Simon Wiesenthal Center Condemns Finland’s Juha Kärkkäinen, Tycoon Publisher of Antisemitic Free Newspapers as a ‘National Danger’
by Joshua Levitt
Jewish human rights group the Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a condemnation Monday of Juha Kärkkäinen, the owner of Finland’s Kärkkäinen department stores and publisher of Magneettimedia, an anti-Semitic free newspaper, in an open letter to Finnish President Sauli Vainamo Niinistö.
SWC’s Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, wrote that Magneetmedia publishes screeds by former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke and anti-Semitic Oregon Pastor Ted Pike in a free format that panders to the lowest-common denominator, Jew hate, encouraging ordinary Finns who read the reports to embrace ethnic hatred.
He called on the Finnish President to “invoke the prestige of your office to contain the revival of concepts once current during the 1941-1944 Finnish alliance with Nazi Germany.”
In a close analysis of the publication’s editorial coverage, Samuels wrote that “past editions have featured conspiracy theories regarding allegedly perverse medical effects of certain pharmaceuticals, together with a mix of Holocaust denial and an increasingly poisonous antisemitism, included in such articles as:
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– A Great Video Shows What a Cheat Albert Einstein Really Was!
– Zionist Terrorism in Norway
– CNN, Goldman Sachs and Zionist Control (translated from the Ku Klux Klan former Grand Wizard, David Duke)
– How to Break Down and Dominate the Zionists (translated from David Duke).”
The SWC letter also pointed to “the latest edition of July 2013 that sinks to a new low, featuring an article entitled ‘The Great Rabbi Rape Cover-Up‘ (translated from the rantings of Ted Pike). This is accompanied by a vicious antisemitic cartoon (featured, above), that could have been taken from the 1930’s Nazi ‘Sturmer.'”
“Another article, ‘The Zionist Media Deceives Afro-Americans’, implies Jewish responsibility in the U.S. Zimmerman-Travyon case.”
Samuels further reported that “apparently, this scapegoating seems to have begun in the wake of Kärkkäinen’s 2011 obligation to reschedule a 37-million euro debt,” while emphasizing that “the motive may be indicative, but the threat to Finland is self-evident.”
“Despite our celebration of freedom of expression, the Kärkkäinen enterprise is fomenting a grassroots mass outreach campaign that may endanger your small Jewish community and Jewish visitors to Finland,” Samuels continued, adding that “the words ‘Jew’ and ‘Zionist’ are used interchangeably in the Magneettimedia screeds and that online comments by readers of each edition now reflect an ever-growing Jew-hatred.”
The Centre urged the Finnish President “to invoke the prestige of his office to vigorously condemn Kärkkäinen and Magneettiimedia, and take all possible measures to prohibit a pernicious racism that violates anti-discrimination provisions of the European Union, especially the Fundamental Rights Agency’s 2004 Working Definition of Antisemitism”
“It behooves Finland to contain this revival of concepts once current during the 1941-1944 Finnish alliance with Nazi Germany. Mr. President, we expect your response to be prompt and unambiguous,” concluded Samuels.
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