Migrant Tales insight: This post by Alex Alex is a reminder of how big of a problem racism is and how little we have done as a society to challenge it. Helsingin Sanomat picked up the story.
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Continue reading “Facebook: Racists who still think they can be racists in public”
A poll published by YLE News Wednesday shows and reinforces how support for the anti-immigration populist Perussuomalaiset (PS)* continues to nosedive. Compared with the 17.7% they got in the April 2015 parliamentary election, support has plummeted to a new low of 8.5%.
Good news for Finland’s culturally diverse community, migrants, and minorities.
Why?
The BBC describes the party in the following terms below. We couldn’t agree more with them.
“The party advocates strict immigration controls and argues that Finns, not migrants, take priority for social and healthcare spending. Its roots lie in rural Finland and it has championed welfare policies that give it a populist dimension.”
If the PS ever got over 50% of the vote and had a majority in parliament, they would pass laws that would make migrants and minorities into third-class citizens. Their immigration policy is hostile to migrants and would encourage human rights violations.
How would this happen?
They would overturn Section 6 of the Finnish constitution that guarantees that everybody, irrespective of his or her background, is equal before the law.
The PS in a nutshell: A party that is openly hostile to visible migrants and cultural diversity.
Continue reading “YLE poll: Support for the PS of Finland nosedives to 8.5%”
Who can understand the logic of people who post racist things and exercise a very basic 1+1=2 argument? Some of these are reactions to a recent blog posting on Migrant Tales, The Kolari, Finland, asylum reception center “is a living hell.”
Some of them are feverishly discussing what asylum seekers are saying about the allegedly crappy food, inadequate treatment and inadequate medical care they are getting at asylum reception centers like the one at Kolari, located in the middle of nowhere about 80km north of the Arctic Circle.
Once again, let’s point out some alleged problems at the Kolari asylum reception center:
Certainly if a Muslim did these things to Finns a lot of people in this country would be outraged.
Continue reading “The 1 + 1 = 2 types who post racist comments”
Why aren’t we surprised and shocked by what we see today in Europe? Populism, racism, bigotry, ultranationalism, isolationism, and fascism spread thanks to the media and the tacit support of many who nod in approval and silence. Colonialism, wars, and exploitation of non-white Europeans through slavery are some of the windfall profits that gave us our present standard of living that is guarded by populism, fascism and bigotry.
We shouldn’t bite the hand that has fed us for so many centuries, right?
Our implicit gratefulness to slavery and colonialism for our high standard of living today exposes why racism and bigotry in Europe and elsewhere remain largely unchallenged.
A story by Helsingin Sanomat about the Estonian members of the Soldiers of Odin in Finland is a good example of how the media gives tacit support to white privilege, or doesn’t challenge it strongly enough.
While the reporting appears sound, there is one problem with the story. Helsingin Sanomat doesn’t follow up the article with an editorial.
Too often the Finnish media may write about a far-right group like the Soldiers of Odin. It may express some objection but we don’t see often enough editorials condemning such groups and how they pose a threat to our society.
How many editorials have you read about the rise of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* and how it threatens our Nordic welfare state?
The classic pipedream in Finland is that somehow racists and fascists can “debate” and come to an agreement about “the problem.” Certainly white people debating between themselves could do that but it’s more complex if you included migrants and minorities in the debate.
And have you ever seen a visible migrant or visible minority being interviewed by the media about the Soldiers of Odin?
Should we be surprised that reporting by the Finnish media of far-right vigilante and anti-immigration groups is so selective and one-sided?
If we went to a mirror as a society what would we see staring back at us? That would be far-right and right-wing anti-immigration populism, fascism, ultranationalism, racism and bigotry to name a few.
The fact that we live in denial about our history and the present is the fuel that feeds our selective and bigoted worldview.
What role has the media played in spreading racism and bigotry in Finland since the 1990s? If it has played a big role, has its reporting improved or got worse?
The narrative of the media, and that of politicians concerning our ever-growing culturally diverse society, has changed but it still has a lot of room for self-criticism and improvement.
When the media serves politicians and other voices that single out certain groups, victimizing them because they are of a different religious or cultural background, it’s clear that this exercise is costly to taxpayers.
It is ironic that politicians of anti-immigration parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, and the tacit support they receive from other politicians from other parties, want Finland to fail in becoming a successful culturally diverse society.
Why would politicians like MEP Jussi Halla-Aho, MP Olli Immonen and many other in this country would not want to see us succeed in building a successful culturally diverse society?
The answer is simple: They would be out of a political job and career.
Let’s go back to the original question: Is Finland’s media racist and bigoted?
While we can’t claim that Finland’s media is racist they do publish a lot of racist and bigoted things. Many of these stories are in code and serve the anti-immigration narrative. One recent example is of a story by YLE on crime rates committed by foreigners in Eastern Finland.
The YLE story’s headline stated that crime committed by foreigners rose by 179% in the beginning of the year. We find out later in the story that we’re speaking of only 206 suspected crimes, which is only about 1.5% of all 14,923 crimes reported during that period.
A story doesn’t have to be “racist” to be inappropriate. Unfair journalism that is slanted is just sloppy and unprofessional journalism.
While not all police ethnically profile people and while not all journalists are multiculturally challenged, it’s those that have these issues that give these professions a bad name.
Take a look below at some of the ads from the 1990s published by Ilta-Sanomat, a tabloid that continues to publish racist stories about migrants, asylum seekers and minorities. Certainly the stories that Ilta-Sanomat writes today have changed from about 25 years ago. Even so, it’s still the same narrative but in a different context.
Some of these diehard narratives are that migrants are rapists, criminals, social welfare bums and just plain bad people that shouldn’t be trusted.
Check out these Ilta-Sanomat ads below for yourselves.
Continue reading “How fair is the Finnish media when it reports about racism and bigotry?”
While it is a fact that the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman looks into complaints about alleged ethnic profiling by the police service and National Boarder Guard, more questions surround this issue than answers.
Migrant Tales has repeatedly pointed out that one of the main problems concerning ethnic profiling in Finland by the police service, and its monitoring by the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman, is the lack of visible minority representation.
No minorities are working for the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman and only a minute amount for the police service and National Border Guard.
This fact is a problem that should be addressed in Finland, which abides by Nordic welfare value and upholds Section 6 of the Constitution and guarantees that we’re all equal before the law. Equality means as well equal representation.
Now here’s the question: How can the police service, National Border Guard and the Non-Discrimination Ombudsman assure migrants and minorities that they take seriously ethnic profiling if it doesn’t affect their staff directly?
Having no minorities on their staff is the same as having only males defending women’s right or people with no physical disabilities representing people with such challenges.
Underwhelming representation of minorities is tantamount as well to playing down a problem like ethnic profiling and discrimination.
The Perussuomalaiset (PS)* is a horrible party for migrants and minorities. They have the dubious “honor” of being the first modern party in Finland to capitalize on voters’ racism and bigoted views. Certainly they couldn’t have done it alone. All the major parties have the same type of politicians who state and write the same kind of things.
Some politicians are pretty straightforward about their bigotted views while others speak in code.
PS foreign minister, Timo Soini, is a politician who usually speaks in code and acts as the “good cop” of racism.
For bigotry and racism to bloom in any society, you need a complacent media, which thinks no differently from such politicians. How else are you going to get your racist and bigoted message to your followers?
The whole so-called debate in Finland on asylum seekers, migration, and migrants is a colossal lie by parties like the PS and others. Its only aim is to scapegoat and shift blame from politicians, who are inept, to migrants and minorities.
Even the president of Finland, Sauli Niinstö, doesn’t get it. He makes wishy-washy statements like the government about racism in Finland. He acts like many closet anti-immigration politicians who play down social ills like racism because he believes it won’t affect him directly.
Wrong.
Ask the Norwegians what happened on 22/7.
Racism is a cancer that spreads in our society with 1 + 1 = 2 arguments. It won’t create jobs, bring innovation, and foster peace in our society but impoverish us and force us to fear even our own shadows. Listening to racists pitch their bigoted arguments is like listening to sexist things said about women. Is it acceptable?
There are some faint positive signs that the media and the Finnish Immigration Service (FIS) are tired of being rubber stamps to such politicians.
This week, PS MP Maria Tolppanen’s blog was taken down for inciting hatred against migrants with misinformation. Even FIS put out a statement rebuffing her false claims that white Finns get less social aid than migrants.
Tolppanen is such an arrogant politician that she’s even threatened to go to the police.
PS MP Pentti Oinonen is another example of how facts are cooked. In January, he claimed that a fifteen-year-old was raped in his hometown of Kuopio by an asylum seeker.
Other masters of deception and bigotry are PS MEP Jussi Halla-aho and former MP James Hirvisaari, both who have been sentenced for ethnic agitation. In 2011 that an asylum seeker had raped a teenage minor that never took place.
But not only PS politicians make up stories about asylum seekers, migrants, and minorities; the National Coalition Party does this too.
Former MEP Eija-Riitta Korhola, who apparently doesn’t like wind power, claimed that she’s heard about “a lot of” animals like sheep and chicken that have died under mysterious circumstances around wind farms. In the tweet below she asked for an independent inquiry into the matter.
Korhola has a Ph.D. Her dissertation, which was defended successfully in 2014, was on “Climate Change as a Political Process: The Rise and Fall of the Kyoto Protocol.”
Continue reading “The role of the Finnish media and politicians who spread their racist statements”
What do politicians like Timo Soini, Riikka Slunga-Poutsalo, James Hirvisaari, Jussi Halla-aho, Juho Eerola, Olli Immonen, Jussi Niinistö, Maria Lohela, Tom Packalén, Olli Sademies, Freddy Van Wonterghem, Pentti Oinonen, Laura Huhtasaari, Terhi Kiemunki and many, many others have in common? They write a lot of racist and bigotted stuff. They are as well all or were members of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party.
PS MP Tolppanen is the latest case to get her fingers burned for pitting white Finns against migrants and minorities after her blog entry was taken down. She appears surprised and has threatened to take the matter to the police.
Without getting into all the details of what she wrote, Tolppanen misinformed social aid information that white Finns and migrants were getting. Certainly the gist of her argument was that migrants get more social aid than white Finns.
Wrong.
If you want to read more about what Tolppanen wrote, visit Saku Timonen’s blog.
What Tolppanen wrote and what so many of her dubious “colleagues” wrote is nothing new. Migrants get special treatment, migrants commit rape, migrants don’t want to integrate, migrants are lazy, migrants are social bums…
The racist insults and false claims that these politicians make will not be forgotten. The children of those very people that they target with their racist and bigotted statements won’t forget.
We will not forget.
In the future, we will look back at this wretched period and so will the whole nation as well. I wouldn’t be surprised that the president of this country or the prime minister will formally apologize on behalf of these politicians.
Migrant Tales insight: Are you still wondering why Terhi Kiemunki got off with a light slap on the hand by the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party for writing on Facebook that it was unfortunate that she didn’t have any condoms to give Muslim children trick-or-treating? Even if Kiemunki is an Islamophobe that Anders Breivik emailed her before murdering 77 people on July 22, 2011, do we need any more proof why racism and bigotry have spread their poisonous roots in this country?
Imagine, you attack children of a different faith than yours on Facebook and all you get is a light slap on the hand and a lot of media attention. Even if Kiemunki was forced to resign as first vice president of the PS’ Pirkanmaa regional board, she was able to keep her job as PS MP Lea Mäkipää’s aide. On Saturday, the PS of Tampere gave her support as chairman.
Still surprised? Don’t be. The PS cannot rid itself of its racist because that would be committing political hara-kiri.
The party needs politicians like Kiemunki who say racist things and hate Muslims. Such despicable behavior attracts voters.
Not only does the party need visible racists but the government needs them too. The PS’ government coalition partners, the Center Party and National Coalition Party, need the anti-immigration party too. Without PS support, Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s government could never push through the massive spending cuts that will impact low-income families, women, pensioners, students and other groups.
The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party, which bases its popularity on anti-immigration rhetoric, empty nationalism, and promises, appears eager and “overjoyed“ that parliament will “finally” take long-overdue steps to tighten immigration law and undermine the human rights of asylum seekers.
Some of the changes that the new law will make possible if passed are shortened asylum appeals and do away with immigration on humanitarian grounds. Last year, there were only 119 people who got a residence permit in Finland on humanitarian grounds. Even so, the grand xenophobic party believes this to be important to make our country unattractive to asylum seekers.
It doesn’t take much gray matter to understand that the PS is lashing out against asylum seekers and migrants in an attempt to fix its atrocious poll standings, which plummeted in the fall.
Continue reading “Populism and nationalism in Finland have made us fear our own shadows”
