Open Access

Oula Silvennoinen

• This is the eighth article in our series Trouble on the­ Far-Right. Trouble’s brewing for the European Union – also in Finland, where the next country-wide elections will see several new, EU-hostile nationalist groups attempt to establish themselves on the political map. At the same time, Finnish Fascism is seeking to entrench and normalize itself into a respectable part of the political framework. With disaffection growing, the time appears to be ripe. As Heikki Hiilamo, professor of social policy in Helsinki University notes, Finland has been particularly hard hit by the most recent economic downturn. The middle and lower classes are seeing their expectations fade into uncertainty, as globalization is bringing new and intangible threats in the form of vanishing jobs. Finland is heading towards increasing social inequality, with the reality of the educated and the employed drifting further apart from “globalization’s losers”. With no self-evident owner in sight, the accumulating political capital is attracting radical nationalist utilizers...