Police investigate blogger for 'Ethnic Agitation'

Another free speech row is brewing in the Baltic, this time in Finland where blogger Mikko Ellila is under investigation by the police for an alleged crime of "Ethnic agitation". It all started with this post just before Christmas, in which Mikko argued, among other things, that black people in Europe commit more crimes per capita than white people. (There is an English translation here.)

Finland's Ombudsman for Minorities issued charges against him, which have been translated by another Finnish blogger, Laiva on Taynna, and asked for a police investigation. The Ombudsman requested that the article be removed from the internet and that the police bring criminal charges against Mikko Ellila. His report also says that, while free speech is guaranteed under the Finnish constitution, the Penal Code of Finland criminalises Ethnic Agitation. He goes on to accuse Ellila of presenting opinions as fact (wouldn't most columnists be in jail if that was illegal?) and making defamatory generalisations about specific ethnic groups. 

As a result, Mikko Ellila was hauled into a police station for questioning this week.

Now, before you start, I'm not saying that I agree with what Mikko wrote. Some of it is, quite frankly, unsubstantiated ranting. But should he be prosecuted simply for having unacceptable opinions? My guess is that, even if his tone had been more moderate and he had offered more evidence, he would still have found himself in trouble because his opinions are deemed unacceptable. Had he only posted his final paragraph, for which he did give some supporting information, he might still be under investigation.

Mikko's blog is hosted in Australia by Prodos who has said that he will not remove the offending post without an order from an Australian court. There is more on this story at Gates of Vienna, which has a translation of a report from a Finnish newspaper.

There is no word yet from Mikko on the outcome of his interview with the authorities.

This case raises a number of issues.

Does Finland's (or any other country's) constitutional right to free speech trump its hate-speech laws? Does offering your opinions about different ethnic groups amount to 'agitation' or 'incitement' of racial hatred? Can someone be prosecuted for something he wrote in one country, but which is published in another and physically held on a computer in a third? Under which country's laws could he be found guilty? How far can Finland ask for its legal decision on an article written by one of its citizens to be implemented in Australia or the USA?

I'm sure we will find out the answers to some of these questions in due course but, in the meantime, I'd be interested to hear your views.

Comments

[Bodkin]

I can't answer your questions. But I'll give my opinion as a man in the street.

First of all, he wrote this stuff on his own blog, the internet is not a broadcast medium, nobody is forced to read what they don't want to. So is there a need for any form of censorship?

Secondly, I find incitement a troubling concept. If I kill someone, can I claim diminished responsibility on the grounds that I was incited? No?

If someone interrupted Coronation Street one night and said "Kill all ginger haired people as they are evil", would we wake the next day to read about the massacre of the gingers? I don't think we would, do you?

[Haw Haw Harry]

Finland has just enacted laws against “incitement to race hatred” in order to protect its Muslim population.

Finland’s law against “race-hate” bears very close similarity to Britain’s “Public Order Act (As Amended by the Race Relations Act)”.

Britain’s race laws have been replicated in White nations the world over, except in the USA where the First Amendment protects free speech except in cases of direct incitement to criminal violence.

Finnish bloggers should be aware that Britain’s law against “race hate” was first drafted and promoted by the Board of Deputies of British Jews during the later 1940s/early 1950s. Their name for this law at that time was “The Group Libel Bill”. It was substantially adopted and put into law (amending the Public Order Act) in 1967 by the then Labour Government, but with the support of most Conservative Party MPs.

Since then the “race hate” component of the Public Order Act has been revised several times. On every occasion the
revision has been floated by…..guess who?…….the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

The most notorious and pernicious of these amendments, which was urged on Lord Justice Scarman when he was conducting in 1975 the Public Judicial Inquiry into the Disturbances at Red Lion Square in London of 1974, and adopted by him in his Report to the Home Secretary.

It urged the removal of the obligation on the Prosecution to prove that an alleged incitement to racial hatred had been “INTENDED” and replacing that with the far easier (and very ambiguous) obligation to prove that incitement to racial hatred was “LIKELY in all the circumstances”.

The Jews, therefore, not the Muslims, were the authors of laws designed to criminalise expressions of opposition to the concept of multi-racialism; and the Jews, not the Muslims, were the intended beneficiaries of such laws.

The Jews pushed for these laws not merely for the obvious reason that they wanted to put themselves above criticism, but because Jewry thrives (and casts a lower profile) in multi-racial societies.

But the Jews have an even deeper and more sinister reason for promoting multi-racialism (among gentiles).

Because Jewry is protected by the religious (de facto racialist) code which is imposed on its membership, it becomes relatively stronger as other peoples descend into racial chaos.

This is an “evolutionary/natural selection” strategy which has been well described in the academic work of Professor Kevin MacDonald of California State University (Long Beach), against whom U.S. Jewry has launched a campaign in recent weeks.

The only problem for the Jews in encouraging Coloured Immigration into Britain and the rest of Europe is that their policy has introduced the Muslims into the mix. The Muslims, unlike all other varieties of Coloured Immigrant, are politically and religiously organised and motivated against Jewry and Zionism, for obvious reasons: Palestine, Iraq, etc.

It is because Jewry has woken up to the Muslim threat (to them as well as to us) inherent in their promotion of Coloured Immigration into Europe that we see so much anti-Muslim propaganda in the mainstream media these days — which kind of stuff would attract prosecution were it to be directed against any other kind of ethnic minority group (especially the Jews!).

It is for this reason that the “Mohammed as terrorist-bomber” cartoons were tolerated and left unprosecuted anywhere. the person responsible for those ‘Danish’ cartoons was a Jew called Flemming Rose.

Rose produced those cartoons with the deliberate intention of stirring-up Muslim outrage and violent protests, knowing that such protests would attract bad publicity (for the Muslims). How’s that for an example of “….intended or likely in all the circumstances to incite racial hatred….”??

Rose’s cartoons were not an exercise in “free speech” but a cunningly calculated coat-trailing operation.

His cartoons were quickly picked up by the anti-Muslim, pro-Jewish British National Party and made the basis for a widely-distributed leaflet which attracted no prosecution.

I do not not want any significant body — let alone a multiplicity — of any variety of ethnic aliens to be settled permanently in Britain, be they Muslim or Jew, African, Indian or whatever. In that matter I have no special favourites or prejudice.

You should not be such a sucker and conduit for Jew-inspired anti-Muslim propaganda.

[JuliaM]

"...should he be prosecuted simply for having unacceptable opinions?"

I was going to say 'No, of course not. The right to free speech is paramount, people should not have any right not to be offended. Only what can be proven to be incitement to commit a crime (in a court of law) should be prosecuted, as in this country.'

But then I saw this garbage, and now I'm not so sure:

"You should not be such a sucker and conduit for Jew-inspired anti-Muslim propaganda."

[AgainsTTheWall]

"But then I saw this garbage....". Not even a spark of intellectual curiosity? Mention the Jewish Power and the shutters come down in the minds of our arrogant know-it-all English middle-class. And therewith our fate is sealed.