Here are some symptoms of the coronavirus: fever, dry cough, sore throat, tiredness, headaches, loss of taste, and smell. Here are some symptoms of the PS virus: racism, Islamophobia, bigotry, climate denial, conspiracy theories, mediocracy, pro-Putin, and incompetence.
Like Covid-19, which fools and infects healthy cells, the PS virus also enters and infects institutions like parliament. The PS got a foothold in the Finnish political system by pulling fast ones on voters, spreading hate, and giving overly simplistic answers to complex questions.
We need a vaccine for the Covid-19 and PS viruses.
For the latter, the antibodies to kill the PS virus are empathy, caring, and anti-racism education based on social equality for all.
Perussuomalaiset MPs (upper row lefrt to right): Jussi Halla-aho, Jani Mäkelä, Mauri Peltokangas, (lower row left to right) Riikka Purra, Ano Turtiainen, Ville Tavio and Veikko Vallin. Cartoon by Hamid H. Alsammarraee.
The PS virus cannot be compared with a temporary hiccup. It is more lethal than that. If we are not careful, it can mutate Finland into Hungary and Poland, or worse.
Below are some more examples of the PS virus and what it has infected our democracy from MAGA caps to adulations to Trump.
Two PS MPs, Vilhelm Junnila and Veikko Vallin giving the thumbs up to former President Urho Kekkonen (1956-82). With or without disinfectant and beams of light, the PS is Finland’s most pro-Trump party. Source: FacebookOn June 4, 2019, Halla-aho tweets: “I dig him. Trump is the best thing that has happened in a long time to the United States and to the Western world.”
What is the worse matter about the coronavirus pandemic? Social distancing? Or US President Donald Trump?
In my opinion, President Trump and his shoddy leadership and outright lies are far worse than the coronavirus pandemic.
His latest lie was contradicting his country’s own intelligence on the origin of the coronavirus.
Trump’s suggestion that bleaches or beams of light could kill the coronavirus suggests that something isn’t right in his head.Source: Facebook. Thank you, Alberto Coronel, for the heads-up.
Mark my words: Trump is such a sociopath that he will not think twice by waging a new World War if it means that it will get him reelected.
The US president, his family, his political, and billionaire cronies are a much greater threat to the world than the coronavirus.
One of the matters that the coronavirus has exposed as well. is how populist anti-immigration parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* assail migrants and minorities, especially Muslims.
Helsinki Mayor Jan Vapaavuori was quoted as saying in statementthat he is concerned by the rapid rise of coronavirus infections among the Somali speaking community.
“Close to 200 cases have been identified to date, which translates to 1.8 percent of the Somali community in the capital, compared with the 0.2 percent average among all of Helsinki’s residents,” the statement said. “In light of this recent worrying trend, the City of Helsinki and HUS hospitals have stepped up their efforts to prevent further contagion.”
While Migrant Tales alerted its readers about how minorities could be more susceptible to infection, the PS has criticized state-owned broadcaster Yle for offering information about coronavirus in the Somali, Kurdish, Farsi and Arabic languages.
One PS official that was highly critical of the broadcasts was party secretary Simo Grönroos. “On morning TV they suggested that broadcasts in [these people’s] mother tongue should be expanded. This is not the way to go. If they want to hear the news in Arabic they should move to an Arabic-speaking country.”
It was last summer that PS MP Ano Turtiainen thanked the ebola virus for doing its part in keeping population growth in Africa.
Back then, he had no idea that the white people like him in Europe would be the victims of a deadly killer called coronavirus.
While exceptionalism and many other blindspots may keep us from seeing inequality in our health care system in Finland and other EU countries, the European Network Against Racism is spot on by stating, the #inequality doesn’t just make pandemics like #Covid_19 worse – it could cause them.
Look out also for a racist blame game against minorities for higher coronavirus infections.
Social inequality is the culprit, not the minorities’ fault because his or her illtreatment, microaggressions, and social exclusion may have undermined his language and social skills.
We have all heard the case for increased testing for coronavirus (COVID-19). But we need other tests like those that will judge our politicians and how they handle COVID-19.
An article in the Washington Postinterviewed a black man in Louisiana who said that “wearing a facemask won’t protect us from our history [of slavery and Jim Crow].”
In the United States alone, coronavirus strikes and kills blacks, Latinos and other minorities disproportionately.
Apart from exposing our wasteful investments on defense and weapons spending, which give us a false sense of security, the pandemic exposes in our faces as well the chronic social inequalities of our societies.
Not only are the most vulnerable groups suffering in the United States but minorities in the UK and other countries of the world.
There is mounting evidence – and it should not surprise us – that blacks, Asians and other minority communities in the UK are hit the hardest. According to the BBC, over a third of the patients critically ill in hospitals are minorities.
It would not surprise me either in Europe that members of the Romany minority and Muslims may experience much higher infection and death rates than white Europeans.
The fact that we still do not have any official statistics on the latter is quite revealing. Such information is also important because minority communities must take steps to protect themselves from the deadly virus.
When will COVID-19 end?
I believe that the pandemic will end when we put on the defensive and tackle effectively social inequality, boundless greed, environmental destruction, laissez-faire globalization and capitalism, populists that worship dictators, and the billionaires that are screwing things up big time.
In an interview in Córdoba three years ago, Finnish screenwriter Aki Kaurismäki said: “We must exterminate the rich and the politicians who lick their asses.”
While the rich indirectly kill people through their wealth accumulation, “extermination” may mean forcing rich people to pay much higher taxes and severely cut off their money machines, which are the capital markets.
Such wealth should not end up in their greedy pockets of the 1% but used for creating global well-being and improving the lives of everyone on this planet.
If we look at the raw economic numbers, world trade is expected to plunge in 2020 by between 13% and 32%, according to the World Trade Organization (WTO).
While the WTO does not mention a word about the Great Depression (1929-1939) or how global economies contracted during that period, a 32% contraction would be on par with the plunge in trade during 1929-1932, according to The Guardian.
“The unavoidable declines in trade and output will have painful consequences for households and businesses,” WTO Director-General Roberto Azevêdo said, “on top of the human suffering caused by the disease itself.”
While it is still too early to predict if we will see a second Great Depression (1929-1939) since such an eventuality hinges on what policies governments instigate like protectionism, it’s clear that economic hard times will not treat migrants and minorities nicely.
Even during periods of economic growth like in the European Union during this century, we still have not succeeded at eradicating social ills like Islamophobia and the shameful treatment and persecution of the Romany minority.
The size of the minority does not matter when it comes to ethnic persecution. In 1933, when Hitler took power in Germany, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates there were 505,000 Jews out of a total population of 67 million. Half a million Jews accounted for less than 0.75% of Germany’s population.
The rise of fascism during the worst economic contraction in the history of the industrialized world did not foster ethnic understanding and respect but led to a terrible world war and the wholesale slaughter of an estimated six million Jews during the Holocaust that included half a million Roma.
Even if the historical context of the present coronavirus crisis is different from what happened in Germany and led to Hitler’s rise to power, why wouldn’t a severe economic downturn and draconian protectionist measures bring out again the monster in us?
In an interview with CNN in March, historian and professor Yuval Noah Harari stated that the lack of trust, closing borders and isolating oneself, are the most significant threats posed by the COVID-19 pandemic
There is also another reason, in my opinion, why matters are going to get worse in Europe as our economies contract and knee-jerk nationalist reactions: We have failed to slay the same monsters of xenophobia and petty nationalism that gave us World War 2 in our eyes.
If we have failed at ridding racism from our societies during good economic timers, why would we succeed at such a challenging task during poor economic times?
If there is an image that evokes the challenges we face ahead, it is the four horsemen of the apocalypse, a Biblical reference appearing in the New Testament’s final book of Revelation. The four horsemen charging at us represent pestilence, famine, war, and death.
We have two choices today and tomorrow: to unite and rebuild or succumb to the four horsemen.
The two French doctors, Jean-Paul Mira and Camille Locht said on television that Africans could be used as guinea pigs to find a COVID-19 vaccine. The suggestion by the two medics unleashed a storm of protests.
African footballers Samuel Eto’o, Didier Drogba and Demba Ba have some words they would like to share with these two medics.
Many of the problems that the EU faces, for example, its broken asylum policy, are symptomatic to our feelings of ethnic superiority and racism.
Two French doctors suggest on live TV to carry on experiments for Covid-19 vaccine in Africa
• Eto’o: You sons of b*tches • Drogba: Africa isn’t a testing lab • Demba Ba: Welcome to the West, where white people believe themselves to be so superiorpic.twitter.com/mp4wiFVfXg
Now, as far-right parties aim to capitalize on the coronavirus with the help of fake news, we must stay vigilant to challenge their sinister and selfish aims.
We saw this happen in Finland on Yle’sA-talk when Perussuomalaiset* MP Riikka Purra claimed that a hospital was washing and using disposable equipment.
“I have received information from a hospital that they wash disposable equipment,” she tweeted, declining to say who her source is. state her source.
Purra’s claim that she cannot reveal her source is an old tactic even used by US President Donald Trump playbook: “There’s that guy who told me…” “I’ve a very nice friend who told me…” “Many beautiful experts told me…”…etc. [1]
In the face of fake news and claims by opportunist and irresponsible påoliticians, EU Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) director Michael O’Flaherty has an important message below.
Finnish MEP Laura Huhtsaari of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party is at it again. Huhtasaari, like her PS MEP colleague, Teuvo Hakkarainen, and all of the party’s 39 MPs are calling for disunity during a time when we need to pull together.
The world will start to be a better place, and far-right parties that spread hate, like the PS and others, will shrink in size and be exposed for what they are: a pandemic worse than COVID-19.
Why are Muslims, especially women, usually pictured covering their faces? Do these types of images in the media reinforce our stereotypes about Muslim women?
Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s leading daily, is one representative of the media that reinforces stereotypes about Muslim women.
While the article is important because it talks about forced marriages, why can’t it write about the topic without stereotypes of Muslims, which in turn reinforce anti-Muslim racism?
The depictions in the media appear to go to great lengths to racialize an issue.
Why is this woman covering herself?Do all Muslim women cover themselves in public? Read the full story (in Finnish) here.
After writing several opinion pieces for newspapers such as Savon Sanomat, Kainuun Sanomat, Suomen Kuvalehti, Karjalainen and others, I am sometimes disappointed with the pictures that go with my story.
Burkas or niqabs or western stereotypes? Read the full story (in Finnish) here.
The most offensive story that I have ever read in Finland depicting Muslim women was by Yle in September 2018.
One of the latest cases (below) of such reporting was by the state-run Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle). The story was a poll about what different parties’ views was of migration and migrants. In the cover picture of the story, there are all the leaders of the political parties in parliament and a woman wearing a niqab. Part of the headline of the story was that only two parties would ban the “burka.” The picture with the woman wearing the niqab was later removed. Source: Yle.
There is one matter that bonds all the Perussuomalaiset (PS) MPs in parliament: They use migrants, especially Muslims and asylum seekers, to get votes. Their ads and rhetoric reflect well their racist disposition.
Take, for instance, the ad below that promises that she will make “Finnish well being and security” priorities.
Some of her pet topics are Muslims even if in her small, far-flung town of Outokumpu (6,803 inhabitants), there are hardly any foreigners, never mind Muslims.
Ouokumpu is located in such a far-flung place that it would be a miracle if a foreigner, never mind a Muslim, would find it on the map. Source: Wikipedia.
In Outokumpu – are you ready for this – there are 177 people (2.6% of the total town population) who are not Finnish citizens, 231 (3.39%) who were born elsewhere than Finland, and 239 (3.51%) who do not speak Finnish, Swedish or Sami as their mother tongue.
Despite their minimal numbers, Antikainen does not miss a chance to label Muslims as rapists and terrorists.
That is why she is obsessed with the message: prioritizing white Finns’ well-being and security.
Perussuomalaiset MP Sanna Antikainen campaign slogan and promises to defend the “well-being and security of Finns’ priorities.”
Antikainen’s Islamophobic worldview raises a lot of questions.
One of these is how she graduated as a registered nurse and what kind of an oath she took. The Hippocratic oath of nurses is also based on the Nightingale Pledge, named in honor of Florence Nightingale,
In the United States, nurses vow to treat patients equally: “Discrimination in any form is harmful to society as a whole and in opposition to the values and ethical code of the nursing profession, which directs the nurse to ‘…respect the inherent dignity, worth, unique attributes, and human rights of all individuals.’” (American Nursing Association, 2015, p.17).
Below are a Finnish nurse’s views about human rights and how to deal with people she does not like.
The PS likes Trump and his racist policies that are against migrants. Don’t be surprised if MP Antikainen would want to build a wall about her small town. Source: Twitter. This claim that “Europeans do not have the money for their social security,” is an old Islamophobic excuse to not help asylum seekers. We are a rich continent and we DO have a lot of money. Source: Twitter.
I sent MP Antikainen Thursday the following questions:
What do you mean when you state that you are “on the side of Finns?”
What about if a person was born in another country but is a Finnish citizen? Are you on his or her side as well?
What about if the person was born in Finland and is black?
Do you defend the interests of all people in Finland irrespective of their backgrounds?
I never expect to get an answer from Antikainen. Even so, the fact that she didn’t answer is already an answer that reveals a lot about herself and her party.
If the PS ever could change the laws of Finland, that would be a sad day for Finnish democracy and the rule of law.
It would be a very sad day indeed because it would be based on racism and far-right populism.
We won’t allow it to happen and, in the meantime, we will give parties like the PS and MPs like Antikainen a run for their money.
