There was no red wave, never mind a red tsunami, in the midterm elections in the United States. Defying the precedent of past elections, the Democrats gave the Republicans a beating they will not easily forget. What lessons can Finland learn from the US midterm elections?
For one, voters shunned extremist positions on issues like election denial, immigration, abortion, and civil rights.
If there are losers in Finland resulting from the US elections, it is, without a doubt, the Perussuomalaiset (PS)* party. We could compare it to the early 2010s when populist anti-immigration parties like the PS entered the major leagues of Finnish politics.
Everything was riding high for the PS until an Islamophobe mass murderer, Anders Breivik, killed 77 innocent people in Norway.
Watch Thursday’s parliamentary question-and-answer sessions if you want to watch “the crazies” lashing out whenever the PS candidates awoke by the magic term maahanmuutto (immigration). They go off the wall throwing their extremist spaghetti wherever it may stick.
Apart from the rejection of extremist Republican candidates, leadership was needed from other politicians to call out these crazies.
In September, President Joe Biden called the MAGA Republicans “semi-fascists.”
It is high time we do the same in Finland and call out these extremist politicians for what they are: fascists and a threat to democracy.
