It is quite extraordinary that the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* continues to play down and deflect criticism for their admiration and support for outgoing US President Donald Trump whose most recent crimes included actively inciting a mob to violently assault the legislative branch of government to overturn the election he lost by seven million votes.
PS leader Jussi Halla-aho, like Trump, suffers from obsessions that are perilous not only to them but to the whole nation.
If Trump is driven by his vanity, Halla-aho’s political message is based on racism and hard-right economic policies in the worst conservative tradition.
Like Trump, Halla-aho’s obsession with so-called “harmful migration,” which is a disguise to spread racist offshoots like Islamophobia, he too as well as his party faces a day of reckoning.
Apart from “digging” Trump and claiming that he is the best thing to happen to the United States and the Western world, Halla-aho shows support for the outgoing US president’s immigration policy.
But that isn’t all.
What about Trump’s Muslim ban? What about his open support for white-supremacists and their violence? And who could forget the tear-gassing of peaceful protestors from Lafayette Square for a photo shoot holding a Bible upside down?
CRITICAL QUOTE
Halla-aho and in the case of Trump was quoted as saying in Ilta-Snomat that too much attention has been given to him for his unorthodox style. Even so, he said the outgoing US president raised critical issues concerning global trade, Chinese dominance, and blocking migration.
After the historic election of the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party in 2011, when it won 39 seats in parliament from 5 previously, two international events have kept in check the PS’ rise: the bloody 22/7 events that left seventy-seven dead in Norway, and Wednesday’s storming of the Capitol building in Washington.
After the historical rise of Islamophobia and anti-EU populism in Finland in the 2011 election, the fanfare suffered a blow when a white Norwegian, who cited PS leader Jussi Halla-aho in his manifesto, committed the worst attack on Norway after World War 2.
Like what happened in Washington this week, the horrific events in Norway served as a wake-up call.
It is no secret that many PS politicians have shown their admiration for US President Donald Trump and worn MAGA, and given thumbs up pictures to their public.
Far-right groups with ties to the PS like the Soldiers of Odin are huge Trump fans.
What happened in Washington on January 6 will impact negatively European radical-right parties like the PS.
KEY ISSUES
Even if the PS has fared well in parliamentary elections during the last decade, it has not increased its lead from about 18% it has received in the 2011, 2015, and 2019 parliamentary elections.
University of Helsinki Professor of legal history Jukka Kekkonen gave his analysis in an interview on MTV.
“The [storming of the Capitol building] events in the United States should be a big warning to us all that we must take lightly what happened,” said Kekkonen. “A more serious attitude is needed by the media and lawmakers concerning right-wing populist hate speech, which is essential to embarking on a new good path.”
Despite the horrific events in Oslo nine years ago and in the US capital less than a week ago, the greatest threat to the PS will be its radical political views that are mostly based on lies and alternate reality.
PS aims to turn Finland into a Hungary or Trump-style banana republic will fail.
The US presidential election’s long-anticipated result bore fruit on Saturday with Joe Biden projected as Pennsylvania’s winner and getting him over the 270 electoral threshold defeating incumbent Donald Trump. Four years of political capriciousness and reckless buffoonery by Trump came to an end.
It has been a terrible and exhausting four years following a man who is the epitome of privilege and power. In all respects, Donald Trump is the embodiment of a modern autocrat and fascist.
Autocrats are usually shortsighted. Once they believe that they are invincible, like Trump did, that is when their downward slide begins.
Even if it would be naive to think that President-elect Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, will change the United States during their administration, they may have slowed or averted for the time being a colossal train wreck for the country.
Trump’s reelection would not only have been a hammer blow to the US’ democratic institutions but dragged the country into a racial civil war.
Four years ago, I wrote about the surprise US presidential election, which elected Donald Trump. I compared the election outcome to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous words after the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. He said that the surprise attack on December 7, 1942, was “a date that will live in infamy.”
Four years of Trump’s administration have been days in infamy covered with thousands of lies, misleading statements, and hostility towards minorities.
Even if it looks like Trump will lose the election, we should not be that naive to believe that Joe Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, will change everything.
The fact that the United States could vote for a corrupt and autocratic president reveals a lot about the sickness that the country is presently suffering for a very long time.
The Islamophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS)* have been quick to point out how much migrants (all?!) are an economic burden to Finland. A new study by Citigroup claims that ethnic inequality and inequity have cost the US a staggering $16 trillion!
While parties like the PS and other ones who follow their racist tune believe that social exclusion and racism are cheap, they should think twice.
“Racial inequality has always had an outsized cost, one that was thought to be paid only by underrepresented groups,” said Citigroup Banking Chair Raymond McGuire in a statement. “What this report underscores is that this tariff is levied on us all.”
The high cost of racism is not only maintained institutionally but through outright lies. One of these is by the PS that talks about migration as one whole when they mean Muslims and people of color.
According to the Finnish Immigration Service, the vast majority (73.3%) of migrants came in 2019 for the following reasons: work (40.8%), family (21.5%), and as students (11%). Asylum seekers and refugees accounted for 7.8%. Source e: Twitter (Maria Ohisalo)
If racism has cost the US trillions of dollars, how much do you think it has cost Finland?
White Finnish privilege is powerful since you can use the police to project the need for defense and protection. In the United States, we saw two viral examples (see below) involving Amy Cooper and Lisa Alexander.
For those who don’t remember, Cooper is the “Central Park Karen” for false reporting to the police. She falsely stated on video that she was in danger of being attacked by a black man after he told her to put her dog on a leash.
The second case involving Alexander, or “San Francisco Karen,” happened when she and her husband approached a black man who was writing on his front lawn, “black lives matter.” The couple did not know that it was the black man’s property.
These two cases not only reveal white privilege but hinge on myths dating to the era of USAmerican slavery when they viewed black slaves as sexual threats to white women.
In Turku, we got a sour taste of the latest example of false reporting. The police report in a tweet that a robbery took place in Turku. According to the “victim,” the man had “a field jacket, dark pants, dark hair, was of Middle East origin.”
The police tweet later on: “The incident is over. Everything is fine. The person [who made the false report] is resolving the matter with the police since he/she admitted that he/she had made the whole thing up.
Patrol resources could have been better used elsewhere.”
FINNISH WHITE PRIVILEGE #72
Like in the two recent cases in the United States, will we see the perpetrator of the false report in Finland apologize? How much damage does such a false report, tweeted by the police, impact people of color?
It is surprising that the Finnish police use outdated ethnic profiling identification. Today, a Finn can be of any color and ethnicity. Moreover, the ethnic makeup of the Middle East is diverse.
Grouping people by nationality is racist. The incident also exposes the police in an unprofessional and racist light.
How many more cases of false reporting are there, and what do they reveal about white Finnish privilege and its open hostility to people who are not white?
While in a different historical context, the false reporting in the US and Finland have the same goals: reinforce and embolden racism. Add to this prejudice and racism of the police, and you have a potent weapon against minorities and migrants.
A white couple call the police on me, a person of color, for stencilling a #BLM chalk message on my own front retaining wall. “Karen” lies and says she knows that I don’t live in my own house, because she knows the person who lives here. #blacklivesmatterpic.twitter.com/rOpHvKVwgP
Thanks to the United States, Latin America has suffered human rights abuses, poverty, exploitation, and a long line of dictators. The latest coup we saw in that part of the world was in Bolivia when Jeanine Áñez usurped power and named herself president.
I lived under a ruthless dictatorship in Argentina. Memories from those times were so harrowing that I can never forget them even if I wished. Indeed, the military rulers who gave us the dirty war (1976-83) caused terrible scars on the country.
Argentina’s bloodiest coup in 1976 had the blessings of US President Gerald Ford and executed by his faithful henchman, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
Some generals, like former Secretary of Defence James Mattis, rebuked President Donald Trump this week by stating that he is a danger to the constitution and that USAmericans in uniforms serve USAmericans, not a political agenda.
Mattis added: “We can unite without him [Trump], drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society. This will not be easy, as the past few days have shown, but we owe it to our fellow citizens; to past generations that bled to defend our promise; and to our children.”
Even if some have hailed Mattis for speaking out against Trump, his military career raises a lot of questions. The Marine Corps general fought in the Perian Gulf War, War in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War.
Amnesty International had questions about Mattis before his confirmation as Trump’s secretary of defense in 2017-2019.
“If confirmed, General Mattis would wield tremendous power, including the ability to order torture and flood Guantanamo with new detainees held without charge. General Mattis has said that those at Guantanamo should be held indefinitely – even though nearly all have been held without charge for more than a decade. However, he is reported to have rejected torture as a useful method of interrogation in conversations with [then] President-elect Trump.”
Mattis, who admitted that the Iraq War was a mistake, led the 1st Marine Division during the invasion and later oversaw the bloody retaking of Fallujah from insurgents in 2004. Some estimates claim that 90% of the people that the Marines killed in Fallujah were civilians.
Is General Mattis a war criminal, and is he an honorable broker with so much war history and blood on his hands?
Other high-ranking military leaders like John Kelly, John Allen, Mike Mullen, Richard Myers, Martin Dempsey, and others have also rebuked Trump. Even former President George W Bush, who condoned torture and invaded Iraq, is giving the thumbs down to Trump.
Remember formerWhite House chief of staff and general, John Kelly, who defended the practice of separating immigrant parents from their children at the border.
Kelly is now making money off caged children. He is currently the board member of Caliburn International, the parent company of Comprehensive Health Services, which operates four massive for-profit shelters that have government contracts to house unaccompanied migrant children from south of the border.
It all sounds like a Hollywood movie with an unsure ending and a list of actors who may have committed war crimes and human rights violations. In all of this, we lose sight of the real issue: #BlackLivesMatter, social justice, and change.
In Argentina, the last military dictatorship that overthrew the democratically elected government of Isabel Martínez de Perón did so to restore “law and order.” They did this with presidential elections nine months away.
Coups in countries like Argentina usually kick off with a communiqué. The first one stated that “The country finds itself under the operational control of the armed forces…”
President Isabel Martínez de Perón being flown off by a helicopter from the presidential palace.
Even if Communiqué 1 asked for calm from the civilian population and not to intervene, it hid its most sinister plan, which was to unleash the suffering and death of tens of thousands of Argentineans.
If the end of democracy is near in the United States, I suspect it will kick off with an announcement like in Argentina in 1976. Contrary to Latin America, which is crude, even vulgar, in handling public relations with its population, the coup in the United States will not look like one but appear sugar-coated with deceitful lies.
The transition from an imperfect democracy that serves mostly whites at the cost and exploitation of blacks and other minorities won’t be hard. The United States has a lot of experience in Latin America, where its support for military and civilian dictatorships, domination, and torture are the trademarks.
The demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 not only brought down a superpower without firing a shot but started the deterioration of another one called the United States.
The social chaos in the United States could end if the country were honestly interested in turning a new leaf and change its ways.
In the next few months, we will see the direction the country is heading on its wayward and perilous path.
The Islamophobic and populist Perussuomalaiset (PS) is a party that attempts to revindicate far-right racists on the rampage and its leader, Jussi Halla-aho, is US President Donald Trump’s enthusiastic cheerleader.
Halla-aho, who has a conviction for ethnic agitation, breaching the sanctity of religion and being a racist smartass, stated his undying admiration for a president who is a chronic narcissist and defies science.
On 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.”
As we all heard Thursday, President Trump suggested that a beam of light and a disinfectant like bleach, if injected in the body, could help kill the coronavirus.
Halla-aho’s and his party’s admiration of Trump reveals the kind of country they’d want Finland to be.
If there is one party that racializes sexual assaults, especially committed by Muslims, that party is without a doubt the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*. Its chairperson Jussi Halla-aho, first vice-president Riikka Purra, MP Sebastian Tynkkynen, and the rest of the 36 MPs of their party in parliament.
All of them, the 39 PS MPs, used Islamophobia and xenophobia to get elected. They have nothing else to bring to the political table except for their hatred of Muslims and non-EU citizens.
Both the Perussuomalaiset and its youth chapter are opportunistic cowards. In this tweet affirming that cultural appropriation is ok, there is no Jew with a kippah. I asked them about this, but they never responded.
In the Perussuomalaiset Youth tweet above, the Islamophobic and far-right group makes a statement about cultural appropriation, which is ok, according to them.
If you look at the picture, the only thing I can make out is a Mexican, two Arabs, and, possibly, somebody from the Far East. There are no Jews in the picture because that would force all hell to break loose. The PS, like its youth organization, bully and pick on soft targets like Muslims.
Remember the Oulu sexual assault cases and the hysteria it brought upon Oulu and Finland? Not only were the PS guilty of spreading anti-Muslim racism, government parties like the National Coalition Party (Kokoomus), and even the police did so as well.
The spread of this racism would not have been possible without the collusion of the media. The media should know better to distinguish what racist reporting is and what is not.
Harvey Weinstein
In the United States, we’ve been reading about the scores of women that disgraced media mogul Harvey Weinstein sexually abused and raped.
In one story in the Huffington Post, it states that the Weinstein case has not only sparked debate about the sexism and abuse in the entertainment industry but anti-Semitism as well.
Writes the Huffington Post: “Several white supremacists and even one prominent Jewish magazine, though, have latched onto Weinstein’s Jewish identity as somehow explaining his abusive behavior towards women.”
Just like our far-right Islamophobic politicians like Halla-aho, Purra and others, anti-Semitic commentary in the U.S. came from the likes of David Duke, a white supremacist and Ku Klux Klan leader, who said that Weinstein is “a case study in the corrosive nature of Jewish domination of our media and cultural industries.”
Certainly, Muslims do not have the same power are Jews have in the United States. Even so, the racializing of the Weinstein case is strikingly similar to how the PS and other racists frame Muslims.
It is a case in point how the Finnish media treats Muslims and a good examples why the Finnish media has an “r” and “I” problem.
