One lesson we could learn from former Perussuomalaiset (PS)* chairman Timo Soini is that the right balance between flattery and speaking in code will get you everywhere, well, almost everywhere. You can win big elections like in 2011 and ride, albeit momentarily, the crest of the popularity wave until you hit the wall in disgrace with your fingers badly burned.
Tag: UKIP
Even if politics makes strange bedfellows, Timo Soini’s bed partners are eerie
Remember the speech below when Timo Soini and the Perussuomalaisiet were riding the crest of a wave after his populist anti-immigration won the parliamentary elections of 2011, when it saw its MPs rise to 39 from 5 in the previous election?
Migrants’ Rights Network: Is a new Immigration Bill to be announced in the Queen’s Speech?
Migrant Tales insight: Events in the United Kingdom resemble a self-fulfilling prophesy for white English and an ever-worsening and ever-hostile place for migrants and visible minorities. The treatment and approach to immigration of Prime Minister David Cameron’s government is shameful. It reveals more cowardice than sound judgement. The worst matter in the United Kingdom isn’t…
Pew Research Center survey: Anti-immigration and anti-minority sentiment runs high before Euro elections
Pew Research Center, a Washington-based “fact tank,” reveals in a survey just before the European parliamentary elections on May 22-25 that anti-immigration and anti-minority sentiment runs in countries like Poland, Germany, France, UK, Spain, Italy and Greece. Euro MEP candidates like Jussi Halla-aho and Juho Eerola of the PS have used anti-immigration sentiment to attract…
Are politicians like Jussi Halla-aho and parties like the PS racist?
Jay Smooth offered in early March some good points on how to spot a racist by sticking to the that-sounded-racist conversation as opposed to they-are-racist conversation. The former conversation allows you to focus on what the person said and why what they said is unacceptable. The other one will take your focus away from the issue. Keeping…
Institute of Race Relations: UKIP – legitimised by the media?
MT insight: UKIP’s Nigel Farage and Perussuomalaiset party’s Timo Soini are close ideological allies. The only difference between these two politicians in the cultural and national context. If Farage lived in Finland he’d speak like Soini and vice versa. Thus to understand the PS you would have to understand the UKIP. _________________ John Grayson examines…
Anti-immigration populist parties are a menace to democracy, ethnic and cultural diversity
Migrant Tales has never hid its criticism of parties that base their message on populism, scapegoating minorities and nationalism. If such political parties ever got power, it’s doubtful that they’d know what to do with it except polarize our society more than before. Anti-immigration and nationalistic parties are masters at scapegoating because they are incompetent at doing…
What can the PS mutate to if the political conditions are right?
In order to understand what a party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) are, look at how it rose to become Finland’s third-largest party in parliament in less than ten years. The growth of the anti-EU, anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam PS has been impressive to say the least, rising from 5 MPs in the 2007 parliamentary elections…
Institute of Race Relations: The shameful ‘Go Home’ campaign
By John Grayson The rhetoric on migrants shows how politicians and the media have created, and embedded, racism in British politics. Read original blog entry here. Recent controversy over the Home Office ’Go Home’ campaign on ‘illegal’ immigrants highlights the way in which politicians try to outdo each other to win over the ‘racist’ electorate…
How ideologically alike is the PS with the UKIP and BNP?
The recent local election victory of the anti-EU and anti-immigration UKIP of Britain is a good example of what Finland experienced with the rise of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) in April 2011. While the United Kingdom and Finland are vastly different countries, the knee-jerk reaction of the ruling parties to right-wing populism and rhetoric is strikingly…