Recently SAS Airline made a video about how everything Scandinavian is copied culturally. What the video forgot to tell us is that even if it copies everything, it is selective about what it copies.
Remember the story about a Muslim Swede called Aye Alhassani, who was told flat out that she would have to take off her hijab if she wanted to work as a flight attendant?
Certainly, the SAS ad did not mention this. It didn’t even mention how different Scandinavian and Nordic countries like Finland copied racism.
“Thank you, colonialism, for being one of the roots of our present-day racism,” the SAS ad should state.
https://youtu.be/ShfsBPrNcTI
But the ad is right: Everything in our culture, everyone’s culture, is copied.
All of the anti-immigration populist parties in the Nordic region have grown strongly and even been in government.
The Progress Party of Norway recently exited the government because a woman and her two sick al-Hol refugee camp children were brought for treatment to the country.
The Danish People’s Party suffered a big blow in the last election but has succeeded at turning Denmark into one of the most Islamophobic countries in Europe.
Finland and Sweden, both, supposedly, examples of Nordic social equality, have the far-right Sweden Democrats and Perussuomalaiset leading in opinion polls.
No, SAS, there are some things Scandinavia and Finland would have been better off not copying.
The vandalism that took place on Sunday against the Turku Synagogue did not come as a surprise, said Harry Serlo, a spokesperson of the Jewish Community of Turku.
“What happened is a general trend [in Finland] and should be seen in such a light,” he said. “I don’t like to talk just about anti-Semitism but how all minorities are targets of such hatred [these days].”
Serlo said he was especially happy with President Sauli Niinistö’s reaction and condemnation of what occurred.
The spokesperson of the Jewish Community of Turku said that the best way to counter anti-Semitism and other forms of hatred against minorities is not only political leadership but respect for diversity, which should be taught at an early stage at schools.
“This is a long process [to root out hatred] and will take a very long time before matters start to change for the better,” he said.
The Turku Synagogue was built in 1912 and is one of two synagogues in Finland today. The size of the Jewish community of Finland numbers over a thousand members.
National Coalition Party chairperson Petteri Orpo tweets that “I condemn the vandalism against the Turku Synagog and I’m satisfied that the Turku city council signed a motion [condemning] what happened.”
Orpo’s support is important, but the question that arises from what happened is if there are different scales of importance when it comes to vandalism motivated by hate.
When the Resalat Shia mosque in Eastern Helsinki was in March when it was vandalized with hate graffiti a day before the Christchurch mosque shootings, no politician expressed outrage.
Petteri Orpo tweets:“I condemn the vandalism against the Turku Synagog and I’m satisfied that the Turku city council signed a motion [condemning] what happened.”
This is a sad example of political hypocrisy even if both cases are equally alarming.
On the left is the Turku Synagogue and on the right, the Resalat Shia Mosque in Eastern Helsinki. Sources: Yle and Facebook.
Another matter that does not seem right in Orpo’s condemnation is his anti-immigration track record when he was interior minister and later finance minister.
Below are some of the questionable matters that Orpo and the previous government (2015-2019) of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä “had to be reviewed” in the face of an “unseen wave” of asylum seekers that came in 2015:
Free legal representation restricted to applicants who required exceptional grounds for assistance;
Deadline for appeals was lowered from 30 to 21 days after a second rejection and to 14 days after the third rejection;
The government tightened appeal times in the hope of ejecting asylum seekers faster from Finland;
There were further administrative restrictions and practical difficulties making the application process more complicated;
Tightened family reunification laws;
No time limit on detaining families with children in immigration removal centers like Joutseno and Metsälä;
Lack of government leadership in tackling Islamophobia and racism contributed to Finland’s hostile environment affecting migrants and inhumane immigration policy.
Finnish politicians like Orpo condemn racist acts with one hand but with another encourage them.
Former Perussuomnalaiset chairperson Timo Soini reappeared from obscurity on Tuesday with the launching of his book on populism called “Populismi.” My initial reaction was that I had not missed at all and his round-about and apologist soundbites and arguments.
He states with his usual poker face: “My opinion about humanity is that every person is valuable irrespective of his race, religion, or ethnic background.”
A good cartoon of Soini would be of him at some Nazi extermination camp where he states in his usual style that he is against all the mass killing of Jews but does nothing to stop it.
Former Perussuomalaiset chairperson Timo Soini got his fingers burned by the very party he helped grow. A politician who is a master opportunist, Soini’s comeback to Finnish politics suffered a fatal blow in June 2017, when Jussi Halla-aho was elected as chairperson of the party. Source: Yle A-studio.
He continues: “I am against any self-indulgent speech and such rumblings about people through hate speech and the like.”
Then Soini puts on his usual they-done-it mask: “[b]ut if people are worried that if tens of thousands of people [Muslims] will do to Finland if they come here, their worries are justified.”
The interesting question to ask about Soini’s resurfacing is why the media, starting with Helsingin Sanomat, treats him with kid gloves. Writes an editorial of Finland’s most important daily: “He’s like a passage of Hameln’s Folk Tale of Fables: When he plays the flute, the media follows.”
It is incredible how Helsingin Sanomat offers in an editorial such a sanitized view of a man that brought populism and racist politicians mainstream politics.
Certainly, Soini’s brand of opportunistic does not directly affect some white Finnish journalists in the same way as Muslims and other minorities in this country.
One of the reasons why racism has lifted its head with so much confidence in Finland is the far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party, which leads in the polls. If social ills like far-right populism and racism are threats to society, why does it gain ground?
One of the reasons, I believe, is naivety. They believe that the way to end racism in Finland is to hit it with a soft stick. Such a strategy will not make racism go away but strengthen it.
Those believing in Hollywood endings to racism are white people who don’t experience racism but speak on behalf of those that do.
Are Finnish policy-makers and politicians naive when it comes to dealing with social ills like racism? Are their expectations of a Hollywood movie ending when everything turns out fine?See the trailer here.
Kenneth Sikorski, a writer who has written a lot about antisemitism and radical Islam in Finland, was quoted in the Jerusalem Post as stating that the approach to the latter issues is “extremely blue-eyed.”
“Successive Finnish governments could be accurately described as extremely ‘blue-eyed,’ especially during the last decade or so in their relations with Iran,” he said. “Part of the problem seems to lie with Finnish politicians who truly believe that having a dialogue – any dialogue, regardless of who is on the opposite side of the table – is better than having no dialogue at all. So you can easily end up with the equivalent of a businessman trying to reach an agreement with Al Capone.”
This is the wrong approach. Defend your institutions tooth and nail. Source: Reddit.
It’s time to smell the coffee: Far-right parties that are racist and populist are a threat to our Nordic way of life.
One matter is clear: Opinion polls, which place the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* as the most popular party, have not only encouraged the party’s far-right stance but given it the hubris to spread and implant with its hatred social ills like racism.
Finland is, alas waking up to the threat of the PS.
In his New Year’s speech, President Sauli Niinstö pointed the finger at Halla-aho’s party, which prompted a knee-jerk reaction from the PS’ head. He stated that the president should mind his own business.
“Online shaming and hate speech are new concepts in public debate,” said President Niinistö. “However, our legislator has been far-sighted. For example, incitement to ethnic hatred and offenses against personal reputation, dignity or privacy of the individual are already criminalized by law.”
Halla-aho, who was convicted for ethnic agitation and breaching the sanctity of religion in 2012, wants to scrap Finland’s hate-speech laws.
Finnish white privilege #68
One of the least-acknowledged ideological love affairs written in the Finnish media is the relationship between the PS and Danish People’s Party.
That is why it should not come to any surprise that Halla-aho said in Politiken, one of Denmark’s most important dailies, that he’s not interested in becoming a minister or even prime minister. The only reason why he is in politics is to change the “scheme and system” of the way Finland’s immigration policy operates.
The aim is clear: Halla-aho and the PS want to turn Finland into one of the EU’s most restrictive countries concerning Muslim and non-EU immigrants, especially from the Middle East and Africa.
Copenhagen-based daily Politken is one of the biggest newspapers in Denmark.
Reading code is one way of understanding what the PS has up its sleeve.
When the PS mentions it is against humanitarian migration, it is most likely suggesting that Finland should turn back asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa;
Even if the number of asylum seekers, or humanitarian immigration, totals a few thousand, the PS does not see size as a factor. In Nazi Germany, there were half a million Jews before 1933, accounting for a mere 0.75% of the population. As the Holocaust proved, it wasn’t the size of the Jewish community but that hatred spread by the Nazis;
The PS rarely identifies its victim, or Muslims. It uses code words like “asylum seeker,” “person of migrant background or origin,” “social welfare loafers,” to mean Muslim or person of color;
The PS states that it is “nationalistic” (kansallismielinen), which can mean fascist, ethnonationalist or ultranationalist;
In the same way that the PS uses code to avoid getting in trouble with the law and get away with ethnic agitation charges, the media plays along by giving inflated respectability and validity to their racism.
Even if the PS has a long-range plan to adopt the Islamophobic policies and mindset of Denmark, it explains why Halla-aho is hellbent on changing permanently “the thinking and system” of Finland’s present immigration policy.
If I had to choose the worst journalism in Finland this year, that would be the media coverage to the sexual assault cases of minors that took place from November 2018 to before the parliamentary elections of April 14.
If you speak with some Muslims in Oulu, they will tell you that the hysteria died down after the April parliamentary elections.
In all fairness, I would like to point out that Finland has, fortunately, newsmagazines like Suomen Kuvalehti and other regional papers that try to report fairly and objectively about the plight of Muslims and minorities in Finland.
Many stories published in the Finnish media reinforce stereotypes about Muslims. This story, published in September 2018, is one of the worst examples. The woman wearing a niqab in the picture does not represent a political party even if the story was about niqab and burka bans in Finland. The picture was taken down shortly after it was published. Source: Yle.
If one can describe the frenzy that was fuelled by the media, police, and politicians concerning the Oulu sexual assault cases, it would be similar to the incitement of a lynch mob before they are about to hang a person in public.
Even if a real lynching is different from one that takes place on social media, both have the same aim. If a real lynching publicly murders a person, a social media lynching kills over and over again a scapegoat, which is often an ethnic group.
Turkish writer Mehmet Muran Ildan described the act of lynching in the following words: “A society with lynch culture needs a big zoo, not for the animals definitely, but for the very people themselves!”
When the media is in “lynch mode,” fair reporting is the first victim that is sacrificed. State Broadcasting Company Yle is a sad example of the latter. It threw in the dustbin and permitted its prejudices and biased reporting to get the best of it.
Just like the coverage of the Oulu sexual assault cases, the coverage of the repatriation of about 11 Finnish women and 30 children from the al-Hol camp in Syria was characterized by disinformation and lack of information. This illustration used in a Helsingin Sanomat story has women apparently wearing burkas even if they use niqabs. See Migrant Tales.
An example of Yle’s biased and unbalanced reporting were the stories it published between November 27 and February 13 on the Oulu sexual assault cases. A total of 77 stories were published during the period under review. In one day, Yle published 13 stories about the topic!
Even if it appeared from the media, police statements and politicians that Finland was suffering an epidemic of sexual abuses by migrants, only eight were convicted and given prison sentences.
While not criticising the media, Päivi Happonen, a Yle reporter, wrote in her blog the over-enthusiastic communications policy of the Oulu police. “So what bad did [Oulu police’s communication] inflict?” she asked. “A lot. Many have the impression that Oulu became the crime capital of Finland, where asylum seekers rape all the children they can.”
The unbalanced and overzealous reporting spread fear as well in the Muslim community. According to Imam Abdul Mannan of Oulu, Muslims did not feel safe and avoided going to the city center.
Another matter that sparked excesses by the media’s reporting was that parliamentary and European parliamentary elections were going to be held in April and May, respectively. Politicians from the governing party demanded tougher laws on crime and even tests on Finnish values to asylum seekers. The City of Oulu went as far as to ban asylum seekersfrom visiting daycare centres and elementary schools.
Even if the governing National Coalition Party and Center Party attempted to gain from the situation with their ever-get-tough stance on “people of foreign origin,” which is code for non-EU citizen or Muslim, the party that reaped the most from the situation was the Islamophobic and populist Perussuomalaiset (PS).*
This is reinforced by opinion polls published monthly by Helsingin Sanomat, and Yle. Yes, you read correctly: monthly polls.
One such poll showed the popularity of the PS rising by an impressive 13.7 percentage points in a year, from 8.7% to 22.4% in November.
Léo Cutódio published at the end of March the following posting on Facebook. In March, a Yle poll showed the PS with 15.1% and trailing behind the Social Democratic Party and the National Coalition Party.
Emilia Palonen, a University of Helsinki lecturer, was quoted as confirming that “anti-immigration sentiment” is the cause for the rise in popularity of the PS. Even if Palonen does not state it directly, one of the causes of the growth in such anti-immigration sentiment is due to Oulu.
One wonders how a country like Finland, which scores high on the World Press Freedom Index, so many important newspapers get it wrong when it comes to writing about Muslims and minorities.
There are various reasons why news coverage of Muslims and other minority groups is unbalanced:
Muslim and minority sources and experts are rarely used as authorities in a balanced news story.
The media too often paint Muslims, and minorities with a single brush and underline a narrative of “Us” versus “Them.”
There are no Muslim editors and there is an underwhelming number of visible minorities working in newsrooms as staffers.
Some media continue to give inflated respectability, importance, and space to Islamophobes and xenophobes.
Helsingin Sanomat’s staff is celebrating the daily’s 130th anniversary in November. Do you see any minorities? Only one person in the picture has a so-called foreign-sounding name. With about 16% of Helsinki’s population is non-white Finnish, Muslims and minorities are underrepresented in the newsroom. Source: Helsingin Sanomat.
If there is something that publications like Helsingin Sanomat and Yle could do is to write critically about the racism and Islamophobia in parties like the PS and not to treat their politicians in a neural-friendly manner.
The media is a crucial watchdog that looks over people’s rights irrespective of their backgrounds. If Finland doesn’t watch out, and especially its media, the slippery slope to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary is not too faraway.
Dedicated to the racist politicians, political parties and groups in Finland.
And let’s be clear. I am talking about the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, National Coalition Party (Kokoomus), Christian Democrats, neo-Nazi groups and websites like Hommaforum. Some politicians that come to mind are Jussi Halla-aho, Riikka Purra, Ville Tavio, Matias Turkkila, Ano Turtiainen, Mauri Peltokangas, Juha Mäenpää, Junes Lokka, Tiina Wiik, Wille Rydman, Petteri Orpo, Sari EssayahPaula Risikko and a long list of others.
The late Toni Morrison (1931-2019) exposed the tiny soul of the racist.
“[but] when you take it [from the racist] away, I take your race away, the only thing you got is your little self, and what is that? What are you without racism? Are you any good? Are you still strong? Still smart? Do you still like yourself?”
One of the most significant political debates going on in Finland now is the fate of about 40 Finnish women and children at the al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria. The debate has taken such shameful turns that even ministers have tuned to their followers on social media to ask whether these women and children should be repatriated.
It is clear that prejudices and hardcore racism against Muslims, especially women who ditch their white Finnish majority culture for another religion, is one driving force in the ongoing debate.
The saddest matters about the ongoing debate is the near-constant Islamophobic disinformation and wishy-washy politicians scoring brownie points with voters. The discussion exposes pretty well our racism towards Muslims.
Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s biggest daily and which should know better, is also responsible for spreading stereotypes and racism against Muslims.
Other mainstream media in Finland like Yle commonly spread stereotypes about Muslims like in this story published in 2018.
Since the repatriation debate of the Finnish women and children at al-Hol is an ongoing story, Helsingin Sanomat has an illustration of five women and four children to highlight the topic. Even if the women at al-Hol wear niqabs, the drawing suggests they us burkas (sic).
The difference between the hijab (or veil), niqab, and burka is pretty clear as the picture below shows. Muslims are common in our society, and we should learn to know the difference between the three.
From left to right: the hijab, niqab, and burka. Source: Sunday Times.
If papers like Helsingin Sanomat want to stop spreading stereotypes and disinformation about vulnerable groups like Muslims in Finland, they should get their facts right and take the time to research their stories better.
They should, at the minimum, know the difference between a niqab and burka.
The rhetoric of the radical-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)*party looks like a direct copy-and-paste job from Donald Trump’s Republicans and Fox news. The PS’ leader Jussi Halla-aho labels maliciously Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s government as “socialist” and even PS MP Ville Tavio claims it is “communist,” you know that this is all a copy-and-paste job from the Republicans.
US President Trump and Republican senators such as Lindsay Graham commonly use terms such as socialism and communism to justify dog-eat-dog capitalism and all the racism that goes with it.
The PS are now doing the same thing.
The Fox & friends is US President Donal Trump’s favorite chat show.
The tweet below by Tavio is a good example. He states: “Is [Sanna] Marin’s government the most communist in Finnish history? Marin is more or less just as close to the Communist Party than the SDP [Social Democratic Party]. In power, we see clearly the Feminist Party, which is far-left ideologically.”
In the screenshot below, PS MP Jani Mäkelä claims that Marin’s government is more communist the puppet Terijoki government of the Soviet Union during World War 2 that was supposed to rule Finland.
PS MP Ville Tavio tweets: “Is [Sanna] Marin’s government the most communist in Finnish history? Marin is more or less just as close to the Communist Party than the SDP [Social Democratic Party]. In power we see clearly the Feminist Party, which is far-left ideologically.” Jani Mäkelä tweets: “Terijoki [the puppet Communist government of the Soviet Union that was supposed to rule Finland during World War 2] comes in second place [to Marin’s government]. Source: Twitter.
If you want to find out what new far-right soundbites the PS will spew, check out what Republican politicians are saying in the US.
