Nordic Ledger

By Mika Horelli, LEUVEN Democracies are founded on the ideals of free discussion, criticism, and the ability to question without fear of repercussions. However, this ideal is not always realized. While authoritarian regimes may suppress dissent overtly, Western democracies can also experience limitations on free speech—not through legislation, but via social pressure and the branding of dissenting voices as unpatriotic. I have witnessed this firsthand. The atmosphere in the United States following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks serves as a textbook example of how opinions diverging from government policy can be perceived as near-treasonous. At that time, I was in New York City, an eyewitness to the devastation amidst chaos and shock. I observed how the administration of President George W. Bush swiftly formulated its response—and how even minimal criticism of this response became politically perilous. When the United States initiated the War on Terror, it breached int...

By Mika Horelli, BRUSSELS Former Finnish Prime Minister Harri Holkeri (1937–2011) served as President of the United Nations General Assembly from 2000 to 2001. As he was concluding his term, he granted me a farewell interview in early September 2001 in New York. Holkeri remarked that when one has spent almost their entire life in Western societies built on the idea of individual freedom, it is easy to become blind to the fact that only a minority of the world’s population actually lives in democracies. The situation has not improved over the past quarter-century; rather, it has worsened. According to last year’s Democracy Index by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), approximately 45% of the global population lives under some form of democracy, but only 8% experience full democracy. I have lived in Finland, Denmark, the United States, and Belgium, but never in an autocracy. That is why even short visits to such places open my eyes every time to an entirely different reality. ...

By Mika Horelli, BRUSSELS In recent years, we’ve become accustomed to hearing cautionary tales about China’s all-encompassing digital surveillance and its citizen scoring system, evoking some of the darkest dystopian futures imaginable.  History offers us crucial lessons. When we look back at surveillance machinery from the past, like the Soviet Union’s KGB or East Germany’s Stasi, we see how immense resources were poured into controlling citizens. These now-defunct dictatorships could only dream of the capabilities that modern digitization and AI have brought to monitoring and control.  It’s an undeniably alarming scenario, but the truth is even more unsettling: governments’ interest in our digital footprints isn’t confined to authoritarian states. It extends everywhere, even to Western democracies, where the right to privacy has long been a cornerstone of individual freedom.  I’ve worked as a journalist for the past thirty years. A big part of my job involves ga...

By Mika Horelli, Brussels   Russians have referred to Finns as ”tsuhna”, a term implying their view of Finns as honest but somewhat naive. This nickname dates back to the 19th century when, for instance, Finnish carriage drivers were considered trustworthy because they didn’t charge extra fees. In reality, this reputation was more a result of fear of penalties than genuine honesty, but the reputation stuck. Mikhail Khodorkovsky , the former owner of the Yukos oil company, wrote in his 2015 memoir Prison Diaries about how, in his childhood in Soviet Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), telling the truth often meant going hungry. According to Khodorkovsky, one had to adapt to a society where truth was a relative concept and lying was the norm. The Soviet system was built on lies, and everyone knew it—both the authorities and ordinary citizens. This collective web of lies held society together through fear and coercion. It is startling to observe how, in recent years, Western societ...