The rise of the far-right and their simplistic scapegoating of migrants and minorities reveals a sad reality hitting Europe. The rise of the far-right does not expose the obvious but the fact that we have failed to educate generations after the horrors of World War 2.
If there is one matter that characterizes an autocratic state like Nazi Germany, it is the fact that the system gave people the right to oppress and murder on an industrial scale. It wasn’t the “rotten apples” at the top who made it possible, but with the support of the masses.
Teaching and institutionalizing racism, us versus them, is a sure way of gaining political and finally, autocratic power, as we saw in Germany after 1933.
Populism is like a drug addict who needs a constant. The drug addict gets the fix but it does not resolve his main problem: addiction and destruction of the person’s physical and mental health.
In Finland, the “drug-addict” political parties that capitalize on scapegoating migrants and minorities are the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*, National Coalition Party (NCP), and Christian Democrats, and to an ambivalent extent the Swedish People’s Party and Social Democrats.
Only the Greens and Left Alliance have given a flat no to the present political development that normalizes racism and social exclusion.
An example of how parties like the PS and NCP further their racist message is by taking “bad” news framed and spread by the white Finnish media against migrants and minorities.
There are too many examples of the latter.
Apart from exploiting the migrant crime theme like in the 2011, 2015, 2019, and 2023 general elections, parties like the PS constantly exploit negative news about migrants and minorities to justify their conspiracy theories and fake news.
Riikka Purra, the head of the PS, tweets in her usual rants about migrants and minorities: “61% of pupils of migrant background have such low literacy levels that they lack the knowledge and skills to participate fully in further education and employment.
Second-generation immigrants also have significantly lower reading literacy skills than students with no immigrant background.”
Source: Twitter
A good recurring theme of an xenophbobic party like the PS is “see, we told you. Migrants and their children are worthless. We should have never allowed them in to Finland.” The problem with such a claim is that it is not only racist and exclusive, but it offers no solution. Some politicians speak of migrants and minorities in a way that they’d never dare to of their own ethnic groups.
Even if our society has failed to educate future generations on the dangers of racism like anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, it is never too late to take that first step.
The first step should be powerful and determined.
A lot is at stake. If we fail, we can avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.
