Earlier by John Derbyshire: Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s Cleavage: The Evolutionary Psychology Angle and Finland's Sanna Marin Just Wants To Have Fun

The trending term on Finnish Twitter recently was “EroaSannaMarin.” This translates as something like “Sanna Marin—Leave,” though the word “ero” is also used to mean “divorce.” Implication: Finland should divorce its 36-year-old attractive female Prime Minister, now world-famous for allowing herself to be filmed dancing in an obviously sexual fashion with male and female celebrities, despite being married with a young child. Marin’s problems are obviously personal, but a role is also played by Finland’s deeply conformist political culture, which paradoxically leaves it without natural resistance to fads like feminism and Wokeism.

Finns don’t really mind that Marin goes out partying at nightclubs. In fact, they’re quite proud of the fact that the international press regards their head of government as sexy and cool, to the extent of commenting on her cleavage (“small but well-formed breasts”—John Derbyshire) [In Finland, a Partying Prime Minister Draws Tuts, and Cheers, by Katrin Bennhold, New York Times, August 27, 2022]. But they do mind if their Prime Minister makes herself, and thus Finland, look bad. They have an intense—almost Northeast Asian—sense of shame. And there are reasons for this, as I’ve explored in my book about Finns’ reaction to immigrants, The Silent Rape Epidemic: How the Finns Were Groomed to Love Their Abusers.

Evolved to a freezing ecology, where cooperation is everything, Finns are very high in social anxiety and suffer from a kind of national low self-esteem (low self-esteem correlates with altruism and empathy). They deeply care about, even fear, what the important countries of the world think about them.

As I note in my book, because Finns are so conformist, they are inertly conservative—thus they resisted “Clown World” far longer than neighboring countries. But when the tipping point was finally reached, the change swept through Finland with astonishing speed. This is probably because Finland, unlike even Norway and Denmark, seems to have few of the highly intelligent psychopaths who have the courage and ability to stand up a trend and slow it down. (For the same reason, it has fewer geniuses, who also tend to have psychopathic tendencies.)

Thus, suddenly, in 2019, there was a Finnish government led by four females, all of them in their mid- or early-30s, obviously over-promoted, elected as party leaders simply because they were young and pretty.

The fact that the finance minister Katri Kulmuni, born in 1987, had to resign over corruption allegations [Katri Kulmuni resigns as Finance Minister over consultancy payments scandal, Helsinki Times, June 2020] (allegedly using taxpayers’ money to improve her public-speaking skills, later blamed on an official) should have rung alarm bells. But Kulmuni was promptly replaced as leader of her Centre Party by another Millennial Maiden, Annika Saarikko.

On 17th August, a video was published on Tik Tok of Marin partying, seemingly at someone’s house, with Finnish celebrities and with other members of her Social Democratic Party.

She appeared to be drunk and was dancing in a sexually provocative manner, including on her knees with her legs spread apart and her arms behind her head. Later in the video, Marin’s friends are heard swearing and referring to themselves as the “jauhojengi” (“flour gang”). “Flour” is euphemism for cocaine in Finnish. This party had taken place between Saturday 6th and Sunday 7th August, when Marin was not on holiday—and in effect, on duty, Finland being in a state of “heightened military awareness.”

Marin responded that she had merely been drinking and partying in a “boisterous” way.

“I danced, sang, and partied—perfectly legal things. And I’ve never been in a situation where I've seen or known of others [using drugs]. I have a family life, I have a work life and I have free time to spend with my friends. Pretty much the same as many people my age,” she told a press conference [Sanna Marin: Finland PM partying video causes backlash,  by Merlyn Thomas, BBC News, August 19, 2022].

She added that she felt no need to change her behavior. “I am going to be exactly the same person as I have been until now and I hope that it will be accepted.”

Personally, as a resident of Finland, when I first saw the video, I thought it must be some sort of “deepfake.” Even though Marin had got into trouble in December for going clubbing after coming into close contact with someone with Covid-19 and then being un-contactable about it [Sanna Marin: Finland's PM sorry for clubbing after Covid contact, BBC, December 8, 2021], I thought it impossible that any competent minister would allow herself to be filmed engaging in such behavior.

But Marin told the Finnish media that she knew she was being filmed and simply regretted that it had been shared.

Then other videos began to emerge, in the gossip tabloid Seiska, from earlier in the evening of 6th August, when Marin and her pop-star friends had been at a Helsinki nightclub. Marin (who is married, remember, although this doesn’t seem to interest the media) is seen dancing in an intimate fashion with a male Finnish pop-star, who appears to be kissing her neck.       

On 22nd August, another video came to light, this time of Marin dancing in a sexual way with Sabina Särkkä, a prominent Finnish female model.

And then, on 23rd August, it emerged that after July’s “Ruis Rock Festival” she had invited some of her “friends” to her official summer residence, Kesäranta, to “sauna, swim and spend time together.” A photograph of two bare-breasted young women kissing, one of them covering her breasts with a sign saying “Finland,” was published online.

In the wake of this furor, and under pressure from opposition parties, Marin took a drug test. It was negative [Sanna Marin drug test proves negative, Yle News, August 22, 2022]. Marin also became tearful in public, in a speech to her supporters, telling them:

I am a human being. In the midst of the crisis, I have been thinking about Ukraine and about all of you . . . I too am a human being. And I too sometimes long for joy, light and fun amidst these dark clouds.

What kind of Prime Minister could get herself into this situation? It doesn’t take a psychiatrist to understand her, and my video about her when she became Prime Minister seems to have aged well.

Sanna Marin is the product of an alcoholic father. Her parents broke up when she was very young, and she spent time in a children’s home, before her mother contracted a lesbian relationship and she was raised by two women, in relative poverty, albeit by Finland’s wealthy standards. She scraped through her high school exams (“L” is the best mark, she only has one) and scraped into university, not actually graduating until 2017, after she had become an MP. She was well known as an e-girl, constantly taking selfies, and also for her dominant chairing of Tampere City Council, in which she feigns a deep voice  [listen here] that she does not use when speaking in English. (Listen below)

It seems that Marin is likely an example of the “vulnerable Narcissist” type. Being Left-Wing correlates with Narcissism, perhaps because—in a Leftist society—it gets you the praise you crave and allows you to reassure yourself that you are morally superior to others. Machiavellianism is also associated with Leftism, possibly because you see the world as dangerous and unstable and fear those with power, so you play for status by virtue-signalling about the disadvantaged; or because attaining status reassures you about yourself. And in a Leftist world, being Leftist is an easy route to this [The Dark Triad traits predict authoritarian political correctness and alt-right attitudes, by Jordan Moss and Peter O’Connor, Heliyon, 2020].

Being Leftist also correlates with Neuroticism—feeling negative emotions, such as envy, strongly [Mental Illness and the Left, by Emil Kirkegaard, Mankind Quarterly, 2020].  As I have discussed in my book Spiteful Mutants, Leftists are evolved to match an unstable and dangerous ecology in which you must you look after yourself, making you status-hungry. If you are mentally unstable, then you may perceive yourself as weak, so you will use covert tactics—such as virtue-signalling—to attain power, all the while making out that your care about the marginalized. But the real “you” will always leak through.

Imagine what it must be like to be Sanna Marin. Your early life—poverty and time in care—has set you up for a “live fast, die young” unstable kind of a life. Your father is an alcoholic, which correlates with poor impulse control and thus adaptation to an unstable world. So there is also a genetic component. You deal with this by telling yourself that you are wonderful—the sexy selfies—and you exude confidence, and sex appeal, which propels you to the highest office.

But you don’t really feel “wonderful.” You constantly crave reassurance, causing you to take damaging risks to obtain the approval of Finnish celebrities. You lose a great deal of weight while in office, with anorexia being a known correlate of Neuroticism [Associations of Neuroticism and Impulsivity with Binge Eating in a Nationally Representative Sample of Adolescents in the United States, by Angela Lee-Winn et al., Personality and Individual Differences, 2016]. You try to control your fears with obsessive behaviour, such as cleaning your house numerous times a day or brushing your teeth many times each day, as Marin has told Finnish newspapers. Your high school friends notice that you’ve fundamentally changed and that you have somehow adopted a false self [Changed Marin: The political autumn started with Prime Minister Sanna Marini's celebration videos. The commotion was ready. Now, old schoolmates tell us how they remember the prime minister. Something changed in the last two years, by  Sami Koski, iltalehti-fi, August 26 2022 (Finnish original)]. This is the coping strategy of the vulnerable Narcissist.

But Marin is also a product of a highly conformist but brittle political culture that, when it flips from Lutheran Nationalism to Woke, really “goes for it,” with few people ornery enough to stand in the way. Sanna Marin’s elevation to the Prime Ministership—despite her being extremely psychologically vulnerable—seems to say as much about Finland as does it does about her.

Maybe this is why she’s allowed Finland to be stampeded into joining NATO, breaking with Finland’s long-standing neutrality and giving the Russian bear a serious poke in the eye.

Edward Dutton (email him | Tweet him) is Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Asbiro University, Lódz, Poland. You can see him on his Jolly Heretic video channels on YouTube and Bitchute. His books are available on his home page here.