By Enrique Tessieri
While the biggest victor of today’s presidential election in Finland is democracy, I cannot help but look way past the awaiting fanfare of Sunday evening , when we’ll be hearing the victory speech of either Pekka Haavisto of the Green Party or Kokoomus’ Sauli Niinistö.
In many respects, Finnish voters decided in the first round of the election that they do not want a cliffhanger repeat of what we saw in April nor a president that is anti-EU, anti-immigration and colorblind with respect to our country’s ever-growing cultural diversity.
During the past ten-odd months, Finns have not only come to know racism, homophobia and anti-democratic credentials of some of the PS MPs, but the lame excuses justifying such shameful examples.
Few will deny that Finland faces many big challenges in the next six years. In many respects, our values will determine how we address those challenges. What kind of leadership will Haavisto and Niinistö offer Finns and immigrants living in the country on how to tackle ever-rising poverty, social inequality, streamlining costs that will weaken our social welfare state, and our general view of the outside world?
Should we invest more on programs that fuel social equality or on fear of ourselves and the outside world through institutions like the police and defense forces?
When I go to vote today, I will be weighing these issues.
Is Kokoomus a “Far-right parties” or is it the Greens? Who is more “Racism”, Pekka or Sauli?
Allan
Are you trying to work out who to vote for? A far-right racist candidate?
Well?
I read this blog daily but I don’t always comment because responding to someone like Allan is tedious and becomes tiresome. I really commend you Enrique for allowing him to babble on here as long as he has. Most other blogs would have banned him as a troll a long time ago.
Allan follows the Amazon Kindle best seller, “Beginner’s Guide to TROLLING” as his Bible. What it teaches is:
1) State your opinion as fact.
2) Wait a moment. Someone will point out what you typed is incorrect.
3) DO NOT ACKNOWLEDGE! Ignore fact.
4) Repeat yourself. The goal here is to drown out your sensible critic. By attacking their character and using circular logic, you’ll come across as being louder.
5) Repeat step 4 until you tire your opponent and win.
Hi BlandaUpp, that is a good list! People like Allan, who have such set views of immigrants and minorities, do us a favor because they show us that other dark side of Finland. Looking at the 19.1% that voted for the PS in April, I am certain that many may think like him.
That is one of the big differences we have with hate forums like Hommaforum and Scripta. You can express your views on Migrant Tales but do not expect any complacency from us when it comes to racism and exclusion.
I like reading your threads.
As I’ve pointed out before, Allan is a useful stooge. He enables us to set out well considered views with the illusion of dialogue, as opposed to preaching or essay writing. This makes Migrant Tales much more interesting to read.
This is not a new technique by any means. Plato set out his philosophy in the 4th century BCE largely in the form of dialogues with stooges, who would often be reduced to saying “Indeed Socrates” and “Most definitely Socrates”. Most of Allan’s responses, though usually negative, are no deeper than this, and they provide useful punctuation that makes the overall message easier to digest.
If Allan did not contribute to these discussions, then we would have to invent him.
JD
Plato was a lot smarter that we are, even if many of his ideas have today been superceded . 🙂
Actually, I think Allan would rather like the idea that he is somehow invented. His argument kind of runs along the lines of ‘you need racism and if it didn’t exist, you would invent it’.
But JD, hats off to you, because you have now created a wonderful illegitimacy for our favourite stooge. Whose to say that those that read Migrant Tales don’t take you at your word, and imagine Allan to be merely a figment. I imagine that if Allan contemplates that a moment, he will see that everything he might say could easily be construed as merely the next bit of dialogue in the stooge’s script.
I imagine that being robbed of your legitimate sense of ‘selfhood’ and the right to exist as and of oneself, and to merely become a stooge of manipulative political forces cannot be nice. Maybe now, just maybe, you have created a scenario, JD, in which Allan would actually get to experience what it is like to be one of those immigrants he so famously denigrates for his own political ends.
Mark
I’m not entirely sure that Allan passes the Turing test.
Did you ever play Starship Titanic? Allan reminds me of the bellbot.
I was merrly commenting on the tags of this post. Again, there was no right-wingvparties nor racism involved, but it was all invented by Enrique .
Allan, name me one anti-immigration party like the PS, Danish People’s Party or Sweden Democrats in Ireland.
You are writing of the Finnish presidential election?
OK so answer me –
Which is the racist: Sauli or Paavo?
Which is the right wing party Kokoomus or Greens?
Or is it again one of these fabrications of Enrique?
“Allan, name me one anti-immigration party like the PS, Danish People’s Party or Sweden Democrats in Ireland.”
Irish Solidarity Party?
There is a NGO focused on immigration, I think Finland needs one too immigrationcontrol.org