Can Finland Prevail?

^[1]2,364 words

Edward Dutton
The Silent Rape Epidemic: How the Finns Were Groomed to Love Their Abusers
Thomas Edward Press, 2019

Evolutionary psychology researcher and anthropologist Edward Dutton, most recently the author of At Our Wits’ End: Why We’re Becoming Less Intelligent and What It Means for the Future ^[2], has just come out with another very interesting text. In The Silent Rape Epidemic, Dutton deals with his adopted nation of Finland, arguing that the evolutionary history of the Finns has made them uniquely vulnerable to multiculturalist ideology and its consequences, but also uniquely capable of reversing current trends.

Much of the material in this text overlaps with the material in Dutton’s earlier work, such as How to Judge People By What They Look Like, At Our Wits’ End with Michael Woodley of Menie, and The Genius Famine with Bruce G. Charlton. Many readers will thus be able to skip much of the material on intelligence and personality. There is, however, a significant amount of interesting material specific to Finland and the Finns, who stand out in numerous ways.

Compared to other Western European nations, Finland has kept a low profile historically. Although readers may be familiar with successful Finnish heavy metal bands such as HIM and Apocalyptica, the nation has produced relatively few prominent individuals, artistic or otherwise. The nation has even been mocked in a song ^[3] by the British comedy group Monty Python for being especially boring, with its main attractions including “eating breakfast or dinner, or snack lunch in the hall.” Dutton goes into several reasons why this is the case and explains how the related character traits have made them especially vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous newcomers.

First of all, Finland is a cold country, even in comparison to neighboring Sweden and Norway. Although like much of Europe, it is significantly warmed by the Gulf Stream, it is located at a far northern latitude, similar to northern Canada and Iceland, and as such is dominated by long winters. Dutton argues that such conditions “lead to small gene pools, because you must be strongly adapted to them or perish” (24), meaning that Finns have more in common with each other genetically than many other nations, with fewer exceptional individuals. Such a group of people will also have the personality traits which enable them to be highly cooperative, again because this was necessary historically for survival. These include having relatively low testosterone and self-esteem, making them shy and averse to conflict.

People with exceptionally high IQs and a moderately antisocial personality are in many cases responsible for questioning established norms, but Finland has proportionately fewer of these geniuses than other white nations. Not only do Finns have a lower degree of the necessary character traits, such as individualism, but their intelligence profile differs ^[5] from that of other Europeans. Dutton cites evidence that the Finns are the most intelligent European ethnicity, with estimates of between 102.2 and 111 for their average IQ, even the lowest of which would put them above the rest of Europe. However, this does not translate into many geniuses. As a very genetically homogenous population, intelligence is distributed along a narrower bell curve for the Finns than for other nations, meaning that they have fewer mentally retarded people as well as fewer of the intellectually gifted.

Due to these factors, only five “Finns” have ever won a Nobel Prize ^[6], two of whom were from a Swedish-speaking minority ethnicity known as the Finland Swedes. Indeed, practically all historically significant individuals born in Finland have been Finland Swedes. This ethnic group is genetically distinct from Finns, and are generally described as differing in personality as well. The author has contributed to research which shows them to be less neurotic and more extroverted and conscientious, which may account for their disproportionate success in Finnish society. Comprising only five percent of the population, the Finland Swedes make up “24% of board members of the 50 largest Finnish companies” (63).

All of these factors lead to a population which is highly trusting and averse to conflict. Unfortunately, this has enabled people from very different cultures to abuse their trust. Although historically Finland has had very little crime, in recent years there have been many cases of Finnish girls being raped, often where the girls are under the age of 16. Practically all of the perpetrators have been Muslims of Middle Eastern origin, with those of Iraqi and Afghan origin in particular being forty times likelier than Finns to be perpetrators of sex crimes ^[7] in 2017. This represents an abuse of trust in two ways. Not only have some Finnish women and girls had the false impression that it is safe to be alone with these men, but the nation’s political leadership had a similar misplaced trust in them, welcoming large numbers of them as refugees. In 2015, Finnish Prime Minister Juha Sipilä even encouraged people to take these Muslim men into their own homes.

Although there are high rates of rape in neighboring Sweden, mainly also perpetrated by Muslim men, only in Finland and the United Kingdom has there been evidence of gangs organizing sexual attacks. Individual victims have been raped by numerous perpetrators working in concert, including cases of gang rape in public parks. Dutton counts ^[9] twenty-nine cases of underage girls being sexually abused over the span of a few months in the northern town of Oulu. In one case ^[10], a girl under the age of 15 was allegedly raped repeatedly by seven men over a period of several months. All of these men had been admitted as “asylum seekers or quota refugees.”

Dutton presents evidence that this type of atrocity is actually an evolved behavior, as it is in the genetic interests of the rapists. As low-status men, refugees in Finland are unlikely to be attractive to many Western women, so their chances of passing on their genes through legitimate means are low. “[B]eing a low status single male is a key predictor of being a rapist,” and both rape in general and of virgins in particular, which most underage girls surely are, mean a higher likelihood of pregnancy (108). Of course, many pregnant rape victims in modern-day Finland would not pass on the attackers’ genes, as they would get abortions, but the way in which the instincts of the attackers have evolved cannot take this into account. Further, rape has evolved partly as a weapon of war, as it demoralizes the victims’ side, putting them at a disadvantage in the conflict and thus making them less likely to survive to pass on their own genes.

Dutton argues that the Finns’ trusting nature has also led historically to putting misplaced trust in their leaders. Today, this tendency, combined with a strong evolved desire to fit in, means a willingness to follow the Finnish elite in embracing the new norm of multiculturalism, despite historically being a very ethnocentric group and being aware of the problems Muslim immigration has caused in neighboring Sweden. This also helps to explain attempts by the authorities to cover up the nature of the atrocities for over a decade, beginning in 2005, as they were apparently desperate not to cast doubt on their newly-fashionable immigration and asylum policies by revealing their consequences.

While there were also attempts by British law enforcement authorities to cover up the Muslim grooming gang scandal in that nation, UK newspapers reported on the issue as soon as they were informed about them. In Finland, by contrast, newspapers helped to confuse the issue, reporting on it only with broad terms such as “foreigners” to obscure the fact that the perpetrators were Middle Eastern Muslims, who in many cases had been admitted as refugees.

Of course, not all Finns support the multiculturalist agenda, and there is some representation of their views in government. Two of the largest parties have campaigned on a promise to limit immigration, but both have been unreliable in keeping Finland Finnish.

In 2015, Juha Sipilä, the Finnish Prime Minister and a member of the Center Party, reneged on his own promise to limit immigration and decided to welcome large numbers of “refugees.” Timo Soini, then Chairman of the populist Finns Party ^[11], had the opportunity to break up the governing coalition in protest, but refused to do so for reasons that remain unclear. Angry voters replaced him with the hardliner Jussi Halla-Aho, but the party was subsequently expelled from the governing coalition, which narrowly avoided collapse.

Dutton covers several other Finnish idiosyncracies, including the fact that they rarely smile. He describes them as “taciturn, introvert[ed], joyless, reserved, and perfectly happy to be solitary,” in contrast to the more outgoing Swedes (65). Not only do Finns have a narrow IQ range, they also have a narrow range of personality traits, with few Finns being much more extraverted than the norm, for example. In connection with their evolved low testosterone and aversion to conflict, they display social anxiety or introversion, which can be seen in an interview ^[13] with two of the nation’s most successful musicians, Paavo Lötjönen and Perttu Kivilaakso. Lötjönen confirms that Finnish people “are not really spontaneous . . . they are really calm . . . the Finnish audience is pretty boring . . . German people are more spontaneous compared with Finnish people.”

This book was written without the benefit of a co-author, and this shows in the writing. It is at times less well-organized than the previous volume, At Our Wits’ End, which was written with Michael Woodley of Menie, and it is sometimes rushed or cramped. An earlier co-author, Bruce G. Charlton, also seems to have made Dutton’s thinking more accessible in the 2016 book, The Genius Famine.

Finland today is notable for being one of the most highly developed nations in the world, including being rated first in the World Economic Forum’s 2015 Human Capital Index ^[14], as well as being highly rated in the UN Human Development Index ^[15]. But historically, it was one of the poorest European nations; in 1915 it was the “poorest country in Europe,”[1] ^[16] and did not industrialize until the 1950s. Dutton argues that this late development means that in comparison to other European nations, the Finns have not been exposed for as long a period to certain deleterious modern trends.

First, as was covered in much greater detail in At Our Wits’ End, while in earlier centuries the more intelligent tended to have more children, so that each generation inherited genes for greater intelligence than the previous one, the opposite has been the case since some point after the Industrial Revolution. Numerous factors have combined so that the least intelligent people now have the most children, leading society’s average IQ to decline. As recently as the 1970s, Finland had not shown this trend in fertility, which partly accounts for their persistent high IQ.

Second, Finns have not experienced a loss of religiosity to the same degree as many Western nations. In stark contrast to nations such as The Netherlands ^[17], where over two-thirds of the population is religiously unaffiliated, in Finland ^[18] only twenty-six percent are, and practically all believers are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. Not only does this contribute to a stronger group identity, but religious people tend to possess certain personality traits: studies show higher levels of “Conscientiousness (rule-following) and Agreeableness (altruism and empathy)” (13). This means that a more religious society is often a more trusting and trustworthy one, and indeed, Finland has been repeatedly ranked ^[19] one of the four least corrupt countries in the world.

Third, Dutton makes a similar argument regarding ethnocentrism. He argues that their brutal treatment of their enemies, such as the Russians in the first half of the twentieth century, in contrast to their generosity towards their own people, indicates high ethnocentrism among the Finns. There is also more recent evidence of this: about twenty percent of respondents in a 1998 poll “favored the view that people from different cultures should not mix,”[2] ^[20] while in 2000, forty-two percent did not feel that certain races were suitable to live in Finland.[3] ^[21] Both lower religiosity and lower ethnocentrism, Dutton argues, are connected to certain genetic mutations which have become more common since industrialization, and so have not taken hold to the same degree in Finland as in many other European nations.

The author argues that not only their traditional ethnocentrism, but also the Finns’ conscientious and agreeable personalities, will actually be a great advantage in reversing the current situation. The Finnish desire to follow rules and please others has meant that they were easily led to support multiculturalism, but it would also make them easily led in the opposite direction once there is a change in who they feel obligated to please. Dutton cites a study ^[22] arguing that once twenty-five percent of a population “adhere[s] to a counter-cultural viewpoint, such as ethnocentrism currently is,” they will be able to make their view the majority view (114). Once this process takes hold, Finns will be particularly quick to adhere to the new norms, and particularly conscientious in following them.

Another point suggests hope for all Western nations, although Dutton presents it only in terms of what it means for Finns. Current immigration policies are already beginning to create a more stressful environment for much of the population, due to issues such as greater socioeconomic inequality and loss of social trust. Stress is correlated with religiosity, and people who are more religious tend to be more ethnocentric. Stress also tends to make people “more prone to our cognitive biases,” including ethnocentrism, which is a bias practically all people display to some degree (115). Thus, as the demographic situation worsens, we should expect more people to feel a preference for their own ethnic group, and thus be willing to defend the interests of their own group against those of others. Hopefully, this shift will happen sooner rather than later.

Notes

[1] ^[23] A. Shaw, “Finland: The Russian Program and the Working of Woman Suffrage,” in American Review of Reviews, Vol. 51 (1951).

[2] ^[24] Pertti Anttonen, Tradition through Modernity: Postmodernism and the Nation State in Folklore Scholarship (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2005).

[3] ^[25] Ibid.