28
votes
A series of racism scandals within the new Finnish government has led to calls for a ban on the swastika and the hammer and sickle
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Finland considers swastika ban after racism scandals rock government
- Published
- Aug 21 2023
- Word count
- 326 words
Seems to be a false equivocation between the swastika (which far-right groups are quite keen on today) and the hammer and sickle (which people don't really use post the collapse of the USSR). Nazism and communism are quite different, in that antisemitism is deeply engrained into the former, whereas hatred of minorities and white supremacism is not core to communist thought.
Yeah it seems like a weird attempt to both-sides things. I know Finland has a lot more firsthand experience with the USSR than many other countries, but the idea that the hammer and sickle is equally associated with racism as the swastika is kinda silly. Even with the atrocities the USSR committed, it doesn't have a modern contingent of racists using its symbols in nearly the same way as the swastika is used.
It doesn't have to be "equally associated with racism" as the swastika, to still be associated with racism. And I think Finland (along with Ukraine and Georgia, among others) have a much more informed opinion about what the hammer and sickle represents, to them, than any of us armchair analysts do.
Forgive me if I'm not particularly keen to accept the right-wing coalition full of racists at face value when they decide which symbols are racist.
Totally fair! It's worth noting that according to the article, it was one proposition among many, which haven't even been voted on yet so there's no saying any of this gets adopted, let alone any indication that it has widespread approval.
There's no equivalency but hammer and sickle are commonly associated with totalitarian period of USSR and stalinism which is pretty despicable. There was plenty of antisemitism and while not industrial scale murder kind, the sort of people behind it would do it if it benefited them. Ask a Russian today about why nazism was evil and you likely won't hear a peep about jews either.
All in all, I'd rather target all types of political extremism and believe actual socialists have plenty of symbols to rally around. Even the well meaning socialists do a disservice to the idea when they invoke memories of worst of the USSR so I think it works out for the better.
I don't think that the hammer and sickle is a good symbol or that people should use it. I just don't think it is inherently antisemitic as some people suggest. It is a symbol of a totalitarian regime, of course.
Keep in mind, the article we're all discussing here is talking about racism, in general terms - not just/explicitly antisemitism.
While the hammer and sickle may not carry an explicitly antisemitic meaning, they can quite reasonably be used to refer to government-enforced ethnic cleansings (e.g., the holodomor, ongoing Uighur genocide).
But people don't use it in the real world to mean that at present?
I suppose that the US flag could also be used to refer to government-enforced ethnic cleansings, coup attempts, etc. but it's not soley a flag for a movement that supports that, so we don't.
Who is "we" in this context?
Glib comments aside, flags carry a variety of meanings, and I for one wouldn't bat an eye at another country banning the display of an American flag as a symbol of racism - because, in my mind, it is. It's a symbol of imperialism, of colonialism, and of the genocide of multiple Indigenous peoples. And all of that, is on top of the more recent far right adoption of the flag as a symbol with which they can wrap around fascism as a means of making it more palatable for the masses.
But more importantly, what other countries decide to do or not do with the American flag is not at all relevant to me. It's their choice.
EDIT TO ADD: Others may feel compelled to mention other flags, and question whether they could be viewed as racist too. The answer is almost certainly yes, depending on specific contexts. It's also worth noting that given the United State's history as a slave state and given the fundamental exclusion of others based on colonial attitudes on race, I believe the flag of the USA is uniquely qualified to be considered as a symbol of racism.
That being said, I am not a historian/vexillologist/anthropologist so take these solely as the musings and opinions of a random dude on the internet
I disagreed without umbrage with the rest of your post, but I do want to highlight the "unique" aspect of this line. I know you said that other flags could be considered racist too, but I don't agree that the US somehow stands in its own category of shittiness.
Apart from the fact that multiple European powers could fall under these exact same definitions - and much more recently, Belgium was terrorizing Congo until 1960 - Mauritania didn't even criminalize slavery until 2007. There are still millions of slaves in that country.
And yes, the US has problems with colonial attitudes on race, but what about France, which was actually a colonial power and yet has barely even had any black politicians? (Forget about having a black president.)
This is a ton of whataboutism, I know, but I'm doing it because I specifically disagree with the assertion that the US is somehow uniquely racist.
My thoughts were probably imprecise; I did not mean to imply that the United States "stands in its own category" of shittiness. There's been lots of states that enforce slavery, and you bring up fine examples of that fact.
The United States isn't unique in its racism, although an argument could be made that American views on race did influence many other notably racist states (e.g., 1930s era Nazi Germany). I meant more to state that the United States is notable in that slavery and racism are fundamental to the founding of the country.
I put more of my thoughts here.
Uniquely seems a bit much. Especially when South Africa exists and Rhodesia existed. Heck, the Confederate flag is a thing.
America has a horrible history of racism but it's absolutely bizarre to pretend it is unique in this regard. Like reverse American exceptionalism lol
Yeah, it might be a bit much. Granted, Rhodesia no longer exists, but it was certainly founded as an explicit slave state, and after a bit of light reading it turns out some far right groups have adopted its flag as a symbol. Odds are, it'll get more attention as a symbol of hate as that gets recognized by the wider media.
You're also right that South Africa is a thing, and as it turns out it has been recognized as a symbol of hate. At least, its apartheid-era flag has been.
The confederate flag IS definitely a thing; it's also American in origin (obviously) and in many places it IS regarded as a symbol of hate - and rightly so.
"Uniquely" was imprecise language on my part; I sought to emphasize that there is something particular to American history regarding slavery. Slavery explicitly existed in the United States for a longer stretch of time when compared to other imperial European powers, and implicitly it still exists to this day. Other imperial powers (e.g., France and Great Britain) certainly invoked slavery, and countries like Belgium with imperial goals did too. What makes them a bit different (but no less horrible) in my mind is that the United States was founded upon slavery, even enforcing it within the Constitution until later amended ... nearly 100 years later, and not without an civil war.
All of this is to say, the United States certainly isn't unique in being a state that has/had slavery. It is noteworthy that it was founded specifically enforcing slavery.
I mean, I'm certainly not going to defend the US's history with slavery, it's rough, but it's shuttering yourself off to percieve it at exceptional. Certain people (typically white Europeans) have a tendency to dismiss their own current and historical atrocities by pointing a finger at the US and insisting that it's the worst, ESPECIALLY when it comes to racism, and that sort of mindset can lead to a refusal to engage with their own horrific acts. Imo comes off as extremely dismissive of these acts to treat the US as exceptional there, especially when the other acts being compared are much more recent, such as the atrocities in Belgian Congo or South African apartheid or Haiti's debt to France for their slave rebellion.
In any case though, I don't think this kind of "atrocity olympics" is particularly helpful to the actual victims of these atrocities and I think it can even impede actually acknowledging them and making reparations.
I feel it's worth noting, again, that I am not saying that anything the United States does/has done is in any way worse than what other nations have done. I merely wanted to point out something that I felt was noteworthy - not better, not worse, just different.
And I agree, an "atrocity olympics" is not helpful and certainly not my intention here.
I understand your explanations of what you meant, so I won't harp on that. I'm commenting here specifically because it's interesting to note that the US (although not the only country founded on/during slavery) was probably simply a victim of timing here. The US happens to have been founded during the peak of the transatlantic slave trade. It's a certainty that were, say, England to have been founded under the same circumstances, slavery would have been enshrined in the Magna Carta. And were the US founded 100 years later, slavery would have had nothing at all to do with it.
None of that negates your argument re: the flag, but it is interesting.
By "we" I mean people in liberal-ish democracies.
It is my understanding that the Sami people fared poorly under the Soviet Union, where they were forced into farming collectives against their will (the alternative was concentration camps) and forced to stop speaking their language, practicing their religion, wearing their traditional clothes, etc. Sami in Finland have fared better and have retained far more of their traditional lifestyle and independence.
As I see it, the real issue is that the Finnish government is filled with racists. But rather than addressing that, they try to give racism a more mainstream aestetics by removing the swastikas.
When I was a kid, my school banned us from wearing red or blue clothing because these colors were associated with the Bloods and the Crips. This was their effort to combat gang activity in the school. As you can imagine, it was a game of whack-a-mole and had no effect whatsoever, other than to further stress out our teachers (who had to enforce the rules) and to lose the respect of the students (who saw the whole thing as arbitrary and stupid).
As an adult, I realize now why the school did it. They weren't trying to suppress gang activity at all. They just wanted to trick outside observers into thinking the school lacked gang activity. It was essentially a cover-up.
And that's exactly how I read this as well. If you want to eliminate racism, you rout out the perpetrators of racism. If you want to disguise the racism, you ban overt symbols of it.