The Finnish-language media: an instrument of transnational repression

There is a new expression going around: transnational repression. It means authoritarian or totalitarian governments silencing their critics even in other countries. Typically, critics thus stifled are émigrés from those authoritarian states, believing that in Western democracies they are free to say what they want about their country of origin. What happened to, say, Khashoggi, Litvinenko, or Skripal suggests that you can't rely on this anymore. However, my own story shows that even foreign nationals, living in their own countries, aren't free to find fault with how an authoritarian regime with few scruples about repression and state terror conducts their policies. I am thinking of Russia, obviously.

In 2006 I was recruited by a major Finnish-language news site so as to write polemical commentary to topical events. As soon as I wrote something critical about Russia, though, I was immediately attacked by the online lynch mobs of the extreme Right. When I pointed out the similarities between this kind of harassment and the way how Solzhenitsyn had been pestered by self-appointed "good citizens" in the years after Khrushchov's abdication as the leader of the Soviet Union (as described in his memoir The Oak and the Calf, one of my staple readings since my teenage years), I was obviously gaslighted by the very same online lynch mobs. People who were behaving exactly as those who pestered Solzhenitsyn called me a lunatic for what this online mob violence was bound to remind me of.

It became clear overnight that the extreme Right is fighting for Putin. But how did my media employer take it? They actually sided with the online lynch mobs. Earlier, my writings had similarly provoked left wing people and feminists, but then the employer's representatives had staunchly defended me and made it clear that whatever those groups demanded, they would not fire me.

But everything changed when it was the extreme Right - the alt-right, if you prefer - that targeted me. The occupational safety there had been until then, immediately vanished. The producer of the site actually told me "not to provoke them". But how the hell do you "not provoke" them, when they spread their crap even in the comments box of such blog articles that had no political content whatsoever? If I wrote a feelgood text about some nostalgic TV show from the eighties that was being rerun, the same online volunteers filled the comments box with entirely irrelevant racist crap.

What kind of racist crap, you ask? Well, for instance links to an online Finnish-language version of the now well-known extreme rightist screed "The Turner Diaries". Anyone who has read that screed knows that it is a neo-Nazi fantasy about America being overrun by the hate objects of the extreme right and about brave and courageous Nazi heroes fighting back, by killing and massacring children and other civilians. 

The extreme rightists who spread such links in my comments box went to complain to the producer of the site I was working for, because I conducted "censorship" of their "opinions" (i.e. deleted the link to "The Turner Diaries"). AND THE SITE I WROTE FOR WAS HAPPY TO COLLUDE WITH THEM, WITH PEOPLE WHO WERE SPREADING "THE TURNER DIARIES" IN MY COMMENTS BOX, AGAINST ME, THEIR EMPLOYEE. So, basically Finnish has turned into a "Turner Diaries" kind of language. It's OK to link to the Finnish version of the "Turner Diaries" in Finnish mainstream media. It is not OK to try to block such links.

It is also important to note that when I was attacked especially furiously in the comments box of a certain blog post, and closed the comments, I still got one extreme rightist comment. This was only possible if there was an alt-right infiltrator in the publishing company that maintained the site, one who was able to reopen the comments for his or her own addition.

You could think that somebody who has no difficulty writing jargon-free literary Finnish, speaks seven languages and reads news material in several other ones would be a valuable asset for any news media? Well it seems I wasn't. And a friend of mine who dared to stand up to right-wing propaganda and fact-check its statements wasn't, either. The guy speaks fluent French and Spanish, two languages which aren't widely spoken or studied in Finland; moreover he has experience in peacekeeping in Afghanistan and probably has some idea of Dari and Pashtu too. He, a more experienced journalist than I, was similarly excluded from writing in Finnish - because he had irritated the voluntary online troops of the extremist Right. I think I am allowed to see a pattern here. 

In these nine (and counting...) years after my seven-year stint as a paid online columnist, I have not been able to publish one single line in Finnish outside this blog, be it online or in print media. Not even about stuff I am practically the only person to have a scholarly understanding of, i.e. the Irish language. It is quite telling that two short stories I have written in that language have been published online, on the web pages of the Museum of Literature Ireland, as some of "the very best of modern short fiction in Irish". So, basically what I write in my seventh language - Irish - is said to be "some of the very best of modern fiction" in that language, while I am being ghosted by every single publishing venue in my native language.

What about publishing in domestic minority languages, then? Well, actually I have been able to see my stuff in print in Finland - in Swedish. I don't really have any difficulties getting my scholarly essays about Celtic languages or modern Russian literature printed. Had there been objective quality reasons to exclude me as a Finnish-language writer, most probably I couldn't have been published in these other languages either. So, this is about political persecution by the Finnish alt-right, and the whole spectrum of Finnish-language publications and publishing houses is more than happy colluding with the persecutors.

But I was speaking about transnational repression. Well, the alt-right online battalions did not target me before I suggested - and I was the first ever media voice in Finland to make that suggestion - that right-wing extremists and racists might be cooperating with Russia. It was only then I was targeted. 

Moreover, if there was an ideological undercurrent to what I wrote, it was the attempt of making traditional Finnish patriotism more palatable for left wingers and immigrants. When I started writing my columns, certain old-school militarist patriots actually liked my opinions and understood just fine what I was about: the revival of the Winter War spirit. But the alt-rightists are not old-school patriots. They are spreading an international hate ideology which has nothing in common with our traditional patriotism. Actually, they could not care less about Finland's national interest. As it turned out, they were more interested in Russian national interest.

(wait for continuation...)