Their biggest fingerpointing being, Finnish Missionaries in Africa…
It’s idiotic on its face. Every tribe, clan, and national movement has at one time supplanted other people. Instead of singling out nations, how about just admitting that it always has been an international phenomenon. The purveyors of Critical Theory, however, will never single out a 3rd world country or people, not even a major religion/ideology (Islam) because their focus is exclusively on the West, it’s values, and morals the built it. These voices are the architects of nihilism, the billows of discontent whose goal is the destruction of the modern world as we know it.
The Finnish state news broadcaster and the academics that it gives a platform to, are pushing a “me too” meme. Wanting to be recognized along with other countries runs deep with many of the (self-anointed) elite in this country. In their desire to prove that their own country also has a colonialist pedigree, they suspend reality, literally, and invent one of their own making. Finland, a long time vassal state of both Imperial Sweden, then Russia, is now a de facto colonialist state, simply because certain actors involved themselves in the machinery of the states that ruled over them.
Look at the mental hoops that they demand you jump through in order to come to their helium-based conclusions:
YLE: It is difficult to talk about colonialism in part because the concept is broad and there is no one generally accepted definition for it.
According to the classical definition, Finland has nothing to do with colonialism, because Finland has never been the colonel of any third country. According to other definitions, Finland was and still is a participant in an undeniably unequal world.
Towards the very end of the long piece, dissenting voices are mentioned, but again, it’s placed conveniently at the very end. The entire piece is aimed at making Finland look like it somehow has a sordid past with sins worth repenting of. A total crock. Nowhere in the piece does it mention the fact that it’s been exclusively the radical Marxist Left behind all the violent unrest and wild accusations, in the streets and within the halls of academia. That, more than anything else shows the dishonesty of the outlet.
What is the relationship of Finns to colonialism and why is it so difficult to talk about it? Professor: “Defending Against Allegations”
Finns also worked on steamships in colonial Congo, the infamous kingdom of King Leopold II.
The colonialists who died long ago have had a tough summer.
A statue of a slave trader was thrown into a river in Britain, statues of a monarch king were crushed and burned in Belgium. The explorer Kristoffer Columbus was beheaded in the United States(you switch to another service), a blood-red paint was poured on the missionary in Greenland.
– It is obvious that, for example, France or Belgium, as states, are much more committed to issues concerning colonialism, but Finland is not external to these phenomena and their effects, recalls Leila Koivunen, professor of general history at the University of Turku .
Dominoes began to collapse in late May as George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis revived the Black Lives Matter movement. Its anti-police violence protests swelled into widespread protests against U.S. structural racism.
On the opposite shores of the Atlantic, the gripping surface for American movement was found in its own, colonial domination of past centuries.
No conqueror statues have been demolished in Finland, but the debate on racism has landed here in the summer as well. Black Lives Matter demonstrations have been held at least in Helsinki , Tampere , Turku and Vaasa .
Interior Minister Maria Ohisalo (Greens) has called for intervention in ethnic profiling by the authorities . Classic Finnish brands , such as Mustapekka food cream and Eskimo ice creams, are being renovated.
But will changing the name of the ice cream stick help if we forget the background factors of racism like just colonialism?
– Racism is not the result of migration in recent decades, but has been built into Finnish society over several centuries, writes Suvi Keskinen, Professor of Ethnic Relations at the University of Helsinki, at HS’s opinion department(you switch to another service).
Recently, in the scientific community and with the upheavals of the summer, the public debate has begun to consider whether Finland also has a share in the history of colonialism.
According to the vast majority of recent academic research, the answer is yes.
Yle asked experts in history and social sciences to consider whether the possible roles of Finns as conquerors and the help of conquerors should also be discussed here. And what would such a debate actually mean?
“The roles of the oppressed and the oppressor are not mutually exclusive”
Finnish-Senegalese journalist Ndéla Faye, who works in London, has followed the Finnish debate on racism and colonialism. She has written on multicultural issues for The Guardian and Brown Girls, among others.
– The most interesting thing is that in Finland, the debate is at a level where Russia and Sweden have oppressed Finland for centuries. We always return to this, but no one wants to talk about the role of white Finns as oppressors, for example in connection with the forced Finnishization of the Sámi, Faye says.
It is difficult to talk about colonialism in part because the concept is broad and there is no one generally accepted definition for it.
According to the classical definition, Finland has nothing to do with colonialism, because Finland has never been the colonel of any third country. According to other definitions, Finland was and still is a participant in an undeniably unequal world.
As thousands and thousands of scientific studies have not formed an unambiguous definition of colonialism and its various species, it is at least challenging to discuss it. Especially on Twitter.
Faye admits that Finns have experienced oppression and injustice in the past. However, the roles of the oppressed and the oppressor are not mutually exclusive. According to Faye, the fact that the Finns have also been victims is not a “released from prison” card in the Monopoli game.
– Finland is not ready to talk about Finland’s historical ties to the Nazis or its colonial rule. There is no awareness of the oppression of the Sámi, let alone the discrimination of other people racized in Finland today. The inability to deal with these issues is really frustrating, and there is no way to get over this unless the facts can be accepted, he says.
Colonialism can be seen in both identity and the yogurt jar
The long shadows of colonialism have been addressed in small academic circles for decades.
Professor Leila Koivunen is pleased that the necessary public debate has received the impetus it needs this summer.
He himself is involved in a group of researchers dealing with the history of colonialism from a Finnish perspective.
According to Koivunen, one of the reasons for the inconvenience of the Finnish debate and for taking a quick stand is that colonialism is a very abstract concept.
– It is difficult to show obvious examples of where and how colonialism manifests itself. Its effects have been baked into various things and phenomena over such a long period of time that they have become an inconspicuous and self-evident part of our attitudes.
[…]
The Finns were building an empire in the Congo
According to Leila Koivunen, the relationship between Finns and colonialism is twofold: on the one hand, there is the participation of Finns in colonialist projects in other countries, and on the other hand, especially the effects of Western European colonialism on Finland.
Finland has never been a colonial power in the traditional sense, because Finland has never had a single colony. And because of its position, even after independence, Finland would not have had such a fuss.
– But there have been many individual Finns and Finnish groups around the world, under the leadership of many different colonial powers, building the empires of others, Koivunen says.
One well-known example of this is the activities of Finnish missionariesAt the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries in present-day Namibia. At that time, the area called Amboma had time to dream of Finland as a colony .
