13 Things We Learned From Dark Side Of The Ring: Ludvig Borga
4. His Political Career Started As “A Joke”
It's pretty difficult to know what to make of comments from Tony's former business partner Veikko Vallin. He showed up as a talking head to say that Halme’s fledgling political career was never meant to be taken seriously. Tony himself pitched that he lead a “kind of nazi party” in Finland. Apparently, all of his mates chuckled at this fleeting thought instead of being alarmed. Wow.
Being fair, Veikko pointed out that “there isn’t any support for those kinds of beliefs in Finland”. Even so, nobody was willing to step in and stop Halme from diving headfirst into the political space. Tomo Soini, who was leader of the small True Finns Party, was struggling to gain support for his own ideals, so they contacted him to see if Tony and Tomo could do business.
Deedee chipped in at this point to say all of this was a conscious effort on Halme's part to play up to his personality as a “troublemaker”. It was more important to Tony that people pay attention to him whether they liked him or not. Soini wasn't strictly on board with that, but he likely shared some of the controversial thoughts Halme did about race and politics.
It's really rather troubling that the word nazi was thrown around so freely in official political circles as recently as the early-2000s. Finnish wrestler and promoter Michael Majalahti told VICE that the country wasn't very liberal back then, so there was a market for somebody who was anti-immigration.
Think about the cruel irony of that: Tony Halme had emigrated to the United States seeking a better life!