Hacker News Reader

The process was quite fast mainly because most Finns are very pragmatic, clearheaded people and intuitively understood how the rules of the game had changed. You can't game a 76% support for any cause in a few months in a liberal democracy.

The root of the matter is that without NATO membership conscription would have become morally untenable. And hence the backbone of Finnish defence would have collapsed leading to need to kowtow to Moscow for all eternity.

Before invasion of Ukraine the economic costs on top of Finnish defence forces were considered to be sufficient deterrent to Russian agression, on top of the material and personnel costs such an invasion would cause.

Ukraine demonstrated that with political impetus, Russia does not care about either economic costs, nor about materiel or personnel costs in it's mad imperialist fantasies.

IMO The cost of NOT joining NATO would have been de facto loss of sovereignty.

Furthermore, due to the closeness of the Russian border, without NATO membership Finland would likely have been perceived as a not very good target for capital investments, killing the economy. While Finland has advanced technology, it is very capital poor - hence needs healthy injections of capital from the global market.

>You can't game a 76% support for any cause in a few months in a liberal democracy.

I suggest reading on Manufacturing Consent.

People living in liberal democracies are swayed all the time. It has happened over and over again. Probably the most notable example being USA after 9/11. Bush approval rating spiked from 60% to 92%. When scary things happen, media coverage and politicians can together make drastic changes to public opinion.

There are wars and crises going on in the world all the time, and media's coverage of them or the lack thereof do change peoples minds on whether they matter or what should be done about them.

You can point to any change in public sentiment as 'manufactured'. Doesn't mean it actually is. This seems the opposite: aggressive neighbour starts biggest war in Europe since WW2 has influence on public opinion of much smaller and weaker country.

I already gave examples of media/politican manufactured narratives in the parent post regarding the Nato discussion.

I love Manufacturing Consent! Even though I don't agree with it's implied worldview I enjoy Chomsky's skill as an eloquent polemiscist.

But Chomsky does not really understand the world outside US.

I am a Finn and I can guarantee Chomsky does not help you in understanding what happened here. We share 1500km border of Russia. We feel the geopolitic shifts in our backbones.

Almost every finnish male regardless of wealth or class would be up in arms as a combatant in the military if Russia was to invade. You can't have more skin in the game than that.

I see this point a lot but I don't understand it. I'm of both Taiwanese and Hong Kong ethnicity. The world has already seen what China did to Hong Kong's autonomy. But Chomsky's essays and lectures have helped me understand my old countries' political issues more clearly than many other sources, even when he isn't directly talking about Asia. So I don't understand the frequent assertion that Chomsky's arguments or his general political views are invalid when it comes to Ukraine or other European countries.

Chomsky starts from the position that the general population is ignorant of history and politics and can be programmed by the elites to what ever worldview.

He does not start from the position that an individual voter would have skin in the game, or understand the consequences of political and economic actions.

Ukrainians feel in their guts their country is being invaded by an genocidal adversary. They are not driven from their homes by US capitalist fed propaganda, but by russain missiles and tanks, they take up arms not because the conscription service ran it's ad targeting the poor and the unemployed, but because their home is invaded.

Chomsky simply does not comprehend a situation where he himself would wake up one morning, take his rifle and go defend his country with the local banker, the baker and the taxi driver.

I.e. he does not understand when masses actually act out of their own volition to do something. Political events to him seem always to be a "nefarious game programmed by US capitalists to oppress the ploretariat" unless it's something directly hurting US corporate interests and then it's always universally good.

In US this view is likely more correct than not as the financial oligarchy is pretty savvy there and does play it's own game. The world and the rules can be quite different outside US.

Then will all respect I must disagree. I said that I am ethnically a Hong Konger. When China broke its UK treaty (effectively, a temporary neutralization treaty that granted autonomy to HK for a period of years), I also felt in my gut how horrible that was: it was cultural genocide, in my eyes. But at no point did I need to dismiss Chomsky's theories or find it invalid in scope. I have no problem pointing out how US and UK foreign policy escalated Chinese actions that harmed HK people's autonomy and oppressed young Hong Kongers' democratic party. And unfortunately I have to point out that if anyone objects to such a comparison, that the similarity is obviously not the same in magnitude compared to an international war, but the moral philosophy and political dynamics is a proper analog, just on different scales the way triangles are similar but have different magnitudes. I know this may not fully explain why I disagree with you in Chomsky's validity, but this is at least to suggest to you that someone in analogous situation may have a valid reason for a different assessment of Chomsky, specifically due to how one interprets his leftist ideas.

I am happy you have found analysis to contextualize the world around yourself in troubled times.

I am in no position to estimate how well Chomskyist analysis is applicable to HK. It's just not very good tool in understanding the war in Ukraine or Finland joining NATO.

There might be some cultural context missing which would make this very hard to communicate.

> Chomsky starts from the position that the general population is ignorant of history and politics and can be programmed by the elites to what ever worldview.

Oh right, that they are a blank slate that one can just write things on? Except that’s a thesis about human beings that he has specifically argued against.

Typical “ignorant masses” projection by some vulgar Marxist interpretation.

Speaking of skin in the game: Chomsky protested against the Vietnam War. A war fought in part by conscripts on the American side. How does that jive with your condescending theory that Americans have no skin in the game?

> So I don't understand the frequent assertion that Chomsky's arguments or his general political views are invalid when it comes to Ukraine or other European countries.

That because those complains come from people who do know about history and politics of countries he talks about. And he has really hard time to admit that something like genocide can happen for reasons that are not caused by Americans. I mean, he has hard time to call genocide the one when it happens (unless done by Americans).

Specifically with Ukraine issue, he is one of those people who cant even hint toward non-Americans having agency or own ideas about future. If you talk about Eastern Europe as if only Russia and America existed, as if no one else was even involved and could not had ability to make own decisions, then you are the one trying to create false worldview ignoring reality.

So you originally made a claim about liberal democracies, which both Finland and the US are. Now after the counter-argument/proposal you change your tune and claim that a book about how the media operates in the US and by a extrapolation similar liberal democracies has got nothing to do with how Finland works. How convenient.

I'm trying to explain how I see the situation from Finland and I don't see anything in Chomsky that would help to understand this situation.

I'm happy we are joining NATO. I'm mostly sure I was not brainwashed into it by media. I just knew intuitively the second Russian tanks crossed Ukrainian border NATO would be the best option in Finland. I can't prove it but I'm guessing lots of finns felt the same. And it was this collective feeling that spread out through the population spontaneously.

There are very few books beyond physics and mathematics with universal truths. And even those need savvy application to real world problems. Problem with chomskyism is that it sees everything through the lense of chomskyism which filters out everything else. It's like a high pass filter attuned to the detection of US human rights violations.

Finnish consent was not manufactured. It was caused by the explicit invasion of Ukraine.

As a people that has always bordered Russia and has been invaded by Russia for centuries we are quite sensitive to things affecting our relationship with it.

You feel it in your bones the weather has changed.

>Probably the most notable example being USA after 9/11.Probably the most notable example being USA after 9/11. When scary things happen, media coverage and politicians can together make drastic changes to public opinion.

That's an weird assertion. People genuinly liked his first reaction.

Nobody is denying that. That's literally what I said when I said the approval ratings spiked to 92% (which you cut out from the quote). Consent can be manufactured, and the result is that people genuinely consent to the narratives given by the media.

> IMO The cost of NOT joining NATO would have been de facto loss of sovereignty.

This to me as a Finn is the most important part. The moment your neighbor country says "you can't join alliance X" and you actually take their opinion seriously and don't due to their pressure means you just lost your sovereignty as a nation.

And Finland has experience of that from the years after WW2 under YYA[1]. While we were lucky to not be fully take into the soviet union shit just sucked. Press was heavily censored "voluntarily", got a god king president for decades (this is why the President has 0 power in internal politics now), etc. After the fall of soviet union we got rid of the bullshit of licking Russias ass and are never going back.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finno-Soviet_Treaty_of_1948

> Whether you agree with Finland joining Nato or not, I think there are good arguments to be made on either side. But to say that there has been any real discussion is a stretch at best. This process was rushed.

Saying that this process was rushed ignores the 75 years leading up to that decision. Finland has been very careful even during the Cold War to keep the US and the Soviets happy and present themselves as a truly neutral nation between those two powers. Finland already spent all this time “arguing the other side” by not joining and keeping everyone at arms-distance. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and hostile rhetoric toward Finland and other countries are markedly different from the last 75 years in the post-WW2 era. So no, it’s not really rushed. Finland had the debate you are talking about already and has had this debate for 75 years. You just didn’t know that they already had the debate.

You can never please everyone. I grant you that this might have been rushed a bit, but it is silly to say that Finland hasn't considered the pros and cons of joining NATO for a long time and has obviously seen benefits considering all the join military exercises.

People who are against joining NATO won't change their opinion until Russia actually invades and by then it is too late. These people also like to make Finland's neutrality to be some noble stance as if it wasn't imposed on Finland by Russia after the Second World War.

Discussion about the "NATO option" has been part of the Finnish foreign policy discourse for close to three decades already. How much more discussion do you think would have been needed? And what kind of change in circumstances would have been needed to switch from talking to doing if the current invasion of Ukraine isn't enough?

> >Translation: During the spring, there has been an important discussion about Finland's possible NATO membership

> This is a very generous description of what happened.

> There has been air of forced consensus in the "discussion" between media, politicians and people on social media.

I think it's pretty much exactly the other way around: For the last three decades, since the fall of Communism and the end of "Finlandization", there has been air of forced consensus in the "discussion" between media, politicians and people on social media around the holy cow of "Neutrality", perhaps (at least to begin with) out of lingering deference to the memory of Kekkonen. In reality, Finland has always been a "Western" country; the invasion of Ukraine was just the impetus to finally realise it / admit it to themselves / openly admit it.

> People have been branded as "putinist" or "playing into Putin's hand" for merely suggesting that the decision shouldn't be rushed, and that there needs to be thorough analysis before making a decision.

Everybody has been thinking about it for thirty years (in Sweden, for seventy); you wanna take another thirty years, or what? If they aren't done thinking now, they never will be.

[Edit: Added forgotten quote markers. And fixed typpo.]