Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Viktor Lavrinenko
[REGNUM] In Finland, the scandals associated with the "skeletons" pulled out of the cabinets of ministers of the new government do not stop. First, they had to dismiss the Minister of Economics, Wilhelm Ünnila , who was convicted of neo-Nazi sympathies. Then the press unearthed facts showing that Finance Minister Riikka Purra holds similar beliefs. This is not enough: it turned out that Yunnila's replacement, Ville Rydman, is also an inveterate racist!
FIRST LOSSES
The beginning of the work of the new government of Finland, headed by Petteri Orpo ("National Coalition"), was marked by a loud scandal - the press unearthed incriminating facts about the freshly minted Minister of Economy Wilhelm Junnil ("True Finns").
It turned out that Yunnila loved to flaunt his addiction to the digital combination “88” (the coded greeting “Heil Hitler!” Adopted by neo-Nazis), led his campaign under the slogan “Give it gas!”, Attended ultra-right radical events, and even lied about the created them startups.
Prime Minister Orpo tried to defend Minister Yunnilu, but he still had to retire. But his place in the government was taken by a no less "exotic" replacement.
At one time, Ville Rydman was a member of the National Coalition, but was expelled from it after he became the hero of a pedophile scandal. In 2022, journalists found out that Rudman was suspected of repeated episodes of harassment of underage girls. Rudman was also accused of having sex with women by secretly filming his sex with them, and then showing these videos to his friends.
Then the politician managed to get away with it, but paid with membership in the National Coalition. Such a “valuable shot” was picked up by the “True Finns”, and already in their ranks, Rudman participated in the elections in 2023 and ended up in the government.
Then the Minister of Finance, the head of the "True Finns" Riikka Purra got into a scandal.
Journalists picked up her Internet comments from 2008, in which she insults black people, Muslims and makes statements that can be regarded as a call for violence against these groups.
Unlike Yunnila, Purra tightly clung to the ministerial chair. Purra assures that those fifteen-year-old statements of hers “were taken out of context” - they say, it was such a “humor”! — and that she "never condoned violence of any kind."
INCIDENT NOT OVER
In connection with these two scandals, the leaders of all four parties that formed the government have publicly stated that they do not support racist views in any way.
After that, Prime Minister Orpo began to pretend that the incident was over and Purra could continue working in the ministry. One can understand the head of government - he does not want his office to be accompanied by a scandalous trail caused by the second resignation of a racist minister in a short time. But many members of the general Finnish public do not think so.
The collection of signatures for the resignation of Purra began - this initiative was supported by over 121,000 people.
On July 19, an anti-government demonstration took place in Helsinki. More than a thousand Finns came to the parliament under the slogan "Zero Tolerance". One of the organizers of the rally, Pessi Jouste, said: "True Finns" is a racist party. The proof of this is the publications of Riikka Purra and Wilhelm Junnila's connections with Nazism. We want this to be taken seriously with zero tolerance for racism."
Jouste recalled that Riikka Purra apologized for the fifteen-year-old posts, but she also has more recent posts of this kind. For example, in 2019, she referred to Muslim women who cover their faces as “black bags.”
Another organizer of the demonstration, Outi Aaltonen , says covert racism is a common phenomenon in Finnish society. According to her, the difficult economic situation in Finland contributed to the growth of the True Finns' popularity - in such times, people tend to believe populist politicians who offer simple solutions to difficult issues.
But, despite the mass indignation, Riikka Purra flatly refuses to resign. “Contrary to media claims, my comments do not glorify or incite violence. I have never supported violence or extremism. I have always been against this ,” writes the leader of the “True Finns” on the social network.
But then a new scandal arrived - the third in a row.
THIRD TIME - ALREADY STATISTICS
Helsingin Sanomat published the details of the personal correspondence of the successor Wilhelms Junnila, the current Minister of Economics Ville Rydman, with his then girlfriend. The correspondence took place in 2016.
The future minister, then the deputy of the parliament, called the immigrants from the Middle East the “monkeys”, compared the Somalians with the “weeds” (and therefore “them”, they say, it was necessary to identify and move to another place), and discussed the “black Nigerian niggra”.
The deputy sent his friend a song about a Muslim who raped a girl, adding that this could be sung at a student party. The author of the song is Rydman's current fellow party member in the "True Finns" Juho Eerola, who at that time was also a member of parliament.
In correspondence, Rydman called himself a "Nazi" and scolded the Germans who destroyed monuments to their Nazi leaders.
And the situation with Purra was repeated again - the government is trying to pretend that nothing special has happened.
Prime Minister Orpo said he "trusts" Rudman, though he added that his comments in private correspondence were "unacceptable." Orpo recalled that now Rudman supported the government memorandum on the inadmissibility of racism, which means that the minister can be considered reformed.
But it is doubtful that Rudman, like Purra, will be allowed to get away with it.
Opposition parties demand their removal from the government. Already now it can be stated that a targeted attack is being carried out on the Orpo cabinet, and the opponents of the current government, using the press, are ready to extract more and more “skeletons” from the cabinets of ministers from the “True Finns”. The blessing of "skeletons" should be enough - this right-wing party has always enjoyed the image of a nest of neo-Nazis.
FINNS KNOW WHO THEY CHOOSE
How did this series of scandals affect the popularity of the ruling parties.
In a recent survey commissioned by the national broadcaster Yle, it turned out that there really is an effect. However, its scale should not be overestimated. Support for the National Coalition and the True Finns dipped a bit.
According to sociologist Jussi Vestinen , a representative of the polling company Taloustutkimus, among those who recoiled from the "coalitionists" and the IF, the majority are women and voters under the age of 35 - as Vestinen notes, these are those representatives of the electorate who are more "tolerant and are less likely to tolerate racism. Women, according to various studies, are more tolerant than men.
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At the same time, curiously, the revelations hit the “coalitionists” more painfully than the “True Finns”, in whose ranks, in fact, the disgraced ministers are: support for the former fell by 2.3 percentage points, and for the latter - by only one.
“It seems that racist publications and statements have not become a problem for the majority of the True Finns electorate,” Westinen concludes. Indeed, for the most part, people who vote for the IF know perfectly well who exactly they are voting for. This is another confirmation of the thesis about the prevalence of racist sentiments in Suomi.
Although the electoral losses of the ruling parties have not yet been so great, Prime Minister Petteri Orpo had to comment on the decline in the rating of the National Coalition he leads. Orpo reluctantly admitted that one of the reasons for this could be the revealed neo-Nazi sympathies of individual members of the government he headed.
“The discussion about racism is a serious topic, it worries Finns, including me. This, of course, is reflected to some extent in the results of the survey,” Orpo noted in an interview with Yle. He once again emphasized that he considers it important to put an end to this phenomenon.
“Personally, I will do my best to ensure that no racism or discrimination of any kind is allowed in the work of the government. Attention will be paid to this ... If necessary, this can even lead to a change of minister if this rule is violated,” Orpo said.
In other words, he made it clear that he might have to sacrifice Purra and Rydman if the opposition parties in parliament did not “get off the topic” and continued to demand the resignation of disgraced ministers.
RADICALS ARE READY TO FIGHT NOT ONLY ON THE INTERNET
Amid reports of racist views among members of the government, Finns were shocked by reports of a neo-Nazi group planning terrorist attacks on the territory of the state.
At the end of July, the Suomi police announced that they were completing a preliminary investigation into the case of four men who are suspected of preparing attacks on civilians. As the law enforcement officers assure, the suspects were engaged in the manufacture of submachine guns of the FGC-9 type, which they “printed” on a 3D printer.
According to Tuomas Kuure, a police inspector from the Häme region (in the south of the country), four Finns were preparing to carry out massacres - and they were going to kill people of a different skin color, as well as those who do not share radical views. In communicating with each other, the terrorists used the terms "siege", "incitement" and "racial war".
Previously, two of the suspects have already come to the attention of the police.
One of them, a 22-year-old native of the city of Oulu, was suspected in 2020 of stealing and burning flags with "rainbow" symbols, with which representatives of the LGBT community went to their rallies.
Another of the suspects, a man named Tero Ala-Tuuhonen (born 1957), is a well-known opinion leader in far-right and neo-Nazi circles in Finland. In 2020, he was accused of preparing an assassination attempt on True Finns activist Pekka Katai , but then managed to prove his alibi. Tuukhonen was also convicted of “leaking” in private correspondence the home addresses of former Interior Minister Maria Ohisalo and Attorney General Raya Toiviainen , after which, according to the initial police assessment, they could become the target of neo-Nazi assassination attempts.
However, Tuukhonen even at that time managed to "get away", saying that he had collected and distributed the addresses of senior government officials for the purpose of "pranking".
In recent years, the Finnish press has been writing a lot about the activation of radical nationalists.
This is facilitated by the arrival in Suomi of a fairly large number of migrants from the countries of the Middle East and Africa - with their presence they arouse the hatred of some Finns. The radicals are calling for the preservation of “white Finland”, if necessary, with arms in hand.
And as the example of Yunnila, Purra and Rydman shows, such sentiments are by no means the lot of only the marginalized from the social bottom. Some representatives of the ruling elite think the same way - it's another matter that they do not have the opportunity to express their views openly.
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