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

This paper analyses the minority rights discourse found in political statements of the populist party called the True Finns. The party won a historic electoral result in the Finnish Parliamentary Election in 2011, increasing its share of the votes from 4 to 19 per cent.  A theoretical framework for this paper is provided by research about the development of political approaches to multiculturalism in western democracies. Will Kymlicka (1995) distinguishes between the minority rights of two different types of minorities in modern nation states: on the one hand, old national minorities, and on the other hand, new minorities that have emerged as a consequence of immigration. Kymlicka (2010) argues that the international so-called backlash and retreat from multiculturalism has mainly occurred in relation to the acceptance of ethnic-cultural diversity among immigrant groups. In this paper, the support for a backlash against multicultural policies is found in the minority rights statements of the political party called the True Finns. The paper argues that Kymlicka’s assessment is not completely accurate in this particular case. The statements of the party are not only about policies relating to immigrants. In the political rhetoric of the party the basic principles of group-specific rights for minorities are disputed. Thus, any real or imagined minority who is not considered truly Finnish, or not considered sufficiently representing ‘Finnishness’, can become the target of the rhetoric.