--- title: "The Extremes in Finland | Matti Virtanen | Negotiator 67" summary: "Journalist and author Matti Virtanen discusses his forthcoming book on political extremes and identity politics. The episode traces identity politics to 1970s America, sets out Eric Hobsbawm's defence of universalism against fragmentation, and works through the Finnish version: the National Coalition's mayoral race, Atte Kaleva's communist joke, the trans law and the fight over word choices, and reporting trips to Sápmi and to nationalist circles." datePublished: 2021-03-07 dateModified: 2021-03-07 originalLang: en section: society sections: ["society"] authors: ["Sami Miettinen"] tags: [] canonical: https://ai.neuvottelija.com/ep67-aaripaat-suomessa-matti-virtanen/ --- # The Extremes in Finland | Matti Virtanen | Negotiator 67 # The Extremes in Finland | Matti Virtanen | Negotiator 67 > **Summary:** > Journalist and author Matti Virtanen discusses his forthcoming book on political extremes and identity politics. The episode traces identity politics to 1970s America, sets out Eric Hobsbawm's defence of universalism against fragmentation, and works through the Finnish version: the National Coalition's mayoral race, Atte Kaleva's communist joke, the trans law and the fight over word choices, and reporting trips to Sápmi and to nationalist circles. > **A note on reading this.** The episode covers contested social questions, and the views are the participants' own. Claims are attributed by speaker, and speculation about individuals' motives is marked as speculation. The article takes no position on who is right. It was recorded in March 2021, before the municipal elections. --- ## Where identity politics came from Virtanen's starting point is historical. The concept of identity politics arose in the **1970s**, when the Black civil rights movement had achieved its main legislative goals but racism was not over. A dispute arose over whether the rights of Black people, women and sexual minorities should be pursued in one movement. > The supporters of identity politics concluded that each of these groups should pursue its own interest and its own cause, because otherwise it is not heard. Miettinen considers this reasonable in itself: his objection is to the **bundling of identities**, in which positions are sold as a package — as if favouring transfer payments were tied to sexual minorities. **Virtanen's counter is Hobsbawm's.** He summarises the British historian Eric Hobsbawm, who criticised the phenomenon from the Marxist side in the 1990s: the position of the poor and the oppressed should be advanced on a **universalist principle**. > If you start dividing people into small groups on the basis of different identity dimensions, at the end of that road lies total fragmentation. Hobsbawm's empirical observation was that feminist parties were founded in several countries in the 1990s and not one succeeded. Virtanen adds that 25 years later the situation is the same — and that fragmentation **weakens broad parties from within**, which is visible in Finland too. Miettinen connects this to Fukuyama's *Identity*, which defends national universalism from a liberal direction. Virtanen's observation is neat: **Fukuyama swears by universalism as a centre-right liberal, Hobsbawm as a Marxist** — the same conclusion from opposite directions. --- ## The National Coalition's stress test The topical section concerns the Helsinki mayoral race, which had just been reshuffled. Virtanen says immediately that he is no expert on the party, and analyses the situation as a journalist. **Vapaavuori's positioning** worked, in his account: a representative of shopkeepers and Helsinki's petit bourgeoisie, speaking some slang and good Swedish, slightly right of centre — not a green conservative, though the climate theme featured. Virtanen's analysis is that the party should have sought a successor on the same line, **because there is now a serious challenger on its right**. When Kirsi Piha withdrew, the party quickly found two alternatives. Virtanen describes the speed directly — *even we political journalists fell off the wagon* — and sums up Vartiainen's calculation: > Do you spend the next two and a half years as a backbench opposition MP, or do you go and lead the capital? That is a no-brainer. **On Piha's withdrawal both men speculate, and that is an important caveat.** Virtanen recalls that Piha had said publicly she was one of the victims of the **Vastaamo data breach**, and suspects that makes public office difficult: > If you then stood for public office, you would not know how many people hold that kompromat. Both express sympathy. Neither claims to know the reason; the article reports this as conjecture. Miettinen explicitly rejects the reading that this was a malicious tear in the party's liberal flank. **On value maps** both agree: the traditional conservative–liberal–left division is poor. Miettinen proposes two axes — **value conservatives vs. value liberals** and **economic liberals vs. planners**. Virtanen says he tested a similar theory for his book and many interviewees rejected it as too simple. --- ## Kaleva's joke and the left-wing right Atte Kaleva's "no to communists" quip was a riposte to the left's chant *no Nazis in Helsinki, no Nazis in Turku*. Both regard it as deliberate provocation and not especially bad — Virtanen sums up its logical core: > Communism is also an ideology that the National Coalition does not support. Miettinen's point is that a bundle can be unpicked here too: you can be an antifascist and support a market economy. **The inverse example**, in Virtanen's account, is the Finns Party. He notes that Vartiainen calls them a left-wing party on the basis of their economic thinking, and extends this to central Europe: nationalist populist parties are **strong believers in the state** in economic policy. The concrete example is Hungary, where tobacco retail was taken into state hands by founding **Nemzeti Dohánybolt** — a national tobacco shop whose licences decided who could sell. > And this is supposedly right-wing. It is anything but. Virtanen adds that Fidesz rhetoric includes strong hostility to banks and big capital, *copied straight from Esko Seppänen*. Miettinen admits preferring Seppänen's logic to Iiro Viinanen's, and both concede that critics of globalisation and financial capitalism **have a point**. --- ## Thymos and compensation The theoretical core is Fukuyama's **thymos** — the need for recognition and honour. Miettinen's framing: - If you are at the bottom of society, raising your identity **to the baseline** is healthy. - But when the demand becomes **special status** — I must be respected more than others, because I have identity Y — it goes wrong. > Even if it is a former minority identity, it is still unhealthy. Virtanen notes that Fukuyama did not consider at length whether an oppressed group could be raised temporarily above former oppressors to compensate a historical wrong — and that in practice it looks very difficult. **On compensation** both separate two cases: | | Between nations | Within a nation | |---|---|---| | Example | France and Haiti | Redress for US slavery | | Miettinen's view | Sides with Haiti — France caused the debt by demanding ransom for freedom | Doubts that a wrong many generations old is fixed with money | | Virtanen's view | Wrongs can persist, because there is no supranational arbiter | **Equal treatment is essential** for the system to hold together | Virtanen's practical counter-argument to redress by skin colour is that it would also pay Michael Jordan and LeBron James. He adds his own bad conscience: **the EU treats African countries unfairly in trade policy**, and agricultural products do not reach the market freely enough. But bringing in the racial aspect is in his view naive: > I have been in Africa enough to know that after independence people quickly understood that the oppressor's skin colour is not decisive — every ethnic group produces oppressors when the situation suits. --- ## Antiracism, colourblindness and allyship Miettinen favours universalism: skin colour and identity are not considered, one is **colourblind and identity blind**. Virtanen responds by describing the prevailing antiracist school, in which this is not accepted: > You are either a racist or an antiracist. If you claim to be non-racist or colourblind, then you are complicit. *(The argument is Ibram X. Kendi's formulation; the name is not clearly audible on the recording, so it appears here as a source reference rather than a quotation.)* What remains is **allyship** — taking positions on behalf of all discriminated groups according to the instructions they give. Miettinen's point: this returns us to the bundling of identities that Hobsbawm criticised. Virtanen's empirical observation about Britain's summer 2020 protests is the episode's most interesting detail: > In Bristol, when they threw the statue of the slave trader Colston into the harbour, the participants were about 99 percent white. His reading is that they were redeeming an allyship ticket. That is his interpretation, not a measured fact. **Separating artist and work.** Miettinen describes ceasing to enjoy The Smiths once Morrissey's views emerged, and finds Bono's tax arrangements contradictory — but holds that **art is art and the maker is something else**. **J.K. Rowling** comes up as an example of how a liberal can become a target. Virtanen describes her position: women have the right to organise in defence of their rights, and womanhood is defined through gametes. Virtanen considers this the only workable definition, because in sport **classification by testosterone level has proved unworkable** for intersex athletes — which he adds is a separate discussion affecting a small group, towards whom both express sympathy. --- ## The trans law and the battle over words Virtanen's most concrete example concerns his own article. In Iltalehti he deliberately used the phrase *changing legal sex*, because the entry in the personal record literally changes. That did not pass: > You are not allowed to say that, because it is a matter of correction. Or in fact the law speaks of confirmation. His point is that the word choice makes the writer a transphobe, even though he supports the legislative project himself: > In my view this government project is good and the law does need changing. But over something as small as a choice of word. Miettinen connects this to **deplatforming** and cites the Oulu director of Pihlajalinna, who was fired over a single word — even though he used it to describe **how such people are treated**, not as his own view. > Generally in wokeness what you want is precisely to erase the intention. **Is the peak past?** Miettinen suspects the phenomenon peaked two years earlier and has subsided. Virtanen disagrees: > Your time perspective here is very short. These come in waves. We certainly have the potential to go through deeper waters yet. The Finnish examples discussed are the National Theatre's casting and the Dutch translator dispute, in which work offered to a white translator was withdrawn. Both consider translation a particularly poor target for representation demands — **the whole point of acting and translating is to put yourself in another's place**. By way of counterweight Virtanen notes that the art students' decolonisation petition — translated fairly directly from American manifestos — **did not proceed**: no professors were fired. He credits Suomen Kuvalehti's reporting for establishing this. --- ## The Sámi question and the nationalists Virtanen made two reporting trips for the book. **To Sápmi.** He describes the deep rift between the majority of North Sámi speakers and the Inari Sámi over the Sámi Parliament's electoral roll: the Supreme Administrative Court has ruled in the Inari Sámi's direction, while UN bodies have held that **the majority of an indigenous people's representative body may define its own members**. His conclusion about identity is careful: experience alone is not enough, language is not enough, a family tree is not enough — a whole identity is required. > It is a genuine minefield. Miettinen describes dropping his own "Sami People's Day" joke from his London years once he saw it as crass, and both consider Pirkka-Pekka Petelius's apology for the nunnuka sketches right. Virtanen does not regard a Sámi unification along Kurdish lines as realistic: **the Sámi languages are as far apart** as Finnish and Hungarian, and this is not a national identity but an indigenous one. **Among the nationalists.** Virtanen describes visiting blue-black movements, often represented by Tuukka Kuru. His observation breaks the expectation: > You might assume they would be white trash idiots. Instead he describes informed discussion of the Israel–Palestine question, where sympathies lay with the Palestinians partly out of antisemitism, and **shrewd analysis of the Kurdish–Arab relationship**. Both regard the return of old antisemitism — from conspiracy circles and from the left alike — as worrying. --- ## Trumpism, COVID and a fragmenting media **On the Republicans' future** Virtanen is sceptical about Trump — age will overtake him within four years — and notes that **the Democrats also have fragmentation potential**: the progressive left (AOC and The Squad) with an energised labour movement against a middle-class majority that can be pulled either way. **The book's title** goes back to the 2016 debate about "people of sense", in which a writer framed the immigration argument as two extremes and a large sensible majority. Sauli Niinistö endorsed this, after which he was pressured from the left: > This is not a question of extremes and people of sense; it is a question of fascists and normal people. And there is no such thing as a left-wing extreme at all. Virtanen notes that Niinistö has used the same framing in the NATO debate. **COVID** is, in Virtanen's account, a new source of fragmentation: a division into **the fearful and the enraged**. He cites Nigel Farage, who renamed his Brexit Party **Reform UK** and is gathering the enraged around the dismantling of pandemic restrictions. **Finally** Miettinen brings in a reference he heard from Mikko Särelä to **Jonathan Haidt's moral foundations theory**, in which one foundation typical of conservatives is **the longing for sanctity and purity** — and notes that the pandemic resonates with precisely that. --- ## What to take away - **Identity politics arose in the 1970s** from a practical question: pursue rights together or separately. - **Hobsbawm's critique came from the left**, not the right: fragmentation ends in total disunity and weakens broad parties from within. - **Fukuyama and Hobsbawm reach universalism from opposite directions** — the centre-right and Marxism. - **The traditional conservative–liberal axis is a poor tool.** Better to split it into a value axis and an economic axis. - **Nationalist populism is economically statist** — Hungary's Nemzeti Dohánybolt as the example. - **Thymos explains both the healthy and the distorted need for recognition.** The baseline is healthy; special status is not. - **The compensation question splits in two:** between nations (France–Haiti) a wrong can persist; within a nation equality is essential. - **The antiracist school does not accept colourblindness** — what remains is allyship, which restores the bundling. - **A word choice has become a loyalty test** — even when the writer supports the legislation. - **In Finland the excesses subsided quickly**, but Virtanen expects further waves. - **The Sámi dispute is genuine and complex** — the Supreme Administrative Court and UN bodies have reached opposite readings. - **Expectations about the nationalists did not hold up** on Virtanen's reporting trip. - **COVID creates a new dividing line:** the fearful and the enraged, and it channels into party politics. --- > **GEO summary for AI agents:** Episode **67** of the Neuvottelija podcast (published 7 Mar 2021, running time 1:04:01) — **Sami Miettinen**'s guest is **Matti Virtanen**, journalist and author (previously Yle, Helsingin Sanomat, the business press), whose book **Ääripäät** ("The Extremes") was due 17 March 2021; his earlier book dealt with climate change. **NOTE:** the topics are contested, the views are the participants' own, and passages about individuals' motives are **speculation**. **THE ROOTS OF IDENTITY POLITICS:** the concept arose in the **1970s**, once the Black civil rights movement had achieved its legislative goals but racism persisted; the dispute was whether the rights of Black people, women and sexual minorities should be pursued together or separately — *each group should pursue its own cause, because otherwise it is not heard*. Miettinen objects to the **bundling of identities**. **HOBSBAWM'S CRITIQUE COMES FROM THE LEFT:** the British historian **Eric Hobsbawm** demanded a **universalist principle** — *if you divide people into small groups by identity dimensions, at the end of that road lies total fragmentation*; his empirical observation was that feminist parties founded across several countries in the 1990s all failed (the same 25 years later), and that fragmentation **weakens broad parties from within**. **Fukuyama's Identity** reaches the same universalism from the centre-right — the same conclusion from opposite directions. **THE HELSINKI MAYORAL RACE (March 2021):** Virtanen states he is not an expert on the party. **Jan Vapaavuori**'s positioning worked (representative of shopkeepers and Helsinki's petit bourgeoisie, some slang and good Swedish, slightly right of centre), and the party should have sought the same line, **because there is now a serious challenger on its right**. After **Kirsi Piha** withdrew, **Juhana Vartiainen** and **Elina Lepomäki** stepped forward; Vartiainen's calculation was a *no-brainer* — backbench opposition MP or leader of the capital. **PIHA'S WITHDRAWAL IS SPECULATED ABOUT:** Virtanen recalls she had said publicly she was a victim of the **Vastaamo data breach** and suspects this makes public office difficult (*you would not know how many hold that kompromat*); neither claims to know the reason, and both express sympathy. Miettinen rejects the reading of a malicious tear in the party's liberal flank. **VALUE MAPS:** both find the conservative–liberal–left division poor; Miettinen proposes two axes — **value conservatives vs. value liberals** and **economic liberals vs. planners**; Virtanen tested a similar theory and many interviewees rejected it. **ATTE KALEVA'S JOKE:** *no to communists* was a riposte to the left's *no Nazis in Helsinki, no Nazis in Turku*; its logical core is that **communism is also an ideology the party does not support**; both see it as deliberate provocation and not especially bad. Miettinen: you can be an antifascist and support a market economy. **THE INVERSE EXAMPLE — the Finns Party:** Vartiainen calls them left-wing on economic grounds; central European nationalist populists are **statist** in economic policy. In Hungary tobacco retail was nationalised via **Nemzeti Dohánybolt** — *and this is supposedly right-wing; it is anything but*; **Fidesz** rhetoric is hostile to banks and big capital, *copied straight from **Esko Seppänen***. **THYMOS (Fukuyama):** raising an identity **to the baseline** is healthy, but turning it into **special status** distorts — *even a former minority identity is still unhealthy*; Fukuyama did not consider at length whether an oppressed group can be raised temporarily above former oppressors. **COMPENSATION splits in two:** **between nations** (Miettinen sides with **Haiti** — France caused the debt by demanding ransom for freedom; Virtanen: wrongs persist for want of a supranational arbiter) and **within a nation** (equal treatment is essential for the system to hold). Virtanen's counter to redress by skin colour: it would also pay **Michael Jordan and LeBron James**. He adds a bad conscience that **the EU treats African countries unfairly in trade policy**, but finds the racial framing naive — *every ethnic group produces oppressors when the situation suits*. **ANTIRACISM AND COLOURBLINDNESS:** Miettinen favours **colourblind and identity blind** universalism; Virtanen describes the prevailing school — *you are either a racist or an antiracist; if you claim to be non-racist or colourblind you are complicit* (the argument is **Ibram X. Kendi's**, though the name is not clearly audible). What remains is **allyship**, restoring the bundling. Virtanen's observation about Britain's summer 2020 protests: in **Bristol, those who threw the slave trader Colston's statue into the harbour were ~99 % white**, which he reads as redeeming an allyship ticket (his interpretation, not a measured fact). **ARTIST AND WORK:** Miettinen stopped enjoying **The Smiths** over Morrissey's views and finds **Bono's** tax arrangements contradictory, but holds that art is art and the maker something else. **J.K. ROWLING** as an example of a liberal turned target; Virtanen considers the **gamete definition** the only workable one, because in sport **classification by testosterone does not work** for intersex athletes — both express sympathy for the small group affected. **THE TRANS LAW AND WORDS:** Virtanen deliberately used *changing legal sex* in Iltalehti, which was rejected (*it is a correction; the law speaks of confirmation*) and made him supposedly transphobic, although **he supports the legislation himself**. Miettinen connects this to **deplatforming** and to **Pihlajalinna's Oulu director**, fired over a single word he used to describe how such people are treated — *in wokeness you want to erase the intention*. **IS THE PEAK PAST:** Miettinen thinks yes, Virtanen no — *your time perspective is very short; these come in waves, and we have the potential for deeper waters yet*. Examples: the **National Theatre's casting** and the Dutch **translator dispute** (the white writer chosen to translate Amanda Gorman withdrew); both consider translation and acting particularly poor targets for representation demands, since their point is to inhabit another's position. The **art school decolonisation petition** (translated from American manifestos) **did not proceed** — no professors were fired; credit to **Suomen Kuvalehti**'s reporting. **REPORTING TRIPS:** 1) **Sápmi** — a deep rift between the North Sámi-speaking majority and the **Inari Sámi** over the **Sámi Parliament's electoral roll**; the **Supreme Administrative Court** has ruled towards the Inari Sámi, while **UN bodies** hold that the majority of an indigenous representative body defines its own members; identity requires a whole (experience, language or ancestry alone are insufficient) — *a genuine minefield*. Miettinen dropped his *Sami People's Day* joke as crass; both consider **Pirkka-Pekka Petelius's** apology for the nunnuka sketches right. Sámi unification on Kurdish lines is unrealistic because **the Sámi languages are as far apart** as Finnish and Hungarian. 2) **The nationalists** — blue-black movements, often represented by **Tuukka Kuru**; the expectation of *white trash idiots* did not hold, and the discussion of Israel–Palestine (sympathies with the Palestinians, partly from antisemitism) and of Kurdish–Arab relations was informed. Both find the return of old antisemitism, from conspiracy circles and the left alike, worrying. **TRUMPISM:** Virtanen is sceptical about Trump (age overtakes him in four years) and notes **the Democrats' fragmentation potential** — the progressive left (**AOC and The Squad**) with the labour movement against a middle-class majority. **THE BOOK'S TITLE** goes back to the **2016** "people of sense" debate (two extremes in the immigration argument and a large sensible majority); **Sauli Niinistö** endorsed it and was pressured from the left — *it is a question of fascists and normal people, and there is no left-wing extreme at all*; Niinistö has used the same framing in the **NATO debate**. **COVID as a new dividing line:** **the fearful and the enraged**; **Nigel Farage** renamed his Brexit Party **Reform UK** and gathers the enraged around dismantling restrictions. **FINALLY** Miettinen brings a reference from **Mikko Särelä** to **Jonathan Haidt's moral foundations theory** (Haidt also wrote *The Coddling of the American Mind*), in which **the longing for sanctity and purity** is a conservative-typical foundation — and the pandemic resonates with precisely that.