The genocide of the Jews has touched millions of French people. That is why such a concept as Nazi humor is not known or allowed in France, unlike in Finland.
Annastiina HeikkiläYle’s Paris reporter
It will be difficult for French politicians to negotiate investments, Minister of Economy Vilhelm Junnilan (ps.) with.
After all, honoring the victims of the Holocaust is an inseparable and still very visible part of French politics, and trivialization is not tolerated.
It shows for example here In a declaration published on the website of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where the country’s foreign policy leadership undertakes to use “its entire diplomatic and cultural network to remember the victims of the genocide”.
Therefore, cooperation with a Finnish minister who jokes with Nazi symbols will probably be challenging.
The Minister of Economic Affairs and the leadership of Basic Finns have acknowledged that Junnila’s Nazi references were bad humor. Junnila has talked, for example, about the election candidate number 88. The number refers to the Nazi greeting Heil Hitler.
In France – or in Western Europe in general – there is no such concept as Nazi humor.
The reason is the actions that no one wants to forget.
The Nazis and the Vichy puppet government controlled by Nazi Germany began the deportation of French Jews to concentration camps in March 1942. An estimated 76,000 Jews living in France were killed.
The name of every known victim is carved into the long stone walls of the Holocaust Museum in the Jewish quarter of Le Marais in Paris. Thousands of monuments commemorating the massacre can be found all over France.
It would not be possible to forget the Holocaust, because the experiences of those who survived it are passed down as stories from one generation to the next. The genocide has directly or indirectly affected millions of French people.
France has the largest Jewish minority in Europe, against which attacks have become more common in recent years. That is why anti-Semitism is taken extremely seriously.
Questioning genocide or joking about it is not appropriate even in the far-right National Alliance. Former chairman of the French far-right Jean-Marie Le Pen expelled from the party in 2016 for anti-Semitic comments.
Le Pen had downplayed the genocide, saying the gas chambers were just a detail in history. He had also defended the Vichy government, which collaborated with the Nazis.
Jean-Marie Le Pen was fired by his daughter Marine Le Pen, who was the chairman of the National Alliance at the time. Marine Le Pen has tried to make a nest separation from her father’s speeches in order to make the party fit for the salon.
The national coalition has been very successful in the elections of the last few years, and in France the positioning of radical and far-right parties in other countries is therefore closely monitored.
It is therefore not surprising that that Junnila’s case quickly made the news in France.
The newspaper Le Monde published last week Friday story, in which the newspaper’s correspondent went through the stages of the basic Finnish party and told about Junnila’s Nazi references, and the speaker Jussi Halla-ahon from court judgments received.
The fact that when I shared the Le Monde story, written in a neutral tone, with the Finnish public, I received a barrage of hate mail is indicative of the weight of the topic. The senders of the messages were Finns, who accused the foreign media – and for that matter – in their hundreds of messages of lying and slander, among other things.
Sometimes, however, you can see more closely from further away. The international media’s interest in the far-right connections of basic Finns acted as a mirror and accelerated the discussion in Finland as well.
Looking at France, it is clear that Junnila’s conditions to act as Finland’s representative are dire. It is equally clear that the Finnish government should quickly review its values as a European civilized state.