At the beginning of May the question of hate speech was discussed big time on Finnish TV.
Even though virtual attacks by neo-Nazi or racist web guerrillas – on just about everybody who does not agree with them – have been increasing for at least five years, the problem has not been openly discussed until now. Instead, Finnish journalists have been trying to belittle it: usually they have shown great leniency towards ”people who have been so marginalised that they have nothing else left but making hate speech on the internet”.
It is part of Finnish political culture to try to domesticate all kinds of radicals by seeking compromise with them, and for a long time journalists have tried to apply this to the new racists, too. But it seems they are coming to understand that it is no use trying to appease people who have no other aspirations than taking away your human rights if they don't like you.
Of course the very term ‘hate speech’ is rather irrelevant in the Finnish context. The word itself first came about in the United States, and it is well known that the American constitution is so generous about the freedom of speech that even threats are legal and legitimate over there. Thus, the American question is whether hate speech should be criminalised. In Finland, though, the laws are there already: it is, for instance, not allowed to incite people to attack a particular ethnic group.
What I personally don't like about the hate speech debate in Finland is that it makes a great fuss of left-wing political activists being targeted in internet attacks. This is the very same message that is being propagated by the extreme rightists themselves: the idea that their attacks are only a justifiable reaction to whatever the left wing is doing.
Actually, those who suffer most from neo-Nazi harassment are those who only want to see good manners observed in relations between Finns and immigrants. The usual story is that some local newspaper publishes a letter to the editor from some naive teenage girl who is criticising the racism her black or Muslim friends of the same age must put up with. As soon as the letter is seen in print, the internet forums of Finland will be filled by the rape fantasies of the racists about this very girl.
Unless this aspect of hate speech isn't debated in Finnish media, something quite relevant will be missing in the discussion. And of course it reflects badly on Finnish culture. If it is commonly accepted that 30-year-old and older men are entitled to write rape fantasies about a young girl on the internet, those who read the fantasies will soon be committing real sex crimes. It seems, though, that some moral vitamin just isn't there in the society of Finland that would make people stop such behaviour.
Panu Petteri Höglund is an Irish-language writer from Finland.
