---
title: "Peak Woke | Matti H. Virtanen and Onni Rostila | Negotiator 145"
titleOriginal: "Peak Woke | Matti H. Virtanen Onni Rostila | Neuvottelija 145"
episodeNumber: "145"
guest: "Matti H. Virtanen, Onni Rostila"
datePublished: 2022-07-10
duration: "01:00:02"
youtube: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQg62Rdz-6I"
originalLanguage: "fi"
topics: ["free_speech_society"]
subtitleMethod: "none"
provenance: "Owner page assembled from YouTube metadata and the neuvottelija.fi episode record. The publisher published no chapter marks for this episode, so none are listed here. No transcript is published either — the channel has no English caption track for this episode and the Finnish one is YouTube's automatic track. One guest was promoting his own book on the episode's subject. Both guests argue from the same side of the Finnish debate and no one holding the position they describe is present to answer, and the episode discusses the independence of the prosecution service and the courts in that context. It was recorded shortly after the Dobbs ruling, which several passages treat as still unfolding."
fiCanonical: "https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/199-peak-woke-matti-h-virtanen-onni-rostila-neuvottelija-145"
canonical: https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep145-peak-woke-virtanen-rostila/
---
# Peak Woke | Matti H. Virtanen and Onni Rostila | Negotiator 145

English subtitles are not available on this page. This is an episode summary, not a curated transcript.

## Summary

Has peak woke already passed, or are both extremes strengthening at once? The freelance journalist Matti H. Virtanen, author of the book Ääripäät, and Onni Rostila, Master of Laws, take up the United States Supreme Court's abortion ruling, the rise of ultra-conservatism, and the part identity politics plays in Russian war propaganda. The conversation works through the mechanisms of polarisation from schismogenesis to the Overton window, and through the independence of Finland's prosecution service and courts. It closes by asking whether a heterodox sensible centre can rescue public debate.

## Not a peak, a widening

The title asks whether the wave has crested; what the conversation actually describes is both ends of the spectrum gaining at once. Those are different phenomena with different predictions, and separating them is the most useful thing the episode does, even though it does not quite acknowledge that it has done it.

## Schismogenesis

The borrowed anthropological term does real work here: it names the process by which each camp defines itself against the other and so hands the other the power to move it. It explains why polarisation continues without anyone choosing it, and why exhortations to moderation have so little purchase.

## The weakest link

The closing hope is a heterodox sensible centre. It is a disposition, not an institution, and nothing in the preceding hour explains what would give it the staying power the two poles have. The diagnosis is stronger than the prescription.


## Watch

The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: [Peak Woke | Matti H. Virtanen Onni Rostila | Neuvottelija 145](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQg62Rdz-6I).
A Finnish edition of this episode is published at [www.neuvottelija.fi](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/fi/episodes/199-peak-woke-matti-h-virtanen-onni-rostila-neuvottelija-145).

## In depth

The Neuvottelija AI editions carry a long-form write-up of this episode:
[English](https://www.neuvottelija.com/ai/ep145-peak-woke-virtanen-rostila/) · [suomeksi](https://www.neuvottelija.fi/yhteiskunta/ep145-peak-woke-virtanen-rostila/).

---

Cite as: Sami Miettinen, Neuvottelija — Peak Woke | Matti H. Virtanen and Onni Rostila | Negotiator 145, https://www.neuvottelija.com/podcast/episodes/ep145-peak-woke-virtanen-rostila/, 2022-07-10. For quotes include episode 145 and timestamp.