Finnish News Recap, Week 25: Midsummer Madness edition

FAR-RIGHT TROUBLES: During the formation process of the current right-wing government, one of the chief complaints of the Finnish liberals – both inside and outside the parties forming the government – was the omnipresent “image of Finland” – and how the nationalist Finns Party would affect it. There’s a long history of many members of this right-wing populist party making racist, sexist and otherwise outlandish comments, one that would hardly be expected to stop.

As such, even before the first full week of the government was finished, there was already a maelstrom brewing over the connections and actions of Vilhelm Junnila, the freshly Minister of Economic Affairs. Junnila is one of the less-known Finns Party politicians outside of this home region, but those that know him know that he’s got a strong background in the anti-immigration movement, being an early factor of the party’s takeover by its hardliners.

However, even beyond that, there’s just a whiff of Nazi stuff. Junnila had already gained a bit of notoriety before his ministership from the time when he participated in an anti-immigration demonstration organized after a stabbing few years back – not for the demonstration itself, but for the fact that he participated alongside several extreme-right organizations, such as Soldiers of Odin and (later-banned) openly Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement.

However, he also has several times made jokes indicating, at the very least, playing around Nazism and other far-right ideologies for comedic purposes, including making a somewhat-hard-to-explain joke 14/88 joke on his electoral ad, building this KKK snowman in 2014 and admiring this swastika decoration while on a visit around the same time. Of course, this sort of stuff is not exactly uncommon in certain circles in Finland, but it’s still rather exceptional for the guy in charge of Finland’s trade relationships with countries like, presumably, Germany and Israel.

This whole event has led to a lot of furor culminating to a vote of confidence this week which Junnila (who had apologized) survived by the skin of his teeth, but more on that next week.

MIDSUMMER MADNESS: Last week as the week of Midsummer, one of the major festivities in the Finnish calendar. This traditional summer solstice date would presumably usually be a lazy time for news, as most Finns are in the countryside, relaxing in summer cabins with beer and BBQing and sauna, and with large bonfires dotting the shores of Finland’s thousands of lakes. It has been very hot (ie. ca 30 degrees Celsius) lately, compounding the situation.

Of course, this year there was some extra activity, as mercenary company kingpin Yevgeny Prigozhin’s weird little rebellion in Russia was happening through the same time, meaning a lot of politically active Finns spent this time glued to their screens, as Wagner Group’s convoy made its way towards Moscow. As people had beers and tried to chill out, a potential civil war looked like it might erupt in our large neighboring country… until it all just piffled out anticlimactically, of course.

This strange event is generally beyond the scope of these recaps, but perhaps it should be mentioned that much of Finnish Twitter chatter concentrated on whether the Finnish government reacted fast enough, as PM Orpo tweeted about it ca 12 hours after the whole situation started. This mostly consisted of left-wingers doing “imagine if the shoe was on the other foot” dunks about how Marin would have been condemned for not reaction sooner or right-wingers saying that Marin *obviously* wouldn’t have reacted at all due to being drunk on duty. Very myopic, but that’s how Finnish analysis of foreign affairs often is.

In other Midsummer madness news, Paavo Arhinmäki, the Left Alliance deputy mayor of Helsinki, was caught while spraying graffiti on a train tunnel. He’s been issued a 3500 € fine, mostly for interfering with train traffic. Arhinmäki, who is incidentally 46 years old, has a long history of defending hip hop culture and graffiti as a valid form of urban expression, so this is technically par for the course, but of course it is still rather extraordinary a sort of a political scandal. He has apologized for his crimes.

IN OTHER NEWS, Centre Party stalwart Olli Rehn announced his candidacy for Presidency, exciting nobody. Charges were mostly dropped against police officers who had sprayed Extinction Rebellion protestors three years back and the Swedish krona is now so weak Finns are going shopping for beer across the western border (an extraordinary situation).

Image: Midsummer is traditionally associated with bonfires, like this one. Source: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/helsinki-deputy-mayor-fire-after-caught-red-handed-100439608