the title of this track is my thoughts on the soviet union
and while this'll be boring to most I know it'll activate a few of you
cos the Soviet Union is the focal point of many people's views
about right and wrong in this world and what we need to do
let me start this story with my drive into work this morning
I got a meeting with my boss who received an email that was disturbing
from an angry right wing person in finland who was very upset
my boss showed me the email and the email said:
"the one thing I have found most distasteful when doing my own studies in universities are the lecturers/professors/docents such who are completely incapable of keeping political indoctrination of their own completely broken worldviews away from their teaching. you seem like a prime example of such even though you are apparently even not man enough to stand behind your own words since you have deleted your recent tweets. I revel in the fact that every single time an ultra socialist even communist regimes have risen to power it has always been the sympathizers of such that have gotten themselves exterminated first. by trying to tell the finnish people of their own history in an absolutely twisted way you are not just insulting me but the people as a whole. regards"
ok there's a lot to unpack in here
I'm not sure where to start but I wanna make one thing clear
I was not insulting "the finnish people" why would I do that?
my childhood hero was teemu selanne the finnish flash
I've cheered for sami salo and teppo numminen and saku koivu
and one of my mentors was the finnish academic liisa north who
taught me the importance of knowing my shit
getting it right, not making stuff up, having a point and standing by it
so when I engaged in a public discussion about finland in the second world war
I knew what I was there for
the only finns I took issue with were the ones who supported hitler
and unfortunately it wasn't a small group, I wish the number was smaller
see back in 1917 the world was in turmoil
the first war fucked everyone up and it radicalized a lot of people
russian, finn, hungarians and so many more
sick and tired of being sick, of being hungry, of being poor
so they rebelled against the rich and powerful but oh
these things don't often go the way we would like them to go
in russia the people won but everywhere else
the rich closed ranks and shut it down and a lot of good people were killed
that's how it all went down in finland you see
and the finnish elite stayed close to the right and later to nazi germany
so if you're picking sides in the finland-soviet war
don't pick the side that sent people to death camps for
being jewish or communist or quote unquote disloyal
finland that was you, I'm really sorry if your narrative is spoiled
this has all been documented by finnish scholars like oula silvennoinen
so don't blame me for sharing truths if they're annoying
and I guess this brings me back around to the question of the soviet union
and how do we walk a measured line with power between exercising and abusing
because frankly if you share the goals of communism as I do, you have to admit
that under the same circumstances you might make the same choices that the soviets did
but at the same time I suspect that if I'd lived there in the thirties
I'd stand a reasonable chance of being targeted in the purges
so all these years later it's not easy to assess this thing carefully
you can easily find yourself attacking too hard or going too easy
what I know for sure is that life for many people got a lot better
and to deny that is to miss something that really really matters
but even more profoundly important than that
is another fundamental and incontrovertible fact
the ussr was built on a series of fundamental beliefs
about the inherent value of all people, not just the elite
and that as a society we're capable of so much more
than to monetize everything and put greed and selfish behaviour at the core
so not thank you trolls, I don't wanna go to the gulag
no, anarchists, I don't think it was always destined to bog
down into a repressive state apparatus
man, the entire ruling class was coming at us
so yeah I wish things had gone a whole lot differently
but what was started back in 1917
is the most important thing we're ever gonna do
so I'm gonna need a whole lot more of you
I'm gonna need a whole lot more of you
I'm gonna need a whole lot more of you
get in loser we're building something brand new
I'm gonna need a whole lot more of you
Epic, immersive songs that you disappear into, with rich layers of keys and ghostly vocal melodies conjuring a misty dreamworld. Bandcamp New & Notable May 2, 2022
Irish singer-songwriter Oisin Leech's acoustic folk music is characterized by its muted beauty and intimate, solitary quality. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 16, 2024
The latest album by Phill Reynolds, a project of Italian singer Silva Martino Cantele, takes listeners on an Americana-fueled musical ride. Bandcamp New & Notable Jul 8, 2022
Singer-songwriter Henry Parker puts his own spin on the classic sounds of '60s and '70s British folk on this wilderness-inspired new LP. Bandcamp New & Notable Nov 9, 2021
