The election success of the Islamophobic and xenophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS)* in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, reveals a party blinded, even more, today by hubris and hatred for migrants, especially Muslims. Their hubris and arrogance are their political vulnerability.
Some Finns have put off the PS as a fringe phenomenon, something that will disappear in time.
The 2019 elections showed that they haven’t vanished.
Below are some sensible demands we should be asking European MEP candidates now and especially our MP candidates before the May elections.
A comprehensive list of demands by the European Network Against Racism, Europe’s biggest anti-racism NGO.
Yle, for one, searches for explanations why people vote for the PS. Even if they claim that it may have to do with limited education and low socioeconomic status, their conclusions are only excuses and denials of racism in our society.
Another explanation, shrouded as well in denial, is that people are racist because they are unemployed. If this were the case, people living under brutal regimes would automatically become Isis members and commit acts of terrorism. Some may, but most of them don’t.
Such explanations are simplistic answers to complex social ills, like the ones used by the media and some politicians to justify racism in society.
The hubris and arrogance of he PS that we are witnessing today appear to have no limit. It was clearly revealed when Matti Putkonen at a press conference censored a Helsingin Sanomat reporter by taking by force his microphone. The reporter asked Halla-aho about his past Islamophobic blog writings and if he renounced them.
Helsingin Sanomat wrote a good story about these blog writings. Unfortunately, the story was published after the election.
In truth, the PS is an opportunistic bully that picks on the most defenceless people of society like asylum seekers who don’t have any political power and who cannot vote them out of power.
The countdown of a dictator’s last days begins when he thinks he is immortal and invincible. This sounds very much where the PS is today after Sunday’s result.
A good example was PS chairperson Jussi Halla-aho’s comments at an MTV talk show:
“…there are many encouraging examples [in Europe] like Antti Rinne’s sister party, the Social Democrats of Denmark, which has taken a very reasonable stand on immigration issues. This is possible when other parties become aware that they start to lose [voter] support to parties like the Perussuomlaiset. This may take some time, [but] the more time it takes the more expensive it will be for society. In the big picture of things, I am optimistic [that other parties will take on board our hardline immigration stand].”
What Halla-aho forgets to tell us is that Denmark is a country where most of the mainstream political parties like the Social Democrats have sold out to the far-right Danish People’s Party, a close ideological ally of the PS.
The PS would not want anything more than to turn Finland into a Denmark when it comes to hardline immigration policy.
The picture below, published in Politiken, one of Denmark’s leading dailies, gives you a frightening glimpse of that party’s racist worldview.
These types of xenophobic proposals would warm the heart of the PS. See original posting here.
Countries like Denmark are a terrible place to live if you aren’t white and a Muslim. It is a white European country where the so-called integration minister celebrates the tightening of immigration policies like in the Facebook posting below.
Denmark is not only a country that is Islamophobic but one that is Islamophobic on steroids. Read the full post here.
This type of arrogance, like the one shown by Denmark’s Integration Minister Inger Stojberg, reveals Europe’s racism problem with a capital “R.” It reinforces our scepticism of European institutions.
Challenging such hubris won’t be easy, but not impossible. White Europe’s arrogance and racism are their soft spot. It is there where we should hit the hardest.
* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13, 2017, into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. In the last parliamentary election, Blue Reform has wiped off the Finnish political map when they saw their numbers in parliament plummet from 18 MPs to none. A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Official translations of the Finnish name of the party, such as Finns Party or True Finns, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and after that the acronym PS.