SAFKA

A Finnish hate group that defames anti-fascism and is led by the pro-Putin provocator, Johan Bäckman, is disseminating antisemitic and Stalinist propaganda. The Finnish Anti-Fascist Committee has come by material that appears to be internal correspondence of Bäckman’s hate group.

The material was sent from a fake address to the email addresses of several Finnish critics of Russia’s current regime and the Russian Embassy in Helsinki. The Finnish Anti-Fascist Committee has strong reason to believe that the fake address was created by one of the hate group’s members, the renegade former pastor, Juha Molari.

The material contains the hate group’s internal discussion about questions sent by the Finnish tabloid, Iltalehti, to Bäckman regarding Stalin’s role in history.

The discussion shows that most of the hate group’s members deny Stalin’s atrocities using expressions that are eerily reminiscent of the rhetoric used by Holocaust deniers. One of the hate group’s most vocal members, Evgenia Hildén-Järvenperä, an active member of the Social Democratic Party in the city of Pori, makes repeated comments that are openly antisemitic.

Only Molari and the Finnish lawyer, Jon Hellevig, who financed Bäckman’s libellous book, Saatana saapuu Helsinkiin (Satan Arrives in Helsinki), regard Stalin’s and Hitler’s crimes as equally atrocious. However, their real concern in condemning support for Stalin appears to be Vladimir Putin’s image.

Bäckman’s replies to Iltalehti’s questions are clearly intended to shock and to maximise the publicity that this pathological liar has received in Finnish media.

Bäckman begins by saying that “Stalin and the Soviet Union should be defended in all circumstances.” He denies Stalin’s responsibility for the state terror that claimed millions of lives, for the Katyn massacre, and for the war of aggression against Finland.

In Bäckman’s words, “Stalin was very gentle and sweet.” Stalin’s government “did nothing wrong, everything went as it should have,” he says. Putin was right when he said that “the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” Bäckman states.

Hildén-Järvenperä denies Stalin’s atrocities by referring to the speeches and writings of Yevgeni Fyodorov, a member of the Russian State Duma representing the “Party of Crooks and Thieves,” and the St Petersburg-based conspiracy theorist, Nikolai Starikov, with whom Bäckman has cooperated closely.

Hildén-Järvenperä dismisses a disparaging remark by Molari’s lawyer friend by saying that people working in Russia’s justice system, especially in high positions, “are most often not even Russians.” In her words, “Trotsky and his companions organised the terror and the genocide against Russians,” while “Stalin fought against Zionism.”

In Hildén-Järvenperä’s opinion, “Trotsky was a project of MI6 and the bankers to destroy Russia,” and the collapse of the Soviet Union was a victory for “Rotschilds and company.” She says that Zionism was anti-Jewish and urges others to read the writings of the “famous Jew”, Israel Shamir, who has been accused of antisemitism and Holocaust denial.

In criticising the praise and admiration for Stalin by members of the hate group, Jon Hellevig seems to realise what it is all about when he says that “I am sure that Neo-Nazis write the same sort of praise for Hitler.”

Earlier, the same hate group published the Finnish edition of a book by Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Jerusalem office. In addition, the group is a founding member of World Without Nazism, an organisation that is led by the Russian senator, chairman of the World Congress of Russian Jewry, Boris Spiegel.

Hellevig laments that by praising Stalin, Bäckman, who is known as a Putin supporter, “besmirches Putin’s image in Finland” and “the reputation of all those who defend Putin.” In Hellevig’s words, bringing Stalin into the discussion is “a ploy of the propagandists to soil Putin’s image and to label all Putin’s supporters as the same sort of lunatics.”

Molari calls Bäckman’s replies to Iltalehti as “the words of a raving lunatic” (bred sumasshedshego). “I cannot happily join in this safcist-stalinist greenwash,” he says. In Molari’s words, the Stalinist apologetics of the members of the “safcist hobby club” have “nothing to do with human rights, historiography, and anti-fascism.”

Hildén-Järvenperä attacks Molari by saying that his arguments align with those of Russia’s “colour revolutionaries,” whose roots go back to “Rotschilds and the global financial oligarchy.” In Hildén-Järvenperä’s opinion, Molari is in the camp of the Russian Jewish TV presenters, Nikolai Svanidze and Vladimir Posner. Molari is spreading the propaganda of Svanidze, Trotskyists, and Goebbels, she claims.

Bäckman says Molari has made a “complete about-face” and urges him to join “Antti-Pekka Mustonen’s anti-fascist committee,” because that organisation is “ardently opposed to Stalin.” Finally, Hildén-Järvenperä calls Molari, a husband of a Russian woman and the father of two Russian-speaking children, a “Russophobe.”

These attacks may have angered Molari to such an extent that he decided to leak the group’s internal email discussion to the public, despite specific reminders from both Bäckman and the North Korea fanatic, Tommi Lievemaa, that the discussion was not meant for publication.

“I have received surprising information about Bäckman’s activities in connection with this discussion,” Molari reveals. “My life is more connected to Russia’s interest than that of Bäckman; even my family are Russian citizens, whereas Bäckman has no real connection with Russia, only demonstration,” Molari comments in a clearly angry tone.

The material was sent on the same day as the last date stamp in the hate group’s email thread. The subject and the text field of the email message only contained three words in Estonian, and even then the sender managed to include a grammatical error.

The properties of the message’s PDF attachments indicate that the author of the files was a “Juha Molari,” and that the PDFs were created using the same programme that Molari has used before to create PDF files.

The discussion in the email thread was about Stalin’s role, and Molari has just promised to write more about the issue on his blog. The recipients of the message were a group of Finnish journalists and civic activists whom Molari has previously called “Russophobes,” but also the Russian Embassy in Helsinki, the actions of which Molari has a blind faith in.

Based on these factors, the Finnish Anti-Fascist Committee has strong reason to believe that the snitch within Bäckman’s Stalinist and antisemitic hate group is none other than Juha Molari.