Identities

Global Studies in Culture and Power

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The ambiguity of Europe and European identity in

Finnish populist political discourse

Tuuli Lähdesmäki

To cite this article: Tuuli Lähdesmäki (2015) The ambiguity of Europe and European identity in
Finnish populist political discourse, Identities, 22:1, 71-87, DOI: 10.1080/1070289X.2014.950585

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1070289X.2014.950585

Published online: 15 Aug 2014.

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 Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power, 2015
Vol. 22, No. 1, 71–87, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1070289X.2014.950585

The ambiguity of Europe and European identity in Finnish

populist political discourse
Tuuli Lähdesmäki

(Received 26 February 2014; final version received 21 July 2014)

Europe is a profoundly flexible concept and, in Ernesto Laclau’s terms, a

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‘floating signifier’ which is given various meanings depending on the speak-

er’s political aims. The article focuses on current populist and nationalist
political discourses in Finland and the articulation of Europe and European
identity in the political rhetoric of The Finns Party. In the rhetoric, Europe is
given contradictory meanings. On the one hand, it is perceived as a cultural
and value-based community which shares a common (Christian) heritage and
values. Identification with Europe and the promotion of European commun-
ality are particularly pronounced when a threat towards ‘us’ is experienced as
coming from outside the imagined European borders. On the other hand, the
European integration process and Europe as a political project can be articu-
lated as threats not only to national independence, identity and cultural
particularity but to European cultural identity as well.
Keywords: Europe; the European Union; identity; nationalism; populism;
The Finns Party

The rise of populism and ‘new’ nationalism in pluralised Europe

The European public and political discussions on identification and cultural
belonging have recently activated in a new way. Identity and culture have re-
emerged as a major area of interest and a sphere of politics in the European
Union (EU), on national and local levels. The current discussions, however,
reveal contradicting views on the use of identity projects and the needs for
identity politics in European societies. In recent decades, global cultural flows
and the movement of people within and across the borders of the EU have
diversified Europe by increasing its inner pluralism. As a reaction to the
increased pluralism, the recent cultural, societal and political changes and the
way different kinds of threats to them are disseminated for public imagination by
the media, European societies have faced the rise of diverse nationalist and
populist political parties. The agendas and attempts of them have often centred
on creating or maintaining borders and rejecting different kinds of threats which
are considered to be the result of increasing ‘borderlessness’ of societies and
cultures. One of the main concerns of the populist parties is the weakening of
the particularity of nations, their national cultures and the independence of

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

 72 T. Lähdesmäki
nation-states. This weakening is related to the EU integration policies and the
consequences of the extra-EU immigration, which is considered a threat not only
to the national particularity but also to the European cultural communality. In the
discourse of populist parties, the relationship with Europe and European identity
is profoundly complex and includes contradictory and flexible situational
meanings.
Although the rise of populist and nationalist movements characterises the
political climate throughout Europe, the movements also have various differ-
ences due to nationally distinct historical, political and demographical contexts
within which they have emerged. Although the movements share various
common contrarian ideological positions, such as anti-globalisation, anti-
capitalist, anti-elitist, anti-intellectual and anti-European views (e.g.
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Moschonas 2013), they differ in their main antagonistic focus. In Austria,

Hungary, Italy, Romania and France, the populist right wing parties gain
support through an ambivalent relationship with fascist and Nazi pasts. In
the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland, the focus is
primarily on a perceived threat of Islam. In Hungary, Greece, Italy and the
UK, the parties restrict their propaganda to opposing a perceived threat to their
national identities by ethnic minorities. The parties in Poland, Romania,
Bulgaria, Ukraine and Russia endorse a fundamentalist Christian conservative
reactionary agenda (Wodak 2014).
Studies on populism in Europe have often focused on agendas and policies of
the populist right wing parties and emphasised their Eurosceptical, nationalist,
xenophobic and anti-immigration attitudes. Studies on populism are still, how-
ever, lacking closer empirical investigations on the diverse meanings of Europe,
European identity and culture and the role of their discursive determination in the
politics of populism. The article aims to respond to this lack by broadening the
investigation on populism outside its common scholarly domain, that is, political
studies, and to approach the populist discourses as a cultural meaning-making
process and an identity project.
In this article, I focus on the idea of Europe and its flexibility as a ‘floating
signifier’, in Ernesto Laclau’s terms, in the current populist political discourse
in Finland. I ask how the idea of Europe is signified in the Finnish populist
political discourse by emphasising in the investigation the point of view of
identification: What kinds of meanings of Europe do the speakers in the
discourse identify with or distinguish themselves from? How is the articula-
tion of Europe and European identity used as a political instrument in the
struggle for power and hegemony? The empirical focus of the paper is on the
Finnish party Perussuomalaiset (The Finns Party) and the political rhetoric
found in its party newspaper. Instead of a political analysis of the party’s
European politics, the investigation focuses on the idea of Europe in populism
with the theoretical frame of interdisciplinary cultural studies and critical
discourse studies.
 Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 73
Background, data and methods
The Finns Party was established in 1995 and it has increased its popularity in
each parliamentary election gaining a major victory in 2011 by receiving 19.05%
of the vote. The party can be characterised as nationalist–populist; both terms are
used in a positive meaning in the party programmes and the writings of the party
leader Timo Soini (Mickelsson 2011). Their agenda is a mixture of traditionally
left-wing social and income distribution politics, right-wing value conservatism
and an explicit national emphasis that enable drawing together protests against a
variety of faults found in the society and therefore bringing together politicians
with diverse interests (Ylä-Anttila 2012; Pernaa et al. 2012).
Since the establishment of The Finns Party, one of its major concerns has
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been the EU and its integration politics. The party has offered a Eurosceptical
alternative to the Finnish political climate which has been considered to have an
overly consensual style and lack the elite-level opposition to the European
integration process (Raunio 2005). However, the level of Euroscepticism within
the political discourse of the party and in the personal views of the party
members has varied from hard to soft Euroscepticism (on Euroscepticism e.g.,
Sørensen 2008). Due to the broad variety of social and political protests brought
together under the political umbrella of the party, several complex and ambiguous
concepts and entities, such as ‘Europe’, are used in the political rhetoric of the
party in diverse ways in order to attain the hegemony in the political struggle and
justify the views and attempts of the speaker.
In order to investigate the politics of articulation and the flexibility in the
meaning-making of the idea of Europe and European identity in the political
discourse of The Finns Party, the party newspaper Perussuomalainen was
selected as the focus of the analysis. The data consist of texts published in the
Perussuomalainen between 1 January 2004 and 2 July 2013. The data collection
took place in two phases: first, all the texts were searched for the headwords: the
EU, Europe, nation, identity and/or culture; and then, after a pre-read, 478 texts
were selected as the corpus because they contained deeper discussion on the
headwords. The corpus includes texts that have been written in various genres.
Their authors are typically parliament members of the party, key members in the
party organisations and the local sections of the party and regular editors of the
party newspaper. Even though Perussuomalainen functions as an arena for
building political communality within the party, it also enables communicating
its agendas and aims the non-members. The issues of the newspaper from 2004
onwards are freely available online.
The data were investigated using critical discourse analysis by tracing the
connections between micro-level linguistic expressions and macro-level socio-
cultural structures in order to understand their mutual interaction and interdepen-
dence (e.g. Fairclough 1995). Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (2001) –
scholars who have investigated populism in the field of political science from
the perspective of poststructuralist discourse theory – have defined discourse as
 74 T. Lähdesmäki
an attempt to fix a web of meanings within a particular domain. This attempt
involves the structuring of signifiers into certain meanings in order to exclude
other meanings. The fixing of a web of meanings is an exercise of power and an
attempt to attain hegemony in the society. Thus, for Laclau, hegemony is ‘a logic
of articulation’, that is, a political relationship of power that occurs as an
articulation within political discourse. Laclau (1989, 70–71, 2005, 133) refers
to the elements that are particularly open to different ascriptions of meaning as
‘floating signifiers’. Floating signifiers have different connotations depending on
the discourse in which they are used, and, therefore, they belong to an ongoing
struggle between different discourses on the fixing of the meaning of signs
(which however can never be totally fixed). Floating signifiers are open to
continual contestation and articulation to different political projects (Worsham
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and Olson 1999, 1–2). Laclau’s and Mouffe’s notions of populist discourse are
applied in the discussion of the article: Europe is approached as a floating
signifier and the articulations of Europe and European identity are discussed as
the politics of populism of The Finns Party. With the use of the concept, the
analysis aims to understand the power of articulation in the political discourse of
the party in the questions related to identity and culture.

The politics of populism and its appeals to identity and culture

Scholars have discussed the political premises of populist movements by refer-
ring to the post-political situation (Mouffe 2000) (i.e. the blurring of frontiers
between the left and the right) and the impact of post-democracy (Crouch 2004)
(i.e. the increase of the power of small political and economic elite groups) in
European societies. The rise of populism in Europe has been described as closely
related to the challenge of the traditional sociopolitical order, which is considered
to be characterised by the naturalisation of the (neoliberal) ‘third-way consensus’
(Mouffe 1995, 498, 2005, chapter 4). The pro-European/EU politics and the
promotion of an image of ‘new’ Europe as a peace project are crucial elements
in the creation of the political consensus in European societies (Mouffe 2005).
The challenge of both this consensus and the current sociopolitical order is
manifested in diverse populist attempts, which are fuelled by the invisible (i.e.
covered by the consensus) but existing antagonist split in contemporary politics,
as Slavoj Žižek (2000, 37–39) notes. Similarly, Mouffe (2000, 113–116) states
that the ‘sacralisation of consensus’ hides the dynamics of pluralistic democracy
and thus causes a democratic deficit, which allows populist parties challenging
the dominant consensus to appear as the only anti-establishment force represent-
ing the will of the people. Instead of the traditional right/left dualism, the
antagonist logic of populism is usually articulated through the distinction
between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, or in the moral register through the categories of
‘good’ and ‘evil’ (Mouffe 2005).
Several scholars have discussed the problematic and paradoxical relation
between populism and democracy (e.g. Canovan 1999; Pasquino 2008). Laclau
 Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 75
and Mouffe (2001; Mouffe 2000) have emphasised how the liberal and delib-
erative democratic attempts to build consensus in fact oppress differing opinions
and world views and thus pave the way for the resistance based on dissent. In
their views, the category of the adversary plays a central role in the dynamics of
democracy. Laclau and Mouffe have discussed the challenge to the oppressive
power relations of the liberal and deliberative democratic attempts as ‘radical
democracy’. The politics of populism can be perceived as a radical democratic
project (Laclau 2005). Populism and democracy are thus closely connected. As
Benjamin Arditi (2007, 50–51) notes, populism is a spectre of democracy, rather
than being a malfunction of it; populism is a possibility embedded in the very
practice of democracy. The populist movements are not usually against the
principles of democracy per se but embrace a particular conception of it. The
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populist actors tend to be at odds with the principles of liberal democracy and
emphasise the rule by ‘the people’ which should not be violated by elites,
experts, religious authorities or foreign powers such as the EU (Rovira
Kaltwasser 2013).
Populism has been investigated in various fields and approached from various
perspectives, for example as a movement, a form of rhetoric (Kazin 1995), a
political style (Knight 1998), a mode of political representation (Arditi 2007), a
type of ideology (Mudde 2004), a political strategy (Weyland 2001), a means for
mobilisation (Jansen 2011) and a social logic (Laclau 2005). Several scholars
have emphasised the ambivalent nature of populism – it does not have a solid
core or a common ideology (e.g. Pasquino 2008; Laclau 2005). There are several
types of populism, and particular cultural, historical and political contexts frame
the contents and the main areas of interest in their ideologies. Thus, populism has
been described as a ‘thin-centred’ ideology: it rarely exists on its own and mostly
attaches itself to other ideologies ranging from the radical right to socialism, etc.
(Akkerman, Mudde, and Zaslove 2013; Zaslove 2008).
Several scholars have emphasised the importance of rhetoric for populism:
rhetoric constructs and mobilises the populist movements and is thus performa-
tive and functional (Laclau 2005). Populist rhetoric is often described as relying
on affective, emotive and metaphoric language; polarisation; simplification;
stereotypification; vague expressions; perceiving threats, faults and enemies;
and it appeals to ‘cultural commonplaces’ (i.e. shared physical places or more
abstract sentimental areas of cultural meanings which need no justification and
cannot be rationalised) (Thévenot 2011). The ‘discourse of people’ forms the core
of populism and its rhetorical strategies (e.g. Westlind 1996, 31–32). However,
the notion of people in the discourse is profoundly flexible and can be used in
various senses referring, for example, to ‘men from the street’; ‘us’ and ‘our’
people who share common experiences, history, language and culture; or people
who live in the same state and form the nation (Canovan 1999, 5).
In all senses, the ‘discourse of people’ in the rhetoric of populism either
explicitly or implicitly constructs the idea of nation. It also often involves a
discursive ethnic categorisation of who belongs to the people and who does not
 76 T. Lähdesmäki
(Hellström 2006, 205). The discourse appreciates the traditional lifestyle and
aims to rediscover and protect the ‘own’ culture of the people (Albertazzi and
MacDonnell 2008, 6). The rhetoric of populism thus uses the concepts of
ethnicity, identity and culture as closely interrelated essentialist entities and
connects them with the cultural commonplaces in order to address the people
through their emotions. In the rhetoric of populism, the people and the nation are
often defined through their discursive antitheses such as elites, bureaucrats,
politicians, immigrants, foreigners, the EU and Europe. The meanings of these
negations are also flexible and fluid and constructed in the ‘discourse of people’.
In this article, populism is understood as a thin-centred ideology by emphasising
discursivity as its precondition, the importance of the performative and functional
rhetoric in its practices and the logic of articulation as its politics of power.
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‘Thin’ and ‘thick’ European identities

In the recent studies, the idea of Europe and European identity has been
approached from a social constructionist point of view, laying emphasis on the
use of language, rhetoric, narration and discursive practices as locations in which
their meanings are both explicitly and implicitly produced (e.g. Diez 1999;
Christiansen, Jorgensen, and Wiener 2001; Risse 2004). As the studies indicate,
Europe and European identities are profoundly complex notions and include
meanings which vary depending on the discursive situations in which they are
produced, defined and used. In addition to discursive emphasis, several scholars
have discussed the materiality of the idea of Europe. Europe is an ongoing
process consisting of many overlapping notions of Europe that may be mani-
fested in diverse ways in different territorial contexts and social, institutional and
political practices (e.g. Agnew 2001; Paasi 2001; Risse 2003).
In addition to the notions of Europe, scholars have emphasised the varied
views on the conception of European identity. It is often discussed in the
scholarly literature as an ambivalent concept, the meanings of which range
from civic (or political) to cultural notions (Bruter 2003). Some scholars have
analysed the dimensions of a European identity with a more detailed categorisa-
tion. For example, Franz Mayer and Jan Palmowski (2004) recognise five
different types of European identities: historical, cultural, constitutional, legal
and institutional. According to Delanty (2006), ideas about European identity can
be perceived as encapsulating cultural, political, moral, pragmatic and cosmopo-
litan meanings.
Both academic and political discussions on Europe and European identity are
often characterised by a varying emphasis on the interpreted unity or diversity of
cultures in Europe (e.g. Sassatelli 2009; Lähdesmäki 2012). The discussions
stressing unity often rely on the idea of common cultural roots, history, heritage
and values as a concrete base for coherence in Europe. These discussions bring to
the fore the notion of European identity as a ‘thick’ cultural identity based on
(real or imagined) shared cultural features. In the discussions emphasising
 Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 77
diversity, culture is not given the role of a unifier or a determinant of Europe.
Instead, a variety of cultures and their plurality is considered as a key character-
istic of Europe. Discussions emphasising the diversity in Europe approach
European identity as a ‘thin’ civic or political identity formed, for example, on
the basis of legal rights, citizenship statuses, constitutions, economic networks or
the functional cooperation of administrative units (on ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ identities,
see e.g., Delanty 2003; Axford 2006; Davidson 2008).
Several scholars have criticised the ‘thick’ cultural determination of Europe
by bringing to the fore how culture has become a site for new conflicts over
identity politics in Europe (Delanty 2000, 234) and how outlining Europeanness
in cultural terms has led to xenophobic and racist demarcations and discourses
(Orchard 2002, 429). That has led others to argue for a political approach in
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outlining Europe and Europeanness. However, the views that stress the civic/
political dimension of European identity have also been criticised. In these
critical views, culture is seen as essential for a sense of common belonging. A
purely political idea of the citizenship is experienced as too abstract, and it has
been dismissed as an unviable basis for shaping a common identity (Orchard
2002, 429–430). As the analysis in the following section indicates, the rhetoric of
populism flexibly uses both the ideas of unity and diversity of Europe and
European identity in its protests against various faults in the society and in
pointing out the diverse threats posed to ‘the people’.
Identity formations are often produced by distinguishing oneself and one’s
‘own’ group from ‘others’ and by articulating a presupposed ‘constitutive
outside’ (Hellström 2006, 54). On the one hand, Europe and European
identity can be perceived as being produced as a negation of or a reaction
to ‘non-Europe’. On the other hand, Europe’s ‘other’ can also be found within
the borders of Europe. In the pro-European and cosmopolitan discourse
promoting European integration, nations and nationalism function as coun-
ter-powers to Europe (Shore 2000; Hellström 2006) – and, respectively, in the
nationalist discourse, the idea of a united Europe forms a threat that needs to
be rejected.
The transforming and fluid relations of national and European identification
have recently been widely discussed in the academia (e.g. Herrmann and Brewer
2004; Risse 2010). These theoretical discussions on territorial feelings of belong-
ing rely on the idea of the multilayeredness of identities – an idea referred to in
the studies with diverse concepts in order to describe the ‘overlapping’, ‘nested’,
‘cross-cutting’, ‘mixed’, ‘hybrid’ or ‘co-existing’ nature of identities (e.g.
Delanty and Rumford 2005, 51, Risse 2010, 23–25). According to this view,
people hold multiple territorial, cultural and social identities, which are invoked
in a context-dependent way and become activated in certain situations or circum-
stances (Risse 2003, 76–77). Therefore, there are no clearly defined boundaries
between, for example, one’s national identity and one’s Europeanness. As
Thomas Risse (2003) notes, it might be impossible even to describe what national
identity means without also referring to Europe and Europeanness. The same is
 78 T. Lähdesmäki
also implicitly true in the case of the rhetoric of populism, even though it
explicitly relies on the notion of European identity as separate from the national,
regional and local identities of people living in Europe.

Fixing the meanings of Europe and European identity in the newspaper of

The Finns Party
In the corpus of the study, the meanings of Europe and European identity are
rhetorically fixed to diverse threats and key populist dichotomies. When Europe
is paralleled with the EU, it is represented as a threat to the common people in
Europe, European nations, national independence and cultures, real democracy
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and the state of law. When a threat is located outside Europe, its target is the
European civilisation, Christianity, current order in Europe and the common
European culture, heritage, values and mentality. Europe is simultaneously con-
sidered as a threat to the European people and being threatened by the outsiders.
The ‘EU-Europe’ represents three key opposed enemies in the rhetoric of popu-
lism: the political elite, bureaucrats and the rich. The EU and all kinds of
integration processes in Europe are perceived as projects of the rich political
elite dominating or ignoring the poor and powerless common people. Thus, the
meanings of ‘EU-Europe’ are intertwined with manifold power relations and
hierarchies of dominance and subordination. As a candidate in the election for
the European Parliament states in his texts in Perussuomalainen: ‘The EU
already orders us, the Finns, about too much, even in small matters. The
Finnish farmer, who used to be the master of his own land, has ended up as a
crofter under the rule of the lords of Brussels’ (Havansi 2009, 16). The author
uses vocabulary that refers to the power hierarchies of a historical agricultural
social order. The rhetoric appealing to the ‘own land’, its historical continuity,
traditional life and a sense of justice is an often used means in the political
discourse of the party to convince the readers on the moral legitimacy of the
speaker and the party.
The ideas of nation and nation-state form the fundamental basis for the
articulation of Europe in the corpus. Europe is signified as ‘Europe of nations’
and ‘Europe of nation-states’: a geographical location of distinct ethnic nations
demarcated by their national culture and state borders. In the following quotation,
the author – a town councillor of Kotka and a candidate in the election for the
European Parliament – emphasises the importance of maintaining the national
multicultural diversity in Europe, which is seen as threatened by the EU’s (cultural)
integration process and the ‘multicultural mingle’ leaking over the borders (of
Europe). The cultural heritage is determined in the text with profoundly high
cultural canonised figures, whose legacy is related to the ‘good old Europe’.

We wish Europe to remain a patchwork in which independent states and nations are
different both linguistically and culturally. We want to preserve the cultivated
cultural heritage of Shakespeare, Sibelius, Mozart, Beethoven, Picasso,
 Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 79
Michelangelo, and Rubens, threatened by the multicultural mingle, seasoned with
American Cocacolazation, leaking over the borders. We support a Europe, in which
each nation can pride on its national identity and traditions.

The Finns Party wants the diversity of Europe to remain for the forthcoming
generations. In the long run, the EU elite wants to turn us into a gray European
mass that wanders from one country to another. The main goal of the elite seems
rather to be a mono-cultural Europe than the good old multicultural Europe. (Van
Wonterghem 2009, 5)

In the rhetoric of the corpus, ‘Europe of nations’ includes various cultural and
mental connections and alliances. Some nations are seen as being naturally close
to each other and having a special bond. Nations are often discussed as mental,
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cultural, societal and/or geographical blocs that share a similar kind of notion of
things. For example, other Nordic countries are seen not only as sharing a similar
welfare state model, but also as being close to each other as cultural entities.
Nations are approached in the data as coherent mono-cultural units and their
people as sharing the same characteristics and modes of behaviour. In general, the
texts in the data emphasise the role of culture as a key determinant of commun-
ality. Cultural differences and similarities are much more frequently addressed in
the texts than ethnicity. When culture is discussed as a hypernym and a broad
(and vague) determinant of people, behaviour and communities, it however often
implicitly includes the meanings of ethnicity. In the data, ethnicity is culturalised
and thus discussed with a vocabulary which veils the prejudiced or xenophobic
connotations.
The nation, its national culture, the fatherland, the state independence and
democracy form a strong rhetorical unity, which in the discourse of The Finns
Party represents everything that Europe is seen as lacking. In the corpus, the EU
is not perceived as a transnational political agent, but approached through the
idea of nation-state. Therefore, EU–Europe is seen as both an impossible con-
struction (because it lacks the key characteristics of a nation) and a threat to ‘real’
nation-states because of its attempts to establish a new nation-state that would
replace the old ones. As the summary of the party programme published in
Perussuomalainen states:

The Finns Party thinks that it is sheer madness to imagine that one nation could be
formed, by force and with success, in multinational Europe. Since democracy is the
power of the people, it seems that those who have accepted the Treaty of Lisbon are
not supporters of the power of the people. (Suomalaisena Euroopassa – kansanval-
lan puolesta 2009, 21)

Even though the interaction between distinct nation-states in Europe is usually

considered positive in the corpus, the trans-European cooperation under the EU
policies and programmes is negatively determined. Supranational, transnational
or multinational structures are considered as threats to a fundamental and ‘nat-
ural’ political unit: the nation-state. Transnationalism is rhetorically related to
 80 T. Lähdesmäki
various kinds of negatively charged mingles of ‘pure’ entities and threats of
borderlessness. In addition, transnationalism in EU–Europe is outlined in the
corpus with undemocratic, disloyal and quarrelsome tones: the EU forces the
nation-states to trans-European interaction and causes an unwanted transnational
battle in which the bigger, impudent nation-states are considered as selfishly
scooping all the benefits. Thus, the transnational co-operation in the EU is
labelled as the battle on national sovereignty, as the editor-in-chief of the news-
paper notes in his editorial:

In my previous editorial I wrote about Darwinism, in which the strongest economy

wins and the weaker loses and dies out. I received a lot of feedback in which the
callers were worried about the role of Finland in the Union. The unanimous
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decisions in the EU are the guarantees of existence for the small Member States,
such as Finland. Otherwise the large and strong, such as Germany and France, make
the decisions for us. Small countries only have the right to speak in the meetings.
(Lindel 2012, 2)

When other nations are perceived as threats to Finland and the sense of order and
justice in Europe, they are often stereotypified with cultural epithets. The nations
are represented in the texts, for example, as ‘French wine farmers’, ‘Italian pasta
manufacturers’ and the Greek ‘Zorbases’. In the discussion on the threats of the
EU integration process, the decision-makers of the other EU-nations are often
politically stereotypified: ‘The increase of power of the EU Parliament will lead
to the situation in which our matters are increasingly decided by a Greek
communist, an Italian fascist, a German banker, and a French socialist’, as the
party leader Soini (2008, 3) writes.
Although Europe is often approached in the data as a collection of distinct
nation-states, in many discursive situations it is however determined as a more or
less coherent singular entity. The idea of the unity of Europe is particularly
emphasised when Europe is considered as threatened by something determined
as non-European. In the rhetoric of the corpus, the unfamiliar and threatening
‘Europe’s other’ takes various forms: it is distinguished in spatial, cultural,
religious, social and temporal terms. When the ‘other’ is located outside the
European borders, it is often referred to in religious (or religious–cultural) terms.
The discussions on religion in Perussuomalainen are particularly related to the
EU candidacy of Turkey and the extra-EU immigration from the Middle East and
the Northern Africa. In the data, Islam is defined as a negation of Europe,
representing not only the antithetic religion but also the contrary cultural, mental
and moral norms, which in the rhetoric of the corpus are closely intertwined with
religion. In these views, Islam and Europe (or the West) are seen as two coherent
entities which have their ‘own lands’, their original spatial homes. In the rhetoric
of the corpus, religion is thus often culturalised, territorialised and outlined as an
essentialist source of behaviour and identity for the people within their territories.
In the following quotation, written by the vice town councillor of Oulu and leader
of the local section of the party, the clash between Islam and Europe is discussed
 Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 81
as a collision of opposed cultures, values, concepts of justice and political and
societal systems.

What comes to Islam, as far as I know, neither mainstream Islam nor Islamist
fundamentalism recognizes gender equality or the absolute freedom of speech.
Because of this, Islamic culture has serious problems to get along with Western
republican societal values that originate in Christianity.
In addition, Islam does not recognize the difference between politics and religion,
for the Islamic society (umma?) is in principle both a political and a religious
community. [–]

Because of these reasons, I think that the immigration to Europe largely from
Islamic countries and the Islamization of our continent form a serious problem if
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Islam will not change. Unless Islam will change, and Europe will, we can say
farewell to both freedom and democracy. (Kortelainen 2008, 22)

In the corpus, some writers bring to the fore evolutionist views on the battle of
civilisations, in which Europe is perceived as being threatened by extra-EU immigra-
tion, multiculturalisation and islamisation and as being profoundly vulnerable to their
negative impact due to current secularised, pro-immigration minded and (over)liberal
policies and attitudes in Europe. In these texts, the EU and its integration politics are
perceived to endanger Europe as a cultural community. The current EU integration
process is thus predicted to lead to ‘the end of European culture and civilisation’
(Kortelainen 2007, 6) as the same author claims. Defending Europe against these
threats outlines it as an essentialist entity, in which the (original European) people share
a common Christian cultural heritage, mentality, sense of justice, morals and ethics.
During the first years of Perussuomalainen, immigration was a less-discussed
topic. When it was brought to the fore, it was approached in relation to the EU, its
directives on the movement of people and economy. In the texts written after 2006,
particularly those by the members of The Finns Party Youth (established in 2006),
the discussion on immigration in the newspaper broadened and transformed into a
criticism of multiculturalism and Islam. At the same time, the public discussion on
immigration and multiculturalism hardened in Finland and even radicalised in a new
way, particularly in the social media. As a result, views in which general ‘border-
lessness’ and different kinds of blurring of traditional borders in culture and society
were considered as negative or a threat gained more ground in Perussuomalainen.
In the following quotation written by the first vice leader of the party, these kinds of
views are intertwined with the threats of Islam, the break-up of the current Finnish
society and the loss of the proper values of ‘our’ ancestors. The culprits for this
situation are found among the elite and the people who ‘believe’ in globalisation.

All kind of blurring, confusion, and mess chopping up our society is bad. We are
digging a grave for ourselves into which we and the values of our ancestors can be
dumped when the time comes. Therefore, we have to defend the nation-state
together with our own fatherland.
 82 T. Lähdesmäki
Borderless society is mentally worthless and cold to people. The geeks, who are all
into believing in globalization, do not realize this big development. Instead, the
stock market capitalists enjoying their life are laughing up their sleeves while the
useful idiots do the undermining for them. But even they, in their voluptuous state,
do not want to understand that with the current development, Islam and their
religious-societal teachings will eventually win. (Saarakkala 2006, 9)

As several scholars (e.g. Wæver 1996; Hellström 2006, 182–183) have noted,
‘Europe’s other’ is often searched for from outside its territorial borders, even
though it can be distinguished in time rather than space. In the pro-European
discourses and the official EU policy rhetoric, European integration is often
justified by appealing to the prevention of the recurrence of Europe’s warlike
history, particularly the horrors of World War II. In the rhetoric found in the
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corpus, history is also used as a warning example for contemporary Europe,

but from an opposing point of view. In the texts, the EU and European
integration are paralleled with the Soviet Union and its undemocratic deci-
sion-making and authoritarian and oppressive politics. In the corpus, the EU is
repeatedly referred to as ‘the EU Kolkhoz’, ‘Kolkhoz of money’, ‘Kolkhoz
ship’ and Eurostoliitto (combining the Finnish words for Europe and the
Soviet Union, Neuvostoliitto). The pro-European politics of the Finnish gov-
ernment is described as contemporary Finlandisation: ‘We used to bow to
Moscow with scabbed knees, today it’s Brussels’ (Tossavainen 2007, 19), as a
letter to the editor states in the newspaper. Common elements between the EU
and the Soviet Union are found from, for example, the un-democratic deci-
sion-making, the subordination of nation-states under the same union and
bureaucracy, or the collapse of economy, the propagandist machinery, and
claiming its critics as right-wing extremists, as the following quotation from
the party leader shows:

Year by year, the EU reminds more and more its late Eastern cousin. Bananas and
licorice are dwindling. The economic collapse eventually killed also the Soviet
Union, but the propaganda machinery lauded the ‘achievements’ of communism
until the very end. Also in the EU, propaganda is what works best. Bananas and
licorice are dwindling. [–]

The critics of the Soviet Union used to be called right-wing extremists. Well, well,
how are the critics of the EU stigmatized?.. Well, similarly. The Soviet Union
survived for a bit over 70 years. That is also the maximum age for Eurostoliitto.
(Soini 2010, 16)

In addition to the extra-European and temporal dimension, the texts in the

corpus define ‘Europe’s other’ in social terms. Europe is threatened not only
by the poor immigrants coming from outside its borders, but also by the ‘poor’,
‘underdeveloped’ and ‘corrupted’ states in the former socialist countries
accepted in the EU in the Eastern enlargements of the Union in 2004 and
2007. As a counter-image to this threat, Europe is signified with order and
 Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 83
wealth. The underdeveloped ‘East’ thus forms in the corpus an economic threat
to Finland.

Ambiguity of Europe and European identity as rhetorical instruments of

power
Populist parties are successful to the degree that they can universalise their claims
on behalf of the people and combine various social groups and discourses into
one common identity. In general, hegemonic political orders aim to present
themselves as internally coherent and their arguments as universal forms of
truth that transcend politics as such (Lowndes 2005, 146). The articulations of
Europe and European identity in the political discourse of The Finns Party are
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rhetorical means in the political struggle for hegemony. Even though the mean-
ings of Europe and European identities vary in their political discourse, the
articulation of them, however, has a common motive, that is, to defend the
common people against the threat formed by its antithetic and ‘othered’ oppo-
nents. The logic of the articulation of Europe and European identity flexibly
justifies the political attempts of The Finns Party. When their political discourse
emphasises a distinction to Europe and national diversity in Europe, the logic of
articulation justifies, for example, nationalist, anti-elitist, antiestablishmentaria-
nist and Eurosceptic politics. When the discourse brings to the fore the identifica-
tion with Europe and the idea of unity in Europe, the logic of articulation
justifies, for example, anti-immigration, antiglobalisation and mono-culturalist
political attitudes.
As an ambiguous concept, Europe can easily be connected to various
populist themes of protest (Ruostesaari 2011, 106–107). The ambiguity of
Europe and European identity makes them useful rhetorical tools in the politics
of populism and enables the flexible fixing of Euroscepticism and populist
European politics to other political attempts. The ambiguity of the concepts
and the ‘thin-centeredness’ of the populist ideology produce a political leeway
utilised by politicians in various, and even opposing, ways within the populist
party.
The diverse views on Europe and European identity within The Finns Party
are partly explained by its heterogeneity: the party draws together different kinds
of agents connected by dissatisfaction with the current policies and a will to
challenge the current political consensus. On the one hand, the varying meanings
of Europe in the populist discourse can be interpreted as indications of the
disintegration and obscurity of the views on the populist political agenda. On
the other hand, the ‘floating’ nature of meanings can be used in the populist
discourse as a political strategy to locate the threats outside the imagined ‘us’ and
to project the fears of ‘others’ on a common ‘scapegoat’. In the rhetoric of The
Finns Party, the EU functions as a scapegoat that can be blamed for various
fundamental faults such as shaking the foundations of identity and culture in
Europe.
 84 T. Lähdesmäki
Conclusions
Europe and European identity are profoundly flexible concepts that can be filled
with various meanings depending on the speaker’s political aims. Their meanings
are not only different in different political discourses, but also ‘floating’ within a
discourse. As the investigation indicates, the discursive construction of Europe
and European identity in the party newspaper Perussuomalainen takes place
through the framing of its dichotomic and ‘othered’ opponents (whether class
based, economic, political, cultural, religious, spatial, social or historical) and
defending the fluid and situationally transforming ‘common people’ against their
threats.
In populist discourse, the idea of Europe embraces diverse contradictions. On
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the one hand, it can be perceived as a cultural and value-based community that
shares a common Christian heritage, traditions and moral norms and values. In
the discourse, identification with Europe and the promotion of European com-
munality are particularly pronounced when a threat towards ‘us’ is experienced as
coming from the margins of Europe or outside its imagined borders. On the other
hand, Europe as a political project and the political and cultural integration in
Europe can be articulated as a threat to national independence, identity and
cultural particularity – and to Europe and European cultural identity itself.
When Europe is perceived as facing an extra-European threat; Europeanness is
articulated as a ‘thick’ identity based on essentialist cultural features. When the
threat is located within Europe or considered to be the EU, Europeanness loses its
basis as a collective identity and transforms into a negation of a ‘thick’ essenti-
alist national identity.
National emphasis is important for most of the political parties. Populists,
however, take nationalism as an explicit agenda. Along with the interests in
nationalism, the concept of culture has been adopted to the political rhetoric of
populist parties. As the analysis indicates, culture transforms to politics and
politics becomes culturalised in populist political discourses. The investigation
on the meaning-making processes of Europe in the rhetoric of The Finns Party
indicates the importance of perceiving populist rhetoric as a culture-bound dis-
course and understanding the cultural and historical contexts of the populist
rhetoric as the frames within which the politics of populism emerge. The very
notion of culture in the populist discourse is however profoundly limited, which
is a political choice. It emphasises mono-culturalism, ‘purity’ of cultural features
and one-layeredness of cultural identities while ‘borderlessness’, and the trans-
formation of the current cultural, symbolic and societal borders is objected to or
perceived as a threat to the ‘right’ or traditional order.

Acknowledgements
The work has been supported by the Academy of Finland under Grant SA21000019101
(Populism as movement and rhetoric).
 Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 85
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TUULI LÄHDESMÄKI is Academy Research Fellow in the Department of Art and

Culture Studies at University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
ADDRESS: Department of Art and Culture Studies, P. O. Box 35, 40014 University of
Jyväskylä, Finland.
Email: tuuli.lahdesmaki@jyu.fi