The Finnish politician Ano Turtiainen, who was expelled from the True Finns a year ago after joking about George Floyd’s death by posting a meme, has since served as an independent in the Finnish Parliament.
Turtiainen and his supporters have now managed to collect the 5000 signatures of support needed to form a new party, which was also approved by the authorities.
The country’s party register therefore includes “Valta kuulu kansalle” [Power belongs to the people]. Turtiainen will represent the party in the Riksdag until the next election, which takes place in 2023.
The party works for more direct democracy and for a Fixit – for Finland to leave the EU. Turtiainen, now party leader, has also opposed Finland’s Corona policy, in particular the vaccination campaign, masks and the government’s plans for a domestic vaccine passport.
In December 2015 Turtiainen posted a comment on Facebook saying that “people had taken great personal risks when acting in elimination operations to destroy existing and planned asylum centres”. He said the Finnish Red Cross was the greatest enemy of the Finns and wrote that “it was now time to expand operations to the enemy headquarters”.
The matter escalated into a controversy after Member of Parliament Laura Huhtasaari had liked the post. The Finnish Red Cross reported Turtiainen’s message to the police. In September 2018 Turtiainen was sentenced in the district court of Southern Savonia to 60 day-fines for public incitement to crime. After being elected as a Member of Parliament, Turtiainen commented that “in this company this sentence is just a feather in my cap”.
On 3 June 2020 Turtiainen mocked George Floyd on his Twitter account with a tweet showing an image of Floyd, a police officer’s knee on his neck and his face colorized pink, with the phrase “Pink Floyd”. His parliamentary group called the tweet “not acceptable”.
The tweet was later deleted. As a response to Turtiainen’s tweet, the Finns Party expelled him from the parliamentary group. Citing zero tolerance for racism, US-based company Elitefts announced that it was ending its business relationship with Ano Turtiainen’s company, Metal Sport & Gear.