The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters. Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)
The quote by the Italian Marxist philosopher, writer and linguist, sheds light on the troubled times we are living in. We can witnes the wrecking ball in the United States, Gaza, and in many troubled regions of the world.
Trump’s National Security Strategy (NSS), which warns Europe of “white civilization erasure” and throws its support to far-right parties, is the best example of how the US is spreading its imperialist intentions.
Even if Finland’s far-right Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party is silent but supports in principle the NSS, the recent racism slanted-eye scandal involving two MPs and an MEP, tells us that racism is the anti-immigration party’s DNA.
An interesting question we can ask is why this particuar racism scandal, which insulted Asians got so much attention? The party normally attacks Muslims and other racialized minorities without any major consequences.
Is it because Asians are considered closer to “white” Finns than say Arabs?
Below, is a shameful picture of the PS politicians who said they “didn’t mean to insult anyone.”
From left to right: Juho Eerola, Kaisa Garedew ja Euroopan parlamentin jäsen Sebastian Tynkkynen. Photo: Facebook.
At a recent parliamentary session Thursday, Finance Minister and PS chairperson Riikka Purra gave a surreal answer when grilled by opposition politicians abour the scandal.
US President Donald Trump’s most recent tirade against Somalis should not only be seen as hostile racism, but show once again how such a social ill us used to seek attention and power. On Thursday we heard about the US’ National Security Strategy, which warns Europe of “white civilization erasure” and throws its support to far-right parties.
The Kremlin came out and gave its full support or the strategy.
Reports the Guardian: “The Kremlin has heaped praise on Donald Trump’s latest national security strategy, calling it an encouraging change of policy that largely aligns with Russian thinking.
While the National Security Strategy offers us a glimpse of the Trump Administration’s racist and colonial mindset, I wonder if it support for nationalist far-right parties includes the Perussuomalaiset (PS)?*
Even if Finland’s far-right party candidate in the US’ National Security Strategy would be the PS, it could also include the National Coalition Party (NCP), which is in government with the PS. Promoting anti-democratic measures would be (top left to right) NCP Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen, who is an apologist of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza, NCP Prime Minister Petteri Orpo who has helped racism grow in Finland, PS Finance Minister Riikka Purra, who impoverishes the country and puts the racism icing on it; (bottom left to right) Donald Trump, a racist felon, PS Mari Rantanen who sees migrant monsters under her bed, and NCP Defense Minister Antti Häkkänen, who fuels fear of the Russians.
Write Reija Härkonen on the Facebook posting: “Finland’s ministers of hate are already beginning to resemble their idols. As Independence Day nears, the nation mourns. The significance of this great holiday is shut when the democracy and welfare of the independent country, built by our forefathers, are deliberately and systematically eroded [by them|.“
The PS’ view of US Vice President J.D. Vance’s las year’s speech at the Munich Security Conference was more than supportive and a turning point in US-Europe relations. Vance, who gave his direct support to far-right policiatl groups like AfD of Germany, did not mention the PS. However, PS Minsiter of Finance Riikka Purra praised Vance’s speech.
After three decades in uniform and the completion of a doctoral dissertation, former police superintendent Jari Taponen made the decision to leave the force. His departure, he says, followed a growing sense that policing and the society it serves were drifting apart.
“The police have become politicised, and no one wants to admit it,” Taponen said.
Jari Taponen
According to him, the organisation’s claims of political neutrality are at odds with its operational structures. “Performance targets come directly from the government programme. In that sense, the police carry out political will whether they want to or not.”
After his resignation, Taponen founded a company called Prevenza together with Susanna Makaroff. The company focuses on social safety, community resilience and evidence-based crime prevention.
A central source of frustration for Taponen was what he describes as the police organisation’s inability to adapt to societal change. “Preventive work gave me a broader perspective on issues like community strength, integration, and reducing polarization,” he says. “But the organisation did not evolve in that direction.”
The breaking point became even clearer during his doctoral research. As he examined the effects of police actions on crime and public safety, he realised that reliable research data was extremely scarce, despite strong assumptions in public debate.
“It is commonly assumed that police actions have clear and predictable effects. But research shows they are highly context-dependent — and sometimes neutral or even negative.”
For Taponen, this lack of research leaves room for interpretations based on assumptions. “There is little research, and official communication often relies more on impressions than on reality.”
While working in the Helsinki police, Taponen followed recurring claims of rising youth crime and talk of gangs involving young people with immigrant backgrounds. According to him, these narratives do not emerge spontaneously.
Even if Finland reported on Monday a record rise in suspected hate crime cases in 2024, there has been little reaction by the government about the worrying trend. The silence and inaction, despite assurances by Prime Minister Petteri Orpo of the failed anti-racism program, speak volumes about the social ill.
The inaction and the hands-off approach of the government towards racism, despite assurances of the contrary, are at the heart of the problem. The government fuels racism by not doing anything.
Like with the government’s economic policies and promises to end indebtedness and create jobs and growth, it has failed as well in making Finland a less racist country.
While the Finnish government has publicly emphasized the importance of tackling discrimination, civil society groups and anti-racism advocates say that some political decisions and public rhetoric over the past years have normalized racism. They point particularly to immigration reforms, political disputes surrounding equality initiatives, and several controversies involving ministers.
Researchers note that Finland has long struggled with underreported racism, and that rising figures can also reflect increased reporting and awareness. Still, the pace and scale of the latest spike have killed debate over whether current policies are alleviating—or aggravating—the problem.
Government officials have not yet commented directly on the hate-crime report. Still, authorities have previously said that combating hate crime remains a priority, even if the report shows the tip of the iceberg.
Migrant Tales correctly predicted in 2023 that hate crimes would soar to new records the following year. The trend, unfortunately, will continue. 2025 will be another record year for hate crimes in Finland.
Migrant Tales is the oldest antiracist blog in Finland founded in 2007. We have a wealth of material collected during those years that should not be forgotten. Welcome to Migrant Tales oldies.
This is an awkward and offensive ad by Wille Rydman who doctored his face brown to look like a migrant, claiming he is helping migrants (Sic!). The person standing behind Rydman is Mukhtar Abib (see message below).
My Messenger message fo Mukhtar Abib: “Hi Mukhtar, I’m Enrique Tessieri from Migrant Tales (www.migranttales.net). What a turn of events in the Wille Rydman case. It would be great to hear your views, considering that you supported him in the 2011 elections. Best regards, Enrique Tessieri, 040 8400773.” He never replied.
Wille Rydman claims that he dares to speak his mind and to make what he says a reality. Let’s see below some of his scandalous quotes.
In those messages, Rydman called asylum seekers who came in 2015 “desert monkeys” and used other racist words for blacks, Muslims, and Jews. He wrote that a certain flower, the lilly of the valley, spreads and multiplies like Somalis. Rydman said he’d be ready to forbid the person wearing the hijab instead of the veil.
Rydman ran into problems a year earlier in 2022 when Helsingin Sanomat published an investigative story where a number of young women, some of whom were minors, claimed they were harassed by him.
The scandal caused Rydman to be suspended from the National Coalition party. He later joined the Perussuomalaiset party.* He was minister for economic affairs during 2023-2025.
The shame and contempt that the government of Prime Minister Petteri Orpo through their Perussuomalaiset (PS)* partners is iincomprehensible if you are a sensible-minded person. The PS was, is and will continue to be a racist party where its toxicity level varies. But mark my words: racism is its fuel and raison d’être, reason for being.
One of the most toxic decisions of the PS and the government has been to extend citizenship period from five to eight years, and now disqualifying people who are forced to live off welfare. The final step is to implement a citizenship test, which most Finns won’t pass.
Writes Helsinki Times: “The revised legislation, adopted by 103 votes to 58, forms the second stage of the government’s broader reform of the Citizenship Act. The main objective is to require applicants to demonstrate financial self-sufficiency through employment or business income, excluding most forms of public support.”
Some, like Nikki Obernik, saw the new phase of the citizenship act as a hostile phase.
The biggest problem with Finland’s tightening of migration policy swims in racism and aims to exclude and oppress foreigners. The laws, like the citizenship act, send out a clear message: We don’t trust you, we do not give you the benefit of the doubt, LEAVE unless you leave your identity and rights at the door!
The Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party is waging a hostile Islamophobic campaign to boost their low standings in opinion polls. The party is confident that the job will be done by increasing attacks on the migrant and minority community. That is the reason you hear and read PS politicians bashing migrants to divert attention from their disastrous economic policies.
One of these PS politicians is Wille Rydman whose shameful writing exposes the lie behind the story.
He claims in a column in a community paper, which the mainstream media would most likely never publish, that the far-right Great Replacement Theory is a perfect term to describe what is happening in Finland.
“All this is happening completely openly and largely as a result of political decisions. There is no conspiracy, nor is one needed. The end result is a Finland that is becoming less and less Finnish. A country that is rapidly being populated by people who are anything but Finnish,” he claimed.
So what’s wrong with the statement? For one, he is talking about foreigners taking over Finland and that white Finns will become a minority, a typical Great Replacement Theory conspiracy theory that has led in 2019 to the mass killing of Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand.
When you read the writings of people like Rydman, they forget to mention that following matters:
Only one conclusion arises after listening to President Donald Trump’s rant in the United States: culture war. This war aims to not only shift political power globally, but also in Europe from the center to the hard right.
Trump said that if we do not close our borders, forget about the climate crisis, and stop buying Russian oil, “our countries are going to hell.”
Apart from European far-right Trump sympathizers like Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Italy’s Georgia Meloni, there are several other cheerleaders in Finland, mainly from the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party.
Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference, which many see as a turning point in EU-U.S. relations, was one where he downplayed the threat of Russia, claiming that Europe’s greatest security threat was unregulated migration and the exclusion of far-right political groups. In the face of widespread condemnation, PS Minister of Finance Riikka Purra praised Vance’s words as a great speech. “Freedom, freedom of speech, democracy; threats from within, inability to fight illegal immigration,” Purra posted on X.
If Purra’s comment was made in Spring, the latest one praising Trump came from Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Ville Tavio:
Writes Tavio on Facebook: “I don’t know how the mainstream media will report on this, but I listened to Trump’s speech at the UN today, and he made a lot of valid points about how open border policies are leading Europe to hell. Trump said that so-called asylum seekers are rewarding generosity with crime. European prisons are full of foreigners, who already make up more than half of the prison population in many countries. According to Trump, the migrant problem should be tackled head-on and those who do not belong in the country should be deported, but decision-makers are doing nothing because of political correctness. He also highlighted climate action as a failed scam that is impoverishing Europe and enriching China and others. Trump believed that Europeans are chasing unrealistic carbon targets and end up paying more for electricity and gasoline than others. Trump made these remarks to world leaders at the UN General Assembly, where it is unusual to hear such blunt talk that deviates from the narrative familiar to the mainstream media. What do you think? Will Europe finally take itself in hand, or will it continue to hush things up and bury its head in the sand?”
One wonders what can be done in light of this onslaught. For one, we should not give in and always place our arguments on the rule of law. Racism, for example, is against the law.
The last dictatorship (1976-83) we had in Argentina seemed invincible. Their downward spiral began when their mistaken invincibility turned against them, causing them to do foolish and terrible things.
Nothing in Finland has been the same since the Perussuomalaiset (PS) achieved their historic breakthrough in the 2011 general election, increasing their parliamentary seats from 5 to 39. If there is one matter that unites the PS and their coalition partner, the National Coalition Party, it is the systematic erosion of our democratic institutions.
We have let in a Trojan horse, and there is no one to blame but our political class, the media, and the segments of the public who endorsed it. The fuel for this assault has been migration and the rhetoric of “security.”
Beyond introducing the harshest immigration restrictions in a century, one of the most damaging measures came in 2024, when Parliament approved the so-called pushback law—later extended to the end of 2026.
It is dangerously naive to believe that abandoning basic civil rights and the rule of law will have no wider consequences on our society. Some may argue: “It will only affect migrants.” Wrong. We are already sliding further down this slope, with calls to strip non-citizens of social security and to ban schoolgirls from wearing the veil.
All of this racism spread by ministers like PS head and Finance Minister Riikka Purra are done with any consequences. The PS, which bases its support on Islamophobia, wants to have its cake and eat it by staying in government and spreading anti-Muslim hatred.
National Coalition Party (NCP) MPs like Tere Sammanlahti spread conspiracy theories about migrants. In his group are a number of politicians of the NCP. One of these is NCP Youth head Binga Tupamaki, who said that Finland is not a social welfare office for the world.
The politicians who are tearing down our democracy can mutate into mouthpieces of the far right. Some, as we recently saw with PS MP Mauri Peltokangas called migrants “vermin.” Even if he apologized, his use of the word is a copy from Hitler.
And let’s not forget PS MP Teemu Keskisarja, who denerated the human value of Muslims on A-studio. “Rather, the opposite is true,” he said. “Those who enable this [ethnic] replacement will turn [Finland] into a developing country of pig stys and bloodbaths. These are the reasons why the great replacement angers me and the Finns Party.”
If there is someone who has normalized the Islamophobic PS, that person is Mrkku Jokisipilä. He speaks for white Finland and rarely does he understand what harm and oppression the PS have brought on minorities. Source: Google
Hold on to your hats: the project to remake Finland—reshaping its institutions to serve only white Finns—is already underway.
Unless we push back against this destructive force, in ten years we may no longer recognize our own country.
While writing chapter on Finland for the European Islamophobia Report 2024, I interviewed an imam who offered a striking observation: our indifference to the war crimes and suffering in Gaza is mirrored in the way we tighten immigration policy and enforce austerity. Both, he argued, stem from the same root – a troubling social numbness and growing detachment from the suffering of others.
The hardening of immigration policy is creating insecurity for many migrants living in Finland. If the government’s stated goal is to make immigrants active citizens and full members of society, the measures chosen appear to move in the opposite direction. Many factors undermine integration and erode trust, such as the risk of deportation for the unemployed, the extension of the citizenship waiting period from five to eight years, and stricter requirements for permanent residency.
One of the most shameful decisions by Parliament was the passage and extension of the so-called Border Act, which disregards the human rights of asylum seekers and weakens the principles of the rule of law.
Welfare cuts, too, disproportionately affect migrants. More worryingly, they feed suspicion and reinforce the perception that immigrants cannot be trusted. This in turn makes harsher immigration policies appear acceptable, even though they deepen divisions and obstruct inclusion.
This indifference is reinforced by the media, political leaders, both government and opposition, and an almost complete silence from the public. Where are the editorials condemning structural racism? Where are the politicians’ genuine calls for a ceasefire, even as we continue arms trade with Israel?
How long must we endure empty slogans about Israel’s “right to defend itself”? Or Prime Minister Petteri Orpo’s claim that the government’s anti-racism program proves racism has no place in Finland – while the Finns Party openly repeats far-right tropes like the “great replacement” theory and speaks of minorities, such as non-ethnic Finns and Muslims, as if they do not belong here at all?
These phenomena feed each other. When we fail to feel empathy for suffering abroad, it becomes easier to ignore injustice at home. The will to care – especially for the most vulnerable, such as minorities and asylum seekers – is essential to any democratic society. Yet many have learned to shut down their emotions, letting injustice and cruelty wash over them like water off a duck’s back.
Ducks’ feathers repel water because they secrete oil and have a unique feather structure. In our society, this “oil” takes the form of denial, scapegoating, dehumanization, alienation, and the refusal to look suffering in the eye. Over time, our hearts risk becoming just as impermeable – shielded against empathy, justice, and humanity.
Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) warned us in his famous poem: “First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out… Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
One of Finland’s most glaring injustices today is the way we treat asylum seekers and visible minorities, particularly Muslims. A recent episode of A-studio offered yet another example of how Muslims are portrayed in public. Finns Party vice-chair Teemu Keskisarja launched a harsh attack on Muslims and invoked the “great replacement” theory. According to him, referencing to a Finnish saying ‘pidot paranee‘: “You don’t improve the feast by replacing the guests. On the contrary – neat Finnish banquets turn into a developing-world pigsty and a bloodbath.”
At the start of her term, Interior Minister Mari Rantanen promised a “paradigm shift” in immigration policy. But if that shift is rooted in fear and mistrust – as it clearly is – what kind of society are we building? Instead of promoting inclusion, these laws entrench barriers to equality.
From the United States to many EU countries, we have seen how destructive polarizing politics can be. But we must not succumb to despair. That is precisely what those who profit from division and hatred hope for.
In my home country of Argentina, where military coups were a fact of life in my youth, we had a saying: Nada malo dura cien años – “No evil lasts a hundred years.”
