Fascist 80 years ago, fascist today
Then just make a new symbol, the sickle is not as representative today as it used to be when it was invented anyways, since agriculture is more industrialised now, at least in Finland.
The problem is that they’ll just ban the new symbol if it gains enough traction
They can’t ban stars and the color red, lmao. So long as those are around they’ll be good.
They can ban anything they want. The cops and judges enforcing the law instinctively knows who to target and who to ignore.
I’m not gonna say I agree with this or defend censorship but when your country got invaded by the most famous communist country in history and had a bad time under their rule, then it’s quite understandable why people there don’t like symbols associated with said country.
The entire affair is just a mess of history. A fascist dictatorship being replaced with a communist one.
Finland was never communist though. When the Russian Empire became the Soviet Union, the Finnish government asked to secede, and Stalin (who was minister for nationalities) convinced everyone to let them have independence. Finland then became independent without a fight.
Even after the winter war Finland never became communist.
I would not say without a fight. The Finnish Whites massacred the Finnish Reds (…and by extension anyone at all thought to be sympathetic to workers).
https://www.marxists.org/archive/serge/1930/year-one-sa/finland2.html
The victors massacred the vanquished. Since ancient times class wars have always been the most frightful. There are no more bloody and atrocious victories than the victories of reactionary classes. Since the blood-bath inflicted on the Paris Commune by the French bourgeoisie, the work had not seen anything comparable to the horrors of Finland. From the first shot of the civil war, “belonging to a workers’ organization in White territory meant arrest; to have been an official in such organization meant execution. The massacre of socialists reached such proportions that it ended by interesting no one.” At Kummen, where 43 Red Guards fell in battle, nearly five hundred persons were executed! There were “hundreds” executed at Kotka, a town of thirteen thousand inhabitants. “They didn’t even ask their names; they just led them away in groups.” At Raumo, according to a bourgeois newspaper, “five hundred prisoners captured on May 15 got the punishment they deserved the same day.” “April 14 in Toeloe, a suburb of Helsingfors, two hundred Red Guards were killed with machine guns … The Reds were hunted from house to house. Many women perished.” At Sveaborg the public executions were set for Trinity Sunday. In the neighborhood of Lakhtis, where the Whites took thousands of prisoners, “the machine guns worked several hours a day.” “On one day alone two hundred women were killed with dumdum bullets; pieces of flesh flew in every direction.”
Finland was socialist for a short while before their revolution was drowned in blood by reactionaries. Also it’s not just “Stalin convincing everyone”, Finland independence or at least autonomy was one of the constant communist points since tsar crackdowned on Finland in 1890’s.
>“I’m not gonna say I agree with this or defend it…”
>Proceeds to agree with it and defend it
I hope your realise that people can understand why others think in a certain way without agreeing with that way of thinking. You seem to think that because I said that I can understand why Finnish people might not like the hammer and sickle, I must therefore support banning it. I don’t.
It doesn’t matter what you intended to do. You ended up defending Finland’s decision. People are not going to pour over your background and study your life in details to say “NateNate60 is a swell guy”. They’re going to read your previous comment and say yeah, you defended Finland banning communist symbols because they allied with the nazis 80 years ago and are still salty about getting their ass handed to them when they joined in the siege of Leningrad.
Look who was constantly working for the independence of Finland from the Russian Empire (bolsheviks), look who actually did helped and allowed Finland to become independent (bolsheviks), look what happened in Finland after independence (revolution was drowned in blood by protofascists), look who supported white army general Yudenich invasion of RSFSR (Finland plus Estonia and UK), look who supported head white general Kolchak even though Kolchak explicitly denied Finland independence (Finnish “hero” Mannerheim).
Finnish counterrevolutionary romance, or more actually marriage with fascism didn’t started in 1940, it started in 1917 by attacking communists with the help of every protofash possible.
I didn’t say that the dislike for the symbol was rational; I just said that I understand how people could come to dislike it.
and had a bad time under their rule
A fascist dictatorship being replaced with a communist one.
I’d like to hear more about this alternative history you got rolling around your skull where Finland became communist. I live in the reality where they joined nazis (as Stalin knew they would, which is why he had to move the border away from Leningrad), participated in starving a city to death and threw POWs into death camps, not the other way around. And then they turned around, seeing the writing on the wall, and avoided justice that way.
And now they’re still nazis.
What were they doing before being invaded?
Maybe participating in a lil seige, just a cheeky lil seige of Leningrad?
Tbf the siege of Leningrad happened after.
And just to be clear, in case any historical revisionists are reading this: the Continuation War was not the USSR invading Finland, it was Finland invading the USSR alongside Nazi Germany.
Really funny too because it was the USSR that gave them their independence.
Few years ago they banned the swastika from their airforce
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Academy_(Finland) The air force academy still has the swastica in its flag.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapland_Air_Command And many other units under finnish airforces
I regularly see people try to defend Finland using it because it predates nazism, but so what. Acknowledging it is forever tainted by association and that maybe they should distance themselves from it isn’t admitting some type of defeat.
People probably rocked Hitler moustaches before him too, but you don’t see people running around with them anymore (except one comedian in my country that I absolutely despise).
CW: Swastika crap
Presidential flag of Finland:
The flag features Finland’s highest state-decoration, the cringely named “Cross of Liberty”
Notable recipients includes Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler.
Both the flag and the decoration is currently in active use by the Finnish state
