The Finnish Parliamentary Elections: Mixed Blessings for the Far Right

The Finnish parliamentary elections on 2 April saw the votes shift heavily towards the right. The biggest winner was the moderate right National Coalition Party (Kokoomus), with 48 seats (gain +10) in the new parliament. The second largest group is the far-right Finns Party (Perussuomalaiset), a right-wing radical organisation, closely resembling the Sweden Democrats or the Alternative für Deutschland, with 46 seats (gain +7). The third place went to the party of the current prime minister, the Social Democrats (Sosiaalidemokraatit), with 43 seats (gain +3).

The major losers where the Center, with 23 seats (loss -8), the Greens with 13 seats (loss -7) and the Left Alliance with 11 seats (loss -5), all coalition partners of the Social Democrats in the current government. (The Finnish parliament has a total of 200 seats. Note that minor adjustments in the seat count may still occur, pending a recount of the votes.)

The Finns Party

These numbers already make one important point regarding the overall dynamics of the far right in Finland. There was an overall tendency among voters to lend their support to one of the three largest parties, the moderate right, the moderate left, or the far right. This trend served all three main representatives of these blocs well. It certainly underscores the fact that the Finns Party remains the only credible channel to political power for the far right in Finland.

But that is not the whole story. Behind the major players, a number of far-right parties were vying for support. All of them can trace their family history to the Finns Party, and most of them also to the ravages of the lockdown months during the Covid-19 pandemic. Much of the membership of the minor far-right parties are among that great mass of people, who first started flowing into the Finns Party when radicalised by lockdown and the mass vaccination campaign. They then flowed out of it again once their hopes of gaining major positions within the party establishment were thrashed at the 2021 Finns Party conference. To the right of the Finns Party formed a growing, confusing, and endemically infighting jungle of new minuscule anti-establishment parties, which were now tested in a general election, many for the first time.

The Finnish far-right fringe

And, probably for many, the last as well. The most successful of them in this election was the Liberty Alliance (Vapauden Liitto). This is a climate- and vaccination denialist, pro-Russia outfit, and much of its membership, including the current chair, are outcasts and drifters from the Finns Party. The Liberty Alliance saw its top candidate gather a mere 2129 votes, which is nowhere close enough to the election threshold for a small party, without any candidates able to attract voters in significant numbers.

Another attempt was made by Power Belongs to People (Valta Kuuluu Kansalle), the only minor far-right party with representation in the outgoing parliament. This is due to the fact that the sole MP of the party, Ano Turtiainen, was originally elected on a Finns Party mandate. He then drifted into internal conflicts, increasingly aggressive behaviour, and racist rhetoric, to the degree that even the Finns Party leadership began to see him as a liability rather than an asset. This absurd one-MP setup combined an extreme pro-Russian stance with heavily eschatological Christian rhetoric, and limped on until this election finally ensured the party will have no more representation in the Finnish parliament.

The most radical of the minor far-right parties to seek an electoral breakthrough this year is the Blue-Black Movement, an openly fascist setup which consciously uses the symbolic blue and black colours of the 1930’s Finnish fascist movements. In their rhetoric they combine the themes of white genocide and white supremacy, antisemitism, and Great Replacement theory. The leadership and candidates of the party have backgrounds in the youth organisation of the Finns Party, as well as the Finnish chapter of the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement. The election results predictably left them with a very small share of votes, 321 for the party chair - not even a start. Then again, the rationale for the existence of this organisation lies not in getting someone elected, but in continuing the activities of the banned Finnish chapter of the Nordic Resistance Movement under the mantle of a legal political party.

Prospects

All these marginal far-right party organisations are beset by the same problem: they are essentially only competing against the most successful and stable modern Finnish far-right outfit, the Finns Party. Outside of that outsized model of success, there are no prospects for competitors. To reach some kind of electoral success from this basic premise is truly an uphill battle. Add to this the usual tendency of fringe movements towards organisational feebleness, instability and infighting, and it is clear why the Finns Party will have little to fear from its far-right competitors.

For the Finnish far right in general, the election brought no fundamental changes. Their fortunes will continue to be tightly tied to the star of the Finns Party. The far-right grouplets outside of, but dependent on the Finns Party, will perform multiple services to the mainstream far right. But, the minor parties also stand to gain something from this arrangement. The public rhetoric of the Finns Party, with its constant overtones of authoritarianism and racism, will continue to maintain a political climate which also benefits the far-right fringe.

Their continued existence is probably something that the Finns Party leadership welcomes in any case. At the cost of a few lost votes, the lunatic fringe makes for a neat contrast to which the Finns Party can always refer to. The true radicals and extremists can be said to be on the outside, and as a sign of the Finns Party supposedly growing respectability, they have removed those people from their party. What they will fail to mention is that it is the Finns Party which has served as a gateway to existence for almost all of these parties in the first place. There was a time when such people were needed to bolster the ranks of the Finns Party. But now, as the breakthrough into the political mainstream seems to have succeeded, they have no place in the mother party anymore.