They call it the "City of Minarets", but it could just as well be called the city of hatred, blood, rape and sorrow. Even 16 years after the bloody civil war, the air is heavy with contempt, and faces are long with grief. Bullet-ridden buildings on every block are reminders of a harsh time not long left behind. Right here in this city neighbours killed one another, women were raped en mass and civilians put into concentration camps. Snipers shot innocent children without a second thought. This is Sarajevo. This is Europe.
This is one nation. One ethnicity. And, no matter what they claim, one language. Serbs and Croats are Christians, and Bosniacs are Muslims, but honestly they are almost all secular. What makes neighbours, classmates and colleagues turn against each other so mercilessly?
This was nothing new to Europe. Genocide did not begin in Rwanda, and it was not invented by the Nazis. Such events are nothing new to Finland either. This young nation has its own scars. It's not more than two generations ago when this small nation of less than 3 million people at the time painted each other red and white. Then neighbours killed neighbours. Even brothers took different sides.
Hatred does not need a reason - it will find one. Hatred is not necessarily a reaction; it's a state of mind. It's a beast inside us. Now this beast is waking up from years of hibernation. Europe is afraid again. But what makes masses behave in such savage ways?
"In crowds it is stupidity and not mother wit that is accumulated". Since Gustave Le Bon, coined it in 1896, this sentence has served as dogma for many. The crowds may truly be ignorant. Only 55 percent of all Americans know that the sun is a star and a third of Russians think that the sun spins around the Earth. Then again, these are the nations that have pioneered space exploration, put satellites into orbit and sent probes to Mars. There is overwhelming evidence that contradicts Le Bon's theory. Research has shown that although ignorance dilutes wisdom in the crowds, a well-selected group will make better decisions than individuals most of the time. Here is the exception: when decisions are made on an emotional basis, herd behaviour could, and will, go disastrously wrong. Enter lynch mobs.
Fear is a strong motive and a dangerous emotion. Useful when well founded, crippling when groundless. Today, fear has spoken in Finland: Fear of change; fear of a new world and a fresh identity. A part of our society has voted for fleeing back to the safety and nostalgia of the past. The magnitude of this group has taken the rest of the nation and even Europe by surprise.
It would be unfair to leave unmentioned the fact that many of the criticisms raised by Persusuomalaiset are well founded. Finland has not always held her ground in EU negotiations. The government's EU policy has not been transparent and communication with the nation has been whipped airy in the crème of political jargon. However, offering oversimplified and emotional solutions to complicated problems - although pleasant to the electorates' ears - is misleading.
THE Rise of xenophobia in Europe and Finland is often explained by the increase in immigration. Although this may be of some influence, I strongly doubt this explanation. Often the most anti-immigrant and kainotophobic (afraid of change) places are those with the least immigrants and little in the way of change. New York, for example, remained international, multicultural, democrat and antiwar, even after 9/11, while the US "red states" (where people have voted mainly republican and multiculturalism is minimal) used the event as confirmation to embrace xenophobia and intolerance even harder. Shift of attitudes tends to be a much more important factor than external factors such as the movement of people.
Balkan history is, of course, complex, but resurrecting historical conflicts and differences to massacre your neighbours is not a natural course of action. Things could always take a different course with a little push or the lack of it. God is indeed in details. For the 4-year-long bloodshed, rape and concentration camps to start, there was one crucial tipping point: Slobodan Milošević was surrounded by a crowd of 15,000 Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo on 24 April 1987.
A man in the crowd shouted: "the police has beaten us".
"Nobody will beat you again," Milošević replied.
Serbian television aired the event later that evening. Ivan Stambolić, President of Serbia later said that after watching the footage that he had witnessed "the end of Yugoslavia".
Finland's "Milošević moment" happened in local politics in February 2009 when Jyrki Katainen, the acting leader of Kokoomus, said publicly that: "immigration should be openly discussed and ‘immigration-critics' should not be automatically denounced racist". A year later SDP's Leader Jutta Urpilainen pronounced her infamous sentence, "maassa maan tavalla", which immediately became the backbone of her party's immigration policy. Translated as: "When in Rome act like Romans", Urpilainen's phrase is in fact much more dire. The Finnish version of this idiom, as many reminded Urpilainen, continues as: "or get out of the land".
Both these sentences were as true as Milošević's announcement in Kosovo, but similarly the context, timing and geography of these words have had extreme significance, overriding their literal meaning. They all were opinion shifters. What Milošević did knowingly, Katainen and Urpilainen committed ignorantly. Hoping to get their share of Soini's hype, in fact they threw more coal into his engine.
Endorsement by authority is a powerful force that should not be taken lightly for both right and wrong. Our boy and girl on the top, Jyrki and Jutta, pulled their fingers off the holes in the dyke and the outcome is poured upon us.
Restraint is a major element of human civilisation. We hold back on everything from our animal instincts to the expression of our fears, thoughts and opinions uncensored and unsoftened. Without that restraint and self-control, our societies would undoubtedly fall apart. What happened in this last election was probably a shift in attitudes for some, but "freedom of expression" for most of the "protest voters". Except that this time, what is expressed freely in the form of a political will is, unfortunately, fear and ignorance.
But there is a bright side to this story. 80 percent of the electorate did not vote for steering the country inward and backward. The surprising progress of fundamental thinking has made this part of the society more active. Many have joined parties and lots of groups have been formed in the social media. We got our wake up call. Progress is not self evident, it needs to be cared for.
