04/13/2019
I’m in shock just as much as the Finnish Left are. Something extraordinary happened in Finland on Friday April 12, just two days before Finland’s parliamentary elections. A judge in Oulu, in north west Finland, declared that the words “Nazi” and “racist” were “insults” (in literal translation “barking words”) and that if you use them against somebody, even if they are in your view empirically accurate, you must pay a fine.
Cllr Junes Lokka, the nationalist independent councillor who single-handedly unearthed a Muslim refugee grooming gang who had raped at least 29 underage Finnish girls in the last year, something unreported by the MSM until pressured by him, last month sued a smug, leftist journalist called Johanna Vehkoo. Vehkoo, who regularly expounds her Multiculturalist dogma in Finnish national newspapers, had become upset in 2018 because Lokka, who livestreams much of his campaigning, was insistently filming her. In a subsequent public Facebook post, she labelled the half-Finnish and half-Moroccan councillor a “racist”, a “Nazi” and a “Nazi clown.”
Turning Finland’s leftist-supported anti-free-speech laws against Vehkoo, in March, Lokka sued her for the “honour insult” (this is a crime in the land of sauna!) of calling him a “Nazi”, a “racist” and a “Nazi clown.” Vehkoo fought the case, arguing that Lokka was a “Nazi” and a “racist,” because, for example, he had met Jared Taylor and because Wikipedia kind of said he was.
The judge ruled that this was irrelevant. She was guilty of using insulting language. He imposed a fine of “15 day’s salary” on her, forced her to pay Lokka 200 euros and compelled to pay Lokka’s 6000 euro legal fees. [Toimittaja Johanna Vehkoo sai rikostuomion Junes Lokan kunnian loukkaamisesta, by Solmu Salminen, Ilta-Lehti, April 12, 2019]
The Finnish left are in uproar, even Vehkoo’s lawyer said she just couldn’t believe it. Popular tabloid Ilta-Lehti promptly editorialised “You should be able to call Nazis Nazis and Racists Racists”. [Pääkirjoitus: Natsia pitää voida sanoa natsiksi ja rasistia rasistiksi, Ilta-Lehti, April 12, 2019] seemingly forgetting that Ilta-Lehti also reported on Friday that Lokka was to be prosecuted for uploading onto YouTube a video of a Helsinki rally in which people supposedly broke Finland’s “hate speech” laws by speaking a bit too directly or truthfully about immigrants. [Junes Lokka nyt itse syytteeseen kunnianloukkauksesta — tekovälineenä Youtube, by Aleksanteri Pikkarainen, Ilta-Lehti, April 12, 2019] Naturally, there was no editorial condemning this. The irony is surely lost on no-one that “#Sanavapaus” (Free speech) is now trending on Finnish SJW Twitter accounts.
In effect, the Friday judgment means that if leftists smear nationalists as “racist” or “Nazi” (these being their main means of debating ideas with which they disagree) then there is a realistic possibility of them ending up with a heavy fine. It will have a “chilling effect” on the enemies of freedom, far more chilling that the Finnish winter. Hyvää Suomi!
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.