In order to challenge a social ill like racism we must be committed to challenging it. It is sad that it had to come to this, but the tragic events in Norway have given us the strength and resolve to grab racism in Finland by the horns. It is as if those 77 victims who died at the hands of Anders Behring Breivik are asking us to act for them.
One of the reasons why racism has flourished and found a sort of eerie renaissance in Finland as of late is in my opinion due to two factors: our silence and lack or leadership, or vacillation.
One of the sources of spreading racism have been websites like Hommaforum and Scripta, both closely connected with PS MP Jussi Halla-aho.
While these websites claim innocently to spur open debate on immigration, what they do is act like a country like North Korea where everyone is of the same opinion and where dissention is strongly discouraged.
Migrant Tales was attacked in September 2008 in a matter of hours by over 800 bloggers from Scripta. Some of them posted angry comments.
How does such a cyberlynch mob get mobilized? One blogger posts something on Scripta’s wall like, “go and hostilely ‘spam destroy’ the debate” on a Migrant Tales blog entry, Are you a target of racism in Finland.”*
Soini appears these days like a politician who sees no evil, hears no evil, speaks no evil. Certainly he is very worried by the impact the killings in Norway will have on the PS.
On Thursday’s Päivän kasvot talk show, he said with a poker face that he hardly visits websites like Hommaforum and knows little of them. Even if Soini appears to suffer from partial memory loss like Halla-aho recently, many like Jussi Jalonen remember what he said on April 8, 2010 on A-talk. Back then he praised Hommaforum by stating that “generally (the website is )very factual even if they sometimes go overboard (with their comments).”
In light of what happened in Norway, Soini has gambled by not distancing himself from the racists and the Counter Jihadists in his party. This can be a costly political mistake by him that could prove fatal.
It will be difficult for him to sell the credibility of the PS if it is associated with Counterjihadists websites like the Gates of Vienna.
If the PS ever want to rule Finland and show leadership, they will have to divorce themselves from the anti-immigration rhetoric and their hate speech of Halla-aho and is followers. It is the langauge of extremists that have no place in our Nordic democratic liberal and open societies.
Finland demands much better than a small group of fanatics who are obsessed by the power that their hate speech has given them.
*“Arvon netsit! Jos ylimääräistä viitseiliäisyyttä löytyy, käykääpä vihaisesti spametdestroyaamassa http://nemoo.wordpress.com/2007/06/07/are-you-a-racist-in-finland/ keskustelu.”
Enrique you forgot that it was me who caused “attack” so you shouldnt point out that i werent, also if you want to give picture of hordes of malicious attackers you shouldnt give out what he really said.
“No joo, jos tuolla keskustelu on täysin idioottimaista niin sitten ihan OK-ehdotus, mutta jos kyseessä on asiallinen keskustelu, niin käyttäydytään ainakin me järkevästi eikä alennuta näiden monikulttuuri-idioottien tasolle. En siis lukenut tuota juttua, mietin vaan että mitä vähemmän aletaan sontaa heittelemään, sitä parempi on oma julkisuuskuvamme.”
Hi Hannu, can you show me that link on Scripta? You probably know how to surf your way better than I on that site.
Also i want example of hate speech with explanation of why it is hate speech.
Easily, just google what you said and only 3 hits.
Also you are prime example of “i dont understand internet”. There is no central boss or anyone who can decide or order. What you saw was simple power of crowd where people saw that youre an idiot and acted accordingly. Spam and destroy “order” what you saw was from idiots who didnt know how internet works and accused us from spam and destroy, it was of course taken like kultamuna as out vocabularity.
There is no one who can order people to do anything, people do what they want to do and if they want to tell you that youre an idiot then so be it.
Hannu, you should be careful in the future because what you say on the net can be seen by others. What about the time you called on others to attack my blog by saying “look at this shit being written” and a link to a blog entry. I am pissed off at you and Scripta for attacking my blog. It shows a remarkable lack of respect and cyberlynch-crowd mentality. But on the other hand we should all thank you for keeping this blog alive today. Without your actions Migrant Tales would probably not exist. That is what we say in English by turning lemons into lemonade.
Google does not seem to find the original call for spamming, just two messages in scripta’s guest book that quote it. Maybe it got deleted as inappropriate.
Thank you khr for checking! What do the messages in the guest book say?
One says (after quoting):
“No joo, jos tuolla keskustelu on täysin idioottimaista niin sitten ihan OK-ehdotus, mutta jos kyseessä on asiallinen keskustelu, niin käyttäydytään ainakin me järkevästi eikä alennuta näiden monikulttuuri-idioottien tasolle. En siis lukenut tuota juttua, mietin vaan että mitä vähemmän aletaan sontaa heittelemään, sitä parempi on oma julkisuuskuvamme.”
And the other:
“Sehän on vanha kun taivas. Vaikka kylläkin ihan baabatuubaa. Löytyy sieltä uudempiakin.”
Basically the first one says that it is better to keep the discussion civil if it’s originally so (“to avoid falling on the level of multiculturalists”). The second one comments the thread is old, though trash, and that there are newer ones too.
Those are what I found with the quote. If there are others I missed them.
Update: I found the original message, though for some reason google didn’t give a direct link to it. I’m not quite sure what to think of it. The writer might have meant civilized commenting despite the inflammatory initial chapter:
“Kyseessä on siis lähinnä maahanmuuttajien käymä keskustelu suomalaisten rasistisuudesta. Muutama suomalainen on siihen liittynyt, mutta yleensä n rasistiksi haukkumisen jälkeen on menettänyt malttinsa ja alkanut riehumaan rasistisesti.”
If that was the purpose, he should have written the entire message in a more neutral way.
Thank you khr! You are great!
Enrique you need to prove your accusations, where i called attack and when?
If i really wanted an attack i wouldnt talk about it in any blog or forum, ill just talk to my friend and after that youll blog would be unusable. I remember that i mentioned your blog atleast once and i may have told what i think about you but calling attack… Im nor anyone is in place where he can “call” attack, one can ask people to look at your blog (like advertising, you may have heard a word) and can give his opinon about your blog but calling attack… Youll notice when youre under attack and its not few hundred visitor, add few zeros and youre close.
forgot to add notify