I recently gave a speech at an event in Helsinki, where I currently live.
I was invited to speak broadly about my experiences as an immigrant, immigration, culture, and the challenges facing Finland and Europe more broadly.
What follows is the speech I delivered. But before you read it, I want you to consider something important.
Although this speech focuses on Finland, the problems I discuss are by no means unique to this country. Much of the Western world is facing similar challenges, and I encourage you to consider what I’m saying in the context of your own country.
We are at a turning point. There is still time to change the direction of our countries, but doing so will require courage. We must be unashamed to name the problems metastasising in our societies, without fear of being branded “racist” or “xenophobic”.
There are far too many people who believe they are being “kind” by burying their heads in the sand, ignoring the evidence of their own eyes, and condemning anyone who dares to describe the dangers unfolding before us.
This is not kindness. It is national suicide. And if we continue down this path, we risk destroying the very things that make our countries prosperous, free, and safe.
The countries we call home did not emerge out of thin air. They were fought for, built, and defended by generations who came before us. We have the extraordinary privilege of living in some of the greatest societies in human history. We cannot afford to surrender that inheritance to a misguided form of suicidal empathy.
The recorded version of the speech is available on my YouTube channel, and I’ve embedded it at the end of this article.
Enjoy!
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The Finland I Discovered
Firstly, I want to apologise that this speech isn’t being delivered in Finnish. One day, it will be.
I’m currently in a race with my one-year-old daughter to see who can speak Finnish first. Well, she can’t speak at all, so I’m currently winning.
When I arrived in Finland in 2019, I didn’t quite know what to expect. All I knew about this place was that there were a lot of white people here.
And you know what? I was completely right.
I expected to stick out. To be treated differently. But strangely enough, people didn’t seem particularly interested in my skin colour.
Apparently, to Finnish people, I was just as uninteresting as everyone else.
They didn’t care, so long as I wasn’t disturbing the peace. Especially on public transport.
To be fair, there was one group who openly noticed me: children. Especially toddlers.
They would stare at me with this wild mixture of intrigue and wonder, probably thinking: A… chocolate man?
I grew up in South Africa, a country still deeply divided by race. When you grow up in that environment, race effectively becomes the lens through which you see everything. From politics and identity to opportunity and success, race is always centre stage.
And I can tell you now, viewing the world through that lens is corrosive to any society.
Coming to Finland completely challenged many of my assumptions.
I learned something valuable very quickly. In this country, it was the way you behaved, and the effort you made to respect the culture, that seemed to matter most to the people around me.
Very early on, I started talking about my experiences on platforms like YouTube.
I was blown away by how much joy Finns got out of watching me do things like ice swimming. Or eating salted liquorice. Salmiakki.
I still don’t like it, by the way.
They loved hearing me complain about the weather, the cold, and the darkness. If anything, they joined me in the complaining, in the comments, with a strange kind of glee.
What is wrong with you people?
But I understood it. Finnish people are secure enough in their culture to have a very dark sense of humour about it. You can laugh at your own weirdness because you know who you are.
And there was something wonderful about being welcomed into that.
Living among people who made me forget about race altogether felt like I’d been holding my breath for years, and here, I could finally take a breath.
An icy cold breath, to be sure. But it was beautiful.
One of the most extraordinary differences between South Africa and Finland is something many of you probably don’t even think about anymore.
Safety.
Most of you have probably walked home alone at night. Taken public transport when it’s pitch-black outside. Gone about your daily lives without constantly looking over your shoulder, wondering whether someone might approach you, pull out a knife, and demand everything you have.
I cannot begin to explain to you how extraordinary that is to someone who grew up in South Africa.
The ability to simply exist in public without constantly calculating the dangers around you. To walk down a quiet street at night without fear. To know that your wife or daughter can do the same.
Do you understand what an incredible privilege that is?
For me, this was practically life-changing.
It changes the way you experience life. It changes how you think about the future. It gives you a kind of freedom that you don’t fully appreciate until you’ve lived somewhere without it.
And when you combine that with public services that actually work, institutions you can generally trust, and a society built on honesty, you begin to appreciate just how extraordinary Finland is.
Social cohesion. Societal trust. These things are precious. And countries like Finland have spent generations building them.
I want this to remain the case.
Especially for my sweet little daughter. I want her to grow up enjoying these same blessings.
The Danger of Suicidal Empathy
But increasingly, I look at what’s happening across Europe, and even here in Finland, and I worry about whether we fully appreciate how fragile these achievements can be.
Across the Western world, both in Europe and America, we are falling for a distorted understanding of what kindness and compassion mean. An attitude sometimes described as suicidal empathy.
We’ve reached a point where raising uncomfortable questions about immigration and integration can immediately invite accusations of racism.
We call people racist for pointing to the overrepresentation of certain immigrant groups in sexual crime statistics. We treat people as though they’re committing some terrible moral offence when they raise concerns about the educational performance of children from immigrant backgrounds.
These are questions about the future of our societies, and they deserve serious answers. The statistics need to be examined carefully, and we should be able to discuss what they reveal without pretending that asking difficult questions is itself an act of hatred.
And then there’s the question of culture.
When I walk through certain neighbourhoods near where I live, I see more and more hijabs and burqas. Sometimes I see little girls who look no older than ten or twelve, dressed according to religious expectations that remind me of societies governed by the Taliban.
And I wonder about the lives these girls will lead.
Will they enjoy the same freedoms that other girls in Finland take for granted? Will they be free to decide what they wear, whom they marry, what they believe, and how they live?
Because the ideology of political Islam, particularly where it seeks to impose religious law on society, stands in direct conflict with fundamental principles upon which liberal democracies like Finland are built.
Freedom of speech. Equality between men and women. Freedom of religion, including the freedom to leave a religion.
These are not small disagreements.
They concern the fundamental rules by which a society operates.
And when I talk about cultural change, I’m not talking about skin colour.
I’m talking about the way people behave. The condition of our neighbourhoods. The respect people show for shared spaces and for one another.
Something as simple as how people act on public transport.
I’ve seen groups of teenagers being not merely loud, as teenagers naturally are, but downright raucous and sometimes destructive. And when those experiences repeatedly involve young people from immigrant backgrounds, I find myself asking what has gone wrong with their integration.
These things matter because a society is not simply a collection of people living within the same borders.
A society is a system. A machine, if you will, in which everything matters, from the smallest screw to the largest engine.
Everything must work together for the machine to run smoothly.
One or two loose screws might barely be noticeable. But when thousands of small things begin to go wrong, the entire system suffers.
The engine begins to overheat. Parts that once worked perfectly begin to fail. And before long, what was once a sleek, efficient machine becomes a stuttering mess that we have to keep smacking on the side just to keep it going.
The same is true of social trust.
It depends on millions of ordinary decisions. People respecting the law. Parents raising their children to respect others. Neighbours looking after their surroundings. Individuals understanding that freedom comes with responsibilities.
These are the small things that make an extraordinary society possible.
Let Finland Be Finland
So, what is the solution?
When Finland was developing its national identity, there was a famous phrase:
Swedes we are not. Russians we do not wish to become. Let us therefore be Finns.
I think there’s something profoundly important in those words.
A country must have the confidence to know what it is.
And people who come to live in that country must understand that they are joining a society with its own history, traditions, expectations, and way of life.
Anyone, like myself, who comes to Finland ought to work hard and play their part equally.
I want to give back to the society that has given me so much. Not simply take from it.
And I don’t believe it’s cruel to put the responsibility for integration firmly on the shoulders of those who come here.
It is not cruel to demand that newcomers respect the laws of the country.
It is not cruel to expect people to learn the language (including me), respect the culture, and contribute to the society they have chosen to join.
And it is certainly not cruel for a country to protect what its parents and grandparents fought, sacrificed, and died for.
I arrived here in 2019 knowing very little about Finland. I came with assumptions about the people, the culture, and the kind of life I might find.
Seven years later, I have a home here. I have a family here. And I have a daughter who will grow up calling this country her own.
When I think about the future of Finland, I think about her.
I think about whether she’ll enjoy the same freedom that astonished me when I first arrived. Whether she’ll be able to walk through her neighbourhood at night without fear. Whether she’ll grow up in a society where people trust one another, where the law means something, and where being Finnish still carries a sense of shared identity.
These are not things I take for granted.
And I hope you never take them for granted either.
Because this is Finland.
And what generations of Finns have built here is worth preserving, worth defending, and worth passing on to our children.
Watch the full speech below.
This Publication is 100% reader-supported. I release an article weekly and they’re completely free! But if you’re able to support, please consider a paid membership. It helps a tonne, and gives me more time to research and write. Either way, it’s lovely to have you here!!
Brilliant. Thank you so much. Suicidal empathy and the inability to discuss events with real history and honesty are harming the West and the US. You are a voice for peace and freedom from indoctrination. And thank you!
What an important and brave speech to deliver…heartfelt, good. It was stirring.