Tag: xenophobia

Migrant Tales (July 22, 2012): What have we learned after Norway’s 22/7 and the Boston bombings?

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Comment: As the manhunt for one of the two suspects continues in Boston, what should our reaction be to the two Chechen killers? This blog entry written on the first anniversary of the horrific killings in Norway by Anders Breivik could shed light on that question.

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What goes around comes around.

Exactly a year ago Anders Breivik carried out his mass killings, which ended up causing the death of 77 innocent victims. Have we learned anything from that tragic Saturday that shook the Nordic region and changed it permanently?

In order to answer that question, we’d have to travel back in time to see how things were prior to that  day.

In Finland, the right-wing populist Perussuomalaiset (PS) had just won ahistoric election victory that enabled the party to increase the number of its MPs to 39 from 5 in 2007. While party leader Timo Soini played down anti-immigration sentiment as one important factor behind the PS’ election victory, others disagreed.

Before Breivik erupted on the stage, anti-immigration parties like the PS were the new political force to contend with in Finland. It seemed that nothing could stop them from adding new election victories in the future. The louder and cruder their anti-immigration and anti-EU stances were, the more supporters they’d rally to their cause.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xjVD0ztWaKA

In Norway, Denmark and Sweden, far-right populist anti-immigration parties had grown as well and were openly challenging traditional parties.

Everything changed, however, after July 22.

The first blow came in Norway to the Progress Party (FrP), which saw its support in the September municipal election plummet by 6.1 percentage points to 11.5%. In the same month, another anti-immigration party, theDanish People’s Party (DPP), suffered an election setback.

Since 2001, the Islamophobic DPP had supported minority right-wing government in exchange for tighter immigration policy.

In many respect, Breivik was a wake-up call that woke up for Finland and the Nordic region to the threat of intolerance and hate speech.

A recent supreme court ruling against Jussi Hall-aho is a case in point. The PS MP was not only fined for defaming a religion but for inciting ethnic hatred as well. The ruling wasn’t only a big blow to the PS but to the far-right Suomen Sisu wing of the party.  Halla-aho was forced to resign as chairman of the administration committee, which, among other matters, sets immigration policy.

The presidential election was another important example of how Finland is distancing itself  after 22/7 from the anti-immigration and populist rhetoric of parties like the PS.

Two conservative anti-EU candidates, Timo Soini of the PS and Paavo Väyrynen of the Center Party, lost to Green Party hopeful Pekka Haavisto in the first round of voting. Haavisto is openly gay and pro-EU.

The next test for the PS will come in the October municipal elections. If polls are anything to go by, the party will suffer another election setback.

In light of the above, can we claim that Breivik had had a direct impact on the popularity of the PS and other parties in the Nordic region that are anti-EU, anti-immigration and anti-Islam?

Your answer to that questions will probably reveal more than anything else your political views on immigration, Islam and cultural diversity.

But if we ask Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, Norway had become after July 22 “more tolerant, [and] more careful not to judge people” by ethnic origin.

Even if Stoltenberg has shown leadership on how a wounded society should react to intolerance, it’s still unclear what impact Breivik will have on our societies. We are still healing from the wound and can matters return back to “normal” in Norway after Breivik?

If we set aside politics and try to understand the impact Breivik had on the region, one matter is certain:  We are outraged by what happened but dread even more the possibility that it could happen again.

Competing for the anti-immigration thunder and rhetoric of parties like the PS, DPP, FrP and Sweden Democrats are far-right groups like the Finnish Defense League, which are  copy-and-paste clones of the English Defense League.

Breivk scared the wits out of some of us and proved that anti-immigration and Counter-Jihad rhetoric can convert itself into a monster that has the ability to wreak terror and change our societies for good.

That I believe is the real message and threat of 22/7.

Whiteness and white privilege speak European languages

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As we hold our collective breaths and await to know the identity of the bombings in Boston Monday, too many don’t see a suspect but a whole ethnicity or religious group. Tim Wise put it very well in an opinion piece where he makes some distributing revelations about the power of whiteness.

If we understand in Finland, the Nordic Region and Europe that white privilege in the United States means the same thing here, we can begin to understand the social ills that have inflicted us as well.

Being “white” in Europe means that you are a member and identify with the dominant ethnic group of a country. You can speak Italian, be a white Romanian, Estonian-speaking Estonian, or an Englishman or a white Englishwoman to enjoy white privilege over other groups that are visible minorities.

Wise affirms that the Boston bombings are another lesson about ethnicity, whiteness, and specifically of white privilege.

He writes: “White privilege is knowing that even if the Boston Marathon bomber  turns out to be white, his or her identity will not result in white folks generally being singled out for suspicion by law enforcement, or the TSA, or the FBI…And if he turns out [the killer] to be a member of the Irish Republican Army we won’t bomb Belfast. And if he’s an Italian American Catholic we won’t bomb the Vatican.”

Anders Breivik, who killed in cold blood 77 victims on July 22, 2011, is a good example of white privilege in the Nordic and Europe. Despite his horrific act, nobody in this part of the world thinks that all white people are mass murderers.

On the contrary. Whites privilege and time make us forget such horrors. Wasn’t Breivik a deranged lone wolf?

We should start to speak more about white privilege.

Not talking about it  shows another feat by white privilege: Playing down the issue.

Margaret Thatcher’s New Right and Finland’s Perussuomalaiset party

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As Perussuomalaiset (PS) leader Timo Soini promises that his party will become the biggest party in next year’s European parliamentary elections, which would give him a spring-board to score a similar election victory as in 2011, it’s still too early for the party to reveal how it would deal with its usual enemies like the Greens, homosexuals, immigrants, visible minorities, left-wingers and anyone it arbitrarily labels as “unpatriotic” or anti-PS. 

What is scarier about the PS? Is it its bravado and political saber-rattling taking place now or what it’s keeping under wraps in the stuffy closet: Do not let out until after the 2015 parliamentary election?

What isn’t surprising, and what few political journalists have failed to analyze, is how similar Soini’s political world view is to Margaret Thatcher’s New Right ideology, when she ruled Britain with an iron fist between 1979 and 1990.

Writes Owen Jones: “Thatcherism was a national catastrophe, and we remain trapped by its consequences. As her former Chancellor Geoffrey Howe put it: ‘Her real triumph was to have transformed not just one party but two, so that when Labour did eventually return, the great bulk of Thatcherism was accepted as irreversible.’”

Can the same happen in Finland if the PS are victorious in 2014 and 2015?

One post, published on Migrant Tales by Jenny Bourne of the Institute of Race Relations, highlights many similarities.

Like Thatcher, who ”was, without doubt, a xenophobe, an unapologetic imperialist with a natural penchant towards the far Right,” according to Bourne, Soini and the PS are without doubt “xenophobic, unapologetic racists with a weakness for the far Right.”

There are differences, however. While Thatcher was bent on destroying the power of the unions, the PS aims to build a “workers’ party without socialism.”

A workers’ party without socialism sounds more like what fascist Italian dictator Benito Mussolini founded in Italy. During his reign (1922-43), Mussolini wielded power with the help of powerful unions. The same model was copied during 1946-55 by Argentinean former strongman Juan Perón with disastrous consequences.

Another clear example of the New Right spirit of the PS is their economic policies. Part of these were revealed in January  by EuroMP Sampo Terho and PS strongman Matti Putkonen, who suggested how Finland could save 3.15 billion euros. While the usual culprit of development aide was mentioned, it was surprising that Terho and Putkonen suggested raising VAT, a PS policy no-no.

Thatcher’s suspicion of the outside world, nationalism and xenophobia are generously shared by the PS.

One recent example is the embarrassing revelation where the National Bureau of Investigation as well as Interior Minister Päivi Räsänen have had to apologize for the mistake in adding Russian President Vladimir Putin to a list of criminal suspects. It didn’t take long for PS MP Tom Packalen, a former police commissioner, from stating in a blog that there was no wrongdoing in placing Putin on such a list.

While the former prime minister admitted that if four million people from the new Commonwealth or Pakistan moved to England in the 1980s, she admitted that people were going to react in a hostile manner to those moving there.

Many PS and anti-immigration groups in Europe and elsewhere speak of “uncontrolled” immigration, which is only a synonym for permitting people to react in a hostile manner towards others.

 

How can Finland tackle intolerance today if it cannot come to terms with its past?

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Finland’s present political and social dilemma could be best described in the following manner: On the one side it has a difficult time acknowledging ever-growing intolerance in its society, but on the other slowly understands that one major source of that intolerance are groups like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party.

The PS has grown into a major political force in Finland not by its own merits per se, but because other political parties and the media have been near-silent to its right-wing populist anti-EU, anti-immigration and especially anti-Islam political message.

If the PS ever got to government, and if its chairman Timo Soini ever became prime minister, it would make conservative Christian Democrat interior minister, Päivi Räsänen, look like a liberal.

If this ever happened, the situation of immigrants and visible minorities in Finland would deteriorate further. They would feel the full brunt of populism and intolerance that is openly promoted by the PS.

While we can debate the extent of intolerance in Finland, probably one matter that we can state safely is that our tolerance for cultural diversity needs to improve. We cannot improve on this front as long as we close our eyes and plug our ears to the social ills that racism, prejudice and discrimination are fueling in our society.

It’s futile for a white Finn to state if there is racism or not in our society because he or she has never experienced it. How could he?

We do ourselves great harm by denying or playing down those voices that claim they are victims of racism, prejudice and outright discrimination.  This type of silence only encourages and fuels more intolerance.

But back to our dilemma: If we are to challenge the sources of our intolerance, our society needs to do a lot more soul-searching that will carry us back to the depths of the last century. Certainly there we’ll find the sources of our intolerance and the causes for the rise of an anti-immigration party like the PS.

Kuvankaappaus 2013-4-9 kello 1.02.06

Here’s an interesting article on Yliopppilaslehti about one of those historical skeletons in our collective closet.

It’s futile to understand who we are today if we don’t come to terms with our past. Some sticky unanswered questions include our relationship with Germany and the Nazi regime, the Continuation War, our hatred for the Russians, the Civil War of 1918, cold war-era censorship, and the social construct of Finnish national identity in the last century as well as other ones.

This is the dilemma facing Finland today: If we don’t come to grips with our past, we will be in danger of repeating the same mistakes.

 

Migrant Tales takes part in German Broadcasting Company program on hate speech

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Those that promote anti-cultural diversity sentiment are not only out to destroy your arguments but your self-esteem. Migrant Tales has proven over again that what we say on this blog has importance and does get noticed in Finland and abroad.  The German Broadcasting Company aired on Friday a program on hate speech in which we took part.  

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We have gotten noticed on publications like Time, Sveriges Radio, YLE’s Suora linja,UNHCR in Greece and others. The BBC and TV4 of Russia have gotten in touch with Migrant Tales as well.

The point is simple: If we have an important message to get out because it is heard faintly by the local media, politicians and public, that message gets eventually noticed. People think we get funding and that enables us to publish Migrant Tales. Wrong.  We are for now a hand-on-heart operation with a clear mandate.

Considering that we’ve been around for almost six years and grown to be an active anti-racist blog that promotes cultural diversity, isn’t it surprising how our most infamous counterjihadists and racists don’t dare come close to our blog.

Doesn’t that tell you something?

It tells me that most of these anti-immigration pundits and groups would rather avoid us because we can expose their false arguments but putting in jeopardy their political careers and credibility.

Another important matter to keep in mind is that nobody in the immigrant community controls which topics should be brought up. Our community is a democracy and defends the rights of others to express themselves as long as they don’t insult others. The more opinions we hear, the better.

Thank you for making Migrant Tales into what we are today.

 

Migrant Tales Literary: The racist and his rabid dog

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By Leo Honka 

The racist shows off

his rabid dog

on a short leash

footsteps and gleaming eyes

speak of  satisfaction

on the pavement and media attention

thanks to his rabid dog.

Like flies on flypaper

struggling to survive

the racist too owns a rabid dog.

On a short leash he walks, walks

but doesn’t know

the true nature of the beast

that knows no master

and can bite back, hard

like Anders Breivik.

What should we do!?

A racist and his rabid dog

in our midst and on our streets!

Send them both to the municipal racist pound!

Give them a shot of tolerance,  a possible cure!

So the racist

will no longer show off his rabid dog

on a short leash.

 

Finland’s tolerance for cultural diversity is being tested to the limit these days

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Finland’s tolerance to Otherness is being tested to the limit these days. If we look at it from a political perspective, the knee-jerk reaction is clear. Denying that there isn’t a connection between the stellar rise of an anti-EU, anti-immigration and anti-Islam party and our ever-growing cultural diversity is understanding a little or erroneously the issue at hand. 

It would be wishful thinking to believe that the Perussuomalaiset (PS), which won 39 seats in the 2011 election versus 5 in 2007, that there is a return to the past when the political landscape was dominated by three major parties: National Coalition Party, Social Democrats and Center Party.

Returning back to the political good old days without Timo Soini’s PS is just as unrealistic as stopping Finland’s ever-growing cultural diversity. Intolerance and cultural diversity are here to stay and will set the pace of things to come in Finland in the future.

As far as intolerance is concerned and the rise of parties like the PS appear to throw sand in the gears of cultural diversity, the good news is that history and our sheer numbers will have the final say. We will one day have the power to tell our own narrative as Finns.

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Professor Jeremy Gould spoke to Otava Opisto Folk High School students and staff on Friday. 

Professor Jeremy Gould of Jyväskylä University gave us the big picture in a recent talk he held near Mikkeli. According to him, there is very little narrative coming from immigrants and visible minorities concerning our ever-growing cultural diversity.

“Nearly everything written about ethnic relations in Finland is by researchers with no personal experience of racism,” said Gould. “Obviously, this limits the depth and relevance of their insights.”

It would be too simplistic to blame only the PS for Finland’s ever-growing intolerance. Such a social ill has been fueled as well by the silence of other political parties, the media and general public.

Not only is silence and lack of leadership a problem, associations that claim to further the rights of immigrants and visible minorities are just as guilty as those who decide to remain silent to the threat of intolerance.

If we accept white Finns, or visible minorities who speak like Uncle Toms, to champion for our rights and to our narrative, we have nobody else to blame but ourselves for our failures.

The big challenge in this century for Finland is deconstructing its twentieth century national identity. In its place there will be a more inclusive Finland where there is a lot of room for everyone to embrace this country as their home.

 

 

 

 

 

Maaseudun Tulevaisuus: Soini sees himself forming government after the 2015 elections

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What are we to think and believe about Timo Soini’s opinion piece on Maaseudun Tulevaisuus, where he claims that the next government formed after the 2015 parliamentary elections will comprise of three major parties? Certainly Soini sees his party emerging as the victor and Finland’s next prime minister. 

Kuvankaappaus 2013-4-6 kello 11.02.23

Read Maaseudun Tulevaisuus news story on Timo Soini here.

It’s clear that if Soini’s Perussuomalaiset (PS) party wins the 2015 elections, the National Coalition Party will not be in government due to that party’s big differences with the PS concerning the European Union and the euro.

Moreover, Soini has said in the past that he could never work with neither the Greens nor Swedish People’s Party.

The interesting question we should ask is why is Soini creating waves about elections that are two years off? Since the PS leader doesn’t have anything significant to show to voters after being two years in the opposition, he is apparently forced to play for high stakes: It’s government in 2015 or bust.

Even if opinion polls have shown the PS to be breathing down the necks of the National Coalition Party and Social Democrats, it’s still a question mark how well they will do when elections arrive.  After the historic victory in April 2011, the PS’ showing in the presidential and municipal election was a clear disappointment for the party.

It’s a good matter that Finnish voters have not fallen for the PS’ rhetoric and populism. Two years in the opposition have not helped the party’s credibility, which has been undermined by near-constant scandals, bursts of racism, ethnic agitation sentences, and anti-EU rhetoric without solutions.

If we are honest about the PS, voters have little idea what the party would actually do if they led the next government.

If the the PS is able match its historic result of 2011 and if any party, especially the Social Democrats, went to bed with Soini, it would be a kiss of political death.

Certainly that day would be one of the darkest days especially for immigrants, visible minorities, Swedish speakers and cultural diversity in general if the PS is able to match its 2011 result in 2014 EuroMP and 2015 parliamentary elections.

While such a threat may remain, some analysts believe that despite Soini’s popularity, most Finnish voters would not trust him as prime minister.

They like to see the PS as a sort of a show and a thorn in the traditional parties’ side.

Three news stories that expose the challenges facing Europe: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-Roma and official approval of the latter

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Three stories this week spoke volumes about the challenges facing Europe during these times: discrimination against Muslims is widespread in many European countries; a string of anti-Semitic attacks have been reported in Eastern Europe; and Hungary’s top journalism prize is awarded to an anti-Semitic and Roma basher. 

Despite their geographic differences, all three stories are related shedding light on the cancer that is spreading in our region. Intolerance is exceptionally resilient, surviving in the postcolonial era even after two devastating world wars that cost the lives of an estimated 100 million people.

If we had to picture how xenophobic groups are using hate speech to further their agendas, we could use a rabid vicious-looking dog being walked on a short leash by a zealous owner. The dog attracts lots of attention and the owner is happy about this.

What the owner doesn’t know is that the dog knows no master and can bite back hard like he did with Anders Breivik, who murdered on his counterjihadist crusade 77 victims in Norway in July 2011.

Another matter that the rabid dog owner doesn’t want to know, or is ignorant of, is that numerous rabid dogs on short leashes with owners can spark conflicts and wars between nations.

A shadow report on racism by ENAR, the European Network Against Racism, expresses concern about widespread Islamophobia in many European countries.

It claims:  ”…damage to Islamic buildings, and protests against the building of mosques even in countries, such as Poland, where some Muslim communities have been established and integrated for centuries. Muslim women and girls are particularly affected, facing an extreme form of double discrimination on the basis of both their religion and their gender. In France for instance, 85% of all Islamophobic acts target women.”

In Eastern Europe, where the economic recession has hit some countries very hard, nationalism and neo-Nazi anti-immigration groups have been on the rise. A spate of anti-Semitic attacks were recorded in the Ukraine, Poland and Hungary in recent days.

Anti-Semitism, which is one of the poisonous fruits of intolerance inflicting Europe these days, is not only on the rise in Eastern Europe but throughout the continent.

The media plays a crucial role in forging attitudes. Even so, the media mirrors what their readers think.

Rerenc Szaniszlo, an anti-Semitic radio broadcaster in Hungary who got fined for calling the Roma ”apes,” was awarded Hungary’s top journalism prize. He has a dubious reputation for spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories on his shows.

It’s a good matter that there are some self-respecting Hungarian journalists still around who saw this as a sham. Ten Transcics Prize for journalism winners from other categories handed their prizes in protest, according to The Independent.

All three cases above reveal something disturbing but known to us for a long time in Europe. Attacks on minorities have become so common in some parts of Europe that even journalists, who fuel such intolerance, are awarded coveted journalism awards.

The day will come when the crimes against minorities will be exposed. Their horrors, which reveal social exclusion, wrecked lives, abuse and exploitation, will one day awaken a wider audience to act and defend those democratic values we hold so dear and which are under threat these days.

 

 

Finland’s response to extremism should be more openess and democracy

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An editorial on Thursday’s Helsingin Sanomat comments about Anjem Choudary’s visit to Finland last week. It points out correctly that hate speech should be condemned irrespective who makes it. Living in a culturally diverse society requires more mutual acceptance, not less acceptance and respect.

Some of the controversial statements made by the cleric was that it was only a question of time when the flag of Islam would be waving on our parliament building. It was an interesting coincidence that on the same day of Choudary’s visit, Image magazine exposed a Perussuomalaiset (PS) councilman from Vaasa who gave a clock with Adolf Hitler and swastikas to a neo-Nazi club in that city.

Which of the two are the greatest danger to our democracy? Choudary or the Vaasa councilman who appears fascinated by a dictator who dragged Europe into World War 2, unleashing mass war that claimed an estimated 60 million lives?

How seriously should we take Choudary’s threats? If we react to them violently by censoring them, or as PS youth leader Simon Elo suggested that the cleric should be banned from coming to Finland, we’d do a favor to their causes.

It’s unfortunate that too many editorials like the one in today’s Helsingin Sanomat sideline the big picture: Why does radical Islam exist? If we look at the West’s colonial history with the Arab World as well as in other parts of the world, there are a lot of arguments and grievances to justify radicalism. Even so, our democratic system offers us the opportunity to challenge and correct those past and present injustices.

Just like radical Islam, we have to look at the causes of far right and right-wing populist anti-immigration sentiment in Europe these days. On this front, we have a lot of historical and sociological information on their causes. One of the most frightening of examples is the rise and fall of Nazi Germany.

We were horrified by 9/11 but some of us were even more alarmed by our reaction to it.  Former President George W. Bush’s so-called war on terror fueled greater radicalization among Muslims. If anything, the attack on the WTC Twin Towers showed the United States as a perpetrator of violence and not as a victim of terrorism.

Our reaction to terrorism and radicalism should be the total opposite to Bush’s. Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg showed the way after Norway was mourning 77 victims murdered in cold blood by Anders Breivik. Contrary to Washington’s reaction after 9/11, the Norwegian prime minister said that his country’s response to the mass killings will be more openness and more democracy.

We must be on our guard against those politicians and groups that demand less democracy during these difficult times, when far right anti-immigration radicalism is raising its head throughout Europe.  What is especially worrying is that such opinions are being echoed by the mainstream media as well.