last Friday, on the Marja Sannikka show about racism, was a fiasco. It was the worst talk show on racism I have seen in Finland. It was such a flop that the host, Sannikka, allowed one of the guests to say the full n-word twice and did not even object.
Before I continue, I would like to say that Renaz Ebrahimi is a brave woman who brought up some crucial points about the discrimination and racism minorities face daily in Finland.
The Marja Sannikka show was the worst talk show I have ever seen in Finland. It was like putting Renaz Ebrahimi in a shark tank with Esko Valtaoja and the host, who made no qualms about showing off their ignorance and white privilege. Ebrahimi held one’s own. See the full show here.
Thanks to the show, the n-word and the full n-word were trending on Twitter. Moreover, when you watch these types of flops you know that nothing will improve on the anti-racism front in Finland.
But what can you expect when the host and gust, Esko Valtaoja, an astronomer and writer, faced off Ebrahimi by using the full n-word on the show.
After listening to some of Valtaoja’s points, I wondered why Sannikka invited him? Apart from his ethnocentric views dressed in white privilege, there was nothing constrictive coming from him.
Sannikka’s comments about how to deal with racism were a flop as well. Like Valtaoja, she is white and has no idea what racism is because it has never affected her in the same way as Ebrahimi.
At best, she showed her ignorance of the issue.
Shameful lazy journalism where we allow our prejudices to dictate solutions that are full of flaws.
Racism is such a big issue in Finland that even white people are discriminated.
Another news story. Another example. You will lose out in the Finnish labor market if you don’t have a Finnish name. If there is overwhelming proof that this type of discrimination takes place, why does it continue? Why aren’t there any stories in the Finnish media that sued an employer for discrimination?
Why are we reading over and over again ad nauseam about labor market discrimination?
Instead of changing your name to a Finnish-sounding one, why isn’t enough being done?
The big issues isn’t exposing discrimination in the media and in studies, which is welcome, but not doing or doing very little about it is the problem. We don’t make a big fuss about discrimination because we don’t take it seriously enough.
Remember Husein Hamiid when he asked in summer a real estate agent about renting a hotel and restaurant? The real estate agent, who was a Perussuomnalaiset (PS)* municipal candidate for the city of Espoo, started to pry into Hamiid’s life: “What kind of family and relatives do you have? What is your religion? Could you send me a picture of your family? What year did you come to Finland?”
Hamiid, a Finnish citizen who has lived many years in Finland, would not stand for this type of discriminatory behavior. He filed charges against the real estate agent.
To his surprise, the police absolved the real estate agent of any wrongdoing. It argued that there was no discrimination.
I’m surprised that [they did not bring any charges against the real estate agent] when everything is written clearly and in black and white and is a clear-cut case,” said Hamiid. “[The real estate agent] has over 20 years experience as a real estate agent even in Spain and should know better:”
Hamiid added that it was surprising that the police gave the real estate agent the benefit of the doubt and sided with him.
Certainly, a real estate agent has the right to ask about a potential client’s background and rental brokierage agreements. Still, they must abide by non-discrimination legislation, according to the Federation of Real Estate Agency. Does the police ruling of Hamiid’s case mean that we can ask people their religion, pictures of their family? Yes, the police are giving the nod to such inappropriate behavior.
So what are the police’s arguments concerning Hamiid’s charges?
The scariest matter that Thursday’s documentary revealed about one of Europe’s most Islamophobic countrie was how far racist discourse promoted by politicians could lead a country. In a standard pyramid of hate (see below), where genocide is the final outcome, the apex of Denmark’s pyramid of hate is deportation, and physical elimination of whole groups like Muslims.
Watching the documentary and the comments by an Islamophobic Danish People’s Party (DPP)* MP Marier Krarup and Matias Tesfaye, minister of immigration and integration, showed the source of the country’s “racism is both cultural and legal,” according to Jonas Eika.
Tesfaye went on to say that Denmark was right in taking a more uncompromising stand against Muslims or people from the Middle East and North Africa. This statement was made by the son of an Ethiopian refugee who supports cooperation with the Islamophobic DPP.
According to Politico, the Social Democrats of Denmark supported confiscating the jewelry of refugees to pay for their asylum, forcing the children of immigrants to attend compulsory child care, and banning the niqab.
Michelle Pace, professor in global studies at Roskilde University, expresses dismay at how the ruling Social Democrats are drafting laws and using harsher Islamophobic discourse than the DPP.
“I can’t believe that I am saying this,” she continued, “[but] it is a reality, and that is because they [Social Democrats] want to please their voters. They want to be reelected in the next election.”
The message that come through loud and clear from Tesfaye and Krarup in the documentary is, apart from their Islamophobia, there is no room for diversity, especially Muslims, in Denmark.
There are many things that one can do to retard or facilitate adaption of newcomers to Finland. One of the worst is constant suspicion by politicians who have no qualifications or understanding of migration. Good examples are National Coalition Party MP Pia Kauma who does not have the faintest idea about migrants but is still strolling with her baby carriage; members of the Perussuomalaiset* party who call certain migrants “harmful.”
The worst way to help adaption of newcomers to Finland is by treating them as unequal members of society and by using labels such as “person of migrant origin.”
If you want to speed up the process of adaption of newcomers to Finland and make them a part of our society, we must then really wish that and take down those structures that permit institutional racism to see another day. But how serious are we about turning newcomers into active members of society and how much ignorance and racism guide our attitudes? Unless we don’t understand this, all integration programs are doomed to failure.
How to describe Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Veikko Vallin’s tweet below? Vallin, who likes to be called the Trump of Tampere, likes posing with MAGA caps and often makes racist remarks about asylum seekers, who are mostly Muslims. He even brags on social media about how he was able to escape taxes in Finland by moving to Estonia.
One does not have to look too far into Vallin’s social media history stained with racist posts.
The PS MP now tries to show is “anti-racism” side with the following tweet:
“@jemustakalio of the Greens speaks about “brown” people. It is an odd word. If anything, it differentiates [people]. For me, skin color does not mean anything. We are all people irrespective of our skin color.”
Source Twitter
Everyone can see how disingenuous Vallin’s tweet is. What about if we substituted the term skin color with “religion” or “Muslim?”
I doubt that he’d ever claim that we “are all people irrespective of our religion.”
The hard truth about Vallin’s tweet is that it is typical of people who believe Finland is only white and that there is only one kind of Finn. It is a convenient way to close one’s eyes to racism’s harm to people in Finland.
The only appropriate time people like Vallin accept “brown Finn” is when it labels such groups as criminals.
Vallin believes that racist statements will get him reelected.
