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Notes -
One facet of this whole affair I considered mentioning (but didn't, partly since it meant I managed to keep it within 10 000 words and didn't have to split posts) was that a few days ago Anton Monti, a Finnish-Italian writer who used to be a fairly notable figure in Finnish radical left (autonomist communist) circles in the early 2000s, made some bizarre tweets where, in addition to a strange attack on Estonians as "beneficiaries of Soviet Union", he said that Finland should - instead of sending tanks to Ukraine, which has been under discussion - "send tanks to Russia", ie. take back the areas lost in 1940/1944. Monti has gone through some ideological twists and turns, but taking a brazen irredentist nationalist position like this led to a fair amount of hooting and hollering, including accusations that this, too, was some sort of a Putinist plot (some magazines have suggested that Russians are trying to stoke take-back-Karelia discourses in Finland to create a potential casus belli). Oh, and he happens to be the partner of the deputy mayor of Helsinki, too...
This is indeed a frequently-made point about the most belligerent statements by public figures, like Monti's. "We can't allow fear of Russia make us engage in self-censorship like during the Cold War" and "It doesn't matter whether we hold our tongues or not, Russian propaganda is going to twist whatever statements we make to their liking anyway" are generally some of the replies.
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