The Perussuomalaiset (PS)* is a horrible party for migrants and minorities. They have the dubious “honor” of being the first modern party in Finland to capitalize on voters’ racism and bigoted views. Certainly they couldn’t have done it alone. All the major parties have the same type of politicians who state and write the same kind of things.
Some politicians are pretty straightforward about their bigotted views while others speak in code.
PS foreign minister, Timo Soini, is a politician who usually speaks in code and acts as the “good cop” of racism.
For bigotry and racism to bloom in any society, you need a complacent media, which thinks no differently from such politicians. How else are you going to get your racist and bigoted message to your followers?
The whole so-called debate in Finland on asylum seekers, migration, and migrants is a colossal lie by parties like the PS and others. Its only aim is to scapegoat and shift blame from politicians, who are inept, to migrants and minorities.
Even the president of Finland, Sauli Niinstö, doesn’t get it. He makes wishy-washy statements like the government about racism in Finland. He acts like many closet anti-immigration politicians who play down social ills like racism because he believes it won’t affect him directly.
Wrong.
Ask the Norwegians what happened on 22/7.
Racism is a cancer that spreads in our society with 1 + 1 = 2 arguments. It won’t create jobs, bring innovation, and foster peace in our society but impoverish us and force us to fear even our own shadows. Listening to racists pitch their bigoted arguments is like listening to sexist things said about women. Is it acceptable?
There are some faint positive signs that the media and the Finnish Immigration Service (FIS) are tired of being rubber stamps to such politicians.
This week, PS MP Maria Tolppanen’s blog was taken down for inciting hatred against migrants with misinformation. Even FIS put out a statement rebuffing her false claims that white Finns get less social aid than migrants.
Tolppanen is such an arrogant politician that she’s even threatened to go to the police.
PS MP Pentti Oinonen is another example of how facts are cooked. In January, he claimed that a fifteen-year-old was raped in his hometown of Kuopio by an asylum seeker.
Other masters of deception and bigotry are PS MEP Jussi Halla-aho and former MP James Hirvisaari, both who have been sentenced for ethnic agitation. In 2011 that an asylum seeker had raped a teenage minor that never took place.
But not only PS politicians make up stories about asylum seekers, migrants, and minorities; the National Coalition Party does this too.
Former MEP Eija-Riitta Korhola, who apparently doesn’t like wind power, claimed that she’s heard about “a lot of” animals like sheep and chicken that have died under mysterious circumstances around wind farms. In the tweet below she asked for an independent inquiry into the matter.
Korhola has a Ph.D. Her dissertation, which was defended successfully in 2014, was on “Climate Change as a Political Process: The Rise and Fall of the Kyoto Protocol.”
National Coalition Party former MEP Eija-Riitta Korhola suspects that wind farms cause animals to die.
PS local politician Terhi Kiemunki is another case. She insulted Muslim trick-or-treating children on her Facebook wall by stating that it’s a shame she didn’t have condoms to give their parents.
Kiemunki is still a member of the PS and still doesn’t understand what she did wrong. Asking a pyromaniac to put a fire is risky business.
Before Anders Breivik killed 77 people in cold blood, one of the person’s he sent his “manifesto” to by email was Kiemunki.
Does the media mention this fact when they write about the Tampere PS politician?
While we are seeing some reaction to politicians who use the media to further their political careers with the help of racism and bigotry, we still have a long way to go in this country.
Recent examples, however, give us hope that some media in Finland are fed up by being taken for a ride by such politicians and parties.
* The Finnish name for the Finns Party is the Perussuomalaiset (PS). The English names of the party adopted by the PS, like True Finns or Finns Party, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and xenophobia. We, therefore, prefer to use the Finnish name of the party on our postings. The direct translation of “Perussuomalaiset” is “basic” or “fundamental Finn.”