---
title: "Pride and the Coalition, defamation in the civil courts, and the arithmetic of coalition talks — Sami Miettinen on Weekly Wiseguys"
titleOriginal: "Viisastelu: Pride-öyhöt voimansa tunnossa | Oikeistohallistus vaarassa | Sananvapaus pulassa!"
description: "Sami Miettinen, Tere Sammallahti and MP Onni Rostila on Ivan Puopolo's Weekly Wiseguys, 26 May 2023, recorded mid-way through Petteri Orpo's coalition negotiations: Helsinki Pride ending its partnership with the National Coalition Party, a first-hand account of being called a Nazi online and the proposal to move defamation from criminal to civil law, and a negotiation-theory read on why the government talks would not collapse."
format: "podcast"
show: "Viikon viisasteluklubi"
episode: "Viisastelu 26.5.2023"
hosts: ["Ivan Puopolo"]
date: 2023-05-26
duration: "59:56"
language: "fi"
original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpWuBGpT6Nw
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/media/viisastelu-pride-the-right-bloc-and-free-speech/
---

# Pride and the Coalition, defamation in the civil courts, and the arithmetic of coalition talks — Sami Miettinen on Weekly Wiseguys

Sami Miettinen joined **Viikon viisastelu** — Ivan Puopolo's weekly political panel, known in
English here as *Weekly Wiseguys* — on 26 May 2023, alongside **Tere Sammallahti** and Finns
Party MP **Onni Rostila**. It was recorded in the middle of Petteri Orpo's coalition
negotiations, on the day the Finns Party had put a clock deadline on the immigration items,
and the panel is openly guessing about an outcome nobody yet knew.

Three subjects. The first is Helsinki Pride ending its partnership with the National Coalition
Party. The panel's durable argument there is not about the trans law but about predictability:
nobody published in advance what counted as a breach, so the rule could not guide anyone's
behaviour. Alongside it sits an honest concession — the removal of the old law's infertility
requirement was a real reform — and a commercial observation about which side of a
sponsorship actually holds the audience.

The second is personal. Sammallahti describes being repeatedly called a Nazi online, and
walks through, out loud, why he decided not to file a criminal complaint: it would sit badly
with his own free-speech position, and a complaint that went nowhere would be read as
vindication for the people making the claim. What he proposes instead is the most concrete
thing in the episode — move ordinary defamation out of the criminal code and into the civil
courts, as in the United States, leaving the aggravated offence in criminal law, on the
grounds that criminal-defamation complaints consume police and court capacity. He states the
intended effect plainly: the threshold would rise.

The third is the coalition talks, and Sami's contribution is a negotiation read given by name:
the Coalition concedes because it has no credible plan B, the Swedish People's Party is the
real kingmaker weighing economic policy against its own immigration line, and a public
ultimatum is usually a sign of weak leverage rather than strong. One of the other guests says
on air that he cannot sign up to all of the premises. That disagreement, and one other, are
left in.

## Chapters

- **00:00** — The line-up: "the fourth estate" group chat
- **01:45** — Ice hockey and a loss in Tampere
- **02:38** — The items on today's agenda
- **03:24** — Set theory, and two sets that cannot overlap
- **04:10** — Identity politics and the demand to pick a side
- **05:03** — Why the partnership ended: how MPs voted, and "transphobic speech"
- **05:51** — The trans law as a package — what was actually voted on
- **06:37** — Sammallahti: collective purity is a strange way to treat the world
- **07:25** — A message to the Coalition ahead of the coalition talks
- **08:32** — Exclusion, and the way back into the fold
- **09:23** — Partnership fees as protection money — the analogy and its limits
- **10:09** — The political grid, and where the Coalition gets pushed
- **11:02** — The alternative: do the same things without the flag
- **11:47** — Equality on its own arguments
- **12:33** — TERF, orthodoxy, and the market for sin
- **13:21** — Why defining sin is power
- **14:11** — Anti-racism as the original sin of the age
- **15:01** — Drawing the moral line as a strength of the left
- **15:46** — Collectivism, and why it feels alienating
- **16:34** — The rule that was never published
- **17:25** — Rostila: a growing public sector grows its own constituency
- **18:16** — The disagreement: conscious strategy, or sincere belief?
- **19:09** — The modern sale of indulgences
- **19:56** — Who needs whom: the brand or the partner
- **20:42** — An analogy best read as rhetoric
- **22:21** — What the trans law already achieved — and what is left
- **23:16** — The logic of power: the demands have to keep coming
- **24:09** — Consumer boycotts and the corporate calculation
- **24:57** — Douglas Murray's prediction of a backlash
- **25:48** — What comes next — and what is a straw man
- **26:35** — The ask: it has to be possible to discuss this sensibly
- **27:22** — Sammallahti on his own case
- **28:07** — Why it is not just words
- **28:54** — Two political risks in filing a complaint
- **29:40** — The proposal: move defamation to the civil courts
- **30:28** — What about those who cannot afford to litigate?
- **31:15** — The aggravated offence would stay in criminal law
- **32:04** — Where the Nazi accusation comes from
- **32:54** — What an over-the-top insult says about the person making it
- **33:41** — Dog whistles, and reading hidden motives
- **34:30** — Why the claim cannot be disproved
- **35:19** — Guessing at hidden motives in one direction only
- **36:06** — Labelling as a pre-emptive move
- **36:53** — Adult education centres: an interview that turned on its own argument
- **37:43** — €180 million, and the question of measurable benefit
- **38:30** — The counter: private provision and a voucher
- **40:07** — Who actually uses the service
- **40:56** — Free of charge is not free
- **41:44** — Why no spending ceiling ever gets set
- **42:31** — Miettinen: a subsidy destroys the market
- **43:17** — A correction mid-argument
- **44:11** — Anything free attracts a queue
- **45:03** — Health centre fees and co-payments
- **45:56** — Public funding as a gift, not an entitlement
- **47:36** — Coalition talks: the Swedish People's Party as kingmaker
- **48:24** — The blue-red alternative and its economic policy
- **49:10** — Miettinen's analysis: the Coalition will concede
- **49:58** — Humanitarian and work-based immigration as separate questions
- **50:44** — Why Purra raised it now
- **51:32** — Disagreement about the premises
- **52:22** — A public ultimatum as negotiating strategy
- **53:12** — Talks that do not leak, and reporters guessing
- **54:04** — A comparison with the 2015 negotiations
- **55:58** — Two large parties instead of three
- **56:50** — When a negotiation turns into a contest of prestige
- **57:41** — The naive way and the smart way to negotiate
- **59:21** — Sign-off: the answer comes at six

**The recording lives on Ivan Puopolo’s own channel and he owns it.** This page is a record of the appearance and a pointer to the original, not a copy of it. The chapter marks above are derived from the recording itself; the episode carries no published chapter list of its own.

A fuller write-up is on Neuvottelija AI, [in English](https://www.neuvottelija.com/ai/viisastelu-pride-oikeistohallitus-ja-sananvapaus/) and [in Finnish](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/poliittinen-satiiri/viisastelu-pride-oikeistohallitus-ja-sananvapaus/).

Original recording (Viikon viisasteluklubi): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpWuBGpT6Nw

---

Cite as: Sami Miettinen, guest on Viikon viisasteluklubi Viisastelu 26.5.2023 — Pride and the Coalition, defamation in the civil courts, and the arithmetic of coalition talks — Sami Miettinen on Weekly Wiseguys, 2023-05-26, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpWuBGpT6Nw. Record: https://www.neuvottelija.com/media/viisastelu-pride-the-right-bloc-and-free-speech/.