Islam and the Finlandization of the West

The word “Finlandization” was coined to describe the concessions made under the pressure of circumstances by a small country when confronted by a much more powerful and numerically superior neighbor. In Finland’s case the powerful neighbor was the Soviet Union. Until 1917 Finland was a part of the Russian empire, and the presence on its eastern border of Russia’s Soviet successor kept Finnish independence balanced on a knife’s edge up until the collapse of Communism.

Nowadays it seems that the entire West is voluntarily agreeing to be Finlandized with respect to Islam. KGS has posted an English translation of an essay that was originally written in Finnish by Vasarahammer. It’s an excellent outline of the reasons for Finland’s delay in joining the Multicultural bandwagon. Below are some excerpts:

Finlandization and Dhimmitude
By Vasarahammer

When Finnish Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen apologized for the publication of Muhammad cartoons in Suomen Sisu website, he became the first and only Western leader to publicly grovel in front of radical Islam because of the cartoons. Some may wonder why Finnish Prime Minister would do such a thing. Finland has little experience with Islam and relatively small muslim minority especially compared to other Nordic countries like Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

Of course, the simple explanation is the fact that a Finnish company Patria was in the middle of concluding an arms deal with Kuwait. However, there is another side to the story, which brought back memories from another, not so distant period of Finnish history.

Finlandization as a term was invented in Germany back in the 70’s and used first in political discourse by the late Franz Josef Strauss in order to oppose normalization of relations with the DDR (East Germany). Finland was used as an example, because Finnish foreign policy was completely subservient to the interests of Soviet Union. Appeasement was the default mode and only option in Finnish foreign policy up to the disintegration of the USSR in 1991.

Road to Finlandization

Some people in Europe and the United States remember Finland from the Winter war of 1939-40 during which brave Finnish soldiers resisted the Soviet invasion without outside assistance. Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany had agreed in the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that Finland would be part of the Soviet sphere of influence. Finnish government unaware of the existence of the pact declined the Soviet demands of ceding territories and allowing the Soviet Union to have a military base in Hanko. The Red Army attacked after staging an event called “Mainilan laukaukset” (Shelling of Mainila), at which Finnish military allegedly shot to the Soviet side of the border in the village of Mainila. This event bears a striking resemblance to the way Russians “responded” to the Georgian aggression in South Ossetia.

What non-Finns usually don’t know is the fact that Winter War was followed by the Continuation war between 1941 and 1944. During that war Finland allied itself with Nazi Germany to gain back the territories lost after the Winter War. This war ended in defeat for the Finns but Finland managed to agree a separate peace with the Soviet Union before the fall of Nazi regime.

The conditions of the peace agreement were harsh. Finland had to cede Karelia and Petsamo regions to the Soviet Union and the Soviets also gained a military base in the Porkkala peninsula, which is located very close to the capital city of Helsinki. Allied commission led by Andrey Zhdanov arrived in Finland to monitor Finnish compliance with the conditions of the peace agreement.

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In post war Finland there was a great fear of Communist coup d’etat, which failed to materialize despite the fact that Communists scored a landslide victory in the first post war parliamentary elections and managed to occupy key positions in the government including the Ministry of Interior and State Police (Valpo).

The failure of the Communists was not mainly due to their incompetence, since the Finnish democratic system of government had remained intact during the war years. The key Communist politicians were either imprisoned or living in exile in the USSR. They had little ability to mobilize the crowds or make the state bureaucracy compliant with their goals. In addition, Social Democrats that had supported Finnish war effort were effective in their attempts to counter the Communist influence in trade unions and major industrial workplaces.

The 1948 election resulted in heavy defeat for the Communists and they have remained a marginal political force ever since. However, the key event in Finnish post war history took place in the following year. Finno-Soviet friendship treaty (Agreement of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance) sealed the relations between the two countries for the decades to come. It included the so called military articles, which made Finland a de facto military ally of the Soviet Union.

The treaty also paved the way for continuing Soviet interference to Finnish internal affairs, since the parties of the agreement tried to use the treaty to pursue different goals. The Soviet Union tried to use the treaty to push Finland closer to itself, but the Finnish side utilised the agreement to pursue neutrality in international affairs. In the end, both sides failed to achieve their targets.

[…]

There are two factors that distinguish Finland from neighboring Sweden, from which the Finnish welfare state model has been copied. The one that I have mention in this article, Finlandization, is an important factor but the other is a history of emigration that continued up to the 70’s. Due to the population growth and resettlement of refugees coming from territories ceded to the Soviet Union, there was a surplus of young people in the late 60’s and early 70’s. This population growth resulted in the migration to the Finnish population centers and to Sweden that still needed immigrant labor.

In the 70’s Finland was also significantly poorer compared to Sweden, and this situation only changed during the 80’s and 90’s. So Finland avoided the mass immigration that Sweden has greatly suffered from. Finnish immigration policy remained strict during the 80’s, even though there were calls from the media and the leftist academics to loosen the “refugee policy” as immigration policy was called at the time. But foreign policy and friendly relations towards the USSR remained the focus of Finnish political establishment, which partly prevented mass immigration from taking place.

Ironically, it was the collapse of the Soviet Union that forced Finland to faces its first wave of muslim immigration. Trainloads of Somalis arrived by train and by ferry from the Soviet Union in the late 80’s and early 90’s. The immigration wave was due to the collapse of Mohammed Siad Barre regime in Somalia. The Somalis that arrived were mostly studying in Moscow and were left stranded by the economic collapse of the Soviet State as well as the disintegration of the Siad Barre regime.

The Somalis arrived in the early 90’s in the middle of the heaviest economic recessions ever experienced in Finnish history. The authorities were baffled and had no idea what to do with the refugees. Eventually the Somalis were allowed to stay, not because of political correctness, but because the authorities did not know what to do about them. This situation gradually changed towards more mainstream European refugee and immigration policy.

In today’s Finland multiculturalism and political correctness rule the day the same way as in other Western European countries. But because of the short history of mass immigration, the societal development together with other effects of immigration lag behind. Finland is roughly 20 years behind in the development of “multicultural” society. However, if the current academic, media and political elite have their way, the situation may change very rapidly.

There’s much more information in the full article at Tundra Tabloids, including a lot of details about the history and political culture of Finland.

Vasarahammer has definitely spotted the trend within the West: Finlandization in the face of Islam.

The peculiar thing about this process is that Islam is neither stronger nor numerically superior to Europe (yet). The eager dhimmification of our elites is a sure sign not of Islam’s strength, but of the political rot within the West.