A leftist researcher from the University of Helsinki, Finland has tried to smear the Finns Party (formerly True Finns) by lumping them together with Nazis and extremists.

Green Party member Oula Silvennoinen told national public broadcaster YLE:

It'd be good to make it clear also to the viewers what we mean by the far right... It's a relatively broad term that incorporates right-wing extremists, neo-Nazi organisations like the Nordic Resistance Movement and radical right-wing parties like the Finns Party.

Silvennoinen's statement follows a declaration two weeks ago by Helsinki City Councillor Abdirahim Hussein that 'All Finns Party members and supporters are racist.'

As always, there's a reason for these attacks: namely the party's recent meteoric rise, which has shaken the Left-Islam alliance.

In the space of a few years they've emerged from nowhere to become the most popular party in Finland.

Helsinki Times, 30 July:

The Finns Party has continued on a steep upward trajectory in the most recent opinion poll commissioned by Helsingin Sanomat.

The newspaper reported this morning that more than a fifth (20.7%) of respondents expressed their support for the populist, right-wing opposition party, signalling an increase of 1.5 percentage points from the previous month.

...

'We haven't seen anything of the like in recent times,' Sakari Nurmela, a research director at TNS Kantar, commented to Helsingin Sanomat. It's a majestic rise.

A few years ago, Finns Party chairman Jussi Halla-aho (pictured) wrote on social media that Islam is a 'religion of paedophilia' and that Somalis specialise in 'leeching' off the state.

In the leftist rulebook, this makes him a very bad man, but clearly Finnish voters don't care as they continue to flock to his party.