What has surprised me about Finland is how the media and others seem fascinated by Islamophobes making racist statements. It gets media attention and helps you win elections. Why does racism and fascism appeal to us? Is it because their racist views resonate with some of us?
By the way, where are those powerful editorials by dailies like Helsingin Sanomat that speak out against Islamophobia and racism? Where are those editorials encouraging a Finland that is more inclusive and condemning negative narratives about migrants and minorities?
Instead, our media prefers debating Perussuomalaiset* (PS) chairperson Jussi Halla-aho’s past toxic and racist blog posts in the face of government talks. In these posts, he wishes left-green women get raped by foreigners, he insults and threatens to shoot gays, near-constantly insults Somalis and Islam.
Considering what he wrote, and we should never forget this type of open hostility, should the PS even be considered a candidate in a new government?
An apology or renouncing what he said will not do. Just like a virus, the place of his writings is either put in quarantine or destroyed altogether.
One of the problems with challenging toxic people like Halla-aho and his extremist ideology is that it is done mostly by white Finns who may have good intentions but don’t have first-hand experience with racism, discrimination and being scapegoated. As long as Finland sits on the fence on racism and fascism and only white people speak for migrants and minorities, the problem will worsen.
Exaggerating?
Remember when Léo Custódio made the following observation below?
See original posting here.
What about adding a new line?
Racist politicians like Halla-aho wins the most votes in the world’s happiest country.
* The Perussuomalaiset (PS) party imploded on June 13, 2017, into two factions, the PS and New Alternative, which is now called Blue Reform. In the last parliamentary election, Blue Reform has wiped off the Finnish political map when they saw their numbers in parliament plummet from 18 MPs to none. A direct translation of Perussuomalaiset in English would be something like “basic” or “fundamental Finn.” Official translations of the Finnish name of the party, such as Finns Party or True Finns, promote in our opinion nativist nationalism and racism. We, therefore, at Migrant Tales prefer to use in our postings the Finnish name of the party once and after that the acronym PS.