New Ovi & 6d online
This news is a bit old but everyone’s favorite e-zine, “The Ovi“, released this month’s issue – their topic this issue, “promises”. Also, everyone’s favorite magazine to complain about, “6-Degrees“, released their latest issue. Here’s another funny excerpt…
During the 1960s and 1970s, SKP (the Communist Party of Finland) was the third largest Communist Party in Europe, after those of France and Italy. SKP had about 50,000 card-carrying members, while SKDL, the electoral alliance that comprised the Communists and everyone left of the Social Democrats, pulled in about one fifth of the popular vote.
To the casual observer of today’s neoliberal Finnish politics, there is virtually no trace of this radical past.
LOL! The European left’s constant labeling of everything as “neoliberal” is just as comical as the American right’s accusations of “communism” to anything left of center.
Here we once again have a funny definition of “Europe”. There were also bigger communist parties than SKP in the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania. SKP was, truthfully, a significant party in WESTERN European standards.
Phil, I liked your comment in the end, you put it exactly as it is! And even neoliberalism beats communism every day. Except for some great music taistoites and their allies produced in the 1970s, there’s however little to nostalgize about them. And what radical is there in getting allied with geriatric Russians with disastrous ideas and demand nationalization of banks and so on?
I wonder who would our leaders today be had Finland been a so-called people’s democracy. I can imagine Lipponen and the like as post-communist leaders. Björn Wahlroos would be a business tycoon as he is nowadays anyway, but then he was also a taistoite for a short time in the 70s. Talk about mutiny against Daddy if your daddy is a high-ranking state official with Napoleon as one of his given names.
MM
Comment by Moral minority? — Fri, May 26th, 2006 @ 7:10 pm
Heh, Björn Wahlroos was pretty funny in some short interview from the beginning of the 70’s with his long hair and Aki & Turo outfit. I think he was doing some left-wing newspaper with Leif Salmén at the time. I kind of miss Lefa’s mulquist act in YLE’s election debates…
Comment by Antti (the redneck one) — Fri, May 26th, 2006 @ 7:23 pm
So what is Vasemmistoliitto then? I still remember when they decided to abandon the name Kommunistipuolue and form “a new party”.
Comment by press — Fri, May 26th, 2006 @ 8:36 pm
There is nothing left, because their children burned Makasiinit four weeks ago. (JOKE)
70´s radicals in Finland were not anarchists, because they were disciplined Soviet style commies. Some of them sit in our Parliament today.
Comment by jormanen — Fri, May 26th, 2006 @ 10:57 pm
This isn’t Phil, its Hank(ER)
Comment by Anonymous — Fri, May 26th, 2006 @ 10:59 pm
Moral minority is right. What was so vanguard of the taistoites to support the anti-democratic politics of the corrupt Soviet leadership?
Perhaps, it was the cool thing to do back then. But, how could people support that crap.
Which taistoites have become famous business leaders/politicians today?
Comment by Peter — Sat, May 27th, 2006 @ 2:23 pm
I think few of them are really in the business (Wahlroos being the great exception although it must be stressed he was never a great taistoite) and most of the Vasemmistoliitto group in the Parliament are former taistoites even today. Former taistoites, however, are the strongest in the media and cultural life, i.e. as opinion builders. It’s interesting to see what has become of them. Some keep drumming the old line (Esko-Juhani Tennilä), some are plain normal and some want to serve whichever foreign master is ‘in’ at the moment (Matti Viialainen, former taistoite who changed his loyalties from Moscow to Brussels).
Does anybody else wonder how Alexander Stubb would have behaved in the 70s. Would he have been the staunchest supporter of YYA instead of EU as he is now?
MM
Comment by Moral minority? — Sat, May 27th, 2006 @ 10:08 pm
I always found the media in Finland – not only concentrated – but also generally leftward biased, and particularly not very much into investigative journalism.
Is investigative journalism actually practiced in Finland?
Comment by Peter — Sun, May 28th, 2006 @ 3:41 am
What is it about Stubb (apart from his pro EU can do no wrong views) that makes me want to punch his smug face each time I see it in a newspaper. Reading his dire column when flying Finnair also makes one near to rage with its faux chummyness…
Little poppinjay.
Comment by Hugh Janus — Tue, May 30th, 2006 @ 10:41 am
“Is investigative journalism actually practiced in Finland?”
Hahahaha… well there is an alleged veneer but nothing like you will get in other countries.
Comment by Hugh Janus — Tue, May 30th, 2006 @ 10:43 am