Meet Europe’s Latest Threat: She Is A Blue-Eyes Blonde Who Wants “Finland First”
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Sun, 01/28/2018
First it was Nigel Farrage, then Beppe Grillo, Frauke Petry, Alexis Tsipras, Marine le Pen, Geert Wilders, Victor Orban, Sebastian Kurz and so on, as one after another European populist, anti-immigrant leader emerged in response to the economic cataclysm unleashed by central banks over the past decade which left the “1%” better off than ever, at the expense of everyone else.
Now a new threat has emerged out of Finland, one which is petite, with blonde hair and blue eyes.
Laura Huhtasaari, a 38-year-old former teacher, is trying to bring anti-immigration, populist ideas back to mainstream Finnish politics and her campaign for the country’s presidency has seen her reputation soar ahead of the first round of voting on Sunday.
In brief: she hates the European Union, cheered Brexit and supports Donald Trump — and believes Finland is more than ready for her brand of populism. And, according to Politico, of the eight contenders to be Finland’s next president, “none stand out quite like Huhtasaari.”
The candidate of the far-right Finns Party is an outlier in both style and substance. She won’t win Sunday’s presidential election but she’s using her time in the spotlight to push her party’s anti-immigrant, anti-establishment message.
As the UK’s Express adds, her Finns Party has employed tactics from a variety of populist politicians, and is echoing Donald Trump with her “Finland first” slogan as well as French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, who used nationalism as a key theme in her campaign. At the basis of her ideology, her eurosceptic rhetoric sounds a lot like that of former Ukip leader Nigel Farage, even telling of her admiration for the 53-year-old’s Brexit campaign as she told supporters to “take their country back”.
Like her Euroskeptic, nationalist peers, she too claims the EU has turned “Finland into its province” and has railed against the country’s political elite, who she argues do not represent the working class.
Huhtasaari has also demanded more immigration controls and has campaigned in favour of a burka ban – a far cry from Finland’s traditionally subdued politics. She told Politico: “I’m here to remind people that the Finns Party is truly an alternative to the mainstream.
“I want to change the direction of Finland and take back our independence.”
Huhtasaari is in her element on the campaign trail. Speaking in downtown Helsinki to a devoted crowd that braved the height of winter to hear her speak, she rolled out the greatest hits of her populist platform: ranting against a heavy-handed European Union, an out-of-touch Finnish political elite indifferent to the working class, and the perils of large-scale — mainly Muslim — immigration.
She broke up her speech by going off-script and engaging with the crowd, shaking hands and offsetting her fiery rhetoric with a smile before telling her supporters to “take their country back” and ending the 30-minute gathering with her rallying cry of choice: “Finland first!”
Speaking to Politico she also said that “Finland is a little bit late if you compare it to other European countries – anti-immigration parties are winning and people are waking up everywhere. They’re waking up now here, too.”
The Rest…HERE
