When Finns Party MP Olli Immonen posted on Facebook in July 2015 about fighting the “nightmare of multiculturalism,” the public response was unprecedented. Thousands of people across Finland rallied in defense of multicultural society and against racism. These demonstrations signaled a broader awakening: many Finns were alarmed at the growing influence of the Finns Party and, in particular, its anti-immigration wing.
The party’s rise to become the second largest in parliament earlier that year owed much to candidates advancing Islamophobic and anti-immigrant agendas. Yet party leader and Foreign Minister Timo Soini has consistently outsourced immigration issues to this faction, carefully balancing on the boundary between civility and uncivility.
Scandals as Strategy
The media environment has been central to this dynamic. Online “echo chambers” have allowed anti-immigration voices to flourish, but they have also exposed politicians to scandal when their comments cross into the mainstream. Anti-racist activists have long used public shaming to hold such figures accountable, hoping to make racist speech politically costly.
Yet publicity is paradoxical. Targeting extremists risks portraying racism as confined to “exceptional” spaces, while normalizing systemic racism elsewhere. Moreover, scandal can amplify prejudiced ideas and help fringe figures gain visibility.
The trajectory of Jussi Halla-aho illustrates this. Once a little-known blogger, his notoriety grew through scandals over his racist writings, culminating in court proceedings in 2009. Despite critical coverage, he leveraged the attention to become a leading Finns Party politician and an MEP.
Scapegoats and Survival
The Finns Party has repeatedly navigated scandals by symbolic punishments or selective expulsions. In 2013, James Hirvisaari was expelled after inviting a neo-Nazi guest to parliament who posed with a “Heil Hitler” salute. His removal served as a scapegoat mechanism—what René Girard describes as the sacrifice that relieves communal tensions. Expelling Hirvisaari allowed more prominent anti-immigration figures like Halla-aho to appear rational and respectable, strengthening the party’s position.
In Immonen’s case, many demanded his expulsion. Yet his role as chair of the nationalist association Suomen Sisu, and the arithmetic of parliamentary seats, made him too valuable to sacrifice. Instead, he temporarily resigned, deflecting criticism without fundamentally challenging the party’s stance.
Civility, Uncivility, and Resistance
Each scandal follows a familiar pattern: racist comments circulate online, mainstream media amplifies them, pressure mounts on the Finns Party, and the leadership responds with delay, dismissal, or symbolic punishment. This cycle enables the party itself to define the boundaries of acceptable discourse, strengthening its authority over immigration debates.
But this time, something different happened. The demonstrations following Immonen’s post revealed that Finnish society is not merely a spectator to this political game. A large, vocal segment publicly articulated its vision of a multicultural Finland—outnumbering the anti-immigration movement and refusing to let the Finns Party alone dictate the terms of debate.
Public shaming and scandal remain double-edged tools. They can inadvertently empower those they seek to weaken. Yet collective mobilization—thousands taking to the streets—signals a more profound democratic intervention. The challenge now is to sustain this resistance while staying alert to the complexities of publicity and power.
