Community activism or bilious resentment – a Helsinki example

It’s been an interesting day. The afternoon went in the crowded large lecture theatre of Porthania at the University of Helsinki. The crowds came to hear the great philosophical entertainer himself, Slavoj Zizek, who’d come here to launch a translation of his book, The Soft Revolution or Pehmeä Vallankumous.

I’d better not say too much about the book since I haven’t touched it let alone read it, though there were piles on sale at the lecture.

But a little bit to record the afternoon, which was interesting and, I believe, pertinent to the future of a city like Helsinki in particular. Zizek is, as far as I can work out, a maverick, a hugely productive writer on very complex things around psychoanalysis and German philosophy, a specialist on “popular” culture like Hitchcock’s films and a passionate political thinker. Oh, and a Christian. But an atheist one.

I thought philosophers prefer not to get involved in messy reality or politics. OK, there was that slogan from Karl Marx, that the point of philosophy wasn’t to understand the world but to change it, but as I understand it that baton was passed on to social scientists. Today Zizek suggested that perhaps at this particular point of time this slogan ought to be turned around. I think he was saying that the world is so complex and that people with left-wing progressive intentions so lost for good ideas, that it might not be a bad idea to focus less on changing the world and try harder to understand, interpret and give it symbolic meaning.

Symbols do move people.

Zizek started by talking about the way that the left wing parties, the usual friends of the exploited, have no longer much to offer to those who are now exploited (that’s very much my word). Instead, the right wing populist parties around the world have appropriated the language that was once there for the left, leaving a horrific potential for resentment and a not very nice future. Particularly when you take into account the other small issues of ecological and technological developments the world has to cope with as well – areas around which Zizek travelled with charm in his long talk, but not always with clear direction.

The reference to right wing populism touched a nerve. Just this morning I came across a horrible piece of internet-based right-wing populism sparked by an article in The Usual a couple of week-ends ago. It pondered how Helsinki could avoid the “white flight” that was seen ten, twenty years ago in certain other Nordic cities where anti-immigrant sentiment among locals made them move out of their neighbourhoods. The article was a bit light-weight, told you which neighbourhoods are violent, which ones not (in Sweden and Denmark too) and it only interviewed whites. The author also tugged shamelessly at emotive nationalist heartstrings and, by using words like “indigenous” and “pioneer” locals, gave added symbolic meaning to a not very enlightening story. The paper got quite a lot of negative feedback.

But the point of putting this on JHJ? Well, there’s the stigmatising of neighbourhoods through the media, and the bizarre way in which, for some people, “Eastern Helsinki” (including e.g. Jollas, right, and parts of Vantaa) has become a symbol of some unwanted but unstoppable social and cultural development in our cosmopolitan city (from which the speaker, resident elsewhere, feels at a safe distance).

And then this bilious text on the internet. Apart from the Perus Suomalaiset Party who are regarded by many as just a bunch of crazies (from Eastern Helsinki) and by others as a straightforward extreme right party, there are a few organisations who have made noises specifically about the fact that immigration needs to stop. On their websites these organisations say they are “ordinary” people who want to defend their communities and to talk sensibly about the problem of immigration. They use the word “maahanmuuttokriittinen” to convey their immigration-critical stance.

They have thousands and thousands of messages on threads a few days old so it’s not easy to figure out what they’re about or how many people are involved. In some they refer to Helsingin Sanomat disparagingly as “the toleranti” and in others tell stories of how they were robbed by swarthy types.

Then there are the “watchers”, websites dedicated to proving that these folks are racist.

So yes, Zizek, there needs to be some symbolic work in Helsinki to tell stories that don’t stigmatise, simplify, stereotype and hurt. You rambled on a bit, all over the place in fact, but it was fabulous to see the place full, sitting all over the steps and propping up the walls. And thanks to Voima (who organised this), Like, Into, Gaudeamus and all those other publishing houses who just keep on publishing sharp thinking, translated or in the original. Finnish.

Floods, Part 3: Prime Minister Vanhanen on refugees

As the editorial here at JeesJees was preparing to entertain you all by borrowing Hesari’s tongue-in-cheek speculations about the origins of the mystery hole in the metro (two types of mutant rodents seem the most plausible) it stumbled on a somewhat different story about “floods”.

According to MTV3’s website Prime Minister Vanhanen (Centre Party) is afraid of a flood (tulva) [sic] of asylum seekers coming to Finland. He reckons (in Aamulehti) that the last few years’ growth in refugee numbers is just the beginning. Around 6000 asylum seekers, it is estimated, could arrive in Finland this year.

The website then reports the Prime Minister’s words thus:

– Ei pitäisi julkisesti sanoa, mutta jos meidät löydetään yhtä laajasti kuin muut Pohjoismaat, hakijoita voi olla jopa 20 000, Vanhanen sanoo. [You shouldn’t say this publicly, but if we’re discovered like the other Nordic countries have been, the number of applicants could be as high as 20 000, Vanhanen says]

“Home, sweet home” in Finnish is “oma maa mansikka, muu maa mustikka” (home is strawberry, abroad is blueberry – work that one out!) In 2008 the UNHCR‘s (The UN Refugee Agency) estimated that there were 11.4 million refugees worldwide. As ever, there’s room to quibble about the terminology and numbers, but it seems rather churlish to do so in this context with these figures. It’s also quite clear that the poorest countries receive about 80% of these homeless people anyway, so such homely sayings are presumably a privilege that only a very few can afford.

P.S. Finnish figures are indeed up. Not long ago they were almost non-existent. Debate is ongoing and extremely fraught about where to put those asylum seekers who do arrive and whom Finland has agreed to assist.

Kaisaniemi flooded … with people

If you looked at a map you could be forgiven for thinking that Kaisaniemi is the throbbing heart of this city. In fact, the park carrying that name is  underused. It’s cut off on one side by the railway and on the other by heavy road traffic.

Until the metro station at the Central Railway sprung its spectacular leak (the origins of which remain shrouded in mystery leaving ordinary folks to muse on whether it’s the doings of Al Quaeda, unqualified builders or a giant city bunny) how many had ever realised there was another metro station just a few hundred, maybe few dozen, metres to the east, in Kaisaniemi?

The shopkeepers in Kaisaniemi must be pleased.

Some architectural interest here too. The banality on the right should be replaced in a few years with something that looks more like this, a new university library by Anttinen Oiva Arkkitehdit with the lovely project name AVOIN, or open.

Even, dear reader(s), as I am aware of the dangerously seductive capacities of architectural renderings! (cf. the tragic case – in so many ways – of HDHD), I think this will be a definite asset.

No consensus on Finnish hospitality

The trees are almost bare now. Winter is coming and it’ll soon be even colder than it is now, and darker. What a time to arrive as a stranger. Particularly if you feel unwanted.

Mark Twain once said about land, “they ain’t makin any more of it” or something. Meawhile the global population is rather large compared to years gone and with income polarisation, endemic violence and environmental degradation pushing people out of places they once considered home (a process that’s happening within countries and cities not to mention across different parts of the planet) it’s the poor who are generally being squeezed. So anyone with an interest in the way places look, even lucky places like Helsinki, is going to have to factor that in.

This week a new reception centre for refugees is to open in Punavuori, as reported by Vartti online magazine. Like many others probably, I found out by reading the week-end paper’s interview. But it was an asylum article with a difference, a portrait of a group – OK, two engaged women – who have established the “Refugee Hospitality Club Punavuori” to make sure that as well as cries of “not in my back yard” we get a compassionate message of “why not in our back yard?” What exactly their activities will consist of is yet unclear (at least to me) but the idea is that there is a volunteering opportunity here for us already-locals that these folks are ready to organise. Oh, and they are on facebook!

The balance (?!) between mobile and sedentary, local and foreign isn’t one that Europeans (or many others, I suspect) have found that easy to negotiate, but it’s good to see that the shrill views of those wishing to restrict hospitality to a narrowly defined type of human being, are not the only ones circulating out there.

On which note, Finnish users of facebook have set up a rather lovely group, loosely translated thus: I accidentally wound up on Helsingin Sanomat’s internet discussion site: shouldn’t have

P.s. just some thoughts on the political background to all this. Finland has been known for its consensus politics, at least until recently. Some now feel that the country has lost the common sense of purupose it once had and that any consensus there might once have been surely is now gone. Related to this, Finland is now also a land of differences and that appears to be a problem. The Finnish media in 2009, however, is busily producing a new consensus or at least a political truth: asenneilmapiiri on kiristynyt literally translated = attitude atmosphere become tighter/tenser. Presumably they are trying to find an inoffensive way to say that racism, fear of difference and readiness to be hurtful have become understandable, even acceptable. I’ve read this phrase in 2 papers (not necessariy fresh) in recent days, and of course, on online discussion threads. Shouldn’t have.