Tag: World War 2

How sincere is PS MP Immonen about Finnish Karelia?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Finnish Karelia, Salla, and Petsamo were territories ceded to the former Soviet Union after the Continuation War (1941-44).  Counterjihadist Perussuomalaiset (PS) MP Olli Immonen sent a parliamentary question Friday asking the government to investigate whether Russia offered in 1991 then President Mauno Koivisto (1982-94) the possibility to buy back the ceded region.

Koivisto, who was the country’s last cold war president, denied in a Helsingin Sanomat interview in 2007 (15 years later!) that then Russian President Boris Yeltsin had offered Finland the opportunity to buy back Finnish Karelia.

Finland used to look like a maiden before 1944. It lost part of its skirt (Finnish Karelia) and an arm (Petsamo) to the former Soviet Union after the war. 

Finnish Karelia represents everything that was and went wrong with Europe at the time. It is a small jigsaw puzzle of a terrible war that ended up costing the lives of an estimated 60 million people.

If the offer by Moscow to Helsinki is true, speculation has it that the sizable Russian population in the ceded region was one important reason why President Koivisto did not want to negotiate with the Russians.

In 1991, Finland’s immigrant population was miniscule, totaling 26,255, or 0.5% of the population.

Finns were back then – as today – very set in their ethnic perceptions of themselves and suspicion of the Russians continues to be high in Finland.

The interesting question to ask about the purchase of Finnish Karelia is what role did issues like ethnic and national ”purity,” Finland’s deep-seated cold war mentality and fear of its giant neighbor.

What kinds of passions does PS MP Immonen’s parliamentary question awaken? Is it another PS election ploy to incite nationalist sentiment and lure voters to the embattled party?

If Karelia were returned to Finland under the leadership of Immonen and the PS, what would they do about the Russian population and other ethnic minorities living there? What kind of ethnic cleansing would take place and how would it affect relations with Moscow? Would we return back to the same tensions that characterized Finnish-Soviet relations in the 1930s?

Since Immonen is a radical Counterjihadist who predicts a war between the Christian West and Islam, we should ask what political mileage does the PS MP want to get from such a parliamentary question.

While it is positive to debate our history openly, Immonen’s parliamentary question should be seen as a sham that exposes his ultra-nationalistic credentials.

Politicians  like Immonen don’t bring us closer to understanding the Karlian question, but take us further from it.

 

Far-right groups and anti-immigration extremists in Finland and Europe flirt with fascism

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Enrique Tessieri

When far-right groups and anti-immigration extremists flirt with fascism nothing good can ever come out of it. Even if it sounds incredible, we have in Finland our own holocaust deniers and those who claim the Nuremberg Trials were  a farce.    

Has Perussuomalaiset MP Jussi Halla-aho, Olli Immonen, Juho Eerola and his aide Ulla Pyysalo as well as Kotka councilman Freddy Van Wonterghem ever seen war? I don’t mean playing a Playstation 3 war game or seeing a war movie, but suffering and witnessing the real thing?

When politicians make statements denying or playing down the Holocaust, state that the the Nuremberg Trials [see Natsi-Saksasta] were “a farce,” or openly admit they like Benito Mussolini and fascism, they are breathing life back to a beast that can terrorize Europe again.

Even if the fascism they like is different from the one we saw in the 1930s, it is the same ogre but in twenty-first century garb. The scapegoats and enemies may have changed, for example Muslims today and Jews before, but it is the same beast.

Rudolf Hoess, the Auschwitz commandant during 1940-43,  justified the death of an estimated 2.5 million with the following quote:  “I had my personal orders from [Heinrich] Himmler [to exterminate Jews]…Not justified [to exterminate so many people] – but Himmler told me that if the Jews were not exterminated at that time, then the German people would be exterminated for all time by the Jews.”

But there is a far bigger question that Auschwitz doesn’t answer right away: Does that type of systematic mass murder that took place there reveal the dark side of the Nazis or something worrying about us?  Do we all have the potential as a group to become mass murderers?

If we look at the former Soviet Union under Stalin, the systematic genocide committed against Amerindians by white Europeans, the terror that reigned under the Pol Pot regime of Kampuchea, China under Mao Tse Tsung, the slave trade and European colonization of Africa  as well as many other cases, they prove beyond any doubt that we are capable of  barbaric deeds.

It makes no sense to spread hatred and attack and victimize other human beings and groups. If you disagree you need to reread your history again, and again, and again.

The author at the gate of the Auschwitz concentration camp where it reads Arbei Macht Frei, “Work Makes (One) Free.” 

 Some 400,000 Hungarian Jews were exterminated in spring 1944 at Birkenau, or Auschwitz 2.

 The shoes of the victims that ended up in Auschwitz’ gas chambers.  

Ilta-Sanomat tabloid ad (lööppi) from December 28, 1992

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales will begin to publish Finnish tabloid ads* (lööppi in Finnish) from the 1990s. Taking into account that Finland’s immigrant population started to grow during that decade, it is easy at least through the main stories of tabloids like Ilta-Sanomat and Iltalehti to see how they reflected some people’s xenophobic and racist views.  

We apologize to readers for the racist and xenophobic content of the material. Our intention is not to spread these social ills but to exposed it.

One of the good things that former President Mauno Koivisto did during his term (1982-92) was the long-overdue recognition of the Ingrians as part of the Finnish ethnic family.  The first question that many asked at the time was who are the Ingrians? They are Finnish-speakers who were settled in the St Petersberg area and surroundings when Finland was a part of the Swedish Empire (1150-1809).

The cold war had buried these people from our collective memory.

During World War 2, or the Continuation War (1941-44), many Ingrians fought in the Finnish army against the Soviet Union. After the war ended, Finland was required to return an estimated 55,000 Ingrians back to the former Soviet Union.  Some of these ended up in Siberia.

Despite the wrongdoings of history, Ilta-Sanomat showed how some were making money off the Ingrians at 1,000-mark daily rates for dwellings offered to the newly arrived immigrants.

While I did not have access to the story, JusticeDemon and Joku cleared the matter up for me. Thank you.

*Migration Institute archive. 

The "us"-and-"them" smoking-gun statement that once justified mass murder in Europe

Posted on by Migrant Tales

One of the matters that surprises me about some politicians in Europe and Finland continue to flirt with ideologies that led Europe down a path of near-total destruction in the 1940s. The younger they are, and the further their time perspective of those times, the more they appear to flirt and idolize with fascism. To them I would like to give them a quote by Rudolf Hoess, the notorious commandant of the Aushcwitz concentration camp during 1940-43. 

When we speak of fascism we should put it in a 2010s context. It has different enemies but is the same political beast.

In order to understand the horrors of World War 2 and especially those of the Nazi régime, a very good starting point to understand those harrowing times is reading up on the Nuremberg Trials.

Hoess was not tried at Nuremberg but in Poland, where he was tried by a Polish military tribunal and hanged at Auschwitz on April 7, 1947.

One of the matters that strikes you when you read about Hoess, and all those that were tried for genocide and war crimes after the war, is how they played down their roles.

There is one quote by Hoess that, in my opinion, gives us the smoking gun to the madness, racism, hatred and mass murder that roamed Europe freely at the time.

This is how Hoess justified what he did that caused the death of about 2.5 million Jews at Auschwitz.*

Hoess: “I had my personal orders from [Heinrich] Himmler [to exterminate Jews].”

Question: “Did you ever protest?”

Hoess: “I couldn’t do that. The reasons Himmler gave me I had to accept.”

Question: “In other words, you think it was justified to kill 2.5 million men, women, and children?”

Hoess: “Not justified – but Himmler told me that if the Jews were not exterminated at that time, then the German people would be exterminated for all time by the Jews.”

The last quote by Hoess is chilling and reveals the smoking gun that justified mass murder by the Nazi régime. What is even scarier today is that it is still used by people to justify their racism and declarations of wars against other groups. Some of these are groups, politicians and individuals who claim that Muslims will take over Europe. They make up their stories with the help of high birth rates and a pocket calculator.

If predicting the future were so easy, then we have invented a time machine to the future (sic!).

* Leo Goldensohn: Nuremberg Interviews. Vintage Books. New York 2004. p. 296.

The "Winter War" that visible minorities face in Finland

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By Enrique Tessieri

Even if we speak proudly about the heroism of the men and women who fought against a formidable foe in the Winter (1939-40) and questionable Continuation War (1941-44), many Finns with culturally diverse backgrounds are facing today a different yet similar kind of war on a daily basis. One of these “veterans” is fourteen-year-old Rebecka Holm, who published her moving story on Swedish-language daily HBL.

If Migrant Tales could, it would offer an award highlighting the adolescent’s bravery to speak out against racism. She doesn’t speak out for herself but for many others who are the silent daily victims of such harassment.

The racist bullying that Holm has faced publicly is a shameful realty and unacceptable. It still happens too often because too many of us approve this type of anti-social behavior willingly or unwillingly with our silence.

In many respects those that go around insulting Finns who are visible minorities and immigrants are no worse than autocratic governments that trample on people’s rights. They carry out their abuse and hostility because they  can do it with impunity.

Holm writes: “I did not want to change schools [in Helsinki] when I started third grade we moved [to another neighborhood]…It was then [on the Helsinki metro to the Herttoniemi Station] that the racist comments and attacks began. I could sit quietly in the metro when some stranger would tell me that I should go back to where I came from. After that, I have been called many things, including mutanaama (mud face), n-word, monkey. And the worst thing of all has always been the silence of the adult passengers when I was verbally attacked.”

Like the costly wars that our country fought in World War 2, many visible minorities are veterans of a very different yet similarly sinister war.

Like these wars it was all about survival but most importantly for acceptance and respect.

guardian.co.uk: Tory MP Aidan Burley sacked over ‘Nazi’ stag party attendance

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Comment: The Perussuomalaiset (PS) and other Finnish parties should look at countries like Britain to see how political parties in that country deal with politically embarrassing situations. Conservative Tory MP Aidan Burley got the boot as Commons aide after he attended a Nazi stag party while at a French ski resort.

A party spokesman was quoted as saying on guardian.co.uk: “Aidan Burley has behaved in a manner which is offensive and foolish. That is why he is being removed from his post as parliamentary private secretary at the Department for Transport. In light of information received the prime minister has asked for a fuller investigation into the matter to be set up and to report to him.”

Yes, I know that we are living in 2011 and the Third Reich came down in flames in May 1945. Even so, some of them like Burley have forgotten the racism and war that Adolf Hitler’s Germany reigned over Europe. Up to 60 million people are believed to have perished in World War 2.

What is surprising is that politicians in Finland appear not to be worried about their members belonging to neo-Nazi associations like Suomen Kansalinen Vastarinta (SKV) never mind far-right ones like Suomen Sisu. 

Finland’s politicians could learn a lot from countries like England. A key explanation for the firing of  the Tory MP is his “offensive and foolish” behavior. Without mentioning any names, I am certain we can come up with a list of politicians in Finland who have been behaving in such a manner as of recent. 

Thank you JusticeDemon for the heads up!

_____________

A Conservative MP who attended a stag party where guests dressed as Nazis has been sacked as a Commons aide for “offensive” behaviour and placed under investigation by David Cameron.

Read whole story.

The New York Review of Books: A New Approach to the Holocaust

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Comment: The New York Review of Books  offers some of the best analysis around on history and contemporary affairs. If you are going to subscribe to this excellent journal, you have to set aside a lot of time to read the lengthy and well-written reviews.

The Holocaust will always live by us like an ugly reminder of our savagery, or in particular of a regime that based its existence on racism and ethnic homogeneity. Some have asked on Migrant Tales what does the adjective “Nazi-spirited” mean before an association like Suomen Sisu? The answer is in its racial views and, like the Nazis, to the idea that ethnic homogeneity is an important value that society should strive to maintain.

This idea is not only shared openly by PS MPs like Jussi Halla-aho who are emembers of Suomen Sisu, but by many far-right populist parties in Europe like the Sweden Democrats and others. In other words, their reason for being and aim is based on their objection to multiculturalism, or cultural diversity, which is a threat to  ethnic homogeneity. 

One matter that these parties and associations don’t tell you is how they plan to preserve never mind return their countries back to some “ethnically homogeneous” society. Taking into account that over a million Finns emigrated from here in the last 150 years and that Finland has always been a part of Europe, we can even argue if we’ve ever been ethnically homogeneous. 

Ethnic homogeneity as an ideal of society has its roots in racism and most recently to the rise of fascism in the 1930s.

This explains as well why PS MPs like Halla-aho and Suomen Sisu don’t openly condemn the works of Alfred Rosenberg and David Duke. Halla-aho even plays down the Nuremberg Trials.  “It is quite justifiable to see the Nuremberg trials as a farce,” he wrote. “Sure, the guilty had been condemned in advance and their convictions carried out on absurd grounds.”

Peter Longereich’s Holocaust not only tells us how misguided Nazi Germany was concerning their pathological ethnic policies but how it led to mass murder when they tried to implement them and make their country and occupied territories ethnically homogeneous. If the Nazi ideology failed in this task and caused as a result the systematic murder and social engineering through death camps and deportation of millions of Europeans, it is doubtful that far-right parties will ever succeed in the task today.

Do you agree?

__________

It is fruitless to reduce the manifold evil of the Holocaust to a single cause. Ideology, charisma, conformism, hatred, greed, and war were all very important, but each was related to the others and all mattered within rapidly changing historical circumstances. In his profound study Holocaust, Peter Longerich puts forward an analysis that includes all these factors and shows how politics or, as he puts it, Politik, set them all in motion. In this amplified English edition of his Politik der Vernichtung (1998), Longerich preserves the German term Judenpolitik, and with good reason. In German Politik means both “politics” and “policy,” and the compound noun (Juden + Politik) gives a sense of a joining of concepts that English cannot quite convey.

Read whole story.

Immigration debate in Finland and Europe: Turning the lights off

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The eagle never lost so much time, as when he submitted
to learn from the crow.
William Blake (1757-1827)

I remember a long time ago reading an editorial by the Buenos Aires Herald on how the military coup of 1976 was able to shut off lights in Argentina and keep the country in an information blackout. It argued that since outdated infrastructure such as telephones and telecommunications were in a wretched state, it was easy for the junta leaders to literally turn off the lights and spoon feed information to its citizens anyway it wished.

Even though cell phones and IT infrastructure are today the best in the world, some of us in western countries such as Finland continue to live in our self-imposed information bubble about people from other cultures. We hate this group because they do this and we don’t like that group because they have different customs than ours.

What is paradoxical about these “champions of our western way of life” is that they would, if given the opportunity, be the first to impose the very autocratic measures that they claim to be fighting against. They would not waste any time in limiting civil liberties such as religious freedom and even freedom of speech by over-exaggerating and overkilling their cases.

The kind of world they wish to impose on Europe is the one that had caused so much bloodshed in the past century.

Europe, as well as other parts of the world, know first-hand what racial and ethnic strife can bring. Hopefully some understand better in other parts of the world that wise tales about other ethnic groups to suit myopic “racial theories” can only lead to disaster.

Thanks to the Internet and the free flow of information, however, their attempts to shut off the information lights of Europe will be an impossible task.

Mannerheim and Finnish provincialism

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I heard yesterday an interesting talk on Marshall Carl Mannerheim (1867-1951) just a few days before the outbreak of the Winter War exactly 70 years ago on November 30, 1939. The talk centered on different aspects of the Civil War of 1918 and how Mannerheim saw the world.

Those who have studied this man, know that he was not the easiest person to get along with and had a mean temper. If he would wake up today from his eternal sleep, one of the matters that would shock him is our liberal, democratic Nordic welfare society.

Without stealing any of his thunder from those difficult decades when he led Finland, Mannerheim’s thinking would have been totally out of touch with these times.

Despite his strong distaste for dissension and the ideology behind Bolshevism (he was trained as an officer of Czarist Russia and had a soft spot for the Menshevics), his view of the world was more open than many Finns when the country became a republic in 1917. How many Finns had back then a broad international view of the world and were not overtaken by the hysteria of nationalism and petty provincialism?

How did nationalism and that narrow view of the outside world impact Finland during those crucial decades that led to the Winter and Continuation Wars? If mistrust and hatred of Russians was the driving force that unified some Finns back in those difficult times, how did it affect its foreign policy? Can we still see this same suspicion and mistrust today sprinkled in our views of immigrants?

Even though it is questionable that Finland could have done something to prevent the Winter War, there are a lot of question marks concerning the Continuation War. Answering, or pondering these queries seriously, will bring to light many things about ourselves as a a people and hitherto-unknown or hidden aspects of our history.

One of these is the reticent attitudes of Finnish authorities towards foreign investment (Restricting Act of 1939) and draconian laws to discourage foreigners to move to the country.

One of the biggest culprits, I am certain, were a small country’s petty provincialism, fear, and suspicion of the outside world.