MP Riikka Purra is an ethnonationalist with a strong white supremacist ideology of the Perussuoalaiset (PS) party. She is also first vice president of the PS. One of Purra’s biggest message is how Finland is becoming culturally and ethnically diverse. According to her, this is a threat to the power and privileges that white Finns
Read on »Posts Tagged: Bigotry
Atte Kaleva is a populist who spreads and dwells in Islamophobic soundbites
National Coalition Party (Kokoomus) MP candidate Atte Kaleva, who has overtaken Wille Rydman as the Halla-aho of his party, held a talk on March 15 in East Helsinki on “why multiculturalism doesn’t work.”
Read on »Laura Huhtasaari: The Perussuomalaiset MP with the sinister kindergarten-teacher smile
With parliamentary elections in April, Perussuomalaiset (PS)* Vice President Laura Huhtasaari is busily fear-mongering us about how Finland is losing its identity and how Islam is on track of taking over Europe.
Read on »Racism, Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia: Words can turn into bullets and corpses
Recently we have seen the consequences of hatred towards minorities in the United States: The cold-blooded shooting of an alt-right suspect that attacked a synagogue killing 11 people in Pittsburgh, the killing of two African Americans in Louisville, and mail bombs sent to Democrats and liberals who oppose President Donald Trump.
Read on »Sweden’s parliamentary elections expose the country’s issues with racist exceptionalism
Sweden heads for the polls on Sunday to elect 349 seats to the Riksdag (parliament). Despite the good showing in the polls of the far-right Sweden Democrats, which has roots in the neo-Nazi movement, is slated to capture 20% of the votes. The rise in popularity of the Sweden Democrats has been fast and a reminder that
Read on »Brexit-inflicted UK is so racist that even white Europeans are targets of racism and rage
It would be wrong to conclude that Brexit is the cause of the racism we are witnessing today in the United Kingdom. Surprised? Not really. What would you expect from a country that has a dark history in global domination, exploitation, and genocide? The common thinking of some people about the United Kingdom is that
Read on »Finnish identity: You define who you are, nobody else can or should do that for you
The Islamophobic Perussuomalaiset (PS)* is a shrinking single-issue political party that wants, but cannot succeed, at turning Finland into a Denmark-style country where political parties try to outdo each other in their racism and bigotry.
Read on »Racism is an ugly monster that can and must be slayed and banished from our society
Do you remember five years ago a young brave fourteen-year-old called Rebecka Holm? A letter to the editor about the racist harassment she endured regularly when going to school changed her life.
Do you remember five years ago a young brave fourteen-year-old called Rebecka Holm? A letter to the editor about the racist harassment she endured regularly when going to school changed her life.
Do you remember five years ago a young brave fourteen-year-old called Rebecka Holm? A letter to the editor about the racist harassment she endured regularly when going to school changed her life.
Do you remember five years ago a young brave fourteen-year-old called Rebecka Holm? A letter to the editor about the racist harassment she endured regularly when going to school changed her life.
Read on »Finland’s lost decade flirting with racism, fascism and the Perussuomalaiset party
Sampo Terho, minister culture, sport and European affairs, was elected on Saturday to chair Blue Reform, a Lilliputian party that split from the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* after their plush ministerial jobs were on the line after Jussi Halla-aho was elected PS chairperson in June.
Read on »Finland finally gets some teeth and bans the neo-Nazi PVL
In a historic decision on Thursday, the Pirkanmaa District Court banned the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement (Pohjoismainen vastarintaliike, PVL) with links to far-right groups in the Nordic region, according to YLE in English. PVL is a racist hate group that aims to do away with Nordic democracy and replace it with national socialism. The district
Read on »We have only to blame ourselves for the rise of vigilante gangs, racism and fascism in Finland
Shortly, we’ll look at this period as the
Read on »Exposing white Finnish privilege #40: To whitewash or to disenfranchise
If we wanted to give an extreme picture of how people are “integrated” into society, we could go back to the 1940s when Jews, the Roma and other undesirables of the Nazi regime were transported in boxcars to death camps. Just like those that were separated and sent to go the gas chamber or would
Read on »QUOTE OF THE DAY: Defecting from a single-issue party like the PS of Finland
Pekka Sinisalo defects from the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* to the Blue Reform party because, under Jussi Halla-aho, it is a single-issue party. Before the PS imploded in June, it was a supposedly a 1.5-issue party. The Finnish media forgets that the PS is the only party in modern Finnish history that decided to target and capitalize on Islamophobia
Read on »QUOTE OF THE DAY: Finland’s ever-racist and ever-injust society
Where Finland thought it could find strength in nationalism is today its greatest stumbling block. Finland is such a white society today that it has a serious blind spot for detecting fascism, racism, and bigotry. Our impaired view and lack of leadership are creating an ever-racist and ever-injust society. The signs about our society’s issues with racism
Read on »Timo Soini’s fall from grace and the legacy of planting the political seeds of bigotry and racism in Finland
One lesson we could learn from former Perussuomalaiset (PS)* chairman Timo Soini is that the right balance between flattery and speaking in code will get you everywhere, well, almost everywhere. You can win big elections like in 2011 and ride, albeit momentarily, the crest of the popularity wave until you hit the wall in disgrace with your fingers badly burned.
Read on »The words and silence of politicians have dire consequences in Finland for us
After the stabbing of ten people in Turku on Friday, politicians like President Sauli Niinistö, Prime Minister Juha Sipilä, Interior Minister Paula Risikko, the national media, which echoes far-right opinions of Jussi Halla-aho, the chairman of the Perussuomalaiset* who was convicted for hate speech, appear to be carried away by their own prejudices and hostility towards asylum seekers, which does impact our culturally diverse community.
Read on »US President Donald Trump’s Finnish “tolkun” moment and his mixed response to far-right violence
Three people died in the wake of a demonstration by white supremacists, neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members clashed Saturday with anti-racism activists when the white nationalists planned a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The demonstration saw a car being deliberately driven into a crowd of people who killed one person and left at least 19 others injured.
Read on »Introducing presidential hopeful Laura Huhtasaari, the Islamophobe with the kindergarten teacher smile
The far-right anti-immigration Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party announced Friday that their first vice president, Laura Huhtasaari, is their candidate for the 2018 presidential elections. The announcement didn’t surprise anyone but it did raise a lot of media and social media interest.
Read on »Disingenuous Timo Soini should take a long look in the mirror
If there is a power-hungry politician who will do almost anything to gain power and lose it in an instant, that politician is Timo Soini. Apart from being a disingenuous politician who saw his populist creation inflate and implode, he is a sore loser as well. In an interview in Tampere-based daily Aamulehti, he claims
Read on »Just call them the New Perussuomalaiset and Old Perussuomalaiset
As politicians like MP Simon Elo try to assure us of their questionable political credentials after he and nineteen others ditched the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party on June 13, the new party’s name, which has changed three times in less than two months, is nothing more than a snow job.
Read on »Finland should stop capitulating to racist far-right groups like Finland First and others
The police service informed the #RighttoLive camp, which has been demonstrating against the Finnish Immigration Service’s unfair asylum policies and deportations since February, to disband from the Central Railway Square by 7 pm Friday. The order was given five days after the far-right Suomi ensin (Finland First) demonstration was obliged to leave the Central Railway Square on Monday.
Read on »Old or new Perussuomalaiset or new or old Perussuomlaiset – it’s a new Cadillac model!
We saw on Tuesday quite a political show in Finland with 22 MPs ditching the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* and forming a new party called for now New Alternative. But don’t hold your breath because nothing has changed it’s just a marketing of the same thing – right-wing populist nationalism and all the toxicity that goes with it.
Read on »Nuiva manifesto – now you see it, now you don’t! We won’t, however, forget
The Nuiva manifesto is a far right proposal on how to tighten immigration policy and make life more difficult for migrants and minorities in Finland. Those who signed the manifesto in 2010, all in all 13 people, cannot be found anymore on the net.
Read on »Timo Soini (2013): “No. I’m a Catholic Christian by definition, I cannot be a racist”
Check this interview dating back to 2013 in BBC’s HARDtalk when outgoing Perussuomalaiset (PS)* chairman denies the party’s racism problem and defends MEP Jussi Hall-aho, who is going to purge him as foreign minister if elected as PS chairman this weekend.
Read on »Even if politics makes strange bedfellows, Timo Soini’s bed partners are eerie
Remember the speech below when Timo Soini and the Perussuomalaisiet were riding the crest of a wave after his populist anti-immigration won the parliamentary elections of 2011, when it saw its MPs rise to 39 from 5 in the previous election?
Read on »Finland’s blind spot of bigotry and white privilege is the Perussuomalaiset
If there is one party that has brought out bigotry, racism and populist far-right ideology as of late it is the Perussuomalaiset (PS)*. But Finland is so much in denial about its bigotry and white privilege that it sees no harm in the PS. This means that the government will do little, except offer lip service on how to challenge social ills like racism.
Read on »The creation and death of the Perussuomalaiset and its #socialmediafrankensteins in Finland
We once wrote about #socialmediafrankensteins and how Timo Soini and the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party had created such demons to victimize, attack and label migrants and minorities in Finland. Soini, a “good-cop” PS party chairman, is in reality no different from people like Jussi Halla-aho and his band of bigoted followers.
Read on »US president-elect Trump’s racism and insults towards minorities ensure that he’ll fail as the so-called leader of the “free world”
One of the things about racists and bigots is that they underestimate those that they insult and/or oppress. US President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign, and his latest announcement that he will deport 3 million undocumented “criminal” migrants is a good example of how the president-elect belittles.
Read on »November 9, 2016: “A date that will live in infamy”
It looks like Donald Trump is heading for an upset victory over Hillary Clinton in the US presidential elections, according to the New York Times.
Read on »The Finnish Immigration Service, with the blessings of the government, aims to separate migrant parents from their children
In August, the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri) is reported to have given asylum reception center instructions that only the children can stay at the reception center if the parents have their asylum application turned down and refuse to leave the country making then undocumented migrants, according to MTV.
Read on »Marianne Kiukkunen is no “Amazon” but a sad example of how low the police service has lowered the bar
Finland’s fascination with hardline nationalists and bigots continues unabated. Police official Marianne Kiukkunen was interviewed on the Enbuske, Veitola and Salminen (EVS-ohjelma) talk show and introduced by the host as an “Amazon” superwoman, the very embodiment of white privilege. Her appearance on the show and her comments are examples of how low the police has lowered the bar.
Read on »Being FUCKING INSANE in today’s Europe
Following the high court decision in France that ruled to suspend the anti-burkini decree in southern France, it looks like the row will not die down, according to The Guardian. Imagine how “offended” people like former president Nicolas Sarkozy and others are and who now want a nationwide prohibition of the burkini in France.
Read on »Racism in Finland and elsewhere 101
Racism and other social ills like bigotry are made to appear complex by those that perpetrate them. Making discrimination look complex is nothing more than a way of giving it shelter through a lie called denial.
Read on »If we are against racism, bigotry and homophobia why do we continue to be Facebook friends?
Some may rightly ask why it took over a year to charge former PS substitute councilman Olli Sademies for stating that African men should be sterilized, Here’s another question: Why are there so few light-slap-on-the-hand sentences for hate speech in Finland? In 2009-14 there were only 27 people who were sentenced for ethnic agitation, according to MTV, which cites Statistics Finland.
Read on »The PS of Finland has lost credibility and should be ejected from government
Here’s the question: What is the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party still doing in government and what credibility does it have after its popularity in the polls continues to plummet? The latest poll published shows the PS with only 7.6%, according to YLE News. That compares with 17.7% of the votes it got in the 2015 parliamentary elections.
Read on »The Finnish Perussuomalaiset and their poker-face-racist remarks
Why would a television station like MTV3 invite a person like Perussuomalaiset (PS)* Youth leader Sebastian Tynkkynen to a talk show about the racist and bigoted statements he’s made about Muslims and migrants? Why would a journalist, who appears to be in the dark about what racism is, treat such a politician with a degree of understanding?
Read on »Authorities should look at factors like social exclusion, third culture and school bullying for what happened in Munich
As the dust settles over what happened in Munich on Friday, when Ali Sonboly took the lives of nine people and injured tens of others, there are a lot of questions that are taking our eyes off the ball. Instead of talking about “Islamic terrorism,” why are we not talking about some other motives that could have played important roles in the tragedy?
Read on »Are bigotry and racism something “funny” and “eccentric” PS chairman Timo Soini?
Perussuomalaiset (PS)* chairperson and foreign minister, Timo Soini, brushed aside recent xenophobic and homophobic statements by MPs like Leena Meri, Laura Huhtasaari and Mika Raatikainen.
Read on »Brexit proves (again) that Europe’s biggest threat was and still is nationalism and xenophobia
We speak of external threats like globalization and others like asylum seekers as threats challenging this great Post-World War 2 experiment called the European Project. While the achievements of the European Union are formidable taking into account that we’re not going after each other’s throats after 1945, there is one threat that is the greatest of them all and one we should pay more attention to: nationalism and xenophobia.
Read on »Why the PS of Finland is a hostile party to our ever-growing culturally diverse community
A parliamentary committee, which is deciding on the future of the Finnish Broadcast Company (YLE), on important issues like how much state funding it should get and its role. If Perussuomalaiset (PS)* MP Teuvo Hakkarainen had his way, it cut YLE’s budget and thereby downsize the broadcaster’s Swedish-language service.
Read on »Finland must get off its whining horse and seek proactive solutions to the asylum seeker situation
Like many anti-immigration politicians, even former National Police Commissioner Mikko Paatero believes that there is some magic number that we shouldn’t cross concerning the number of asylum seekers that arrive to our country. In 2015, a record 32,000 asylum seekers came to Finland. How many arrive this year is an open question.
Read on »Researchers working for the police see falling support of the Perussuomalaiset as a danger to society
It’s incredible how even the police service feeds the xenophobic climate in Finland. A column published by two applied science researchers on the Police College of Finland page is a perfect example of the one-sided view that some people of the police service have.
Read on »UPDATE (November 20): Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism
Migrant Tales’ 2015 Hall of Poor and Sloppy Journalism will be updated separately. To see other examples of opinionated journalism in Finland about cultural diversity, please go to this link. November 20 Aukeavatko suvakin silmät? – (Tamperelainen) What’s wrong with this community paper editorial? Community papers like Helsingin Uutiset and Vantaa Sanomat are just as bad as other
Read on »Finnish PS Kotka counclman under police investigation for ethnic agitation
Mertsu Merivirta is a Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party councilman of the southern Finnish city of Kotka. His Facebook wall is full of nationalist anti-immigration posts and sexism. If you’re going to victimize migrants and minorities why not include women as well.
Read on »Finnish politicians: Leave your “we’re against racism comfort zone” catchphrases and take action!
I read National Coalition Party (NCP) Interior Minister Petteri Orpo’s speech in parliament Wednesday about racism. While we’re moving in some direction on this front there is one factor that takes us off the path: denial.
Read on »PS councilman of Finland posts pictures on Facebook of Hitler and Ku Klux Klan clansmen ready to lynch a black woman
Ville Moisanen is a Perussuomalaiset (PS)* councilman from a small town near Lahti called Sysmä who posted anti-Semitic and racist pictures on Facebook, according to Heinola-based daily Itä-Häme. Apparently inspired by Finland’s Ku Klux Klan impersonator,
Read on »The most outrageous picture I’ve seen of a racist in Finland
A picture that appeared with a story on YLE left me speechless. The arrival of a few thousands of refugees Finland has brought out the worst in some Finns, like in the picture that shows a man in Ku Klux Klan garb and a Finnish flag protesting the establishment of a refugee center in Lahti.
Read on »Unfriend those Facebook friends that are openly racist, homophobic and sexist
There’s one matter that continues to baffle me about Finnish politics: How xenophobic and Islamophobic politicians are Facebook “friends” with people who claim to champion cultural diversity and anti-racism. If we look at the US Civil Rights Movement (1955-68), there’s one important lesson: Don’t flirt with those that want to keep in in the chains of bigotry.
Read on »Finland and the PS: The face of racism becomes uglier as it ages
The Perussuomalaiset (PS)* in general and specifically MPs like Juho Eerola, Olli Immonen and Teuvo Hakkarainen are, together with MEP Jussi Halla-aho, examples of the worst kind of extremism and racism we can find in Finland today in the halls of our parliament. They are permitted to spread their racist and bigoted views because they have
Read on »Islamophobia is rampant in the PS and they like it
Or should the headline read: Islamophobia is rampant in the PS and they LOVE it? Two members of the Perussuomalaiset (PS) Salo city board said in a statement that the Muslim religion is incompatible with our Nordic welfare state values. The statement by the PS of Salo, a city located 114km west of the capital
Read on »Those who loathe you are your supporters
The biggest supporters of immigrants and visible minorities in Finland aren’t groups lobbying for their rights per se, but their enemies. Instead of tapping ourselves on the back for challenging a social ill like racism, we should thank Perussuomalaiset (PS) chairman Timo Soini for exposing in this country bigotry and isolationism in the raw.
Read on »Defending religious bigotry – a case study!
This article is the final narrative of an exchange I had recently with a Migrant Tales’ commentator who goes under the handle of Elven the Archer. If you have read his very many comments on the Migrant Tales article “Why are Finland’s politicians still so silent?”, I think you will already be aware of his
Read on »If you see racist abuse in public, film it and send it to Migrant Tales
It’s pretty clear that silence is an ineffective way to address a serious social ill like racism. We can do a lot more. Filming passengers being attacked verbally in public, like those published on Mail Online, is a good way to drive home the message that we won’t tolerate this type of behavior and abuse from anyone.
Read on »We must fight for greater cultural diversity representation in our democracy and society
When I grew up in the United States, most if not all of our most popular television series kept us doped in a fantasy world where the only people that counted were white Europeans who spoke English. We read history as well but there was too little about the “other” USAmerican: immigrants, Hispanics, blacks, Native Americans and a long list of other groups that built the United States.
Read on »The role of the Finnish social welfare state and newcomers
It is surprising that one can hear these days in private conversation from some teachers and people working with immigrants and refugees that some national groups should never be brought to this country because they will never adapt to our way of life. “Why do they continue to bring them here?” some say.
Read on »Finland also locks up asylum seeker children
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- A child in the Joutseno Immigration Removal Center.
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