The global press was baffled by the success of an anti-immigration party in last month's Finnish elections. Only dumb people ever worry about immigration, but Finland has the highest test scores in Europe: Does Not Compute!
Why in the world would Finnish voters, which has had the least immigration of any European country that hasn't been Communist, be worried about immigration?
From the Helsinki Sanomat:
Why in the world would Finnish voters, which has had the least immigration of any European country that hasn't been Communist, be worried about immigration?
From the Helsinki Sanomat:
Pasi also emphasises the attraction of the neighbouring area, but in addition to the attractive factors there are other features that made the mother from Metsälä refuse to consider a school in Maunula.
“Undoubtedly we all want to live in a multicultural and tolerant atmosphere, but the fact is that if there are many children who do not speak Finnish, the teacher’s time is spent on them”, the mother of two says.
She does not know any children who have actually attended school in Maunula, but she has “heard stories”.
The stories are spread as mothers meet for coffee during the day, but few bother to examine whether or not there is any truth to these mental images that people have. The result is mass flight.
Pasi also has an impression of the Maunula school. “Normal education does not work there. There are many children who should not be in first grade at school. When your own child is at stake, you have to be careful.”
The large number of immigrant children is a concern for him. “It’s damn hard to teach if the group doesn’t speak any language. They just yell in their cultural agony.”
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57 comments:
How far away can you go in Finland? The problem with that strategy there is that pretty soon the Finns will run out of places to go.
It's funny how the phenomenon is blamed on the language barrier, which is complete BS. If the foreign born-children spoke Korean or Japanese at home, the white families would not be fleeing.
Probably these foreign children are violent and aggressive, particularly towards female classmates.
Could the higher population density of Europe (compared to America) play a role in their response to immigration? In America, White Flight has been possible due to the availability of cheap land. Not so true in Europe, as I understand it. This may make them get their back up faster. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, makes people fight. Here are the numbers I found:
Population density of the continents:
North America - 32 people per square mile
South America - 73 people per square mile
Europe - 134 people per square mile
Isn't interesting how all these good political movements are starting in small/unknown countries? 20 years ago, most nobody would have been able to find Finland on the map. Heck, even today, most people in America won't be able to find Finland on the map.
I think 21st century will be known as the age of small countries. Native people in big countries are basically doomed. Big states have been hijacked by corporate and parasitic ethnic groups.
You know, if "science" consists of searching for [and identifying] universal, predictable, reproducible true-isms, then the "social sciences" could certainly get a helluva lot more "scientific", if only they so chose.
Just love that the article tries to paint these mothers as ignorant bigots.
"“Undoubtedly we all want to live in a multicultural and tolerant atmosphere, but the fact is that if there are many children who do not speak Finnish, the teacher’s time is spent on them”, the mother of two says."
They will lose. If one has to accept this bogus premise, then any other argument you make can be waved away. "Some program will address that issue, a small price to pay to live in a multicultural society, which we all agree is the highest good."
This is the expedient argument against mixing I hear among SWPL's all the time.
What will their excuse be in the future when the descendants of immigrants speak the Finnish equivalent of spenglish or ebonics? Rather than a totally foreign language.
These people learning from experience must be racist. Don't they know anecdote does not equal data? They should wait 50 years for the academics to come up with some numbers before coming up with snap judgments.
“Undoubtedly we all want to live in a multicultural and tolerant atmosphere,...."
Sure about that?
Stupid Finns. Please, please, just listen to your good ol' Pravda, that you love!
But I thought that Finland's super successful public schools was only due to their particular teaching model with highly credentialed teachers having so much freedom in the classroom... surely if you export that some model to Detroit then the 45% literacy rate there will start to improve immediately.
Ha, the first mother's quote is awesome. Boils down to: "We all want to live in a multicultural atmosphere, just not with multicultural people."
What's sadder is that this is the case with n-th generation "Americans" of a certain skin color.
The school gets a bonus of EUR 49,000 a year to cover costs of “positive discrimination”.
Well, at least they call it what it is.
The City of Helsinki has already tried to reduce differentiation through means such as positive discrimination, but in spite of that, the trend has accelerated.
Imagine that! So surprising.
Parents want the best for their children, but if they shop for schools based on mental images, many neighbourhood schools could atrophy and multicultural coexistence would never happen.
And that would be really tragic. Why can't parents stop wanting what's best for their children? Shame, shame.
Western governments are working furiously to take states that work perfectly well with minimal intervention and turning them into failed states dependent on extensive government intrusion into their lives. Muslims play their own rule by giving the government the excuse to snoop.
Europe rose to the top of the world without any Muslims, America to the top of the world without any Asians of Hispanics, and Germany has even been doing pretty well without many Jews (though pre-WW2 Germany didn't have that many, anyway - less than 1% of its population).
In the minds of the Western cultural Marxist/neofeudalist elite, their biggest fear is that one or two white states will survive to show that, not only is multiculturalism & diversity not needed for happiness and success, but that it's a hindrance to it.
Every white country must fall. One has to wonder at what backroom pressure is being applied to those governments that don't get on board.
I was one of those people who voted for True Finns. I can read, and the news from countries, say Britain or France, with a lot of immigrants unwilling or unable to fully blend in don't seem good.
There don't seem to be many countries which manage having several large clearly separate groups in them and still stay stable for more than a few generations. The only model which seems to have worked is the original American melting pot - if most people consider themselves as citizens of their country first and members of their cultural group is only of secondary importance you will perhaps get some local gang wars, but at least you won't get actual civil wars. But if there are large groups who think of themselves as, say, Muslims first and have no real allegiance to the country they live in that does seem to be a recipe for disaster somewhere down the road.
And that is one problem which is a lot easier to solve before it develops than after. I'm perfectly willing for my country to take immigrants, but I think we should be very careful how we do that.
But Forbes wants us to believe it's the "free wheeling" teaching methods that make Finland special.
http://blogs.forbes.com/erikkain/2011/05/02/the-finland-phenomenon-inside-the-worlds-most-surprising-school-system/
The elites just cannot face reality on this subject, can they?
When non-Whites flee it's regarded as normal and natural, to "look for a better life". When Whites flee it's regarded as a pathological condition, either "racism", paranoia, or cowardice.
It's about time you had some Finnish content.
You can't expect your millions of Finnish fans to keep reading this blog if you never have any Finnish content.
Illegal immigration is like most modern architecture: everybody knows it sucks but as a society we're somehow powerless to stop it.
I love how, unless I missed it, they never actually say where these immigrants are from. I assume that means they're Muslims. If they were just eastern euros or Russians you'd think they'd not be afraid to say so.
Finland has some immigration, sufficient to notice the results. According to Statistics Finland In 2010 1.5% of the population were non-European immigrants, mostly from Asia and Africa. Another 1% are from eastern Europe and the Balkans.
http://pxweb2.stat.fi/database/StatFin/vrm/vaerak/vaerak_en.asp
The figures are 6-10% in Norway/Denmark/Sweden, so the difference is in degree.
Furthermore, the Finns have had plenty of opportunity to see the results of immigration in neighboring Nordic countries.
Saying that Finnish voters are not allowed to oppose unskilled immigration before they have had mass immigration is like saying voters are not allowed to be against communism unless they first introduce communism and see what it's like.
The TrueFinn party (this is a poor translation, the name is much softer in Finnish) won not only based on opposition to immigration, but opposition to the European Union bailouts, and opposing the insane policy of forcing all Finnish kid to learn Swedish in school.
Finland was part of the Kingdom of Sweden for 600 years, and has a 5% Swedish speaking minority.
Their policies are broader than just immigration, what Americans might call the National question. They are also the interest group of the Finish countryside and small town inhabitants, a large segment of the population.
Previously this demographic was represented by the Center party, but the Center party has been taken over ideologically by the cosmopolitan elites and is no longer representing their base.
In order to understand why people's natural sentiment against immigration has been translated into actual policy in Finland, it would be interesting to know who has control of the media in there. Being on the fringes of Europe, maybe it's a place the Zionists have largely ignored.
"Undoubtedly we all want to live in a multicultural and tolerant atmosphere ..."
Oh, undoubtedly! We really want to!
I guess being white makes even smart people evil racists.
-osvaldo m.
For those too busy to click to the original story, yes, the Finns are just as cowed writing about the race of these immigrants as, say, local news anchors reporting on the perps of some crime (even when it might aid in capture). Only after clicking through to the sub-links did I find a photo of students Omar Ahmed (black) and Duong Le. I never did find any written mention of race or origin.
"They just yell in their cultural agony.”
If there is a better summing up of the late twentieth, early twenty-first century pomo-lefto-elito-cosmo experience, I don't know it.
Anyway the leader of the True Finn party, Timo Soini, had this to say in the European edition of the Wall Street Journal: "Insolvent banks and financial institutions must be shut down, purging insolvency from the system. We must restore the market principle of freedom to fail. If some banks are recapitalized with taxpayer money, taxpayers should get ownership stakes in return, and the entire board should be kicked out."
What's that? Powerful, well-connected businesses free to fail as well as succeed? Elites held accountable when their leadership leads those businesses into bankruptcy? The average worker not forced to bail out billionaires? Not taking in thousands of immigrants your economy doesn't need and your people don't want?
Sounds like some sort of crazy, racist, right wing extremist philosophy to me.
Messy states give the elites far more power to favor their friends, punish their enemies, and enrich themselves.
North America - 32 people per square mile
A little misleading. The federal government owns something like 1/3 of all land, and when you add state and local governments, it's about 45%. Those places will never be opened up to development as long as there is a policial entity known as the Democratic party.
"Germany has even been doing pretty well without many Jews"
Sure, but Russia without Jews (and Germans - much of the pre-1917 nobility was really ethnic German/Baltic) is a disaster. Iraq and Egypt could really use their Jews back as well. Immigration can work if the new immigrants really are smart and motivated and not simply "diverse." Asian immigration to Canada may also turn out to be beneficial over the long-run.
Cap'n Jack is right. They do not want any all White state to survive because of it will compare to all the new Multicultural paradises. It's like the old idea the Soviets had that for socialism to succeed the whole world must be socialist.
Previously this demographic [small-town and rural Finland] was represented by the Center party, but the Center party has been taken over ideologically by the cosmopolitan elites and is no longer representing their base.
Funny how that happens, isn't it?
Cennbeorc
One would think the inhabitants of the most remote northern countries would be in theory the people who hold a 'national memory' of having done the most fleeing over the aeons since we left Africa, and should be more likely to resist outsiders. Or in the case of Sweden, developed a sophisticated altruistic community which does not translate in practice to assimilating outsiders, and holds the seeds of its own destruction.
"They just yell in their cultural agony.”
That turn of phrase reminds me of Joseph Conrad; how sometimes a foreigner can be more poetic than a native English speaker.
Gilbert Pinfold
The True Finns Party is an anti-Swedish party even more so than they are anti-immigration. Their main priority is to remove Swedish as an official language after 800 years and to remove the mandatory Swedish classes from school.
As a Swede living in Sweden I find it a little sad.
So this is how the world ends, not with a bang but with a yell in your cultural agony
"how sometimes a foreigner can be more poetic than a native English speaker."
A foreigner can very often be more poetic than a native speaker. All through high school, I've been wowing my English teachers by translating the most common place, everyday phrases in my native tongue into English, word by word. When I tried the same thing in reverse at home, mother smacked me upside the head.
It must be a western thing, congratulating foreigners on their depth of soul and intellectual prowess or whatever because I was also very much praised in France, translating American phrases into French. They particularly liked, "She disappeared up her own ass."
Well, that is the central theme of the most insightful book ever written about modern art, Tom Wolfe's "The Painted Word," although I think Wolfe phrased it: Art theory disappeared up its own fundamental aperture.
"As a Swede living in Sweden I find it a little sad."
As an American living in America, I found that a little stupid. Now, if Finnish were an official language of your country, Sweden, your statement wouldn't be so stupid.
"Press 1 for Finnish, press 2 for Swedish." Is that what you want to go through every time you call up a big company for service? How 'bout road signs in both languages? I heard Finnish was a damnably hard language to learn and not related to other languages.
(Still, I guess it can't be any harder than any of the arabic languages, where, if no phlegm comes out of your mouth as you speak, you're apparently unintelligible and definitely not a native speaker.)
As an Eastern European child immigrant, I don't think I made the educational experience of my fellow students below average or dangerous, but I did suck up a lot of resources. Our ESL department was huge and multi-layered, we had an extra social worker, translating services, a foreign accent-specific speech therapist and free school lunches for all recent immigrants. Plus, I haven't seen it mentioned here yet, but immigration is an INCREDIBLY stressful time for a family. Immigration brings out the best in the select few, and the absolute worst in the majority. The rate of divorce among the immigrant couples must be sky high based on what I observed. Kids engage in behaviors they wouldn't engage in back home. Adults do too, for that matter. I wouldn't go back to the immigrant ghetto to raise my family because of the atmosphere and the examples that type of sea of humanity would set. Btw, my immigrant ghetto was mostly asian/eastern european, and there was a steady upward flow of people securing a steady income and buying their own homes. Can't imagine what it would be like growing up in a different type of an immigrant ghetto, where the crooks are more risk-prone and less future oriented. We'd probably steal cars instead of bikes.
However, if you already made a choice to let our kind in, assimilation shouldn't be an option. Those Finns should do everything they possibly can to teach little Omar finnish and proper manners, if they can't kick him out. I have plenty of Russian-speaking family that historically reside in Estonia (a nice little country right by Finland) and refuse to learn Estonian. Estonia doesn't grant citizenship to anyone whose parents aren't Estonian and who can't pass a citizenship exam, in Estonian. You'd think the 3rd generation residents would make sure their kids go to Estonian daycares, pre-schools and schools (all freely available) to make a Euro citizenship possible, but no. Now, they are nearly 1/3 of the population and getting troublesome.
If you can't kick us out/keep us out, FORCE proper conduct onto the young, at least. No bilingual education. Harsh discipline in schools. District curfews. My school district did pretty well, actually. Sorry for eating your money, but you got a deal in the long run. Dumping money into the education system does work, as long as the students are held accountable, instead of the teachers. Scratch all those laptops, smart boards and ipads and hire some full time discipline professionals. Also, allow schools to fail everyone who merits a failing grade. Even if they later con you into paying for their summer schools and/or community college classes, it's still better than having your neighborhood school lose all credibility. Oh, and the school has to retain the right to place each student into the level it sees fit for each subject. I wonder if my district had a good lawyer on staff... We even had elaborate Christmas celebrations every year despite being located in a historically jewish area with a growing muslim population. Was this possible only because our section 8 rifraf (1/2) of the student body was still classified as white/asian? My school had no trouble sending kids to Harvard and MIT as well as jail and the local ethnic grocery store. They just happened to be honest who was who from the get go. This was the north side of Chicago.
The True Finns Party is an anti-Swedish party even more so than they are anti-immigration. Their main priority is to remove Swedish as an official language after 800 years and to remove the mandatory Swedish classes from school.
As a Swede living in Sweden I find it a little sad.
To say that the True Finns are primarily an "anti-Swedish" party is ridiculous, probably a result of your relying on the Swedish media's warped reporting on Finland. The party has Swedish-speaking members, e.g. Tom Packalén who was just elected to the parliament from Helsinki.
To force the entire population of Finland to learn Swedish does not make any more sense than forcing all Swedes (in Sweden) to learn Finnish. The policy of mandatory Swedish in all Finnish schools was introduced only in the 1970s, so talking about "800 years" makes no sense. Swedish has always been as foreign a language for most Finns as Finnish is for Swedes.
The True Finns want to abolish mandatory Swedish classes, and the vast majority of all Finns agree with them. To do so would go a long way towards normalizing and Westernizing Finnish language policy, in which the Swedish language (or rather a particular dialect thereof) currently has a status similar to that of Russian in communist Eastern Europe or Afrikaans in the National Party-run South Africa.
The only ones to oppose the language reform are the Swedish-speakers, the Swedish People's Party (SFP), and the party elites of some Finnish-speaking parties. Nevertheless, some forward-looking elements even among the SFP understand that the policy of mandatory Swedish is irrational and counterproductive from the perspective of Swedish-speakers. For example, vice-chairman of the SFP Nils Torvalds (father of Linus Torvalds, BTW) recently suggested that mandatory Swedish classes should be abolished. (He was then fired from his position though, apparently precisely because of his liberal views on language policy.)
"Sure, but Russia without Jews (and Germans - much of the pre-1917 nobility was really ethnic German/Baltic) is a disaster."
The 30 million or so murdered by the Bolsheviks included most of the brightest. It takes time to recover from something like that.
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"Immigration can work if the new immigrants really are smart and motivated"
The critical factor is loyalty. If the immigrants are only loyal to their own in-group then the smarter and more motivated they are the more damage they'll cause in the long run.
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Why was mandatory Swedish even introduced in the 70s? 5% is miniscule.
"Sure, but Russia without Jews (and Germans - much of the pre-1917 nobility was really ethnic German/Baltic) is a disaster."
Was Russia ever not a disaster? To set aside the issue of Jews, everytime I read about Russian capitalists I understand a little more why Russians embraced communism. With capitalists like that I would, too.
Population density of the continents:
North America - 32 people per square mile
Europe - 134 people per square mile --Wes fan
Finland has 40 people per square mile, which is quite a bit less dense than the United States.
Your "North America" includes Labrador, Nunavut, Yukon, the North Slope, and Baffin and Ellesmere Islands. I'd rather escape to Rovaniemi!
The Swedish-speaking part of the Finnish population has shrunk continuously for centuries, but this has accelerated over recent decades.
I have always found it ironic that the great champions of the Finnish language in the 19th century had the very Swedish names of Johan Snellman and Elias Lönnrot.
"I have always found it ironic that the great champions of the Finnish language in the 19th century had the very Swedish names of Johan Snellman and Elias Lönnrot."
This is a useless battle, but
I don`t see the irony at least in Lönnrot`s case, because probably everyone in Western Finland has a Swedish surname or surname translated from Swedish.
One of those "champions" Alexis Kivi was Alexis Stenvall, but his mother`s tongue was Finnish as was Lönnrot`s. Is it ironic that Irish nationalist have English language names? And Elias is also a Finnish name, btw.
Why was mandatory Swedish even introduced in the 70s? 5% is miniscule.
It was apparently the result of a backroom deal between the Center Party of President Kekkonen and the Swedish People's Party (SFP). It was a time of very fragile government coalitions in Finland, and the SFP, which has no strong policy preferences aside from guaranteeing the rights and privileges (such as quotas in universities) of the Swedish-speakers, was (and is) a popular partner in government coalitions for this reason. Another reason might have been pressure from the Swedish-speaking moneyed interests which back then still had considerable power.
The introduction of mandatory Swedish classes for all was a part of an overhaul of the school system where a two-track system was transformed into a single-track comprehensive school. In the old system, Swedish was mandatory for those who aimed for university, which was a minority of all students. In the original school reform bill English was the only mandatory foreign language for Finnish-speakers, but the SFP, arguing that this would put the Swedish-speaking minority at a disadvantage as they would in any case have to learn Finnish in addition to English, started to work against the bill, and managed to change it.
Anyway, I don't see how mandatory Swedish could survive for long. While the older Finnish-speaking political elite considers it a progressive and enlightened policy to force everybody to study a language they will most likely never speak outside of school, this view is not widely shared by anyone else among the Finnish-speaking majority, and even powerful lobbies such as the EK want to get rid of Swedish in favor of Russian and other more useful languages.
Well Reg that may blow my population density theory --- but --- is as much of the land in Finland habitable as in the US?
Thanks, TH!
but the SFP, arguing that this would put the Swedish-speaking minority at a disadvantage as they would in any case have to learn Finnish in addition to English
Ridiculous.
Stockholm, rape capital of Europe, is right next door.
"Sure, but Russia without Jews (and Germans - much of the pre-1917 nobility was really ethnic German/Baltic) is a disaster."
Culture is important. German cultural values invariably led to prosperity. Russian cultural values invariably lead to chaos; or, in the best case scenario, to a benevolent dictator that keeps a lid on the chaos without killing too many people.
On a related topic, the immensely positive role ethnic Germans played in Eastern Europe for centuries is little spoken about for obvious reasons. Ethnic Germans were the "Jews" of Eastern Europe, eventhough there were millions of real Jews around who weren't doing much. Perhaps because of anti-semitism or other reasons, Eastern European Jews were unremarkable for centuries.
I don't believe Stockholm has the highest rape rates in Europe. Rape tends to rise and fall with other crimes, and plenty of other European cities are regarded as more criminal. Provide a link.
"The only model which seems to have worked is the original American melting pot - if most people consider themselves as citizens of their country first and members of their cultural group is only of secondary importance you will perhaps get some local gang wars, but at least you won't get actual civil wars."
Is that so?
What's wrong with white people? They used to conquer other lands, but today they take flight within their own countries, which they're slowly and even willfuly losing.
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