The party for the rest of us
Due
to the way the parliamentary system works in Finland, small parties get
some representatives and political power. One rather interesting small
party in Finnish politics was the populist Agrarian Party, which later
changed its name to True Finns.
In its heyday, the party held 18 seats in the Finnish parliament,
whereas now it only has three and is a pale shadow of its former self.
When I was in high school when the 80's turned to 90's, I used to read the weekly newspaper of the Agrarian Party, among my many other reads in the main library of the town where I lived. This newspaper was a very humorous read, especially the letters from the party's grassroots, in which it was obvious that few writers had any idea of even what the relevant problems were or which parties and people sit on which side of each issue. I could easily understand the Christian Party and the Green Party and all the other minor parties in the Finnish political spectrum, but I remember being completely baffled about what the Agrarian party was supposed to be.
In many issues, the Agrarian Party was clearly a "right-wing" party with its tough-on-crime and anti-foreigner positions. The party was solidly anti-intellectual in its outlook, advocating religion and simple traditional values, and it clearly tried to arrange the society in ways meant to decrease the power of the educated class. The party newspaper cartoons often praised the wisdom of a slow common man and depicted educated and wealthy people as being stupid and evil. On the other hand, the party was quite vocal in many leftist policies: it promoted progressive taxation, generous welfare payments and various government subsidies, in clear opposition to the ideas of free market economy. The party also advocated heavy regulation of economy and big business and derided free trade, but at the same time called for less regulation in average people's lives.
I then grew up and forgot this perplexing conundrum for years until I was reminded of it by reading Steve Sailer's articles about the silent war between the two halves of the Bell curve. In a flash of insight, every piece of the puzzle fell into place as I understood that the Agrarian Party consistently represented the interests of the bottom quarter of the Bell Curve. There was no more mystery, no more paradox, once the useless left/right distinction was removed from confusing the issues. I had realized that every position on every issue of this seemingly very inconsistent party could be easily predicted by asking "What would be best for a Finn who belongs to the bottom 25% of intelligence?" I don't know how consciously the party did this and whether this policy was on purpose, but this is what the party obviously ended up being.
As I understood this, I also vividly remembered how the party and its supporters were openly depicted by the left and green parties in their media. In many issues the Agrarian Party would have been their natural ally, but it was obviously left out of the cool kids crowd on general principles. In fact, I recall the leftists being quite explicit in their opinions about the low intelligence, poor education and lack of sophistication of typical Agrarian Party members and supporters, which was simply assumed as a given premise in the discourse, even while the same people loudly denounced the existence and meaningfulness of intelligence and intelligence differences in the same familiar fashion which seems to be universal to leftists everywhere. (During the nineties, the Finnish Green Party often described itself as "the party for intelligent people", and it was obvious that they didn't mean this only metaphorically. They probably later realized how embarrassing this was and have dropped this description by now.)
Times have changed since then and so have the relevant issues: Soviet Union is gone, there is no serious opposition towards European Union in Finland, the fifth nuclear power plant is being built and beer can be freely sold in convenience stores. As far as I know, no other serious political party has moved in to the niche that the Agrarian Party once successfully occupied. The left hasn't really cared once they finally got into their heads that no true proletarian ever really uses the word "proletarian" and thus had to invent other groups to idealize, whereas the right has realized the futility of protectionism and isn't that enthusiastic in going back to the seventies either. We'll see what happens.
When I was in high school when the 80's turned to 90's, I used to read the weekly newspaper of the Agrarian Party, among my many other reads in the main library of the town where I lived. This newspaper was a very humorous read, especially the letters from the party's grassroots, in which it was obvious that few writers had any idea of even what the relevant problems were or which parties and people sit on which side of each issue. I could easily understand the Christian Party and the Green Party and all the other minor parties in the Finnish political spectrum, but I remember being completely baffled about what the Agrarian party was supposed to be.
In many issues, the Agrarian Party was clearly a "right-wing" party with its tough-on-crime and anti-foreigner positions. The party was solidly anti-intellectual in its outlook, advocating religion and simple traditional values, and it clearly tried to arrange the society in ways meant to decrease the power of the educated class. The party newspaper cartoons often praised the wisdom of a slow common man and depicted educated and wealthy people as being stupid and evil. On the other hand, the party was quite vocal in many leftist policies: it promoted progressive taxation, generous welfare payments and various government subsidies, in clear opposition to the ideas of free market economy. The party also advocated heavy regulation of economy and big business and derided free trade, but at the same time called for less regulation in average people's lives.
I then grew up and forgot this perplexing conundrum for years until I was reminded of it by reading Steve Sailer's articles about the silent war between the two halves of the Bell curve. In a flash of insight, every piece of the puzzle fell into place as I understood that the Agrarian Party consistently represented the interests of the bottom quarter of the Bell Curve. There was no more mystery, no more paradox, once the useless left/right distinction was removed from confusing the issues. I had realized that every position on every issue of this seemingly very inconsistent party could be easily predicted by asking "What would be best for a Finn who belongs to the bottom 25% of intelligence?" I don't know how consciously the party did this and whether this policy was on purpose, but this is what the party obviously ended up being.
As I understood this, I also vividly remembered how the party and its supporters were openly depicted by the left and green parties in their media. In many issues the Agrarian Party would have been their natural ally, but it was obviously left out of the cool kids crowd on general principles. In fact, I recall the leftists being quite explicit in their opinions about the low intelligence, poor education and lack of sophistication of typical Agrarian Party members and supporters, which was simply assumed as a given premise in the discourse, even while the same people loudly denounced the existence and meaningfulness of intelligence and intelligence differences in the same familiar fashion which seems to be universal to leftists everywhere. (During the nineties, the Finnish Green Party often described itself as "the party for intelligent people", and it was obvious that they didn't mean this only metaphorically. They probably later realized how embarrassing this was and have dropped this description by now.)
Times have changed since then and so have the relevant issues: Soviet Union is gone, there is no serious opposition towards European Union in Finland, the fifth nuclear power plant is being built and beer can be freely sold in convenience stores. As far as I know, no other serious political party has moved in to the niche that the Agrarian Party once successfully occupied. The left hasn't really cared once they finally got into their heads that no true proletarian ever really uses the word "proletarian" and thus had to invent other groups to idealize, whereas the right has realized the futility of protectionism and isn't that enthusiastic in going back to the seventies either. We'll see what happens.
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