Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
User ID: 137
Should be noted that they're quoting some journalist in Ukraine who has joined the Ukrainian army. I mean, it's still cringe (NATO has the choice of what they put in the account), but it's also probably exactly the sort of a way how normies might categorize this stuff, or even more likely how an Ukrainian fighter might imagine one speaks to your stereotypical Westerner living in comfort who probably has a pretty dim idea of what Ukrainians are actually going through.
I'm not sure if it's a new thing, either; Finland's most famous war novel, The Unknown Soldier, about WW2, has a side character who basically belongs to one of the youngest age classes to be conscripted during the entire war (ie. used to demonstrate how grizzled old veterans barely few years older than teens like this might view such new recruits) and turns out to be a highly effective and fearless fighter who also has the tendency to make "pew pew! Fiuuuu!" sounds when shooting Russians or throwing grenades, just like in Disney cartoons.
As such, while I cannot deny the cringeness, I'm not sure if it's really that good an opportunity to make analyses about NATO's general form of communication, let alone Theater Kids (though the soldier in question does mention theatre people as one of the class of people who have joined the Ukrainian Army, actually). I'm also somewhat at loss to what the connection to "progressives/post-Marxist culturists/“the woke”" is, despite everything it's actually not just wokes who might live their life vicariously through stuff like Marvel movies or other Hollywood cultural fare (and I'd imagine that if one actually could make a survey on this they'd be less likely to do this than just your average normie).
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1yr 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?
WHAT’S THE LARGER ISSUE, ACCORDING TO SÁMI PARLIAMENT MAJORITY FACTION?
According to the Sámi Parliament majority, this is a conflict between Sámi indigenous self-governance and a group of anti-Sámi Finns who wish to take over the Sámi Parliament, supported by the Finnish courts. (Note: this view is also the one that you can read more about in English in, say, this article or this one
To Sámi Parliament majority, who is Sámi and who is not is clear – the North Sámi, Inari Sámi and Skolt Sámi are Sámi, while the “Forest Sámi” or “Kemi Sámi” are quite evidently not Sámi at all. In fact, in this view, while there once was a Kemi Sámi, it has long since gone extinct; the current "Kemi Sámi" claimants are then a group of mostly Finnish settler origin who have essentially created an identity to themselves out of whole cloth (by portraying common Lapland ‘Sámi-style’ work jackets as gákti etc.), in collective Rachel Dolezal style, either because they feel themselves distinct from other Finns due to their life in the hardscrabble North, or for devious purposes, believing that taking over Sámi Parliament would give them power over the considerable land use questions in Lapland. (The Sámi parliament doesn’t have formal powers over land issues, but has an advisory role, and there has been a push to grant it a more extensive role.)
To the majority faction, the issue in question is urgently recreating the voter rolls without the “Lapp paragraph”, i.e., utilizing a language-based criteria, to prevent small, organized groups of LARPers from exercising their power to take over Sámi Parliament. In this view the great danger is that this would essentially defang and implicitly assimilate the one institution working for Sámi culture, language etc., thus being a part of the general process of assimilation of Sámi to the Finnish majority. In the majority’s claim, the “Lapp paragraph” has never really recorded cases of Sámi identity but rather has been an economic moniker assigned to those working with reindeer or otherwise living a non-farming lifestyle, without reference to ethnicity.
Otherwise, Sámi Parliament majority considers this a straightforward case. Reforming the voter rolls without the Lapp paragraph, and implicitly removing the wrongly added people, would protect indigenous rights and self-governance, bring the definition to the same standard as used in Sweden and Norway, and quite importantly being in accordance with the UN’s opinion on this issue, admonishing Finland for not passing the Sámi Parliament reform act. Likewise, Sámi Parliament majority claim is that the actual Sámi are greatly united, apart from individual oppositionists who have their own reasons for contrarianism and who are bolstered by votes of the non-Sámi Finns already wrongly added to the voter rolls.
To the majority, the Finnish government’s inability to resolve this issue by passing the reform is a case of conscious foot dragging, in hopes that eventually the Sámi Parliament constituency changes lead to a new more pliant Sámi Parliament majority. This, then is considered to serve the interests of landowners in Lapland, who do not want the indigenous people of the land interfering with land use rights – particularly ones that might prevent lucrative but polluting mine development.
WHAT’S THE LARGER ISSUE, ACCORDING TO OPPONENTS OF SÁMI PARLIAMENT MAJORITY?
This is much harder to piece together – unsurprising, since there seem to be many different minority viewpoints here, they tend to be advocated by – shall we say – dissident types that may often get rather fervent about their views, and they don’t seem to have the same resources as Sámi Parliament to make easy-to-read materials. However, one general narrative I’ve seen is essentially this:
The whole topic is not as much a conflict between Sámi and Finns but one between different Sámi groups, riven apart by the actions of a small, elite radical Sámi nationalist faction ruling Sámi Parliament. According to this view, Forest Sámi are indeed a real group, and moreover one that, when properly viewed, would also include Inari Sámi and the Skolt Sámi, though the first group is divided and the Skolt Sámi are tactically allied to the ruling faction.
The claim is that Northern Sámi elites ruling Sámi Parliament – indeed, who formed it as a pressure group which then gained official recognition as the representative of the Sámi – represent large-scale reindeer herding interests also supported by the states, because it’s easier to tax large-scale reindeer herding than hunting/fishing/gathering/small-scale farming and herding style living that (according to this view) had thus far characterized life in Finnish Sámi territories.
In this view, the more southern, originally Finnish Sámi groups have (naturally, due to settlement) gone through extensive assimilation, language death etc. and thus seem “less Sámi” to outsiders; nevertheless, in this view, the ‘Forest Sámi’ are an actual group, formed by descendants of assimilated families who have nevertheless maintained some parts of their traditions, like keeping around gákti, having memories of Sámi being used in their past etc., and the voter rolls have failed to include many Inari Sámi, as well.
Furthermore, in this view, Sámi Parliament is an organ of Northern Sámi hegemony over other groups, and the whole process of ‘cleansing the lists’ is meant to remove inconvenient, popular Inari Sámi oppositionists from the rolls and otherwise prevent this hegemony from being disrupted electorally. Moreover, in this view, Northern Sámi are not indigenous to Finnish land, but rather migrants from the currently Norwegian areas, pushing the native Sámi groups aside. Thus, in this view, there's also a land issue - but it's the one of Northern Sámi claiming lands from other Sámi for reindeer-herding purposes.
To the opponents, the Lapp paragraph has been essential for finding such cases, since proving an ancestral language is considerably harder and such languages haven’t been sufficiently registered anywhere. As such, they believe they’re the true protectors of indigenous rights – and the UN’s statement otherwise is simply a result of extensive lobbying by Sámi nationalists, and not as binding anyway as claimed.
Note that the question of how legit the Kemi Sámi seemingly are controversial even among the oppositionists, and the general legal argumentation concentrates on the voter roll removals affecting the Inari Sámi members currently in the rolls; furthermore, there seems to exist a controversy about whether the planned voting system (too complex for me to really understand) treats Inari Sámi fairly and so on.
CURRENT STATUS OF THE DRAMA
The government’s program included a mention that the government will advance the Sámi Parliament reform, interpreted as a mandate to pass a reform law during this period. There exists a committee proposal for a reform law without the Lapp paragraph, but the actual process has been extended several times, of course, the government has had a lot on its plate with COVID and Ukraine, so it’s not surprising many other questions would take a backseat.
Now the time is running out, the government’s period ends next Spring and a failure to bring the law to the Parliament now might just mean there’s simply not enough time to process all of this. The Centre party is refusing to advance the law without the Lapp paragraph and asking for still more time to discuss it – stalling for time, other parties claim. PM Marin has promised to nevertheless bring the law to the parliament, leading to a potential situation where the government parties would vote against each other, which would of course be bad, possibly fatal, to the government’s stability.
CONCLUSION
Well, it’s obviously a complex issue. Perhaps the best summary is that both sides leave me with suspicions based on their own materials – the opposition does not really argue its case particularly well and particularly the ‘Forest Sámi” activists really give the sort of a feeling I’d guess you generally get from guys whose identity is not on a particularly stable ground and might very well indeed be engaging in some sort of an extended LARP. So, overall I sympathize more with the Sámi Parliament majority view.
However, I’ve also heard from various sources near the situation that the conflict between North Sámi and Inari Sámi is more real than the Parliament claims, a book I read defending their view and heavily promoted by their activists written by a North Sámi professor) also discussed the Inari Sámi in a way that seemed to concentrate mostly on their assimilation and “Finnishness”, and thus gave the impression that there might indeed a certain assumed hierarchy, and division against the Sámi groups, here, or at least more so than the people claiming the Sámi are fundamentally united around the reform are claiming.
(edit: somewhat extended edition of this on Substack)
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1yr ago
It's worth noting that for large periods of time "formal" colonialism was basically colored sections on the map, with the local inhabitants still living under traditional arrangements and often quite literally not knowing at all they were "colonized". For instance, the colonial period in Africa often lasted well under a century, and it was, as far as I've understood, quite possibly to live in your local village without ever seeing an European man or being particularly aware you're now technically living under the "protection" or suzerainty of an European king. Or you're the subject of the local king or prince, but that king or prince is responsible for dealings with the Europeans - that's one of the reasons they talk about postcolonialism, the idea that even though colonized countries are now technically independent in the end their ruling regimes are still under similar arrangements and their staying in power depends on European countries or the US.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
4mo ago
Based on what I know about the reality of sex differences, I'm sure the presence of large numbers of Ukrainian refugee women, I imagine a large portion of them young and single, in the EU has already generated high levels of resentment among local women, even if this is not visible in media reports.
Living in a country with a large Ukrainian refugee population, I have literally not seen a single indication of this. By all accounts solidarity with Ukrainian refugees remains high among men and women.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
4mo ago
And let's be clear about what "Zionism" is. It's the belief that Israel should continue to exist.
Yes, that's the motte.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1yr ago
New Zealand and Sweden, shown here, would be countries that have been quite extensively mRNA-vacced but haven't seen major excess mortality spikes lately, at least compared to Sweden's two Covid-wave-congruent spikes (which NZ avoided through its famous zero-covid policies, until it ended them, which then correlates with a modest excess deaths increase in mid-2022, ie. winter months in NZ). Lately, NZ excess mortality has been pretty close to baseline.
Now, that's just two countries, but if it it's mRNA vaccines, how could that be? According to NZ govt website, almost 90% of 12+ residents have got the primary course, ie. two shots. How are they avoiding excess mortality, if it's vaccine-related? Do they have different vaccines than the rest? Again, according to NZ govt, the Pfizer vaccine is the preferred vaccine in NZ.
I don't think it's impossible that there vaccine is somewhat more dangerous than generally understood and might contribute a bit, but I still consider it likely that the current excess mortality rates are better explained by Covid itself, non-Covid respiratory diseases that were smothered for two years and are now back in force, and the cumulative effects of past years leading to increase in obesity, decrease in doctoral check-ups etc, whether one blames those more on fear of Covid itself or the gov't policies like lockdowns. Maybe one even sees the effect of things like increased food prices and electricity prices etc. (ie. old/poor people cutting back on heating or food, worsening their health outcomes and contributing to potential earlier deaths, and so on).
CULTURE WAR IN FINLAND/SWEDEN/TURKEY: Nordic Cartoon Crisis 2.0
Nordic cartoon crisis 1.0, of course, was the one in 2005, as cartoons of the Islamic prophet Mohammed in a Danish magazine (reprinted by a number of instances the world over) precipitated riots all around the Muslim world. Of course the same issues would be replicated later on in different contexts, like with the Charlie Hebdo shooting.
This time, what is at stake is the Finnish/Swedish NATO membership quest, seemingly derailed by cartoons and other mockery of the Turkish PM Erdogan, in Finnish and Swedish magazines, and various other issues, including, once again, the relationship between free speech and Islam.
As is known, few months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Finland and Sweden applied for NATO. NATO operates by consensus, and applications require affirmation by all current member states to proceed. All countries expect two, Hungary and Turkey, have done this. Hungary might still cause its own issues, but what is currently at stake, however, is the Turkish veto.
One issue has been the Finnish and Swedish refusal to export weapons to Turkey. Finland doesn’t have a formal ban but stopped exports in 2019, after the Turkish invasion of Northern Syria. Finland has, however, already indicated that it will review this line, and it would probably be odd for two countries to be in a military alliance but one refusing military exports to another.
Indeed, the Finnish and Swedish governments have been lobbying for United States to release F-16 fighters to Turkey in hopes that a blatant bribe might do the trick of easing the membership process. The WSJ has indicated this might indeed be what the US will offer. I wouldn’t be too confident that this, alone, would be enough, and the Greeks might have something to say about this, as well.
However, more important has been Turkey’s claim that Sweden and Finland, claiming that these countries foster terrorists, chiefly those of PKK, ie. the Kurdistan Workers Party, which has run a decades-long armed campaign against the Turkish state. Turkey has also referred to the "Fethullahist Terrorist Organisation", ie. the Gülen movement, but this seems secondary, and it continues to be hazy what all Fethullahist Terrorist Organization is even supposed to encompass.
Of course, everyone who has ever debated with a Turk on the Internet on, like, anything, knows the salience of the PKK issue on the Turkish mindset. It’s safe to say that I’m never going to understand how this conflict truly feels to Turks, as Finland doesn’t even have any equivalent separatist groups. (There’s one in Åland, but frankly, as long as there was some form of security against Russians making a sudden move on the territory, most Finns wouldn’t give a whit if Åland became independent.) As such, I'm of course be going to discuss this from a Finnish perspective. I understand the Turkish perspective will be different.
It's important to remember that PKK continues to be a banned movement in Finland and Sweden, like in all EU countries. This has been challenged by EU courts, but the formal ban holds. In practice, this means that the Turkish government has demanded the deportations of various numbers of suspected terrorists, as well as expressed anger over expressions of speech in these countries, such as PKK flags featuring in public demonstrations.
The governments of Finland and Sweden have essentially responded to Turkish deportation requests by stating that they will work with Turkey on this issue but it’s also impossible to automatically to as Turkey has requested on this subject. A memorandum between Turkey, Finland and Sweden was signed on summer, but the countries disagree what it means.
One problem is that Finland and Sweden aren’t countries where politicians can just deport people at the point of finger. It’s up to courts to decide whether this can happen, and the courts have been reticent on this one, considering that there are doubts as to how many of the fingered suspected terrorists are terrorists at all, or just politically inconvenient for Turkey. There’s nothing, in practice, preventing deportation to Turkey – in October the courts extradited a bank robber.
When it comes to the demonstrations with PKK flags, these are generally done by the sort of far-left groups that have been, and continue to be, opposed to NATO membership, Kurdish separatist solidarity having been an important part of far-left movements in both countries for years. As such, the threat of Turks keeping Finland and Sweden out of NATO won’t of course keep them from demonstrating with PKK flags, if anything it gives them more reason to do so.
One such recent demonstration in Sweden involved an Erdogan doll being hung in effigy, by a group called the Swedish Solidarity Committee for Rojava – Rojava being the Kurdish autonomous statelet in North Syria, known for fighting ISIS and then fighting Turkish-supported Islamist Syrian rebel groups and the Turkish forces occupying Syrian territory as a part of their claimed anti-terrorist operation, Rojava’s leading groups being affliated to the same Kurdish political family as the PKK.
Soon after this, Erdogan made a demand for the extradition of 130 (claimed) terrorists by Finland and Sweden, interpreted to be a reaction to this personal affront. Swedish far-left magazine Flamman has reacted by organizing an Erdogan cartoon contest, and Finnish cartoonist Ville Ranta summarized the issue in a cartoon with an angry Erdogan demanding an increasing amount of terrorists for all affronts.
The most recent turn is the notorious Danish far-right provocateur Rasmus Paludan burning the Quran in front of the Turkish embassy. Paludan has conducted Quran-burning protests for a long time, it’s sort of a trademark for him, so it’s not surprising he’d utilize this issue for his one-man crusade as well. The Turkish government is predictably hopping mad and there are large protests in Turkey against this.
While this has been going on, the Finnish and Swedish governments have been in a hard place. Sweden has a right-wing government and Finland has a left-wing government, but both are reacting rather similarly: making noises about how the rule of law and freedom of speech are of course very important but that they also respect the Turkish government’s wishes and that they are sorry about these provocations.
And, of course, if one takes a strong free speech perspective (it’s arguable that these countries don’t always take it in other issues), it should for sure be a part of free speech to be able to fly a flag or burn a Quran if one wishes, no matter how provocatively this is viewed. One can’t help but think one point is that an authoritarian country wishes to spread its authoritarian norms concerning these issues to other countries as well. Is that a suitable price for NATO membership? To many it is.
A particular issue for Finland is a sneaking suspicion that it appears to be Sweden that Turkey really has a problem with, even moreso now after the Quran burning protest, as Erdogan has directly referred to this affair as reason to not support Sweden. If you look at the exact wording, you can of course interpret "not expect to support" in various different ways, but it's still evidentially something that makes the issue ever more complicated.
As such a frequent topic is whether, if an opportunity presents itself, Finland should just cut Sweden loose, if that it takes, even if it this means knifing a longtime ally in the back after frequent talk about how Sweden and Finland will go through the NATO process together. Not to mention that Swedish and Finnish militaries just plain are almost meant to work together – Sweden has a strong navy and air force but a weak army, Finland is the other way around.
(CONTINUES BELOW)
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1yr ago
Who has been following the drama around Disco Elysium? Disco Elysium, of course, is the 2019 CRPG that has received numerous accolades for being the savior of Western computer role-playing gaming, the best game in a long time etc. I've played it through, and it deserves the accolades; many here have played it as well, and it is not surprising that a forum like this would have many aficionados for a game that basically consists of reading vast oodles of texts about one drunken failure cop's personal psychodramas and politics and a well-realized fictional somethingpunk setting, and so on.
The game was been made by ZA/UM, an Estonian developer / art collective, around a world created by Estonian novelist Robert Kurvitz, and is quite obviously Estonian-influenced if one knows anything about Estonia (starting with the fact that Revachol, the city where the game happens, is very visually remiscient of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, once known as Reval).
What's the drama? According to Wikipedia:
In October 2022, ZA/UM member Martin Luiga announced that he, Kurvitz, Rostov, and Hindpere of ZA/UM had "involuntarily left the company", stating that ZA/UM "no longer represents the ethos it was founded on." Luiga also affirmed that the ZA/UM cultural association had also been dissolved.[92] In an interview, Luiga stated that the other three members had been fired under false premises.[93] A spokesperson for ZA/UM stated that "Like any video game, the development of Disco Elysium was and still is a collective effort, with every team member's contribution essential and valued as part of a greater whole. At this time, we have no further comment to make other than the ZA/UM creative team's focus remains on the development of our next project, and we are excited to share more news on this with you all soon."[94]
In early November 2022, conflicting reports of the events were announced. According to Kurvitz, Zaum Studio OÜ, the development studio, was originally owned in majority shares by Margus Linnamäe, was then acquired by Tütreke OÜ, a holding company owned by studio CEO Ilmar Kompus through a share purchase in 2021. Kurvitz and Rostov claimed that the funds used for that purchase were pulled from the studio itself, making it a fraudulent purchase, upon which they started to challenge the purchase and recover their IP from the studio.[95] Zaum Studio dismissed the charges in a statement, and said that former employees had been let go for creating a disruptive environment at the studio. Other employees of Zaum Studio speaking anonymously with GamesIndustry.biz claimed the situation lied between these points.[96] Kurvitz and Rostov were seeking legal options against the studio.[95]
How Kurvitz and Rostov explain it:
We have now learned that Tütreke OÜ must have obtained control over Zaum Studio OÜ by fraud. We believe the money used by Tütreke OÜ to buy the majority stake was taken illegally from Zaum Studio OÜ itself, money that belonged to the studio and all shareholders but was used for the benefit of one. Money that should have gone towards making the sequel. We believe that these actions — which in our view, and the view of our lawyers, amount to criminal wrongdoing punishable by up to three years imprisonment — were perpetrated by Ilmar Kompus and Tõnis Haavel with support from Kaur Kender, another minority shareholder. This is hardly surprising given that Tõnis Haavel, who we believe to be the ringleader, has been convicted for defrauding investors on a different matter in 2007 [https://www.riigiteataja.ee/kohtulahendid/fail.html?fid=303963621].
I've also seen suggestions that Kurvitz et al believe that Tütreke, Kender etc. are planning to compromise their vision specifically for upcoming Amazon Disco Elysium series, presumably so that the political (anti-capitalist - Kurvitz is a self-described communist, very much a rarity in Estonia) aspect of their work would be compromised.
Speaking to Estonian newspaper Estonian Ekspress (translated by Google), ZA/UM CEO Ilmar Kompus said the studio suffered from a "toxic environment," and accused Disco Elysium designer Robert Kurvitz and 'Saandar Taal' of "humiliating colleagues and intending to steal IP."
ZA/UM confirmed that Saandar Taal is an alias of Aleksander Rostov.
Kompus accused Kurvitz and Taal of "belittling women and co-workers," claims that echo those made by GamesIndustry.biz's own sources.
"They treated their co-workers very badly," Kompus told the Ekspress. "Despite talking to them repeatedly, things did not improve. Therefore, the company was forced to fire them. Robert [Kurvitz] is said to have been known for belittling women and co-workers in the past, but this was previously unknown to the company. It would be very short-sighted of a growing international company to tolerate such behaviour."
More context from an Estonian Redditor
Anyway, so by the time we first heard the news of this video game project, Za/Um as a cultural movement was already dwindling. For an Estonian art-adjacent person, Za/Um has basically been dead since 2017. That's why Luiga's decision to disband the movement doesn't really raise an eyebrow here. It's old history, man.
Other than Kender, the rest of Za/Um was a bunch of nobodies to the mainstream. The members were well known enough in art circles, so they definitely weren't a bunch of amateurs or something like that, but they weren't well established figures in the broader sense. But first and foremost they are artists. Not aspiring video game developers but writers, painters, musicians. They went for a mad plan to do something completely out of their wheelhouse and I personally think this is what made Disco so interesting. It was an art project more than a video game but through some sheer genius it turned out to be a hugely successful and hopefully influential video game as a side product.
For me, Disco Elysium was the last hurrah for Za/Um, and what a hurrah it was. Of course I'm sad with the outcome but all you socialists out there, you saw it coming, didn't you? We got a miracle of a game out of this and there are only so many wins we get on the left.:
Perhaps it's not necessary to specifically mention all the ironic aspects involved in this, and if we indeed see Disco Elysium as an art project, it feels like a fitting capstone to the project, in a way.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1yr ago
Where did they add Ivermectin to the list though?
I personally surmised that the vaccine risk was probably larger than claimed, but it's worth remembering that many conspiracy theorists made huge claims about the risks, sometimes going as far as to claim that there would be evident mass dieoffs already at this phase, that the vaxx would be a practical death sentence within a few years etc. If one has made those kinds of claims, I don't feel it would be then right to pivot to "I was right all along! Another one for the "conspiracy theorists!"" if a considerably milder claim of vaccine ill-effects turns out to be true.
FINLAND MOVES TO CRIMINALIZE HOLOCAUST DENIAL
I've been making some updates previously here on the new right-wing government including a nationalist party, Finns Party, and the ongoing racism scandal after it turned out that some of the ministers from that party had a history of racist comments, even playing around with Nazi implications. You can read this, this or this for more context.
For some time now, the actual survival of the government has been predicated on an "anti-racist statement" demanded by Swedish People's Party, the most liberal and pro-minority (chiefly their own Swedish-speaking minority but also all other ones, in some way) party in the government.
The statement was published yesterday and mostly just contained platitudes, basic repetition of already-existing laws and government program parts and promises to "launch programmes", "improve dialogue", "support the work done" etc that basically amount to very little. The actual actions also contains parts obviously intended to placate Finns Party, such as new campaigns against honor violence, gang violence and so on, as well as a promise to look into banning Communist symbols alongside with Nazi ones.
You can read it here if you wish. Its main purpose, of course, has been to allow everyone to save face sufficiently to keep the government going on, so that it can get on to doing the other tasks that the parties it consists of wish it to do, ie. implement a pro-business economic policy and limit immigration.
However, the one concrete detail that has aroused some attention abroad has been a promise to criminalize Holocaust denial. Holocaust denial has not been formally criminalized in Finland and before this Finnish governments have actually resisted proposals and demands by institutions like EU to do so, chiefly on the basis that antisemitic acts could already be charged under ethnic agitation laws if need be.
In practice Holocaust denial is very rare in Finland and there's been only a couple of cases that have seen court action, mainly since Holocaust in general is not as important in Finnish discourses as in many other countries. Finland has had a tiny Jewish community, maybe a few thousand at any given era, and during the actual event Finland deported eight Jewish refugees to Germany but otherwise did not follow German demands to relinquish the country's small Jewish community, and Jewish soldiers fought on the front while Finland participated in Operation Barbarossa, with three Jewish Finnish soldiers even being offered the Iron Cross by Germans, who had troops in Lapland.
In general, it might be said that one reason for the comparatively less attention being paid to Holocaust than in many other countries is that Soviet crimes against humanity loom so large. Thus far, for instance, while other European countries have commemorated Holocaust Remembrance Day, Finland has had a “Remembrance Day for the Victims of Persecutions", and the local press often uses this day to talk about Soviet persecutions, like the Soviet ethnic campaign against Finns in the 1930s. (This is one of the things that the anti-racist statement also promises to change.)
I have sometimes seen local Nazis post Holocaust denial stuff, but even this happens in a very perfunctory way and is clearly not a top concern in comparison to immigration or, say, GLBTQ+ stuff. Maybe that is because internationally a popular antisemitic argument has always been blaming the Jews for communism, socialism, feminism and the New Left, and Finland as had plenty of all of those (a socialist revolution, one of the largest Communist parties in Western Europe per capita etc.) with barely any Jewish participation.
One of the few actual instances to have actively demanded Holocaust denial criminalization and generally stronger actions against antisemitism are the Christian Democrats, a small socially conservative Christian party, which is firmly pro-Israel and based on evangelical movements that subscribe to dispensationalist theology, which is currently also in gobernment. As such, it's very likely that this was one of their demands. However, it doesn't seem to have been one that has caused particular troubles for the Finns Party to accept, since it's not related to their true concern - immigration - and the party also has some history of giving soft support to Israel simply on the basis that the Finnish Left is firmly pro-Palestinian.
As such, I don't expect this to be particularly consequential, since it basically criminalizes something that has very rarely happened anyway and which would arguably often already be banned under other laws. If anything I'd expect it to increase Holocaust denial, simply since there's already a conspiracy theory community suspicious of anything the government does and who might be expected to go "If it's banned there must be some truth to it, eh?"
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1yr ago
FINNISH ELECTIONS TODAY
I haven't had time to write updates here (though I write a weekly Finnish politics etc update on my blog) but a short update:
Finland has a parliamentary election today. The Finnish parliament has 200 MPs, one from autonomous region of Åland (which has its own political system I won't go through here) and the rest from mainland, which is divided to several electoral districts. The Finnish electoral system is "open-list proportional", the parties receive seats according to their votes but what people actually vote for are individual candidates from these lists and the amount of votes for a list in a certain districts is the total vote of all the candidates. As such, Finnish politics is fairly personalized, and elections usually see hundreds of thousands of candidates all running their individual campaigns and party campaigns on top of them.
For the past 4 years, Finland has been led by a center-left government run by Social Democrats, currently under the now-world-famous PM Sanna Marin. During these past 4 years Finland has faced the same COVID and Ukraine crises as all the other countries, as well as the strain caused by aging and sluggish European economy on the welfare state on top of it. The government has simultaneously tied to juggle with the global crises, reform/refund the welfare state and strive for a tight environmental goal of carbon neutrality by 2035, which has caused a lot of strain inside the government.
Finland's parliamentary political parties are (you can also check this to get a "neutral" look at most of these these parties through ChatGPT/Midjourney created candidates):
GOVERNMENT:
Social Democrats (currently 40 seats): A fairly typical European social-democratic party. Center-left, used to be a labor-union party, still kind of is but has also expanded to a more "modern" green-left feminist direction, particularly under Marin. Currently also very dependent on Marin's popularity and visibility.
Centre (currently 31 seats): A center-right rural party, the "odd man out" of the government. Has particularly had a strained relationship to other parties due to the carbon-neutrality goal, which they technically share but which has led to policies that greatly bother their rural/small-town voter base, like cuts to timber production, steeper fuel prices etc. Took a big hit in the last election (when they were in a center-right government). Projected to lose seats.
Greens (currently 20 seats): After a long period of concentrating on intersectionalism and general lefty policies etc., they've tried to refocus back on environmentalism in this government, which hasn't gone particularly well, since the post-Ukraine inflation has put environment on the back burner among Finnish middle-class concerns. Projected to lose seats.
Left Alliance (currently 16 seats): A far-left party that has, for once, tried to be the nice guy of this government and didn't even rock the boat too much when Ukraine war caused Finland to apply for NATO, a thing this party has long opposed fiercely.
Swedish People's Party (currently 10 seats, Åland's MP always caucuses with this party): An interest party for Swedish-speaking Finns. Technically centrist liberal, in practice just mainly concentrates on acting as a quasi-ethnic party that always plays nice in the government to get their few interest-group issues through.
OPPOSITION:
The Finns Party (currently 39 seats): A right-wing populist and nationalist party. Main issue is opposing immigration, is also against new environmental legislation. Possible election winner (ie. might be voted as the largest party), their leader Riikka Purra might replace Marin.
National Coalition (currently 37 seats): A center-right neoliberal party. Stereotypically the "party of the rich", focused on tighter fiscal policies and playing back the debt taken during this government. Long the only party to support NATO, only to now have their signature issue taken way. Also a possible election winner, their leader Petteri Orpo might become the PM.
Christian Democrats (currently 5 seats): A small religious party. The only Finnish party to be anti-abortion, though currently main causes are trying to get Finland's birthrate up and opposing the recently-signed trans reform law.
Movement Now (currently 1 seat): A one-person splinter from National Coalition, led by millionaire who got angry the NC didn't make him a minister the last time they were in government. Imagine a poorer Trump who had none of Trump's humor or charms and hadn't lucked into his immigration top issue. Unsurprisingly this hasn't worked too well. The millionaire might keep his seat.
Power belongs to the People: (currently 1 seat): A one-person splinter from The Finns Party. Led by a bodybuilder who got kicked out for being too racist, then pivoted to anti-Covid-measures/anti-vaxx stuff, then pivoting to QAnon-tier conspiracy theories, then pivoting to pro-Russianism and charismatic Christianity. Will almost certainly lose the guy's seat, upstaged even in the anti-vaxx conspiracy communities by a somewhat less insane splinter Freedom Alliance.
In addition to these there are a bunch of extraparliamentary microparties, in addition to PbtP and FA there are at least three other antivaxx conspiracy parties and these have spent much of this election fighting each other. The most notable microparties are Liberal Party, a libertarian-ish party that has campaigned solely on having an explicit list of 9 billion euros of budget cuts (something like 11 % of Finnish state budget) without cutting health care, education of defense spending and might get a seat, and Blue-and-Black Movement, who probably won't get a seat but have got a fair bit of attention for explicitly being a racist and fascist party (as in, making statements like "Blue-and-Black is a racist party" after The Finns Party said they were not a racist party after some minor affair).
ISSUES:
The main issues have been:
DEBT: Due to Covid, post-Ukraine defense boosts, but also welfare state reforms like the increase of mandatory age of education or overhauling the social and health care system, Finland has taken a fair amount of debt, with Finnish debt-to-GDP ratio increasing from 59 % in 2019 to 72,4 % in 2022. Finnish politics are very debt-averse, so much of this election season has been spent on parties discussing how they're going to bring the debt ratio back down and what sort of cuts they would make. On the other hand, there's also:
HEALTH CARE AND EDUCATION: Despite (or, some would say, because) of the reforms, the Finnish health care and education systems are still showing signs of strain, with there being new health care scandals all over the country almost weekly, at least, and Finnish PISA education scores dropping. Various parties have various measures for fixing this.
STREET GANGS: Street crime, generally by immigrants, has been a theme in Finnish discussions for some time now. The police used to be dismissive about the possibility of gangs even existing in Finland but have taken a stricter tone recently. Unsurprisingly a big issue for The Finns Party, who have seen a major poll rise as the elections approach.
FOREIGN AND DEFENSE POLICY: While this looms extremely large in Finnish consciousness and media because of, you know, it's not a divisive issue among the parties, since they all (apart from small conspiracy theory parties) either support NATO now or at least grudgingly accept its existence, and also support Ukraine against Russia (again, apart from small conspiracy parties). Still, there are individual themes like "Should Finland offer to accept nukes in Finland if NATO wants to base them here?)
POLLS:
Current 30 day polling average:
National Coalition: 20,3%
Social Democrats: 19,3%
The Finns Party: 19,3%
Centre: 10,6%
Greens: 8,6%
Left Alliance: 8,6%
Swedish People's Party: 4,4%
Christian Democrats: 4,0%
Movement Now: 1,8%
Others: 3,2%
GOVERNMENT FORMATION:
As one can see, any one of the largest three parties might be the biggest in the election. If the Social Democrats are the biggest, since the Centre does not want to continue the current government, they would probably form a "blue-red" government with National Coalition and some mix of the other parties, even though the parties have expressed very diverging ideas about economic issues and the debt.
If The Finns Party was the largest, they would probably form a right-wing government with the National Coalition, and maybe Centre and others, as they agree on the economy, though don't agree on all the environmental and immigration questions, and this sort of a government might cause problems with the EU, since TFP is still formally an anti-EU party. If the National Coalition was the biggest they could go either way.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1yr ago
The average attendee at an anarchist radical book reading club, assuming it really is a club that meets up live, may not even represent the most wacky section of anarchist radicalism, since at least they're still out and about, meeting other people and exposing themselves to potentially problematic opinions in such a space. In my experience, biggest hyperradicalism usually comes from shut-ins who essentially live their entire lives online and have a major effect on online discourses that way.
The general power of extremely online shut-ins who do nothing but post and engage in online dramas all day to affect social discourses - not just in woke way, but also in, for instance, the views of the extremely online far right seeping to related spaces - is generally an understudied topic. It may be that one of the most effective ways to give an ordinary nobody power is to bully them hard enough to ensure they won't ever go anywhere where they may meet anybody and will only process their resentment via social media.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1yr ago
“are octopuses an order of magnitude more ancient than the universe itself?”
"Yes. I refuse to elaborate."
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1yr ago
I think the quality has been going down, but I wouldn't peg bots. This might very well just be a personal opinion, just this morning, I was thinking about how increasing amount of subthreads are about trans stuff, a subject that, in the end, doesn't hold a great deal of interest to me. Not only that but it seems to be about endlessly relitigating a few particular facets of this particular culture war. Probably not something that it would be easy to write a bot for, though.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1yr ago
All of that just sounds like nothing but "I am ideologically on the pro-Russian (or at least anti-anti-Russian) side, and thus am by definition bound to find Zelensky non-heroic."
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
4d ago
The most famous woman in the history of the world would be Virgin Mary, I believe.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2mo ago
The reasons for why civil rights legislation, including affirmative action, have been enacted and are maintained in the US have at least at much to do with external as with internal policy. The original context for the enactment of the CRA and all the legislation meant to make racial equality not just a theory but an actuality was America's ideological content with the Soviet Union, a country that could lay a credible claim to an antiracist practice that made it very attractive to Third World masses and First World intellectuals; since it was also known that the equitable treatment of African-Americans was one of the main areas where United States had, to put it mildly, failed, it was also imperative for the US to show that it was working to fix it.
The status of the African-Americans was closely followed by numerous anti-colonialist and other progressive movements abroad, after all, and the civil rights movement was genuinely aspirational to numerous such movements. This was recognized by many prominent African-American figures, from DuBois to King to the Black Panthers, who all utilized this knowledge in their own ways. Some time ago I read a book of MLK's speeches, and MLK frequently appealed to the idea that unless America can show it offers equal treatment to AAs, it's going to lose the battle for hearts and minds in the wider global context.
Of course, the Soviet Union no longer exists, but America is still getting the dividends for this policy; however much anti-Americanism might exist abroad, there could still be vastly more, and, for instance, America (at least in 2015) was viewed very favorably particularly in Africa, doubtless aided by that implicit group of American cultural ambassadors - African-American celebrities showing that the American model can offer fabulous opportunities for wealth and influence for black people, too.
The one group of conservatives who seem to see this connection are the isolationists, but I'm not quite sure even they would be fully prepared for what would happen if America, implicitly or explicitly, just went "Okay, all that is over now, our policy is now based on the idea that blacks are morons and will never, as a group, reach the status of the whites (or Asians)", and then seeing that message percolate out abroad. It would have just effortlessly handled out a huge trump card both to China, always looking for opportunities to expand its influence, and whatever radical anti-American movements there are, from Chavists to parties like EFF in South Africa to radical Islamists (who surely would be willing to say that there's no racial discrimination in an Islam, whether that's true or not).
Once those movements start taking over their countries with no effective American counter apart from war (which the isolationists would presumably also oppose), and once that starts effecting the global trade (and the Houthis have just shown you don't even need to take over to do that), the American economy will take in the lumps, too - and there might be even more direct effects of the terrorist kind that one might surely imagine. Is it worth all that to just abolish affirmative action? Perhaps to some, surely not to many others.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
4mo ago
What this really just reminds me of is that we really are, de facto, still living in the greatest time of free speech and free exchange of ideas ever. One could make a list of obscure and out-of-prints books like this with the expectation that someone who desires will find at least the great majority of these books with a bit of searching and an ability to look into the right places (like the Internet Archive for the older ones); in the pre-Internet times, even knowing about this stuff would require a huge physical effort. Sure, some of the books might get one punished for mere ownership in certain places, but I would guess that even in those cases the authorities finding out would require you committing some other crime of sufficient valence to get your hard drive examined, so the punishment for owning the PDF would be extra punishment on top of the one you'd get for committing a more concrete variety of a crime.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
6mo ago
Just as an aside, what value I continue to see in this forum is that it offers at least some sort of a dispassionate ground to discuss the tactical and strategic aspects of a conflict like this, which I find far more interesting than endless decriminations over modern dating or trans stuff or whatever. Twitter, certainly, is currently almost unusable for a discussion like this, even the local Twitter (in a country where the I/P conflict has far less valence than in many other European countries).
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
10mo ago
What keeps going through my mind, apart from worrying how this will end and what the geopolitical implications are, of course, is how embarrassing it would be a Russia Stronk shill type right now. No matter how this ends, this sort of shit does not actually happen in nations that are actually stronk.
I repeat myself from previous threads, but a continuous talking point for Z patriots and their scarce American/Western hype men has been that Ukraine is embarrassing, cringe, Reddit etc. "fake nation", unlike Russia with its 1000 years of history and a populace willing to give their lives for the Motherland. It certainly, once again, seems that Ukraine is dozens of times more "real" than Russia, in the sense that Ukrainians have (after 2022, at least) been relatively able to keep an united patriotic front instead of tearing each other apart in a madcap struggle for power.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
10mo ago
My general feel is that, when the protests were taking place, the Western governments were already hard in the process of considering how to gradually start ramping down the unworkable lockdown/mandate/fear cycle that had characterized the Covid response. The most visible parts of the Covid response were generally wound down everywhere at roughly the same time, ie, Jan-Feb 2022. Of course at the same time Ukraine also started to gain more and more importance as an issue in the eyes of the political class, even before the invasion itself.
As such, I'm not sure if the Freedom Convoy propagated these processes or simply came at a time when the consensus had started to form that these things should be wound anyway. It might have even delayed the process (in Canada, at least) by making it an issue of maintaining face for Trudeau.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
11mo ago
There was a similar small to-do in Finland about a planned screening of the Drag Kids documentary. It was basically stillborn since the cultural festival that had planned the screening quickly withdrew it from lists, citing threats sent. However, while the fracas was going on, much of the discussion basically consisted of both sides flinging "You're just importing American culture wars!" accusations to each other; pro-LGBTQ types saying that this is a copy of American conservatives tactically making up mountains from molehills over LGBTQ culture and conservatives retorting that the whole "drag kids" thing is just an American folly to begin with (even though the documentary appears to be Canadian, but that's not exactly a large difference from this side of the pond anyway).
Of course they're both correct, but it's like... of course this country is going to import culture, discussions and ideologies wholesale from some other country, in this case the most powerful country in the world, the undisputed global hegemon, with never-seen-before opportunities to broadcast its ideologies at scale everywhere. What else are we supposed to do, invent all the local ideologies and policy points ourselves? There's just 5,5 million of us.
The entire Finnish history consists of people importing ideologies from elsewhere. Christianity through Sweden and Russia, later Lutheranism from Germany, then nationalism from Germany (the founding father of Finnishness, J. V. Snellman, basically based his nationalist visions on Hegelianism), socialism from Germany, environmentalism from, yes, Germany... When one reads Social Democratic magazines from the start of the century they're already bashing each over basically over whether German Socialist 1 or German Socialist 2 was correct, and adjusting their own views on the basis of such debates elsewhere.
The biggest difference to past centuries is where the importation of ideology comes from, but that it's mostly imported from somewhere says.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1yr ago
Did socialism just suck away anarchism’s energy by speaking to the same people disaffected by capitalism but offering a more compelling vision of society?
I'd say that, even moreso, Bolshevism and the post-Bolshevist Communist movement did this. The Bolsheviks had an extremely compelling argument for everyone that was dreaming of a society with capitalism overturned: "Look, we did it!" Compared to it, anarchists looked like unserious daydreamers.
Of course, Bolsheviks also quite literally bodied anarchists in several territories, like in Russian-Revolution-era Ukraine and Spanish Civil War, but even there, even the fact that they managed to do this served as an argument for them. The Communist Parties offered a militant, regimented organization that could basically be turned into an army that asserted its will on the society as the need be. Such organizations - communist, fascist, whatever - beat the inchoate, loose anarchist structures every time these two encounter each other in the field of ideological or actual battle.
Of course, when the Bolshevik-style Communism then ended up being a spent force, the general revolutionary energy dissipated. "It's easier to envision the end of the world than the end of capitalism" and all that. Whatever existing anarchist organizing there is is more of the "try to create an alternative society in the cracks of the existing system without directly fighting against the system too much" variety, but that sort of thing still tends to either get crushed (if they can't manage to avoid fighting the system too much) or recuperated (if they don't fight the system at all, or only in a perfunctory way) by the system.
A bit over a ten years ago I participated in a SWP event in London, at some local university. Around the campus, it seemed like every other Trotskyist group, and some others, were prowling around, trying to pilfer potential recruits from the SWP (back then still quite a bit larger - the Corbyn movement did a number on them, from what I understand, and so did a rape scandal which got revealed soon after my visit.)
I asked one of them, from some group I can't remember (wasn't SP) what their disagreement on current policy with SWP was, and the guy launched into a spiel on how the SWP had been on the wrong side on whether it was correct to demand the British troops out of Northern Ireland in the 70s, I'm not sure which side of this he represented. I asked what the difference was now and he just looked at me and relaunched the same spiel abut Northern Ireland in the 70s. I came away from the event mainly with a strong conviction that it's a great positive there's never been a sizable Trotskyist movement in Finland.
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