David Mac Dougall about press freedom: Is Finland sleepwalking into Orbanisation? "Crucial moment for Orpo"

What did I do wrong? I published a fairly straight-forward story on 20 June when the new government was being sworn in, looking at the backgrounds of Minister for Economic Affairs Vilhelm Junnila, and the new Speaker of Parliament Jussi Halla-aho. 

To be honest, nothing was new. It had all been reported before. I wrote a list of the crimes for which Halla-aho had been convicted by the Supreme Court and mentioned his many vile blog posts - a Helsingin Sanomat article from 2019 had laid everything out in a convenient list which I just had to match up with court records and Halla-aho's own his own writing to verify.

As for Junnila, the information about him for my article was out there already, well-documented in online videos, photographs and social media. 

I've been to quite a few extremist rallies in Finland, from Soldiers of Odin to Nordic Resistance Movement to report on them, but there's also a network of researchers and concerned citizens who make it their business to track the extreme right, who had also documented many of the issues which became Junnila's downfall.    

So where did the threats come from? Mostly they seemed to be Perussuomalainen supporters at first. 

But then increasingly people who identified as Kokoomus voters got involved, angered it seems, by my original article - which had been translated into seven other European languages by Euronews at this time - linking the PS minister to the Orpo government and highlighting that it becomes a reputational and public relations problem for the prime minister.

Foreign media quickly took an interest as well with newspapers in France, Germany, Switzerland, the UK, Israel, Sweden and other countries picking up on just how problematic it is to have a far-right party in government when ministers have a long and open track record of flirting with extremism, and spreading conspiracies like the Great Replacement Theory - something SUPO has said is a threat to the security of Finland.

As someone who has covered Finnish politics extensively over 12 years living in the country - including interviewing presidential candidates and party leaders through three election cycles on MTV Uutiset - the most worrying thing for me is how Finland seems to be sleepwalking into Orbanisation: where journalists are discredited on a personal level by the government parties, when they can't dispute the facts.

One Kokoomus parliamentary assistant said I was well-known for my left-wing sympathies. Other prominent Kokoomus voices echoed those comments. (For what it's worth, and it's really nobody's business, I've voted in several European and Municipal elections in Finland but never for a left-wing party).

Other journalists this week have had Kokoomus and Persut MPs trying to discredit them personally, rather than finding fault with their work. 

And this perhaps explains why so many Finnish journalists hesitate to write about the right-wing because of the storm of personal criticism it can bring. Yle's Paris reporter even got attacked merely for sharing an article from Le Monde.

In one case I got a threat of blackmail from an activist. The same person stalked Sanna Marin to Teatteri nightclub late last summer and took video of her, which he leaked to a tabloid newspaper in Finland and tried to sell to the Daily Mail in the UK. 

They offered it to me too, hours before it went viral, and I mention this merely to offer a snapshot of how twisted Finnish politics has become for some people.

We see even in the last few days Kokoomus politicians saying that reputable journalists spread lies and rumours; or engaging in 'whataboutism' along the lines of "sure, our political partners did terrible things but what about this thing that a left-wing politician said or did five years ago?"

What Finland needs is strong leadership to halt this slide into Orbanisation. 

It needs a strong prime minister - Petteri Orpo has been shockingly mute in the last two weeks - who can control his party, his MPs and his staff, who respects journalists and academics and experts and stands up for freedom of the press. 

This is a crucial moment for Orpo to prove he can be that leader.

As a side note, almost all the abusive messages I was receiving stopped when Vilhelm Junnila quit his post. It's almost as if the abuse was never about disputing the facts of my work as a journalist, but instead about trying to smear and discredit the messenger all along.
 

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