End of an era in Finland?
Twenty years ago, Finland’s political scene was being rocked by the first real wave of racism. At that time, the greatest of all the racist propagandists was Sulo Aittoniemi, an ex-policeman and a member of the Rural Party of Finland (SMP), the predecessor of the True Finns party we have today.
Aittoniemi was a rough and rugged man with a violent sense of humour, able to make his listeners laugh any day. The anti-racists of the day were quite desperate about Aittoniemi because of his media savvy and his ability to manipulate the common people.
In the end, however, Aittoniemi lost his momentum almost overnight. When he started to tell the people to be so unwelcoming towards foreigners as to become notorious all around the world, it wasn’t fun anymore, and instead people became ashamed. At the end of the day, Finns did not want a bad rap around the world. Supporters deserted Aittoniemi, and he was left as just a footnote in the annals of history.
Like most people before they go into politics, even Aittoniemi was known as an incorruptible man of integrity at the beginning. He first broke into the headlines when he was still a policeman, investigating the so-called Noppa scandal. This was controversy surrounding the housing development company Noppa in Tampere, the biggest city in western Finland.
Aittoniemi was sacked before the investigation was finished, with many seeing it as an indication that he had found out too much about the machinations of the elite. When he went into politics, he was greatly trusted by the people at first, but he soon wasted this political capital. The man who started as the personification of sincerity was soon viewed as a loudmouth without manners.
It seems that the era of the new racist demagogues in Finnish politics is coming to an end, just as that of Aittoniemi did 20 years ago. The propagandists who have been running wild in the political life of the country for the past five years are losing their grip.
Blog writer Jussi Halla-aho, one of the most voted-for politicians in the 2011 parliamentary elections, has even made his own supporters impatient. With the chaos in the economy of Europe, Euroscepticism is ousting racism even in the True Finns party itself. A year ago, Halla-aho was the ‘master’ of his acolytes, who were always happy to verbally attack anyone bold enough to criticize him. Now, they are blaming Halla-aho for not being Euro-sceptic enough.
Panu Petteri Höglund is a translator and linguist who studied German, Polish, and Russian at Åbo Akademi University in Finland.
