In its most ridiculous and recent publication, The Security Committee, a collaboration of anonymous experts under the control of the Finnish Ministry of Defence, has issued a stark warning over the Russian influence that will stop at nothing to disrupt Finnish democracy. Under the veil anonymity, the report and its writers suggest that Russia, in this case Kremlin, would even resort to assassination and sabotage in order to thwart the Finnish democracy and undermine people’s trust to the local and international institutions such as EU and NATO.
This would mean that a mere critical word not including full blown hate speech would indeed make you a Russian operative in the eyes of the state. Unfortunately many politicians and some reporters have come strongly against this report and even the current President Sauli Niinistö, currently running for a second term as an independent candidate, undermines or even ridicules these extravagant claims that the report has issued. This intervention by the President lead to a column in local major daily Helsingin Sanomat that accused the otherwise pro-West President of being a facilitator of the assumed Russian goals by sowing confusion with his words that contradicted the expert report.
Hybrid warfare is a hot topic in Finland and recently an international cooperation set up a pro-West propaganda unit to tackle the threat of misinformation and information warfare. So far it’s been much ado about nothing but it has helped the authority to chill the forum of discussion by insinuating that everybody who disagrees with the govt and media chosen truth narrative is a divergent, Putin-fan.
Ever since the coup in Kiev in winter 2014, information war has ravaged the Finnish minds cape and pro-NATO narrative is being protected by all means. In Finland, I have to say that unfortunately people are still gullible and tend to prefer authoritative television stations and newspapers as preferred source of trustworthy news but little by little, this overwhelming dominance is crumbling and the reliable and trustworthy media does everything it can to belittle, besmirch and smear any and all of the rising citizen media sources foreign and domestic by labelling them as ‘fake news’. Finland is a de facto American puppet state.
Trolls and elves aside, even though part of the Finnish pagan heritage, psychological warfare is becoming unreliable and ludicrous. They cannot achieve their goals in open debate and they are doing everything to try to staunch the discussion. Social media and online forums are a blessing and although the thought policing policy is starting to kick in, the pandora’s box has been opened. The mass exodus of immigrants and asylum seekers has made many Finns wary of govt motives and revelations of ventures of crony capitalism and profiteering on the govt contracts makes many see red. Many see that EU is descending full speed into a totalitarian Soviet Union like central government that wants to control reality.
The little green men are coming for you. If you don’t believe this, then the men with white lab coats will be escorting you to more comfortable premises.