The worst enemy of the Perussuomalaiset is the Perussuomalaiset.
The recent opinion poll published by Yle is a source of hope that Finland is finally awakening from its 2011 general election nightmare, when the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* saw its MPs in parliament soar to 39 from five previously.
The latest poll shows that the PS’ support plummeted by four percentage points to 11.4% relegating the anti-immigration far-right party to fourth place after the Social Democrats (25.3%), National Coalition Party (20.2%), and Center Party (15.6%).
The PS saw its support dive in April’s municipal and county elections and this is a bad omen for the party in the 2027 general election.
Even if the PS leadership blames their poor election misfortunes on “a red wave” and “poor communication,” the party’s membership in government has exposed its far-right neoliberal policies and agenda.
Many, like myself who have followed the PS closely since the early 2010s, are hoping that the PS will return permanently to the single-digit political leagues characterized by internal fighting.
In the face of what is happening in the United States under President Donald Trump and the rise of far-right parties in Europe like the AfD of Germany, one may ask if we have crossed the point of no return. Finland’s municipal and county elections of April offer us a clear no to that question.
In the municipal and county elections, the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* saw its results plummet raising speculation that it may be even a death blow to the party with parliamentary elections due in April 2027.
The worst enemy of far-right and autocratic parties and rulers is none other than themselves. Autocratic rulers and parties become success or speed blind until they smash against a wall.
In a watershed announcement by Germany’s domestic intelligence service it slammed AdF as a “right-wing extremist group.” This could allow the government to ban the far-right party. As guessed, the Trump administration has expressed its displeasure.
The recent resignation of former Chief Nnspector Jari Taponen and others from the police reveals the extent to which populist politics has infiltrated the police. In 2023, and with funding from the European Network Against Racism (ENAR), the EU’s largest anti-racism NGO, we published a report showing how parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* use migrant crime to attract voters.
I have interviewed Taponen a few times about street gangs. What he writes in a column in Sunday’s Helsingin Sanomat confirms our conclusions that the issue has a strong political component.
It is sad how slowly, if not yet, the media has reacted to the populist politicking of parties like PS and the National Coalition Party.
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that the whole street gang news story is a ploy by parties like the PS to further polarize the country and label all racialised youth as potential criminals.
Shame on the PS and the Finnish media.
We wrote in the report: “Moreover, the “youth gang” story has exposed how the media, police, and politicians collaborate to spread a narrative about marginalized groups. Each of the three involved has a vested interest in exploiting stories about minorities: – The media gains viewers and advertising revenues. – The police can secure more funding for fighting crime. – Politicians appeal to voters.”
Media like MTV engage in a lot of shameless hypocrisy. Look at the pictures below and how they have labelled all racialised youth as potential criminals.
Has MTV changed its ways? Below is a picture of an interview with the PS Minister of the Interior Mari Rantanen.
This ad was placed on MTV last year to mark an interview with Ivan Puopolo Rantanen. Puopolo is the face of MTV, who frequently interviews and spreads the anti-immigration message of the PS.
In his column, Taponen hits the nail on the head: “This is a worrying trend [in the police], because the functioning of the police and the upholding of security in socleity must be based on respect for inalienable and human rights and the fair and equal treatment of all groups of the population.”
The normalization of racism and government policy that reinforces the social illness are the sad examples that will get worse as long as National Coalition Party Prime Minister Petter Orpo leads the government with the Perussuomalaiset (PS).*
One way of putting some breaks on the adverse climate of polarization and xenophobia is by forcing the government to fall.
Normalization happens when even the opposition can cave into the pushback law that ended Finland’s respect for human rights and the rule of law.
The pushback law says it clearly: asylum seekers are animals who don’t deserve human rights.
Thanks to Petteri Orpo’s toothless anti-racism measures, white power is gaining strength in Finland and emboldens racists. Picture: Enrique Tessieri
The normalization of racism happens through the media as well by portraying migrants and asylum seekers as the guilty suspects when, in fact, they are the victims of our draconian migration policy and our lack of empathy.
The media, which is a big part of Finland’s racism problem, is toothless when it reports on ministers like Mari Rantanen, who is the biggest threat to migrant and minority rights.
If the government could shape your thinking, Rantanen and her cronies want you to believe that migrants and asylum seekers are lowlifes taking advantage of the social welfare system.
The next measure suggested by the likes of Rantanen is to offer social security only to Finns.
Here is the question: Why do foreigners pay taxes in that type of dark world where you are a mere visitor in Finland?
You cannot make this up. National Coalition Party Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s government plans to offer an hour-long anti-racism training for the government. The training has been postponed to after the municipal and regional elections of April.
“It will be an intensive training of about an hour, including discussion,” Katriina Nousiainen, project manager and senior expert at the prime minister’s office, was quoted as saying in Helsingin Sanomat.
The course was suggested after the numerous racism scandals last summer that led to the resignation of Perussuomalaiset Minister of Economic Affairs Wilhelm Junnila and the resurfacing of Finance Minister Riikka Purra’s racist writings from 2008.
The scandals of the summer of 2023 almost forced Orpo’s government to fall. In the autumn, it published an anti-racism statement that was nothing more than a ploy to save the government’s skin.
The most recent scanal brought by the non-discrimination ombudsman is another case in point of the toothless and empty efforts to tackle racism when PS Interior Minister Mari Rantanen attempted to favor Christians over Muslims in the quota-refugee scheme.
The government and large sectors of Finland have a serious issue with racism. Not doing enough and playing dumb to the social ill is just as bad as being openly racist.
The Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party is known for its hostility and attacks against migrants and minorities as well as anyone who dares call them what they are: a party that peddles racism. In a statement Thursday, the non-discrimination ombudsman, said that the actions of PS Minister of Interior Mari Rantanen were discriminatory when the ministry attempted to favor Christians over Muslims in the quota-refugee scheme.
Non-Discrimination Ombudswoman Kristina Stenman defended the work of her orgnization in Helsingin Sanomat for not only calling out the discriminatory actions of the interior ministry but calling the PS “openly Islamophobic.”
Defending her use of Islamophobia to describe the PS, she said that the party’s immigration policy program states that the present refugee quota system based on the work of the UNHCR “can be phased out, with persecuted Christians and other groups with [so-called] positive integration prospects being slected for the quota.”
Moreover, the party’s program also says that “many of the problems of integration in Finland are linked to the Islamic cultural influence.”
As a result of the report, the PS leadership has gone into their customery victim mode by stating that the statement by the non-discrimination ombudsman was “a shocking attack,” according to Helsingin Sanomat.
Stenman said that the ombudsman report is not an attack against the PS.
Interior Minister Mari Rantanen’s and the party’s views of Muslims and other racialized migrants is well documented.
In an Interview with the tabloid Iltalehtiin 2023, PS chairperson Riikka Purra acknowledged that she aims for zero asylum seekers, like Denmark, from Muslim countries. Speaker of parliament, Jussi Halla-aho, who was convicted for ethnic agitation in 2012, has repeated the same aim.
When EU Commissioner for Technological Sovereignty Henna Virkunen (National Coalition Party) and Interior Minister Mari Rantanen (Perussuomalaiset, PS*)meet to boost confidence in Nato’s ability to protect its subsea cables, but the total opposite. Their political record and their extremist stance on asylum seekers reveals why Europe is toothless and lost in the face of US President Donald Trump.
In the 2024 election compass, Virkkunen still showed little regard for people crossing into the EU. Question 11 of Yle’s election compass asked a yes or no answer: “A person trying to reach Europe can be turned back at the border, even if it would put their life in danger.”
Virkkunen responded in the affirmative, yes, it was ok to push back the person even if his or her life were in danger.
EU CommissionerCommission for Technological Sovereignty Henna Virkunen (National Coalition Party) and Interior Minister Mari Rantanen (Perussuomalaiset) speaking to reporters over a new disruption of the cable C Lion 1 in Swedish waters. Both Virkkunen and Rantanen have little to no respect for refugees crossing the Mediterraneanbut are more concerned about underwater cables.
Rantanen is another case in her own league.
Some may ask how politicians like Virkkunen and Rantanen show how toothless and lost is Europe.
Their stances on human rights and difference show a cancer that is affecting Enruope: Blame it all on the migrants.
If we continue down this path, Europe is doomed to fail and its cherished values won’t mean a thing.
With the Örbero mass shooting, the worst in Sweden overtaken now by time and denial, a question remains: Who speaks up for migrants or New Swedes? The sad truth is few if any. What is even sader the silence has grown and is defeaning.
In a brilliant column, Mehdi Hasan writes about how DEI, which stands for diversity, equity and inclusion, and how the concept has been used to replace the n-word. “Today, more than four decades later, DEI has become the new n-word; the new rightwing abstraction deployed by Republicans to conceal their anti-black racism.”
In Finland too, DEI has been used by the likes of the xenophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS)* to mean anti-immigration and anti-migrant.
Silence is another racial slur that means approval of the existing order and institutions that oppress non-white people.
When a white person kills he is usually seen as a lone wolf. Behold if the killer is a Muslim or a racialized minority.
Apart from labelling racialized people and migrants, we are faced with the same issue: Let’s say as little as possible good things about migrants and minorities. Let’s speak in code and call them “asylum seekers.” You don’t even have to use the n-word anymore since everybody understands what your malicious labelling means.
A good question is why the public’s fascination with far-right populism has caught on. US President Donald Trump is one sour example but so is the changing political landscape of Europe. In Finland, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s National Coalition Party (NCP) believes it can continue to do business with the anti-immigration Finns Party (PS) and form the next government with them and the Center Party.
A simple answer to the above question is that populist far-right parties like the PS and their NCP enablers have sold simple solutions to complex problems. Some of their favorite scapegoats are migrants and minorities. Tougher laws and fueling mistrust will make us a stronger nation.A good question is why the public’s fascination with far-right populism has caught on.
A simple answer to the above question is that populist far-right parties like the PS and their NCP enablers have sold simple solutions to complex problems. Some of their favorite scapegoats are migrants and minorities. Tougher laws and fueling mistrust will make us a stronger nation.
Behind such 1+1=2 answers by politicians lies the deepest fears of parties like the NCP and PS.That fear is that white Finns, the kantasuomalaiset, or ethnic Finns, will lose power in the face of plummeting birthrates and rising immigrants.
Trump’s racist rants in the US, the FPÖ in Austria, AfD in Germany and other far-right forces are a direct response to the fear that their white majority will become a minority. It explains why the US Supreme Court overturned abortion rights and why some politicians are so paranoid about immigration, especially undocumented immigration.
If there is one indication that will fuel xenophobia in Finland it is also the country’s birth rate. In 2024, the birth rate plummeted for the third consecutive year reaching the lowest level in the country’s recorded history, according to Statistics Finland, forcing the fertility rate to retreat to 1.25 from 1.26 children per woman.
Lower birthrates paint a somber demographic future for Finland and a bleak social one as well. As the PS and NCP have shamelessly shown, spreading hateful rhetoric and strengthening institutional racism has short-term political benefits but long-term wrecks.
Labeling a minority as a threat has been used by different groups over the ages to justify genocide. Such a crime hasn’t lost its shine. Take a look at the Native populations of the Americas, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Empire, the Muslim Rohingya by the military of Myanmar, Rwanda, Israeli war against Palestinians in Gaza, and the Holocaust just to name a few.
When given enough unchecked space, hatred takes on a life of its own and is difficult to put back into the bottle.
Governments are playing with fire when they play down racism and continue to subvert migrant and minority rights. It is the best way to lead us towards the peak of the pyramid of hate.
In Finland, the paradigm shifts in migration, social and labor laws will impact dearly migrants and minorities. According to European Islamophobia Report w023. “Although the government program speaks of a ‘strong and committed Finland’ that respects ‘human rights and other international conventions, obligations under EU law and the rule of law,’ some say the statement is misleading because of the 180-degree turn in immigration policy. The government’s policies and assurances have failed to reduce the climate of hostility towards migrants and minorities, which is likely to continue to grow.
Even so, we have the power to halt this perilous development.
Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson not only blamed migrants for the violence in Sweden, he sent a message to all of the Nordic region. It’s called the blame game. Blame is an excuse and a tool for attack that distorts reality and a way to avoid responsibility.
He reiterated Sweden’s about-turn in strict immigration policy as a way to control immigrant and minority crime. “We have globalised crime, which is very much linked to immigration,” he was quoted in Helsingin Sanomat quotting TV4. “We have had very high immigration into Sweden for a long time. We have now tightened it considerably.”
Kiristersson’s blame and denial are straight from the populuist anti-immigration songbook. The message is clear: Just tighten immigraton law and the problem is solved.
Much of the Swedish public, which voted for Sweden’s most anti-immigration government in a long time, is also filled with wishful thinking. If the PM gives such a simple solution, then it must be true, right? Dead wrong.
In Finland, too, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s government has blamed migrant youths for the rise in crime. A report published by us in 2023 showed how the anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS)* have used the rise in youth crime in Finland as a way to gain voters and public support.
