Finland’s new economic affairs minister and member of the nationalist Finns Party, Vilhelm Junnila, survived a confidence vote in parliament on Wednesday.
MPs votes on the measure fell 95-86 with three abstentions and 15 absences.
The confidence vote was called by three opposition parties, the Left Alliance, Green and Social Democratic parties, due to Junnila’s previous controversial statements and links to far-right groups.
Seven Swedish People’s Party MPs voted against Junnila, with the other three abstaining. Three National Coalition MPs were absent for the vote, but the other government party MPs voted their confidence in the controversial politician.
Junnila has joked about his election number (88) referencing ‘Heil Hitler’, campaigned at an election under the “gas” slogan and spoken at at least one event organised by a far-right group.
The recently-appointed minister apologised last week for his comments and actions, following two days of media controversy about the matter.
MPs also voted on the government programme, with 106 voting to support it, 78 voting against, and one abstention. 15 legislators were away for that vote.
I’ll never understand the appeal of nazism.
It provides easy targets for all frustration and anger people have.
I just don’t understand how they can’t see that the people that benefit the most from the system are the people making it awful and trying to keep them from targeting them.
I mean even when I was young and conservative (because I had no fucking clue about anything) I always knew it was the ultra rich that were the issue.
Ultra rich are the problem AND they usually support nazis at least indirectly… because it’s just too convenient to have the poor blame other poor for the enshittification of the society.
A lot of the time they directly support them.
George Bush Sr.s dad literally did business with the nazis. The rich in the 30’s attempted a fascist coup in the United States that only failed because a man named Smedley Butler that they tried to hire to help them do it ratted them out to congress.
Weak people need a strongman, they love boot leather
Also simple solutions and scapegoats to complex issues. Elite is safer when the people fight each other
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Same appeal as other forms of extremism. You get a set of enemies to blame for everything wrong with the world. You can hate them and feel justified for it. You get simple solutions to complicated problems. You’re in the know, while ordinary people are being manipulated by some evil elite.
I do t like lumping all extremism into the same boats, because they’re drastically different. Nazi extremism is not the same as Bolshevik extremism, taliban extremists are not the same as anarchist extremists, and there are situations where the label “extremism” is applied to oppressed people trying to change things or face annihilation with the only means left open to them, and then there’s racist pricks who just don’t like black people and non Christian’s. There’s rich people who don’t want the poor to have any sort of quality of life, and there are poor people who just want to feed their families. It’s fucked.
Recently it turned out this fella has lied about his education and work past. Turned out instead of masters on goverment studies, he signed up on open university but never finnished a single course.
Nazis are bad at thinking. Not surprising.