I really want to open an Amazon account in Finland to send a book to opposition politicians in the Nordic country. The latter have tormented Prime Minister Sanna Marin since videos of her dancing at a party surfaced online this week.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
These politicians — there are men and women among them — accuse Mme Marin not to behave like a head of government, to act irresponsibly. In chorus, they asked the 36-year-old politician to go and undergo a drug test. Nothing less.
Why ? Because in one of the video clips in question, an unidentified person yells: “The flour gang! An expression that would refer to cocaine.
Calling the request unfair, but saying she wanted to “protect herself”, Sanna Marin agreed to their request on Friday and will release the results next week. “I still think it’s special that it’s required,” she noted.
She uses the word “special” like my mother does. To politely say that she finds it downright weird or out of place. A big understatement.
And that’s where the book comes in that I would love Finnish politicians to read this weekend with a (big) latte: the biography of Emma Goldman, Live my lifepublished in two volumes in 1931.
Does it seem a bit far-fetched to you to refer to a work from the last century to talk about a leak on Instagram? It is not, I assure you.
In this book, which has been a classic of its kind since its publication, the anarchist icon born in Lithuania in 1869 and died in Canada in 1940 recounts how she was involved in all the struggles of the early twentiethe century while celebrating. Dancing. With abandon. “At the dance parties, I was one of the most tireless and cheerful,” writes Mme Goldman. A daughter of partywhat !
PHOTO ARCHIVES LIBRARY OF CONGRESS
Emma Goldman
However, there was always on his way a man who tried to calm his ardor. To scold her for her frivolous behavior, which he felt was unworthy of her stature as a female figurehead of a revolutionary movement.
Would you be surprised if I told you that Mr.me Goldman sent them flying? And not nearly. “I didn’t believe that a cause that carried an ideal of anarchy, looseness and freedom should go hand in hand with the denial of life and joy. If the movement asks me to become a nun and becomes a cloister, I don’t want it,” she wrote, bluntly.
This episode in the life of the militant anarchist became famous in certain circles and gave rise to a slogan which is not hers, but which has since been attributed to her. “If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution. » Jos in osaa tanssia, in halua olla vallankumouksessasiin Finnish.
Printed on t-shirts, buttons, banners, this catchy formula has rallied feminists around the world. In the United States, in Canada, in Europe, but also in Iran, where, in the name of the revolution, women were asked to give up a good part of their individual freedoms.
It is not really the dance that is at stake here, but the control of women, their ideas and their image in the political arena.
And this is where we are transported back to Finland, in this month of August 2022. Where a young politician and mother, who acceded to the highest step of power at 34, is reminded ordered by her peers for partying at a private residence on a Saturday night. Because she dances and sings. “I have a professional life, I have a family life and I have free time that I spend with my friends. Like people my age,” she says.
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In 2022, it would have been “special” to attack her only because she dances. After all, we’ve seen many world leaders wiggle their hips over the years. Starting with the current Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, who can dance to disco as well as Indian bhangra. In Russia, we saw Boris Yeltsin dancing like the Carnival man to show that he still had the vitality necessary to be president.
In this context, Sanna Marin’s political rivals instead chose to rush to a little phrase in the background to berate her like a teenager. They had done much the same thing last December when she had spent the night in a nightclub. This time, she was criticized for going out without her cell phone and therefore not having learned at the minute that she had been in contact with a case of COVID-19.
She had to publicly apologize. Another “special” punishment.
What’s strange about all this is that Finnish politicians don’t seem to notice that their admonitions are also the stuff of pro-Russian trolls who go out of their way on social media to denigrate the Finnish prime minister. The same one who defied Vladimir Putin by asking for his country’s accession to NATO in recent months. Well.
The music should be turned off for them, not for a politician who can dance, govern and chew gum at the same time.