By Enrique Tessieri
The shocking revelations in Germany, whereby 140 people have died since 1990 as a result of far-right violence, is a wake-up call for us in Finland as well. How is it possible that so many people are killed by a far-right terror cell without anyone raising a question?
Writes Spiegel Online International: “Now, Germany has been startled from its slumber. Ever since the discovery of an underground far-right terror group which apparently targeted Turkish small businessmen all across Germany for many years, the law enforcement agencies have been asking themselves how they could have overlooked something that is actually impossible to overlook.”
The guardian.co.uk reports: “The German parliament has passed a cross-party resolution expressing ‘deep shame’ that a neo-Nazi terror cell was left unchecked to murder 10 people during 13 years on the run.”
Supo assured Finns in early November that while it takes the far right seriously, it does not consider these groups dangerous, according to Helsingin Sanomat.
What does “dangerous” mean? Should we be concerned?
Any person with some understanding of what has happened this year should be concerned. A party like the Perussuomalaiset (PS), which got 19.1% of the votes in April from a tad over 4% in 2007, has received a dubious reputation in only eight months after its election victory. Just over a week after the election, it became pretty clear what some of their MPs thought about racism. Then came other issues concerning democracy, sexism, homosexuals never mind links to neo-Nazi associations like the Suomen Kansalinen Vastarinta (SKV).
Denial is one of the oldest snow jobs in the books: Racists never admit they are racists never mind the far right telling us that they are extremists. That is why the role of academics, analysts, writers and journalists who are on the ball are crucial at exposing these groups for what they are.
Some sectors of Finland, especially the police and Supo, have pretty conservative views about Finnish society. For some of them, the PS and groups like Suomen Sisu aren’t an issue because they identify with their ideology.
Even so, we at Migrant Tales see a worrying trend in Finland after April even though we feel that more Finns than ever expected are standing up to this menace posed by racism and nationalism.
By extremists we mean the SKV, Suomen Sisu and “light” versions of the latter like the PS, especially the Nuiva manifesto faction led by Jussi Halla-aho.
Should we be concerned or not in Finland?
I would be.
Law per definition is conservative as it reacts only to changes after changes have established themselves. Law enforcement agencies are consequently linked to conservatism. When threats were/are detected (Baader-Meinhof/Al Qaeda) the machinery come alive. Conservatism (also right -wing extremism) is a part of their existence. Often is has been said that especially law enforcement wear black shirts (Nazi) under their beige uniform shirts. The Thuringer group is just one of the German rightwing scenery. Read the book: Forwärts Kameraden, wir mussen zuruck about the right-wing underground in the 70-80s. Lately a right-wing assault group has been detected in Danemark to start the “killing-fields” like the Norwegian Breivik.
Like I have said earlier that rightwing behavior (especially socially in bars, in the streets etc) are taken for granted as “acts of some disturbed or drunken people”. Youngsters are not supposed to be drunk at 08.00 in the morning molesting foreign paper-runners. Or foreigners who get shot at with air-rifles (sorry, an accident). These acts are ignored by the local police even though they have been called at the site. Black shirts under blue jackets??
Being a policeman/woman is not a garantuee of “objectivism”. A lot of “accidents” indicate at least “subjectivism” and “silent approval”. Nothing has been done, no actions are taken or actions are dropped without justification. Policemen/women are just as much human beings as we all are. However!! Their role should be as a “role-model”. When this role-moddeling consists in ignoring racist situations only show the “offenders” that their behavior is taken for granted, justified in a way. Making a bad situation even worse.
A lot of snow-shovelling has to be done in Finland I am afraid!! Where are the right tools and the right people??
–Being a policeman/woman is not a garantuee of “objectivism”. A lot of “accidents” indicate at least “subjectivism” and “silent approval”. Nothing has been done, no actions are taken or actions are dropped without justification.
Very well said. Now, how do we change things? For one, I believe making the police force in Finland more diverse. More people of different ethnicities, women, Romany minority etc. That would change things quite rapidly.
There is a danger that the trappings of certain forms of work can easily attract people who are manifestly unsuitable for that work. You would not hire an unreformed alcoholic to run a pub or fly a jet airliner.
If I say that child molesters should not be permitted to work with children, then everybody will wholeheartedly agree, even to the point of establishing public registers of convicted offenders.
If, on the other hand, I say that racists and fascists should not be admitted to the police and armed forces, then there is generally less universal agreement. Even so, an authoritarian mindset and an ingrained view that violence can finally resolve interpersonal conflict are factors that make certain individuals manifestly unsuitable for most functions in modern policing and military operations.
There was certainly a measure of truth in the perception that some Finnish immigration officials in the early 1980s had drifted into this line of work for the wrong reasons and were using their positions to pursue a personal agenda. The damage that these officials did to Finland’s domestic and international interests was considerable.
‘What does “dangerous” mean? Should we be concerned?’
“Dangerous” would be, for example, attacking and robbing people and raping women. “Dangerous” would be forming an Islamist terror cell to funnel money to al-Shabaab.
What if there were a foreign population group, here in Finland, who exhibits much higher rates of criminality than do native Finns? Should we be concerned?
Oh, wait. There is such a population group!
http://www.optula.om.fi/uploads/nul786y.pdf
But we’re not concerned. No, it’s much more important to conduct Stalinist witch-hunts for “racists”. Gotta pave the way for population replacement!
–What if there were a foreign population group, here in Finland, who exhibits much higher rates of criminality than do native Finns? Should we be concerned?
We should always be concerned about such a thing. However, we should find the root of the problem.
Nikolai, where do you get these expressions: “Stalinist witch hunts for racists.” I never heard that one and I think it is pretty ridiculous.
Nikolai
Did you even bother to read the 21-page document that you linked in that response? What is your opinion of the methodological reservations expressed at various points in the text?
“Dangerous” would be, for example, murdering more than 140 people for no better reason than being immigrants. That’s what the article in der Spiegel was about. You don’t say anything about this. Instead you deploy the standard hommaforum tactic of trying to change the subject.
Which Finnish parliamentary political party would be least likely to expel such criminals from membership for such conduct? If you were a rabid racist thug with a mind to get involved in Finnish party politics, where do you think you would be most likely to find people willing to accept your views? Where would you be most likely to find like-minded authoritarian types who encourage and accept the use of force and coercion and are proud of their own racism?
It’s a good thing now happening in the German Parliament. The security services have failed to detect neonazi groups in the country, failed to solve the “kebab-murders” that have been going on for more thana decenium.
Failed to or swept under the carpet ??. This piublicity will harm Germany for quite a while. “Black shirts under beige uniforms” is an obvious conclusion that the Parliamentary gremia have to solve. I certainly will follow the investigation deeply.
“What if there were a foreign population group, here in Finland, who exhibits much higher rates of criminality than do native Finns?”. I studied criminology for my Master Degree. There is no methodological problem to “proof” any group (Finnish or foreign) to be more criminal than others. Therefore studying research results especially the methodological part is essential for evaluating the results.
Furthermore, criminality of groups can easily be explained by following the “detective policies of the polivce management” of an town, an area, province etc. Suppose: I am the head of police (my hidden agenda is to support PS) and I want to picture immigrants as “more criminal” than Finns. My orders to the staff will be to pay attention to violations of foreigners and less to those of Finns. The statistics coming from such “hidden agenda” will be visible very soon. Uncritical readers will find those statistics useful for their “political points of views”.
I can even proof that Finn men are less criminal than Finn women. This is known as scientific manipulation. You aren’t that stupid, are you??
Ever done any scientific research, Nikolai?? Here you have a path to show that you are always right. I have very many examples of such research findings if you like!!
Congratulations on having “studied criminology”, Mr. Genius. I guess having a “Master Degree” makes you some kind of expert statistician-cum-philosopher moral authority, and we should all defer automatically to your views?
Let me guess – your “research” consists of a nearly-illegible screed claiming that all group differences in criminality are due to “racism” (“That nasty police chief must have told officers to only arrest foreigners!”).
There’s plenty of evidence demonstrating strong correlations between ethnicity and violent crime in many different societies – loads of data comes from the USA, but also from the UK, Sweden, Germany, etc. Why don’t you start out at the easiest place: http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/. Take a look at the violent crime statistics and see if you can find any stable, long-term correlations between violent criminality and ethnicity. I’ll give you a hint – those naughty black people just can’t stop committing violent crimes! In fact, it would be fairly simple to set up a statistical analysis in which skin pigmentation is an independent variable, and without doubt it would show a much stronger association with criminality than any number of other factors, including income or educational level. This would, of course, be career suicide for any demographic researcher. The putative association would represent different distributions of underlying behavioral traits in genetically isolated population groups that have evolved under remarkably different circumstances over evolutionary time. Oh, but thinking that “genes” might somehow be related to behavioral traits is evil and racist, right? Let’s just ignore genes, and instead celebrate diversity and tolerance. Get some more Congolese and Somali enrichers in here!
Nikoli, here is some food for thought about using statistics: “Statistics are not synonymous with reality but are, rather, a way of representing the complexity of the world in categories and figures attached to such categories. This becomes immediately obvious when we
compare the ways in which comparable phenomena – such as international migration – are statistically represented in different national contexts. The national statistics used to describe international migration are based on different conceptualisations that are closely related to the history of the respective country as well as to the particular history of migration from and to this country.”
Source: Heinz Fassmann, Ursula Reeger & Wiebke Sievers ?eds.?: “Statistics and Reality Concepts and Measurements of Migration in Europe.” Amsterdam University Press 2009. p. 17.
Your point of view and how you tackle it speaks a thousand volumes of your view of other people.
Well, at least it gave me the sense of reading statistics in a far more critical way than you do!! The link you gave me is interesting but doesnot mean anything as long as I haven’t seen the research papers, its questions and what purposes the research serves. But I must admit your research proposition is really “cool” It reminds me of research done some 70 years ago in the concentration-camps of the Nazis. Also your favorite I guess??
Thanks for the compliment. Nevertheless, I hold a different opinion. I am certainly not the genius that you think I am but my studies gave me a more wider view of society and its shortcomings of which your reasoning is only one.
No, my thesis was on white-man criminality, especially white-collar crime of politicians. Very interesting subject. Not for you though because you are only interested in the criminality of everybody except white crime especially racism.
Having said this I suggest you continue to do this race-related research of yours. Career suicide guaranteed!!
@Enrique. Fully agree with you!! I checked the link that Nikolai sent to me. It is the site of the American Bureau of Justice Statistics. He advised me to “have a look” to find “long-term correlations between violence and ethniticity”. Where are these correlations, Nikolai??
Something else becomes clear to me. Uncritical use of statistics from cultures (there is no one American culture) that has totally different judicial systems (state-related) and drop them on one pile (statistics from USA are also relevant for Europe) shows the “I know all and that is the truth” thinking of Nikolai.
I prefer my “some kind of expert statistician-cum-philosopher moral authority” (Nikolai’s quote) than the stupidity of an uncritical statistician-cum-philosopher anti-moral “nit-wit”.
Hans, remember the old saying: “You can prove anything with statistics?”
That’s an interesting quote, Enrique – truly, it’s important to remind ourselves constantly of these sorts of fundamental epistemological considerations. How does language work? Are any concepts real? Does anything actually exist? Questions like this are undoubtedly extremely valuable when considering phenomena such as migration, crime, and ethnicity. Keep up the good work.
Eyeopener is obviously not clever enough to find any correlation patterns in published statistical data, so I’ll make it very clear:
Black people are more violent than white people, at all income levels, in every nation, and in every culture in which black and white people live, for all times in history. This is well documented everywhere where criminal statistics are kept that include data on ethnicity or national origin, including Finland.
Here’s an example article which might be easier for you to understand:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/7856787/Violent-inner-city-crime-the-figures-and-a-question-of-race.html
The reason for this is not because black people are fundamentally evil, but because many human character traits are not shaped by cultural forces or social engineering, in the same way that skin pigmentation or eye color are not shaped by cultural forces, special diversity government programmes or some pathetic speech by Tarja Halonen.
The sad thing is I’m quite sure that “eyeopener” and “enrique” are much more concerned about “racism” than about people getting assaulted, raped or killed. We are experiencing an unparalleled ethnic population transfer in contemporary Europe with numbers much higher than any of the forced deportations and repopulation campaigns initiated by Stalin in the 1930s.
@Enrique. That’s one of the reasons why statistics should be read carefully and critically. A lot of people do, some don’t 🙂
@Nikolai. Is my English from a different planet?? I asked you to show me in the link you sent me where I can find your “long-term correlations”? Your opinion on race-related crime is not interesting for me. It’s simplicity of the lower ranks of reasoning.
You are quite familiar with the background of The Telegraph, are you? It that case, it is no surprise an article like that!!
I am quite sure that Enrique and I are very much concerned with people who are assaulted, raped and killed. For you, these crimes are only stemming from, black, red, yellow and…….. Strange though that these crimes happened when there was no multi-cultural society. How do you explain that fact, dear Nikolai? Oh yeah, people show too much their richness, women are asking for rape because they wear “inviting clothes” or “the lack of them” and killing belong to the human game. Isn’t it??
Stalin was indeed not a “nice guy”. Read Solchenitsihn books and many others on the Gulag Archipelago. But ……… what does this have to do with multi-culturalism in the Western World??. Are you suggesting that the Western World should follow Stalin’s principles??
@Nikolai.
When you advise a “genius” to read an article that presumably hold the truth you are advised to read the article first yourself. Then you would have read the criticism of readers on how to interpret the data. But that is maybe a bridge too far!!