COMMENTARY: The R-word and how it became a taboo

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By Anna Karismo
     
      Was the performance given by MP Veltto Virtanen during a cruise for prospective True Finns election candidates just over a week ago racist, or was it not?
      The subject has been batted back and forth with some vigour in the days since the story broke (see linked article).
     
Everybody seems to be in agreement that singing a children's song about a little Hottentot boy in a floorshow for the adult members of a party that pursues a strict anti-immigration platform is not necessarily racist.
      The fact that when the plug was pulled on his performance, Virtanen then loudly enquired as to the skin-colour of the person behind the mixing desk, was some kind of reference to ethnic matters, but it may still not have been a racist remark.
     
So it has come to this. People do not recognise racism as racism, and in public the R-word cannot be spoken aloud.
      In fact we appear to have gone past the point of no return in any sensible discussion of immigration as a whole.
      We have to invent euphemisms and roundabout expressions, dodging and weaving to avoid actually saying anything much at all.
     
On Monday of this week, an expert on multicultural questions wrote on the opinion pages of Helsingin Sanomat that he or she [the piece was published anonymously as an exceptional move] had had to make all the family's telephone numbers ex-directory and could no longer take part in the discussion of the issue under his or her own name.
      Opponents of multiculturalism have threatened and browbeaten him or her into silence and fear.
     
"Abused into silence" is just one of many persons involved in the immigration debate who have faced threats, as today's daily article "Immigration experts face racist harassment" points out.
      If one takes the side of minorities in public at any level, or if one chances to call racism by its real name, then the heavy artillery opens up.
      The blogosphere and email inboxes fill up with angry writings, and threats rain down.
     
Who is going to do something about this? Where, for instance, are the politicians who have not had their spines filleted out?
      I have not seen the other ministers getting into line behind their colleague Astrid Thors, the Swedish People's Party Minister for Migration and European Affairs, and condemning those who have waged a hate-campaign against her.
      In the case of the person who wrote in to the paper's letters pages, the police did not regard it as being of sufficient social weight to launch an investigation.
      Could the police be urged to change their values and their view of the world?
     
According to a poll published in Helsingin Sanomat on Monday (also linked below), we do not have to look far for the reason why the politicians and the decision-makers are in a funk about the subject.
      Anti-immigration views among the Finnish public at large are growing apace.
      Sensible discussion and any degree of political backbone are probably therefore not something we can look forward to in the year leading to a general election in 2011.
      Multiculturalism and racism will become even greater taboos in the months ahead.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 16.3.2010


Previously in HS International Edition:
  True Finns MP´s off-colour floor show gets unplugged by Viking Line crew (9.3.2010)
  Immigration experts face racist harassment (16.3.2010)
  Survey: Finns´ attitudes toward immigration have become more negative (15.3.2010)
  President of National Coalition Party Youth Arm criticises Finnish immigration policy (23.2.2010)

See also:
  NEWS ANALYSIS: Death threats have become an everyday phenomenon (3.3.2010)

ANNA KARISMO / Helsingin Sanomat
anna.karismo@hs.fi