True Finns and Non-True Finns: The Minority Rights Discourse of Populist Politics in Finland

ABSTRACT

This article analyses minority rights discourse in statements of the populist radical right party called the True Finns, which has become a major political force in Finland in the 2010s. A framework for the analysis is provided by research about the development of political approaches to multiculturalism in Western democracies. Kymlicka (2010) argues that a backlash against multicultural policies has mainly occurred in relation to the acceptance of ethnic-cultural diversity among immigrant groups. Support for a backlash is found in the minority rights statements of the party. However, the political rhetoric of the party is not mainly about policies relating to immigrants, but basic principles of group-specific rights for minorities are also disputed. The article argues that the populist rhetoric has to be understood as related to fundamental discourses about majority and minority rights in developed welfare states.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration
• multiculturalism
• far right
• populism
• populist rhetoric
• minority rights
• majority rights

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Östen Wahlbeck is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Helsinki, Finland, Adjunct Professor in Sociology, University of Tampere, Finland and holds a PhD in Ethnic Relations from the University of Warwick, UK. He has published widely in the field of international migration and ethnic relations, including the books Kurdish Diasporas (Macmillan 1999) and Debating Multiculturalism in the Nordic Welfare States (edited with Peter Kivisto, Palgrave 2013) and articles in Ethnicities, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Journal of Refugee Studies and Mobilities. He has been the project leader of several research projects funded by the Finnish national research council, the Academy of Finland.

Notes

1. In connection to the widespread public debate following the Facebook update of Immonen in 2015, the slow reaction and relatively modest condemnations from the Finns Party drew attention in Finnish media (e.g. YLE 2015). The party leader Timo Soini was on holiday and did not comment on the incident. The Party Secretary Riikka Slunga-Poutsalo commented that Immonen’s words were not well chosen, but the party as such did not take any immediate actions since it was up to the parliamentary group to discuss the issue with Immonen, when they eventually would meet two months later. In the end, Immonen was, formally at his own request, temporarily suspended from the group for a few months.