Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
User ID: 137
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2yr ago
Finland has a new right-wing government. It's been called the most right-wing one in Finland's postwar history, since it is headed by centre-right National Coalition, contains the right-wing populist/nationalist Finns Party and doesn't contain the Centre Party, which has been previously been in government with these two but is, as the name says, more centrist.
Essentially, the new government is combining an anti-union, austerity-oriented economic agenda of the center-right with a list of anti-immigration measures favored by the nationalists. However, while the foreign papers have mostly been concerned with the claims that the most important thing about this govt is far-right inclusion, the economic agenda comes first; the anti-immigration measures, while they probably will lead to immigration cuts, are still not as hard as , for instance, what a roughly similar coalition in Sweden has set last year.
Among other changes, a work-based residence permit would expire if an individual fails to find a new job after more than three months of unemployment. Those with a student-based residence permits would not be allowed to rely on Finnish income support, while the tuition fees of Finnish educational institutions are to be reviewed.
The annual refugee quota is to be cut by more than half to 500 people, down from the present 1,050. Asylum would be granted for a maximum of three years , after which the need for international protection should be reassessed.
In future, obtaining a permanent residence permit will require six years of residence, a language proficiency test, a two-year work history without long-term unemployment or income support, and a requirement of an impeccable record.
Citizenship rules are also to be tightened, with the minimum residence requirement extended to eight years, along with an income requirement and mandatory civics and language tests.
Insofar as economic measures go,
The four parties have agreed on many other changes to the labour market, according to STT. It says that in the future an employee's first sick day would be unpaid, unless otherwise stipulated in their collective agreement.
Iltalehti reported that – assuming the government's plans are approved by Parliament – in future it will be possible to dismiss an employee more easily, simply citing any "reasonable cause". It will also make it easier for employers to offer one-year fixed-term employment contracts without having to cite any special reason for them.
The future government also wants to expand local bargaining – as opposed to centralised national collective agreements – to cover all companies. It will also seek to curtail the right to launch sympathy strikes and politically based labour actions.
There's also two minor parties, the Christian Democrats who basically set no demands for participation and are just happy to be a part of this government and Swedish People's Party, a liberal party that watches over the interests of the Swedish-speaking minority and had considerable troubles fitting in with the Finns Party's nationalism and probably managed to prevent some of their more hardline immigration proposals from taking force.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2yr ago
My country is being exceptional again on European polls. (If you don't want to click, it's a poll on how many agree with the question "One of my main goals in life is making my parents proud", and while in most European countries well over 70% would strongly agree or agree with this statement, and even in other Nordic countries the affirmative answer ranks in the 50% range, in Finland only 25% agree.)
Some explanations I've seen:
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The word "proud", or rather its translation, just has a different, considerably more negative connotation in Finnish. Like, if hearing this question in English, the idea of "pride" I'd get would just be a beaming parent going "So proud of you, son!" while imagining the same phrased in Finnish, using the word "ylpeä" (direct translation), has much more of a connotation of an arrogant, conceited parent going around their friends going "Oh, you didn't know my son/daughter is a doctor?"
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even taking this into account, the Finnish/Nordic culture of "collective individualism" (which I've discussed here) might play a role
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some have just guessed that Finns tend to answer surveys like this more honestly and bluntly, actually thinking about their priorities instead of just automatically giving the pro-social answer - yes, something of a self-serving explanation
How many here would answer this question in affirmative, anyway?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2yr ago
I think the idea is to use the troops to secure the "1000 km of frontline" to prevent any more Kharkivs and then just continue the slow methodical grind in Donbass (and other parts of the four oblasts they don't yet hold?). It's not going to be a tactic for conquering entire Ukraine, but I don't think that's in the cards, unless there's some complete collapse or something else changing the picture considerably. (Though Belarus joining in or a sudden surprise attack in the Northern front areas Ukraine has retaken might change the picture considerably.)
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2yr ago
As I said elsewhere:
I have, actually, read the Sanning book, and found it, to put it mildly, underwhelming. It's essentially a series of it-just-so-happenses - it just so happens that the Polish demographical data on local Jewish population was vastly overcounted without either the Poles or the occupying Germans catching on to this, it just so happens that once this is established the same overcount can be expected to apply on other Eastern European nations as well, it just so happens that out of that population a larger-than-assumed share left for Soviet Union and the Soviets then deported/killed them (even though Soviet sources don't show such deportations and deaths - sure, such sources became available after the Sanning book was written, but that's no excuse for us to ignore them), it just so happens that there was a vast Jewish wave of emigration in the 30s to other countries not shown in official data etc.
And once you add all the it-just-so-happenses together, presto - the numbers advocated by the revisionists! Data massaging would be putting it lightly - and in many cases the data is essentially based on just the sort of testimonials, memoirs and what amounts to guesstimates by individual figures that revisionists don't generally consider to be valid (ie. the idea of Soviet deportations is justified by referring to several testimonies made in front of US House Select Committee on Communist Aggression) in establishing a Jewish genocide by Germans.
Beyond that, though, has there even been an attempt from the revisionist camp to make a similar demographic analysis post-Sanning, taking all the new data (methods of estimating populations in cases where demographic data is considered undertain, post-Soviet archives etc.) into account? If not, it speaks volumes that on this crucial field all that there seems to be is this one book from decades ago, while the general effort of the revisionist sphere seemingly concentrates on individual memoirs and technical camp details, and such.
Also, Karlin's predictive abilitites have not exactly shown their worth in 2022, regarding, well, most aspects of the Russian invasion and its presumed successes.
Like, even if you're going with "the Soviets lied about their numbers" narrative, why would NVKD lie about their internal numbers in their reports to the party? The NKVD's job, or one of them, was deporting people and putting them to camps. They're deliberately trying to diminish the job they're doing in internal party assessments?
If the refutation of the demographic question for revisionists continues to rely on one 50-year-old book relying largely on guesswork, anecdotes and guesses about information they didn't have access to (but later researchers do have access to), doesn't that at least somewhat indicate there's a problem here?
How many are thinking of deleting their Reddit accounts entirely once there's some confidence in this move succeeding reasonably well?
While I've occasionally commented on some other subs, chiefly SSC, I'm also a believer in pruning out the social medias you're not actually needing or using out of your life entirely, and the transfer would largely render Reddit into that category, for me.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1yr ago
Re the first one, does this extend to cases where someone's a dual citizen due to essentially not being able to get rid of their second citizenship? Dual citizenships have been a bit of a topic in Finland in the recent years since the most common dual citizenship is Russian but, for instance, I have a friend who has such a dual citizenship and would like to get rid of it but essentially can't, since he'd have to physically go to Russia for that and there's a high chance he'd get punished for such an attempt, particularly since he's been a vocal opponent of Putin's policies and they might as well just go and forcibly draft him and throw him at the front.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1yr ago
this poll makes it obvious that the Blue-pressers are willing to risk their own wellbeing for people that are too stupid to just push the correct button
Like said below, it becomes a different thing if you imagine that everyone in some community has to make the choice, including small kids.
Would I trust my 3-year-old and 11-month-old kids to understand the subtle logic of the "everyone picks red" option, or just pick the pill that looks more like candy?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2yr ago
"Ukraine will have to take loads of third world refugees by EU/NATO" is one of the most ridiculous predictions of this conflict. How many third world refugees, exactly, are there in Romania/Bulgaria/Croatia - the closest equivalents as the newest EU countries? What even is the mechanism how this is supposed to happen? There are currently no ways how EU could force an EU member state to take in refugees from (presumably) other member states, and all efforts to create one have been scuppered.
Of course, if the EU wanted a "soft" mechanism to considerably discourage asylum-seeking in general, a way to do it would be stating "sure, you can come, but you would have to settle in war-torn Ukraine"...
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2yr ago
People have been elucidating the reason why Americans and Europeans, in general, keep supporting Ukraine in many individual posts; one of the main pillars of the global international order is countries not altering their borders unilaterally through invasion and annexation, and whatever other violations to this principle there have been, none have been as flagrant as what Russia is doing now.
However, beyond that, is there any wonder why I, as a Finn, would have a special reason for hoping Russia loses, and loses badly? It's not just an abstraction when one lives in a country next to Russia, which used to be a part of the Russian Empire, which was for a long time in Russia/SU's claimed sphere of influence, which went through another "border adjustment" by Russia in 1939/1940. The said border adjustment, incidentally, meant my father had to leave his home while two years old, an event he would still recount on the phone while drunk and crying to his adult children decades after it happened. The said border adjustment removing my native Eastern Finland of what would have been its natural biggest city and a potential hometown for me, Viipuri, and turning it into a peripheral Russian wreck of a town. And a hundred other similar reasons.
What is crucial for Finland's future is one thing: Russia finally learning that it is not a special country. It does not have a sovereign right to adjust its own borders on a whim. Not for the "protection of Russian minorities", not for "russkiy mir", not for its ephemeral "security", certainly not because - as one tends to hear from countless Russian patriots when discussing this - because Russia's bordering countries just are puny and useless and will be dominated by one country or another anyway, so might as well be Russia. And there really seems to be no other potential way for Russia to learn this lesson than getting drubbed in Ukraine, and drubbed badly.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1yr ago
One of the things about the war I've been thinking about lately is how hard it has been to predict what's going to happen next. I'm not sure if there's anyone with a clear bill of being able to predict even the grand trends of the war for the entire duration. To have that you'd need to have:
- been able to confidently even predict the war is going to start, after several false predictions on dates (a lot of folks, me included, would be right out this stage)
- then go with the absolutely most bonkers pro-Ukrainian position until approximately autumn 2022 (insofar as I remember, it genuinely was only the most bonkers pro-Ukrainian types who were first able to predict that Russians would withdraw from Kiev and Ukraine wouldn't collapse right from the gate, then that Europe would do all the sanctions and support it has right now instead of chickening out immediately, then that the Kharkiv and Kherson counteroffensives would actually be successful even after Kherson offensive had become a regular joke among pro-Russia types)
- then move smoothly to a moderately pro-Russian narrative (ie not go with the predictions of renewed Russian offensives pushing to Odessa etc., but also be able to predict there would be no further major successes for Ukraine after Kharkiv and that Russia would still make gains in Donbass)
- and, of course, all the while not predict that there would be further countries invaded, WMDs used, Western intervention etc., all of which were widely and often confidently speculated on at multiple intervals
All things considered, while my guess would be some sort of a ceasefire during this winter with frontlines wherever they are, I fully also acknowledge this has all the chances of being wrong with something else happening, though who knows what.
Culture War in Finland: Onrolling Far-Right Scandal Moves on to Forums Poasting
The Finnish government has been up for three weeks and pretty much all of that has gone to abjudicating the various comments and stuff said by ministers belonging to right-wing nationalist The Finns Party. The last few days in Finnish politics have focused on party leader Riikka Purra, now the Finance Minister (and the second most powerful member of the govt, at least formally), and her online posts from 15 years ago.
These posts were made in the online guestbook of previous party leader Jussi Halla-aho, the guy who basically is responsible for kickstarting modern anti-immigrationism in Finland and for the anti-immigration hardline faction taking over the Finns Party. Halla-aho got famous for running a blog and gaining grassroots support through it, and an important part of it was his "guestbook", an old-style webpage guestbook which eventually started functioning as an informal forum (imagine a forum with only one ongoing thread). The guestbook, alongside some other forums, was used for bringing together the faction that would eventually grow strong enough to elect several people as MPs, and these people (and people in their general orbit) now make up the party's elite.
The entire guestbook is still online and searchable, the original guestbook at Halla-aho's website is gone (apparently due to hosting troubles), but there's a mirrored copy of it elsewhere. A number of web sleuths found out that one of the guestbook's posters was nicknamed "riikka". Now, Riikka is a pretty common name in Finland, so that wouldn't alone be enough to connect this to Purra, but sleuths also found out that:
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nickname "riikka" has stated that she comes from a left-wing home and that her parents had taken a pic of her as a child in front of Lenin's statue - Riikka Purra has told a similar story on TV
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nickname "riikka" stated that she went to same school as leftist MP Anna Kontula - Kontula and Purra have gone to same secondary school in Tampere
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nickname "riikka" sent the guestbook greetings from Barcelona on 25 August and 27 August 2008, dates on which Riikka Purra participated in an academic conference there
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nickname "riikka" talked about moving to small town of Kirkkonummi in 2008 and asked about the number of immigrants in a specific neighborhood. Apparently the number was low, since Riikka Purra has indeed lived in that neighborhood in that town since 2008
And many other similar congruities, ie. it's pretty obvious to anyone that this is the same person. Nickname "riikka" had also posted on the guestbook posts, where she:
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drops the Finnish n-word several times (it's a linguistic question whether that word is the equivalent of English n-word or the word "Negro", but these are angry enough one might say it's the former in this context), as well as talking about a Middle-Eastern man as a "Turkish monkey or whatever", as well as uses some more creative (common in the Finnish racism community) slurs, such as the ones translating to "mocha dicks", "somps" (Somali + chimp) etc.
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ironically calls herself and other forums members "raycist" and "Nezi" (net + Nazi), including asking others for beer by saying "Any Nezis in Helsinki today up for spitting on beggars and beating up n-word children?"
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states that "if I had a gun there would be bodies on this train" after hearing a black teenager say "I don't care about Finland" and going "BANG BANG!" with fingerguns at her on a train (this happened two days after a notorious school shooting)
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After browsing a Finnish Islamic forum describes herself as "so full of hatred and rage she is going to melt on her chair" and says that things like this start to seriously bother her life since "there's nothing else running through [her] head"; also gets angry after seeing a fat Somali family eating at McDonalds at the same time as her family
And other such fare. In other words, at least the most notorious poasts are a mix of edgy injokes and weird ranting. Unsurprisingly these discoveries don't play well in the media, local or foreign (the Finnish foreign minister, while at the NATO summit in Vilnius, actually apologized to Turkey (our new NATO ally, mind) for the "Turkish monkeys" thing.
Purra has copped to being "riikka", and while she originally commented this by saying "there's nothing to apologize or explain", she ended up apologizing and saying that of course the government or she don't tolerate racism and so on. Many of the party's supporters are disappointed and believe that she cucked, but of course if you're in actual government with other parties you kind of have to occasionally do what they demand you will do, if the alternative is your party getting kicked out of the government.
All of this probably serves to indicate what happens when - basically - an Internet forum ends up taking over a political party, and potential for similar things exists might exist in other countries, considering the centrality of Internet in modern communications. I'm pretty sure that Purra, 15 years ago, didn't think that her ranting online might have any importance whatsoever regarding domestic politics or, indeed, that she would even rise to her current heights, but maybe you already have a bunch of groypers in America making edgy jokes on Twitter or wherever who will have to eventually explain that stuff 15 years from now when running for Senate or some other high post.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2yr ago
Again, as I said, we're not talking about Soviet external claims. We're talking about Soviet internal numbers, ones that became available during the period of expectional openness that followed the fall of the Soviet Union. (Among other things, such numbers have been generally used to bring clarity to the extent of the Great Purge, the gulag system etc.) These numbers might, of course, contain mistakes, just like all demographic statistics, particularly in authoritarian countries. However, even in such cases, one would expect those numbers to rather exaggerate the effort of instances like NKVD to do whatever they've been tasked with doing, rather than diminishing them.
I've been interested in demographic numbers and questions for a long time, so it's natural to me to take this approach also to this issue. It speaks volumes to me if the crucial question of "well, what happened to the Jews then?" is treated by revisionists in such a cavalier manner.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1yr ago
Okay, this is obviously a very minor point, but a Calvinist church... with a monastery?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2yr ago
"Woke madness has gone so far that they are now ahistorically portraying black people as criminals" is certainly a new twist.
Some of these criticisms are pretty odd. The Harkonnens absolutely were shown as perverse and brutal, a lot of that was just dumped on Feyd-Rautha here, and I liked what Villeneuve did with Feyd-Rautha very much. "Feyd-Rautha as a psychosexual Darth Maul" turned out lot better than the usual "Feyd-Rautha as a somewhat more competent Joffrey Baratheon" thing and Austin Butler was great with microexpressions. The worst thing about the casting of the Emperor Shaddam IV (not a particularly major character anyway) is that it's impossible to see Christopher Walken as something other than Christopher Walken, but other than that, casting him as intergalactic Joe Biden showcases that we're seeing a late-stage empire waiting to be pushed down. I don't understand the point about Irulan.
I understand the Alia criticism - I had been quite averse to early rumors on how Alia would be handled but ended up being OK with it, I guess that the murder toddler would have been something that might have become ridiculous too easily - and share the Chani criticism, though that might have also worked better if Zendaya was a better actor outside of the love scenes, which she handled well.
Personally I thought that the part with Paul taking the worm juice could have been handled (a lot) better and Dave Bautista was kind of wasted in this movie.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1yr ago
The sub appears to be connected to the "black women divestment" movement. I've seen references to this a couple of times, but the whole idea seems to generally be connected to the idea that black women should detach themselves from the general "black community" (ie. black men), start dating white guys and concentrate on self-improvement instead of social justice causes. ie. according to this Medium post that I found and that bashes the movement:
Divest/ Divest Black Women/Divested Black Women
This movement is derived from BWE, but with a more intentional focus on “divesting” oneself from the Black community, from social justice (#BurnTheCape), and from issues relating to Black male oppression. Self-improvement (feminization training, weight loss, professional development) is promoted as a means of achieving hypergamy. Compared to BWE/BWGTOW, there is more of a focus on colorism and the disparate treatment of monoracial dark-skinned Black women (DSBW). Less centralized, and more spread out across social media platforms, this movement appears to be the most current as well as the most popular iteration of the BWE ecosystem. As I will explain later, this movement is also notable for its idealization of traditional gender roles, and its pointed interest in the perceived failure of Black men (especially in Western countries) in comparison to other groups of men. Predominantly Black neighborhoods are derisively called “Blackistan”. “Blackistan” is a conceptual place where Black dysfunction and violent crime flourish.
I would expect such a movement to have offbeat views on a great variety of things, and wouldn't certainly use it as a barometer for progressive thought.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1yr ago
Is there something inconsistent about being right-wing and supporting fighting Russia? You would simply be one link in potentially numerous generations of right-wing local nationalists who have supported the same.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2yr ago
Isn't "DAN", at this point, basically just a bot trained, through user feedback, to answer the questions in a way that a "typical DAN user", ie. 4chan/rw twitter schizoposter, would expect? That's why it spouts conspiracy theories - that's what a "typical DAN user" would expect. It's not that much more of a real chatbot than the original ChatGPT.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2yr ago
It's a bit hard for me to see it that way, since, as said, insofar as I've been interested in the whole debate, it's been through the demographic question, dovetailing with my interest in various other demographic questions. The whole debate about door hole placement in Auschwitz or the specific details of victim testimonies has never held my interest, and I have little to say about it.
However, howevermuch one would want to say "reversal of the burden of proof", the question is still there, isn't it? It doesn't just go way by such a reference. While the Holocaust has been, of course, related to many criminal cases, in the sense of this forum debate we're not talking about a formal criminal case debated by a court - it's a historiographical debate, one with many different varying facets, one of which seemingly is one that revisionists wish to avoid (apart from saying "Look, Sanning!")
Furthermore, Sanning's book is not just about debunking standard claims about the Holocaust - he makes some quite far-reaching claims himself, including one about there being a genocidal murder of the Polish Jews, just one done by Soviets instead of the Nazis. This highly unusual claim comes with precious little proof of this happening, especially considering - as linked previously - that we can now peruse Soviet files on this era, and they do not show a transport/labor camp operation of the claimed sort. If one uses Sanning as reference, shouldn't there be at least a bit more effort to offer proof for his particular claims?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2yr ago
And they have deprived a third of their population of the right to vote on the basis of ethnicity.
None of the Baltic countries has "deprived a third of their population of the right to vote on the basis of ethnicity", this assuredly referring to stateless post-Soviet citizens in Estonia and Latvia (not Lithuania, incidentally). Currently ca 9-10 % of Latvian and 7-8 % of Estonian population has the non-citizen status; this was not based on ethnicity but on the basis of becoming resident in these countries during Soviet occupation times (in other words, people descending from Estonian or Latvian Russian minorities that had existed there before the Soviet occupation gained citizenship among the others). Of course the noncitizen numbers were larger in the past decades, but many of them have been naturalized since.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
4mo ago
Kendi has a different race in mind:
I don’t hate white folk because I’m a Christian. How can you hate a group of people for being who they are? Similarly, how can you hate a turtle because it won’t keep up? That would be like parents hating their children because they are different. All of our children aren’t the same. Europeans are completely different from Asians who are completely different from Hispanics and so on and so forth. Europeans are simply a different breed of human. They are socialized to be aggressive people. They are taught to live by the credo, “survival of the fittest.” They are raised to be racist.
Caucasians make up only 10 percent of the world’s population and that small percentage of people have recessive genes. Therefore they’re facing extinction. Whites have tried to level the playing field with the AIDS virus and cloning, but they know these deterrents will only get them so far. This is where the murder, psychological brainwashing and deception comes into play. -- Ibram Kendi [as Ibram Rogers]: The Famuan. Sept 9, 2003
The similarity is quite remarkable. Whites for Kendi, like Jews for Hitler, are a race of (1) genetically disposed (2) deceivers and (3) capitalist (4) exploiters. They just can't help it.
It must be pointed out that Kendi's statements here are beyond the pale even for most woke pundits, and few of them would follow as far in Hitler's ideological footsteps as Kendi does. It must also be pointed out, however, that Kendi's comments were well known for years, and he was seldom if ever denounced for them by the woke left -- so, while unusual, these statements were not particularly unwelcome.
Well, there is at least one book by the woke left denouncing those statements - "How to Be an Antiracist" by Ibram X. Kendi, where Kendi spends an entire chapter self-flagellating about these statements and his other similar youthful views and uses it as an example on how, in the course of being an antiracist, one should not be an anti-white racist, either.
Finnish MP Quiz: Initial results
(note: I've created a second equivalent quiz, you may click here to take it if you want to test yourself more without reading analysis)
The quiz has been taken 237 times (at the moment of writing). The best results has been 19/20 (this may have been just me testing the quiz, though). The worst result is 3/20. The average result is 10.8 - while this looks like only a little better than random change, it should be mentioned that evidently not all answered every question.
Going through the individual MP's, here's how they rank on the basis of how correctly they were guessed (in other words, the number shows how many people correctly guessed a left MP as leftist or a right MP as rightist):
LEFT MPs
97 % Pia Lohikoski (Left Alliance)
77 % Tiina Elo (Greens)
68 % Anneli Kiljunen (Social Democrats)
65 % Seppo Eskelinen (Social Democrats)
64 % Pirkka-Pekka Petelius (Greens)
50 % Kimmo Kiljunen (Social Democrats)
47 % Ville Skinnari (Social Democrats)
14 % Markus Mustajärvi (Left Alliance)
RIGHT MPs
73 % Vilhelm Junnila (The Finns)
71 % Janne Heikkinen (National Coalition)
68 % Mauri Peltokangas (The Finns)
64 % Ville Vähämäki (The Finns)
58 % Wille Rydman (National Coalition, currently independent pending review)
52 % Jouni Kotiaho (The Finns)
51 % Kai Mykkänen (National Coalition)
42 % Kaisa Juuso (The Finns)
41 % Hannakaisa Heikkinen (Centre)
32 % Ville Valkonen (National Coalition)
30 % Hanna Kosonen (Centre)
25 % Riikka Slunga-Poutsalo (The Finns)
QUICK THOUGHTS:
The fact that there is one MP who was correctly guessed by 97 % shows people have tried to answer the quiz seriously, for the most part. It's not surprising that Pia Lohikoski would be guessed correctly by the most, as there are several cultural signals (red hair, glasses, jewelry) that probably are more associated with left-wingness than right-wingness interculturally.
On the other hand, her party comrade Markus Mustajärvi was the most wrongly guessed person in the quiz; it probably should be mentioned that while both indeed belong to the leftmost party in the Finnish parliament, Mustajärvi is probably the most "red-tribe-equivalent" leftist politician in the country, representing the deepest reaches of Lapland, being very much a "trad leftist" type, opposing for instance gun control bills when they have occasionally been proposed, once causing a scandal by drunkenly addressing a far-right rally etc.
Generally speaking, I suspect many simply associated women with left wing and men with right wing. Finnish political dress codes for women are typically looser than in countries like US and "normie dresses" and such are pretty normal female politician-wear; the sort of a "power pantsuit" you'd associate with Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi etc. would be reserved to a very distinct class of right-wing female politicians.
The two female politicians from the Centre were guessed more incorrectly than correctly, and Centre, indeed, would probably be the party whose members would most likely resent me placing them in the "Right" category; this party, stereotypically representing rural interests, identifies as centrist (as the name says) and is in government with the three left-wing parties, but it also constantly fights with those parties in all manner of policy issues, recently almost bringing down the government, and at least at this point I would guess most Finns would place the party on the Right.
Some people said that 20 pols is too little and they want to test again if they are now better at a particular form of cultural pattern-matching, so I've created a second quiz with 20 more MPs. My subjective appraisal is that this might be a little bit easier?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2yr ago
I don't care about Jan 6th but are you really saying it was treated the same of the protests the summer before?
No, because it was a literal attempt at overturning a democratic election result, ie. a coup attempt. No matter how farcical or amateurish, that's what it was. The people invading the Capitol obviously thought in some way that their actions would lead to Trump being declared the president, despite that, according to the law, this wasn't supposed to happen, and indeed didn't happen. That's a coup attempt by whatever definition of the words you are using; it is absolutely not surprising at all that a coup attempt would be treated more harshly than an "ordinary" riot.
I've experienced much the same, most of the really active Palestine posters are women. Maybe a part of the explanation is this poem from the 70s that the local ones like to quote (translated by me from Finnish):
When someone has been born a mother
Who has once been born as a mother,
is a mother to all children,
and all the children of the world
she has held to her chest.
And the cry of the children of the world,
she has started to hear in her ears,
as all the children of the world,
speak with her own child's mouth.
This particular war has really featured a lot of pictures of dead or seriously hurt Palestinian children and babies. If you're even vaguely affliated to lefty people on social media you'll be bombarded with dozens of them every week unless you start hiding or blocking. I'm not particularly emotional (well, duh, I post here), but some of them really get to me, too. They must be playing a particularly merry havoc on maternal instincts, even with women who don't have kids themselves.
One reason why it might have taken a bit of time for this effect to start working was that during the first month or so there were equivalent pics of Israeli kids being killed or having been kidnapped, but that petered out since it was related to one dramatic one-time event, not a continuous supply of new examples.
It's compounded by social network effects, of course.
Insofar as I've understood, while Ukrainian has always been widely spoken in the countryside, Russian has been a prestige language, which is one of the reasons why it has had a strong stature in the cities (other reasons include internal immigration inside Russian empire etc., of course). The Ukrainian national project is not just about making Ukrainian acceptable but making it the prestige language inside Ukrainian; Zelensky speaking Russian in an interview like this would obviously go against that project.
If the starting assumption is that Zelensky and the Ukrainian govt has already tacitly accepted that (the occupied areas) of Donbass are not going to be within Ukrainian suzerainty for the time being, it also means that the people currently residing in those areas are not really the ones to convince about anything any more.
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