Tag: xenophobia

The repackaging and marketing of hate by anti-immigration parties and groups in Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Migrant Tales has shown on a number of blogs how neo-fascist groups like Golden Dawn of Greece, Hungary’s Jobbik and our own Finnish version of the latter, the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party, are examples of the growing intolerance in Europe. Any sensible immigrant, visible minority and European should be worried by the situation. 

In Finland, our collective denial of racism is so deeply rooted that even in our history we deny being allies of Nazi Germany during the Continuation War (1941-44). Officially, we were a co-belligerent of Nazi Germany, but not minor allies like Hungary, Bulgaria or Romania.

Instead of going around in circles with such nuances that aim to hide the real fact, that we were at war with Nazi Germany against the former Soviet Union, we must find the courage to look at the issue closer at hand so we can free ourselves from the chains of the past.

Why were we allies of Nazi Germany? The explanation that you’ll hear boils down to revenge for the Winter War (1939-40) and our deep hatred of our old foe and master, the Russians. We went to bed with Germany in 1941 because Finland believed the Nazis would win the war.

What kind of world would we live in today if Nazi Germany would have triumphed in Europe? For one, this writer would not be here today because part of my family was Jewish.

We can already see how extremist groups like Suomen Sisu and parties like the PS have changed their tactics on how they attack immigrants and our ever-growing cultural diversity. Many don’t have to make inflammatory racist statements as before because they have today much more power than before.

A good example is a Suomen Sisu statement, where the far right anti-immigration association, which holds pretty much the same ideas about cultural diversity as the Ku Klux Klan and the U.S. American Nazi Party, calls for immigrants to integrate by learning Finnish, getting an education and a job.

Should we believe them? Certainly not. It’s only a red herring to hide their hate agenda, which is now being repackaged and marketed for a wider audience.

Two videos below of skinhead, neo-Nazi and anti-immigration groups throws back a disturbing question at our faces: Would this be possible on a much greater scale in Finland?

Certainly there’s such a danger and potential for our intolerance to escalate into further violence. The PS and the silence of other political parties are the best indication of our xenophobia and our opposition to cultural diversity. Certainly there’s also the euro crisis that brought voters to the the PS, but how do you explain its April 2011 election victory, when it received 19.1% of the vote (39 seats in parliament) versus 4.05% (5 seats) in 2007?

Such a major shift in the political paradigm in Finland doesn’t happen by chance. It comes from somewhere and buds at the right time.

Matters will unfortunately get worse in Finland before they improve.

The only way that immigrants, visible minorities and Finns can challenge the menace that Finland faces today is by reacting to it.

Complacency and silence to intolerance is waving a white flag at those who seek to not only defeat you but change our society permanently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLUxuq-E9yA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=fvwp&v=IuOVgx3Zh6E&NR=1

Finland’s and the PS’ three mentors: See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The latest scandal in the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party concerning  a councilmen who gave a clock with Hitler and swastikas to a neo-Nazi club in Vaasa, is another worrying example of how low we have stooped as a nation since the April 2011 election. Contrary to what some populist anti-immigration politicians may claim, we are not being threatened from abroad but from our own backyard.   

3904059792_588374e1a3

 See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil are quite popular in Finland these days. Source: Flickr.

Even if Finns speak proudly about the courage they showed during the Winter War (1939-40) when they were vastly outnumbered against the Red Army, some show remarkable cowardice when our society comes under attack from social ills like racism, prejudice and intolerance in general. Finland is not being led by a marshall like Carl Mannerheim, but by three monkey generals: See No Evil, Hear No Evil and Speak No Evil.

Hear No Evil is not only a good buddy of the PS, it’s a close friend of Finland’s political parties, the media and general public. Whenever anyone plays down racism, most likely that person or group has had a chat with Hear No Evil.

The one that should know better but prefers to be quiet is See No Evil. Instead of bringing out our good side and courage, Speak No Evil humbles us into opportunistic silence.  It’s a bit like your executioner who chops your head off. Since your good manners constrain you from speaking your mind, the only thing you can say after they behead you is, “Thank you, thank you!”

The third monkey, See No Evil, is probably the leader of the pack. This character brings out our cowardly behavior.

See No Evil was most likely responsible for Finland’s political earthquake in April 2011, when the PS won its historic election victory.

There were many factors that brought the PS to power. Two important watersheds,however, were Prime Minister Jyrki Katainenn infamous “debating immigrant issues in this country didn’t make you a racist,”  and Social Democratic Party (SDP) Economy Minister Jutta Urpilainen’s  maassa maan tatalla (In Rome do as the Romans do) statement.

Since the National Coalition Party and the Social Democrats feared the rise of the PS would rob them of votes, they decided to flirt with their populism instead.

That was a huge mistake that Finland is paying high price today.

Reading about Hitler and swastika clocks in Vaasa is a part of that political blowback.

The long battle for ethnic equality has begun in Sweden and Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

One wonders how Sweden’s embattled migration minister, Tobias Billström, could make his “blonde, blue-eyed” comment on asylum seekers and get away with it without losing his job.  Here in Finland we give prime television time to representatives of  racist association like Suomen Sisu, whose views on cultural diversity don’t vary greatly from the U.S. American Nazi Party or Ku Klux Klan.

To add salt to the injury to Suomen Sisu’s enemies,  immigrants and visible minorities, the association thanked the media for its “accurate coverage” of its annual meeting this month.

Billström got into hot water after an interview with DN.  “Sometimes we have this image that people in hiding live with a nice Swedish lady in her fifties or sixties who wants to help,” Billström was quoted as saying on The Local, citing DN. “But that’s not how it is. Most of them live with their countrymen who aren’t at all blonde and blue-eyed.”

After his comment instigated a storm of criticism even from Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, Billströn apologized publicly for what he said.

Should we seethe migrant minister’s comment as an isolated case or an indication of a much wider problem gripping our Nordic societies?

Like the Perussuomalaiset in Finland, the rise of the xenophobic and anti-immigration Sweden Democrats in the polls is hardening opposition to  immigrants and cultural diversity in that country. More and more politicians are pointing their fingers at immigrants for the country’s economic problems. Anti-immigration sound bites are a quick way to get support from voters and media attention.

Intolerance, which has raised its head in Sweden and especially Finland, reveals how blind our societies are to European history. If there were a class on racism at our schools, most would probably fail. Stiffening attitudes have emboldened visible racists, a new political class that capitalize on invisible racists’ fears and xenophobia.

The most worrying matter is neither the visible nor invisible racists in our society, but the silence of the majority. Silence isn’t always silent, however. It can manifest itself at a talk show with two representatives of Suomen Sisu or when a migration minister makes a racist comment.

Since too many journalists and politicians haven’t been victims of racism, they simply don’t get it. In order to help them understand what is at stake and what is being debated, we could replace terms like immigrant and visible minority with women.

How many would go public and denounce women in the same way that immigrants are today? Few, if any.

Why?

Because women have fought and gained greater gender equality.

Contrarily, too few have stood up for immigrants and visible minorities. Even so, the long path towards ethnic equality has begun and there’s nothing that can stop it.

The reaction of anti-immigration groups and parties in Finland or outrage sparked by a minister’s statements about asylum seekers are the best indication that that battle is taking place today in earnest.

 

Of Birds and Feathers: The PS, the Sweden Democrats, and Their American Bedfellows

Posted on by Migrant Tales

By Barachiel 

“Birds of a feather flock together.”

I don’t know how or if this saying applies to personal relationships, but it is true in the world of politics. And though they undoubtedly hate to admit it, the populist parties of the Nordics and Europe are not exempt. The PS’ problematic relationship with Suomen Sisu is proof enough of this. But even though we are well aware of the ties between populist parties like the PS and racist groups like Suomen Sisu, what about the ties to intolerant people and groups abroad?

There are many. With enough unsavory people to sufficiently embarrass the populist parties.

While the links between the populists and their American fans may not always be reciprocal, they nevertheless shine a light on the ultimate mindset of the populists. If parties like the PS and their immediate neighbor organization, the Sweden Democrats, really weren’t racist and xenophobic, I doubt they’d get attention from the people listed below, among countless others.

This indeed would be a case of birds of a feather flocking together. Or more fittingly, moths mingling with butterflies around the bug-zapper of intolerance.

Kuvankaappaus 2013-3-25 kello 15.32.06

Theodore Beale, a.k.a. Vox Day

Theodore Beale, better known by his pseudonym Vox Day, is a blogger and columnist for the extreme-right U.S. website WorldNetDaily. Like most of the contributors on that site, Vox Day propagates all manner of anti-Obama and anti-government conspiracy theories, as well as attacks on minorities. This is what Vox Day said about Finland and the PS on WorldNetDaily in 2011:

Being a more pragmatic nation than most, the Finnish people are the first to openly reject the idea that sending millions of Euros to other European countries and importing large quantities of foreigners is beneficial to the nation of Finland. Unlike Americans, the Finns recognize that a foreigner who comes to Finland is not a Finn. He is merely a foreigner in Finland, and his interests have little in common with those of the Finnish people.

Vox Day
“The End of Europe”
WorldNetDaily
May 9, 2011

Meanwhile, on his regular blog, Vox Day criticized The Wall Street Journal for editing a letter-to-the-editor by PS boss Timo Soini. Invoking conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama’s birth certificate, Vox Day expressed support for Soini occupying the Oval Office:

Since the election of Mr. Soetoro [Obama] has demonstrated that absolutely no documentation is required of an American presidential candidate, why not nominate Mr. Soini for the presidency? He’s a damn sight better than anyone else the Republicans are likely to choose, he isn’t too old, and as the leader of a popular, electorally successful party, he can’t possibly be called unelectable.

Vox Day
“The Wall Street Journal Scrubs The True Finns”
VoxPopuli.BlogSpot.com
May 11, 2011

Even for an extreme site like WorldNetDaily, Vox Day’s attacks immigration are unabashedly racist. In late 2012, Vox Day wrote WorldNetDaily piece in which he called for a whites-only secessionist movement, lamenting “the U.S. bifactional ruling party’s hatred and contempt for white Americans who still hold to traditional values” and “the infestation of even the smallest American heartland towns by African, Asian and Aztec cultures.”

Vox Day, it should be noted, is an expat living in Italy.

Elsewhere, Vox Day has called for “traditional Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture” to be reclaimed through ethnic cleansing, and has reasoned that: “If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn’t possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don’t speak English and are not integrated into American society.”

VDARE.com

VDARE.com – named after Virginia Dare, the first reputed white settler to be born in the North American colonies – is a non-profit anti-immigration website that has been officially listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Founded by Peter Brimelow, former editor of the ultraconservative periodical National Review, VDARE.com posts all manner of propaganda pieces by anti-Semites, white nationalists, and race-baiting pseudo-scientists.

VDARE.com – through an irregular columnist named Rafael Koski, a Ph. D student from northern Europe – has taken to writing laudatory, rabble-rousing pieces about the PS…

The True Finns have been taking votes from left, right and center, by exposing the incompetence and arrogance of the ruling elite. True Finns have gained a lot of votes from the Social Democratic Party, which has abandoned its traditional focus on fighting for the economic improvement of workers and adopted the crazy-left focus fighting against reality. (cf. U.S. Democrats.) The other two parties, the centre-right Center Party (rural population) and National Coalition (city bourgeoisie), are Europhiles and have been losing their nationalist voters to the True Finns.

Rafael Koski
“Death Of Nation State Exaggerated: Immigration-Skeptic True Finn Party Roiling Finnish Politics”
VDARE.com
April 14, 2011

And the SD, too…

Swedish media elites and the Establishment parties made fools of themselves by calling the Sweden Democrats a Nazi party trying to get away with Goebbels-style propaganda . . . The party got a publicity victory by showing that it is being treated unfairly by the Establishment parties and their media supporters. The reaction against the Sweden Democrats overshadowed all other election themes and ensured that protest votes would end up to the Sweden Democrats.

Rafael Koski
“The Sweden Democrats—Alone Against Establishment Extremists”
VDARE.com
September 10, 2010

Who else does VDARE.com take stock in besides Koski? There is Kevin MacDonald, a college professor who says that Jews are genetically predisposed to undermine whites by pushing for non-white immigration; John Derbyshire, a disgraced National Review columnist who claims that “white supremacy…is one of the better arrangements history has come up with”; and Jared Taylor, a white nationalist who founded the “racial-realist” webzine American Renaissance.

What other topics does VDARE.com cover? Apart from attack pieces on what it calls the “Treason Lobby” – VDARE.com’s term for human rights groups who defend immigrants, such as the ACLU – the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented articles entitled “Freedom vs. Diversity”, “Abolishing America”, “Anarcho—Tyranny: Where Multiculturalism Leads”; and “Why Immigrants Kill.”

Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN)

Known for its national television program The 700 Club, hosted by far-right televangelist Pat Robertson, CBN airs “news” stories which seemingly confirm Robertson’s contention that “Satanic” Muslim immigrants are out to conquer the world. Two CBN “reporters” – “terror analyst” Erick Stakelbeck and foreign correspondent Dale Hurd – have emerged as significant U.S. mouthpieces for European “counter-jihadist” parties, including the SD.

A March 2009 report by Hurd that aired on The 700 Club presented the SD as legitimate critics of Sweden’s immigrant community, with no mention of the party’s historical roots in neo-Nazism. Hurd took the party’s word for it that it wasn’t racist; dismissed criticism of the party as manufactured smears from Sweden’s “liberal media”; and cast two members, Kent Ekeroth and Erik Almqvist, in a martyr-ific light, along with the party in general…

KENT EKEROTH (Sweden Democrats international advisor): “I filmed the police chief [at a counter-demonstration of Islamic extremists in Malmö] and asked him why are they [sic] not reacting to [violence], why are they not doing anything. And he–he simply answered, ‘It’s their right according to the Swedish constitution to be there.’ We apparently did not have that same right because we were forced out of there, so…”

DALE HURD (voice-over): “Swede Ted Ekeroth [sic] helped film the Arab-left counter-demonstrations. He saw Arabs throwing rocks at a ninety-year-old Holocaust survivor.”

KENT EKEROTH: “Hopefully, you can show some of the clips from our demonstration for Israel, which is always peaceful and always with a message of peace. And theirs is always the quite opposite — death, hate, and killing of Jews.”

[…]

DALE HURD (voice-over): “But the Swedish Democrats [sic], who stand up for traditional Christian values and limits on immigration, have been stigmatized by the Swedish media as ‘fascist’ and ‘bigoted.'”

ERIK ALMQVUIST: “The media has tried to portray us as extremists, racists — we’re almost inhuman.”

DALE HURD (voice-over): “Erik Almqvuist, national youth leader for the Swedish Democrats, faces regular death threats and was almost killed recently in a left-wing knife attack.”

ERIK ALMQVUIST: “The multicultural system in Sweden has polarized this society. We have ethnic polarization. We have also political polarization.”

The 700 Club
Christian Broadcasting Network
March 12, 2009

With the benefit of hindsight, I’m sure I am not the only one chortling as Ekeroth and Almqvist insist – those two specifically – that the SD are neither violent or racist.

Both men became infamous after a video – shot a year after the 700 Club interview – showed them engaging in racist and thuggish behavior, resulting in the “iron pipe scandal.” Not only did that scandal expose Ekeroth and Almqvist as hypocrites, but also exposed as Hurd as an ideologue-posing-a-journalist who openly refused to look into the SD’s agenda. Hurd certainly didn’t cover the iron pipe scandal when it broke.

Hurd seems supportive of racists from both sides of the pond. His 700 Club reports include sympathetic stories on the violent English Defence League and the white nationalist “Identitarians” of France. Hurd’s public Facebook page shows pictures of him interviewing Jean and Marine Le Pen; as well as posing with ultraconservative writer George Gilder, who once called African and Native American cultures “destructive cultures”, “tragic failures” and “virtual social suicide.”

With supporters like these, how could the PS, the SD, and other anti-Islam parties present themselves as comfortably mainstream? Again, I doubt that rabid scribes like Vox Day and propagandists like VDARE.com and CBN would pay so much attention to these parties if they weren’t bigoted.

What will happen to Finland if the PS matches its parliamentary election result in 2015?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Should we be worried by the latest polls, which show the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party vying for second place? What does the rise of the PS say about the present state of Finland? What will happen if the party matches its 2011 election result in 2015?

Right after the disappointing municipal election, PS head Timo Soini promised that his party aims to become the biggest in 2014, when Finland holds European parliamentary elections.

If you are an optimist, the rise of the PS in 2011 could be seen as a knee-jerk reaction to Finland’s ever-growing cultural diversity, globalization and especially to the economic crisis that has hit the European Union and our country.

In my hometown of Mikkeli, we had our first refugee center in the early 1990s. The initial reaction was hostile, sometimes even violently towards the newcomers. That fortunately changed with time and today it’s nothing uncommon to see immigrants in Mikkeli.

While matters have changed for the better, others like institutionalized racism, prejudice and intolerance haven’t. They linger on because nobody has challenged these problems seriously enough.

Kansainvälinen Mikkeli, an association promoting cultural diversity and internationalization, approached by email some candidates before the April 2011 parliamentary election who wanted to tighten immigration policy and cut funding to such groups. Kansainvälinen Mikkeli published these responses on their Facebook page and thereby  opened debate with these candidates.

The email was important because it showed these candidates that their views concerning immigrants were being heard.

While it’s clear that time will change matters for the better in this country for immigrants and visible minorities, what if the PS match their last parliamentary election result in 2015? What would happen if they become the biggest party two and a half years from now and its leader, Soini, becomes prime minister?

While the latter scenarios are unlikely, such an election victory by the PS in 2015 would end up polarizing our society ever more. Soini’s and the PS’ answer, with the silent blessing of the bigger and some smaller parties, would play down intolerance by denying it as a minor problem.

It’s pretty clear that immigrants and visible minorities will never be treated as equals in Finland as long as they leave this important work to others. We must rise to the occasion and we must take charge of our own future.

One of the reasons why the PS has grown to such a big party and why our answer to their discourse has been so ambiguous, is because too many white Finns don’t feel threatened by them.

Leadership is needed more than ever today to drive home a fact that Finland is a culturally divers society.

No matter how much the racists and extremists kick and bitch about this fact, that’s what’s written in stone.

How far to the right will the PS and Suomen Sisu take Finland?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Even if Suomen Sisu president Olli Immonen and Jussi Halla-aho, both MPs of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) party, tried to assure television viewers Thursday on A-Talk that the association is neither racist nor far right, nothing could be further from the truth. 

In order to keep immigrants and visible minorities disenfranchised, Suomen Sisu must come up with new arguments and sound bites to justify their intolerance.

One of the matters that Suomen Sisu does is spread stereotypes about certain immigrants. Tabloids like Ilta-Sanomat paved the way for such stereotypes in the early 1990s, when Finland’s immigrant population started to grow.

Claude M. Steele’s whistling vivaldi reveals how detrimental stereotypes can be.

Whistling-Vivaldi-Steele-Claude-M-9780393339727

The provost of Columbia University writes: “But this book offers an important qualification to this creed: that by imposing on us certain conditions of life, our social identities can strongly affect things as important as our performances in the classroom and on standardized tests, our memory capacity, our athletic performance, the pressure we feel to prove ourselves, even the comfort level we have with people of different groups – all things we typically think of as being determined by individual talents, motivations, and preferences.”

If what Steele claims holds any truth, the spreading of generalizations and stereotypes about certain ethnic groups in Finland can be devastating.

The A-Talk show made one matter clear: Suomen Sisu’s new synonym for racism is its loathing for cultural diversity. Instead of attacking all immigrants, they are now pointing their guns at Muslims and non-white people from outside the EU.

As Migrant Tales wrote on Friday, Immonen’s and Halla-aho’s opposition to cultural diversity and their support for assimilation (one-way integration) was near-constantly revealed on the program while denying at the same time that Suomen Sisu wasn’t a racist and far right association.

The new Suomen Sisu president couldn’t have put his opposition to cultural diversity clearer on A-Talk: “Is there anything wrong [that an association] says that different [ethnic] groups and cultures shouldn’t mix, which I interpret as a multicultural society and what we don’t want to have in Finland?”

Even if one natural symptom of denial is convenient memory loss, Immonen disagreed that Suomen Sisu was against people of different ethnicities marrying and having children. Just like the Ku Klux Klan and the U.S. American Party, Immonen, however, believes that it is only a question of time when Christian Europe and Muslims will be at war.

He was quoted as saying right after the April 2011 election on Iltalehti: “Due to the present trend of multiculturalism, I believe we will see in the future of Europe a number of terrorist strikes and civil war in which the other warring adversary will be notably the representatives of Islam.”

It’s pretty clear what will happen in Finland if the PS’ chairman, Timo Soini, ever becomes the prime minister of Finland. It will mean greater clout for Suomen Sisu to spread its far right ideology and policies, which will not only polarize society but even threaten to put in cold storage our noble Nordic democracy and values such as social equality. Racism, xenophobia and intolerance in general will become more normal as our society strays from our present democratic values.

Halla-aho said that Suomen Sisu, which was founded in 1998, has played a crucial role in fostering anti-immigration sentiment (he calls it critiquing immigration) in Finland through platforms like Hommaforum and the PS.

Even so, there is nothing Finnish about Suomen Sisu’s ideology, which is copied from other far right groups in Europe. The only difference is that it is put in a Finnish context.

How different is the neo-Nazi party of Greece, Golden Dawn, from Suomen Sisu? One of its MPs Illias Panagiotaros claims in the video below: “[Immigrants] having a very nice life with extra good food, heating, air-conditioned [living quarters] and at the same time Greeks, millions of Greeks, don’t have foot to eat. They don’t have a place to stay, they don’t have anything.”

As far as we know, immigrants in Greece live in overcrowded apartments and detention centers. Many fear walking in public for fear of being attacked by far right mobs and the police.

Considering that Greece’s population is about 11 million, Panagiotaros claim that “millions of Greeks” are without food while the immigrants live a plush life is a gross exaggeration to put it lighly. It is, however, a common argument used by far right groups. It is used by Suomen Sisu and politicians like PS MP James Hirvisaari, who claims without proof that immigrants get more social-welfare benefits than white Finns.

If Finland lost its nerve by making the PS the biggest party and giving Suomen Sisu more power, it would be a slippery slope that would lead us down a slippery slope called Hungary, gripped by the same xenophobia that Suomen Sisu spreads in Finland.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BUulplUxRc

Police apprehend suspected attacker of black VR worker of Kajaani, Finland

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The police have apprehended the suspect who violently attacked on Tuesday a black train cleaner working for state railways, VR, reports Kainuun Sanomat. The suspect, who is a foreigner, admitted to the police of attacking the VR worker, who has returned home after being operated twice in hospital.  

Kuvankaappaus 2013-3-10 kello 9.21.00

Just because a person is a foreigner doesn’t mean he cannot commit a hate crime.  See what is happening in countries like Hungary, Slovakia and Greece, where racism and xenophobia have scapegoated visible immigrants, the Roma and Jews.

Moreover, the mere thought that people act like “cultural zombies” reveals your ignorance and prejudices, which are kept alive thanks to generalizations made of other groups.

Is the police treating what happened in Kajani as a hate crime? We still don’t know but they should if the victim was attacked because of his ethnic background.

Some Finns, who clump all foreigners in one group, believe that immigrants cannot house racist thoughts about other groups. This assertion could not be further from the truth. The same type of intolerance we find in some sectors of white Finnish society can be uncovered among some foreigners, who see themselves as white but may loathe blacks.

Our message to these people should be the same: racism, prejudice and intolerance are unacceptable in our society. Cross the line and you will have to deal with the law.

When we address a social ill like intolerance, the message must go to everyone in our society. Our aim must be zero tolerance.

Hate crimes in Finland are shameful but reveal our meek response to intolerance

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Just like over a year ago, during Black February, when three Muslims died under violent circumstances in a span of about three weeks, Migrant Tales learned of a new tragedy in the city of Kaajani. A black man, who is a train cleaner for the state railways company VR, was violently attacked by two men on Tuesday, according to Iltalehti and Kainuun Sanomat. 

Irrespective of who are the suspects, these types of crimes are simply unacceptable in our country and should not only be condemned by law but by society as well.

It is incredible that such violence can still happen in our country due to a person’s ethnic background.

If we must search for the real culprit of this crime, it is the ever-growing intolerance we find Finland. This adverse climate for immigrants and visible minorities has been forged not only by the present economic situation, but by our lame stance against racism, social exclusion and prejudice.

One must look at the big picture when looking at cultural diversity and tolerance. What does it say about the state of our society when  Perussuomalaiset (PS)-spirited associations like Suomalaisuuden liitto, Vapaa kielivalinta associaiton, and the youth wing of the PS and National Coalition Party spearhead a petition to do away with mandatory Swedish?

It sadly reveals that some prominent groups in our society are ready to sacrifice other people’s civil rights to satisfy their hunger for greater intolerance. If these organizations ever got their way concerning the role of the Swedish language in Finland, they would continue to search for new “enemies” because their reason for being hinges on creating and attacking scapegoats.

Moreover, undermining diversity enables populist parties who loathe civil rights for their “enemies,” to drive home their political ideology more effectively. If I were a dictator, the first matter I’d eliminate is the opposition, or diversity. Adolf Hitler did this effectively with the Jews and other enemies of the state.  At the end of the day, there was no opposition.

What has happened before can happen again in Europe. The fact that Finland has few minorities and immigrants explains why intolerance is not only  accepted but encouraged by some circles. It explains why a party like the PS rose from semi-obscurity to become Finland’s third-biggest party in parliament in 2011.

It is surprising that the National Coalition Party’s youth wing  has gone to bed with far right associations like the Suomalaisuuden liitto on the language issue. Even so, it is an excellent example of the traditional party’s mixed view of intolerance in Finland. Thanks to their unclear stand on the issue, they have permitted anti-immigration parties like the PS to grow into major political players in this country.

We at Migrant Tales hope that the perpetrators are brought swiftly to justice and the victim a swift recovery. This may be better said than done because the injuries of the victim are apparently so serious that he can never return to work at VR.

Haglund continues to challenge Soini on his broken campaign promises on racism

Posted on by Migrant Tales

The rift between Perussuomalaiset (PS) chairman Timo Soini and Carl Haglund, head of the Swedish People’s Party, reveals an ongoing David and Goliath duel where Soini is showing his true autocratic colors. Haglund challenged Soini last week to an open debate on racism after the PS leader was grilled on HARDtalk about this festering issue.   

Soini said in 2009 that he would sack any member from the party, especially an MP, if they were convicted for ethnic agitation.

Kuvankaappaus 2013-3-5 kello 23.05.46

As a result of Haglund’s challenge, Soini has refused to sit at the same table with him never mind have a debate about racism, according to Helsingin Sanomat. The PS leader even refuses to answer questions from journalists about the matter.

“He made a clear campaign promise, which he hasn’t kept,” Haglund was quoted as saying on Helsingin Sanomat. “After that he hasn’t accepted to comment about the criticism concerning his broken campaign promise but only repeated [in public] that he’s not a racist.”

Haglund, who is defense minister as well, said that the reason why the bigger parties haven’t challenged Soini on his broken campaign promise and racism  is because they fear the PS will continue to eat away at their support.

Migrant Tales asked the same question and gave roughly the same answer as Haglund on a March 3 blog entry.

We responded:  “The answer [why the big parties are so silent] is pretty obvious. There are two answers to this question: the biggest parties are too afraid to do so and/or silently agree with many of the populist policies of the PS.” The silence of the biggest parties has not undermined the PS’ popularity but helped it grow.

Thanks to the PS and its leader Soini, we have today given a political voice to a record number of racists, Islamophobes, immigrantphobes, isolationists, anti-EU supporters, male chauvinists, homophobes, neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers. Certainly that’s something to be worried about if you are attempting to build a society based on acceptance and harmony.

Is this is the brand of “Christianity” that Soini wants to promote in Finland?   We certainly hope it isn’t but that’s what it looks like.

Migrant Tales raises its hat once again to Haglund for pressing Soini for some answers on his broken election promises.

 

 

 

Holocaust toll was much higher than believed – what will the deniers and Counterjihadists now say?

Posted on by Migrant Tales

Don’t look for intolerance in complex and distant places because it sits and hides right under our noses.

A story on the Huffington Post, reveals that researchers from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum found over 40,000 Nazi death camps and ghettos that existed during Adolf Hitler’s reign of terror between 1933 and 1945. The total is much higher than previously believed, reports The New York Times.

Even if Counterjihadists claim to be pro-Israel, that is only lip service to hide their intolerance for diversity. If they ever got rid of the Muslims from Europe like their modern “final solution,” their next target would most likely be the Jews.

While the terror that the Nazi regime sowed is clear to most sensible people and the proof is out there in ever-greater quantities, there are some who are still in denial about the horrors of fascism and the Holocaust. Those who play down such atrocities committed against the Jews, Roma and other minorities in World War 2, can be found in parties like the Perussuomalaiset (PS) of Finland.

One of the matters that has always struck me about Counterjihadists, Holocaust deniers, populist right-wing radicals and anti-immigration politicians, is how they believe that history can be rewritten and forgotten to suit their opinionated ignorance and hatred.

Their denials are the brush that’s supposed to whitewash the truth.

Let’s look at a few of the many PS politicians what they think about fascism and the Holocaust so we don’t forget who they are.

A politician who made his questionable political career on spreading racism and hatred is PS MP Jussi Halla-aho.

What did he say?

  • “It’s quite justifiable to claim that the Nuremberg trials are a farce. Their guilt was decided beforehand and the convictions were carried out for absurd reasons.”
  • “Retroactively opposing the Holocaust is nicer and easier than getting involved in solving present-day problems. It is nice to accuse the Germans because it’s what everyone does. Armenians are irrelevant because Armenians don’t own Hollywood and the American media.”*

Halla-aho was convicted in June 2012 by the Supreme Court for ethnic agitation and breaching the sanctity of religion.

PS Kotka councilman Freddy Van Wonterghem, who claimed in May 2011 on Iltalehti that even though excesses happened during World War II, the Holocaust was an “exaggerated” fabrication by the former Soviet Union.

An appeals court upheld in February Van Wonterghem’s ethnic agitation conviction.

What did Van Wonterghem write? He said it was ok if Saudis kill a Muslim woman because that person would not give birth to anymore Muslims.

On a Migrant Tales blog entry on Uusi Suomi, Van Wonterghem had no regrets about what he wrote.

And then there’s a long list of others who are dazzled by far right ideology and who don’t hide their admiration for fascism.

PS MP Juho Eerola’s far-right and anti-immigration views are well-known. He once wrote in a blog entry that he liked Italian fascist Benito Mussolini’s economic system because there was full employment.

His aide, Ulla Pyysalo, applied for membership in the neo-Nazi Kansalinen Vastarinta.

Eerola didn’t want Pyysalo to resign. He said he’d be more worried if she’d apply for membership in a far-left group.

PS MP Jussi Niinstö, who chairs the defense committee, showed his political colors in the fall of 2011  when he quoted in parliament Nazi playwright Hans Johst’s Schlageter, “Wenn ich Kultur höre … entsichere ich meinen Browning” (“Whenever I hear of culture… I release the safety-catch of my Browning”).

Niinstö substituted the word “culture” in Johst’s play for parliamentarism.

Heidi Kuittinen is a PS politician from Kirkkonummi, located near Helsinki. She is another Holocaust denier: “Hitler’s mother’s father was apparently related to the Rothschilds. The six million dead have been proven to be a hoax anyway. The amount of Jews in Europe before and after the war just doesn’t match with the numbers of the supposed holocaust.”’*

Occasionally the PS shows its romanticism of Nazism as a group. The PS of the western Finnish city of Pori launched their municipal election campaign with a former Nazi catch phrase: “One city – one leader.”

The Nazi motto was: Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer (One People, One Nation, One Leader).

Here’s what a former PS member, Atte Pulli, was quoted as saying recently: “SIEG HAIL! …Oops, I slipped. I’m drunk.”*

And another one by Amon Rautiainen, a Kotka city councilman: “People are too uptight with Nazism, if someone has a Totenkopf on a shirt or somebody questions the amount of people killed at concentration camps, you’re immediately branded with Hitler.”*

Rautiainen is being investigated  by the police for suggesting that Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen and Economy Minister Jutta Urpilainen should be killed and Muslims boiled alive, according to YLE in English.

In the face of playing down Nazism, fascism, the Holocaust and, of course, racism, it’s important that we the voters do not forget who these PS politicians are and what they really stand for behind their populist sound bites.

* Original source: truefinns.tumblr.com