Comment: Newly elected MP for the True Finns, Jussi Halla-aho, who is a member of the the far-right Suomen Sisu association and believes Finland should take the same Islamophobic route as Denmark, refuses to answer a question by a Helsingin Sanomat reporter. The reporter asks if the MP-elect still stands behind what he wrote in 2005 that some don’t have the same human dignity as other groups.
He wrote in 2005: “Individuals can justifiably be placed in a hierarchy of values according to how the removal of their abilities or skills from the use of the community would weaken the community.”
Taking into account that Halla-aho has expressed interest in becoming the next minister for migration and European affairs, the reporter rightly grills him with the same question. The MP-elect refuses to answer and prefers instead to hang up the phone.
Halla-aho later wrote on the anti-immigraton website Hommaforum: “I would hope that we could take the road of Denmark, where no major confrontations have emerged. Instead, critical thinking about immigration has spread to other parties, a little bit like green thinking has spread in Finland.”
Migrant Tales has written on numerous occasions that Halla-aho and his followers find strong ideological solidarity with Islamophobic parties like the Danish People’s Party, Sweden Democrats and others.
Here is a blog called Freodom that wrote in 2007 about Halla-aho’s view of minorities. It reinforces what people know about him today. I wonder if he ever thought his writings would come to haunt him in 2011.
The blogger writes: “Apparently, to a lot of people his views are sensible. I believe he’s a dangerous man. Simply put, Halla-aho is popularizing racism and intolerance. His blog is seemingly totally dedicated to vilifying the immigrant population of Finland and prophesying the cultural takeover of Europe by the African-Muslim hordes.”
It is a good matter that reporters are asking some tough questions of some PS candidates who have based their election campaign on xenophobia and sub-rosa far-right ideology.
__________
Hanna Kaarto
Blog article from 2005 questions notion of human equality
Jussi Halla-aho, a nationalist politician from Helsinki, got 14,884 votes in Sunday’s Parliamentary elections, winning him a seat in Parliament on the True Finns party ticket. Halla-aho had established a reputation with his writings on the Internet.
If you want to read the original story in Finnish click here.
Ricky
The term ihmisarvo is normally rendered human dignity in English, and the idea that every person has the same human dignity connects rather clearly to the second maxim of the Kantian Categorical Imperative. This in turn connects (no less clearly in my opinion) to the idea that a person is a moral subject who is capable of making ethical choices and therefore open to praise and blame. These ideas are very much the basis of our moral dialogue. They are presupposed even by the most rabid contributors to this blog. It is only because immigrants are assumed to be moral subjects that allegations of sloth, criminality, deceitfulness and so on make any sense. They are also presupposed in any system of democratic accountability.
The idea of linking human dignity to any kind of social function or collective utility denies the second maxim by treating a person as a means to an end. It is far from clear how anyone who openly espouses this idea can seek election to office or serve in a position of public trust in a democratic system.
Halla-aho might have been best advised to dismiss his earlier thinking as immature. If he is hoping for an appointment in the new government, then it could pose an obstacle to taking the oath of office.
Let me be the first to suggest in this forum that if PS joins the government, then there is a better than even chance that the High Court of Impeachment will convene at least once in the lifetime of this Parliament.
OK, that explains it better. Thank you Justice Demon.
Isn’t it incredible how all these things he wrote are coming to haunt him today? How is it possible that a person like him could be a minister if he does not uphold the law? One way of looking at him is through Suomen Sisu. Lots of far-right groups could find their soul mates in Eugen Fischer and Alfred Rosenberg but in a twenty-first century context. In Rosenberg’s “The myth of the twentieth century,” I believe his main argument was that Germany had to rid itself of Jews in order for the Aryan “race” to realize their full potential. It was the Jews and non-Aryans that were keeping the German people from realizing its potential. The twenty-first century context of Rosenberg’s work could be that certain immigrants will destroy our culture and way of life.
Here is a passage from Leon Goldensohn’s “The Nuremberg Interviews (p. 198):” “Did Rosenberg consider himself a historian, or a philosopher, primarily? Well, both, because you can’t separate the two things. Did he consider himselv an authority on those subjects? Yes indeed, he had studied all kinds of history and philosophy since in his teens. What did he get his degree in, philosophy or history or what? In architecture, he said. But he never practiced it. He bacame a journalist soon after his student days were over, and he was a writer for a newspaper. In 1923 he was editor of the Völkischer Beobachter (Munich), which was the National Socialist Party organ.”
He might have been editor, or the garbageman, but no one in the Third Reich wrote what he pleased. Orders came from above, so essentially, Goebbels wrote the VB, as party organ.
That’s like saying the USSR newspapers had editors (with “editorial policies”?) as if they operated in free democracies.
Uh, don’t think so! Rosenberg simply knew where his bread was buttered, a politician basically.