Finnish News Recap, week 35: Cat Killing edition

The big news last week was the government’s so-called anti-racist statement, discussed here. In other news:

NEW SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP: The Social Democratic Party, the main party in opposition held its party convention to choose a replacement for the outgoing leader, former Prime Minister Sanna Marin. They also presumably also made other decisions in the party convention but really, outside of political parties themselves, leadership decisions really tend to be the only thing about political parties’ conventions that outsiders care about.

For the first time ever, the Social Democrats organized a membership poll for their leader. The candidates were Antti Lindtman, the chair of the Social Democrats parliamentary group, and former Family and Social Services Minister Krista Kiuru. Lindtman expectedly won the poll, getting roughly 80 % of the members’ vote, and was subsequently elected to the post.

Lindtman is generally considered to be on the right flank of the party, in comparison to Marin and Kiuru, though the latter is probably mostly currently remembered for her hardline restrictionist stance during the Covid crisis, where (despite not being the Health Minister) she somehow became the main official in charge of Covid policy.

The SDP’s selection of a new party secretary also received much attention. Party secretaries, being the top workers in Finnish parties in charge of the practical matters (while the chair presents the party’s public face and oversees the political line), are usually less visible, even though they wield considerable power.

In some parties, the party secretary is selected by the party’s internal organs, in others by the party convention. SDP belongs to the latter category. Party leaders often do have some leeway in steering the members into backing their preferred candidate into become the party secretary (and their chief working partner), very concretely in this case as Lindtman’s team convinced two candidates for the post to stand down, arousing some criticism.

However, a much bigger firestorm was set off by the party’s eventual decision to select Mikkel Näkkäläjärvi to the post. Näkkäläjärvi, a long-time youth organization activist, became known to most Finns a few years ago when he was running to the European Parliament and it turned out that he had, well… tortured a cat to death. That’s right; no matter what else Näkkäläjärvi has done, he will never shake off the case where he and some friends, living in the backwoods region of the very northernmost Finland, had broken into an old lady’s cabin and brutally tortured her cats to death, as teenagers.

Näkkäläjärvi was duly punished in those years and has apologized many times, but as one might guess, this sort of a thing makes him radioactive in actual elected politics (he didn’t get elected to the European Parliament), but oftentimes such persons, if considered useful enough, are just shuffled to the party’s internal structure. Lindtman himself has aroused some notoriety from old photos from his teenage years where he, among other things, gives a Nazi salute with his chums.

In general, the papers have implied that the choices in the party convention, like electing Helsinki deputy mayor Nasima Razmyar as deputy chair, mean that the Marin’s faction is being sidelined, though the press is notably fond of always portraying the Social Democrats as a broken, infighting-prone party full of arcane factional struggles, so who knows. In practice, the change in ideological line is probably not going to be as large as the Finnish media, which has been waiting for Social Democrats to take a step to the right and to becoming more “cooperative” with the neoliberal parties in government, expects.

ANTI-GOV’T DEMONSTRATION: While the racism scandal might have been “solved”, that didn’t prevent a vast demonstration against the government being organized on these grounds on Sunday. With over 10,000 participants (10.000 being the official number by the police, which tends to be a low estimate – the organizers themselves spoke of 30.000-40.000, though that seems unlikely), this is one of the bigger protests in Finland in recent memory.

It's almost ritualistic at this point for protests of such nature to draw condemnation for the tiny numbers of actual anarchists and communists present with their symbols. This time the most notable offender a banner by the former group – more precisely A-Ryhmä, which coordinates wider anarchist activities in the Helsinki area – stating (in Finnish) “If there’s something to be cut, let’s cut Petteri and Riikka’s heads”, referring to the new government’s austerity policies and the PM Petteri Orpo and Finance Minister Riikka Purra, the latter directly implicated in the racism scandal.

This slogan has a long history among Finnish anarchists, going back to the Great Recession of the early 90s and a punk song repeating the same exhortation for the then-Finance Minister Iiro Viinanen, the personification of that government’s hardline economic policy (and the idea of austerity in general, even today). Since then, banners repeating the line have featured in various demonstrations of the Katainen, Stubb and Sipilä governments.

The organizers – and the various lefty politicians and figures – were quick to condemn the banner as promoting violence. Whatever my opinions of this childish slogan are, it’s a surefire controversy attainer, and as such will almost certainly continue to feature in future protests, not that it will probably make the Finnish anarchist movement any stronger than it has been at any given point in history.

Radical movements have generally featured in last week’s news, as Kone Foundation (the Finnish equivalent of Ford Foundation etc. in terms of social status) gave a €200.000 grant to the Finnish branch of Extinction Rebellion (which promised to use it for *non*-illegal activities, the rebels that they are) while. In more serious affairs, perhaps demonstrating why people see giving an opening to racism as so dangerous, Bellingcat published a piece on a white nationalist summer camp in Southern Finland and the case of potential neo-Nazi terrorists planning race war moves to court.

In other news, a new law guaranteeing abortion on demand until 12 weeks (passed on a citizen’s initiative by the previous parliament) entered into force and President Niinistö celebrated his 75^th birthday with a walk in the center of Helsinki alongside with the Eurovision almost-winner Käärijä, among others.

Image: new SDP chair Antti Lindtman. Note that he hasn’t killed any cats, as far as I know.