Episode 352 · 2025-09-23 · 54:00 · Original in Finnish
Left-wing gaslighting | Tere Sammallahti, Onni Rostila | Negotiator 352
Originally published as “Vasemmistosumutus | Tere Sammallahti Onni Rostila | Neuvottelija 352”
The organising concept is sumutus — Onni Rostila's proposed Finnish equivalent of gaslighting — and its separation from ordinary selective framing. The conversation starts from the Charlie Kirk killing and the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel and moves to how a media controversy is either harnessed to an agenda or managed down. Its most concrete example is domestic: a reception unit in Tampere whose cost was explained away as the cheapest bid, when the real question concerns how the tender was specified. It also covers cancel culture turning in both directions, where Sammallahti draws the line against his own side, and citizenship-based social security as a question of incentives. Both guests are sitting MPs on the right; nobody puts the opposing case.
Core theses
- Gaslighting and selective framing are different things, and the episode's value is in keeping them apart rather than in the examples it picks.
- The Tampere reception-unit argument turns on how the tender was specified, not on which bid was cheapest — which is the general shape of most cost controversies.
- Cancel culture is treated as running in both directions, and one guest applies the test to his own side.
- Both speakers are sitting MPs from governing parties and no opposing voice is present.
Watch and listen
Key moments
- 00:00 — Hiking in Norway, and teaching children to swim
- 01:00 — A swimming course on a southern holiday against the state doing it
- 01:13 — The killing of Charlie Kirk
- 01:44 — Jimmy Kimmel's suspension and Trump's cancellation
- 02:52 — Gaslighting, sumutus and propaganda in society
- 03:53 — Late-night comedians under pressure in the US
- 04:20 — Helsingin Sanomat writes about gaslighting too
- 06:03 — Luxury accommodation for underage asylum seekers in Tampere
- 08:15 — Gaslighting, the film Gaslight, and the Finnish word for it
- 09:43 — A poor defence of the Tampere tender from the left
- 11:42 — Charlie Kirk against twenty liberals
- 12:07 — The media's selective use of controversies
- 15:56 — Violence on the left and the right, and attitudes to it
- 18:01 — Cancel culture's waves in both directions
- 19:58 — The media chooses what you see
- 21:41 — Tolerating political violence in workplaces
- 23:51 — Atte Korhola reads the left charitably
- 25:32 — Acceptance of political violence on the left
- 27:43 — On the power to fight, and the nature of politics
- 29:23 — The Overton window, and Teemu Keskisarja moving the goalposts
- 31:14 — Attitudes to benefits for foreigners in Europe
- 33:22 — Media gaslighting and the inversion of statistics
- 35:22 — Citizenship and the problems of foreign nationals
- 37:10 — Targeting public services at immigrants
- 39:17 — Pushing the solving of problems forward
- 41:30 — Health care and paying privately
- 42:52 — The difficulty of employing people, and the market economy
- 43:13 — The Social Democrats blocked balancing the budget
- 47:30 — The illusion of growth and the need to save
- 49:15 — Political promises without savings measures
- 51:07 — The household deduction, and how politicians answer
- 51:24 — The finance minister and analyses of the euro
- 53:13 — The guests: Tere Sammallahti and Onni Rostila
Summary
The organising concept is sumutus — Onni Rostila’s proposed Finnish equivalent of gaslighting — and its separation from ordinary selective framing. The conversation starts from the Charlie Kirk killing and the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel and moves to how a media controversy is either harnessed to an agenda or managed down. Its most concrete example is domestic: a reception unit in Tampere whose cost was explained away as the cheapest bid, when the real question concerns how the tender was specified. It also covers cancel culture turning in both directions, where Sammallahti draws the line against his own side, and citizenship-based social security as a question of incentives. Both guests are sitting MPs on the right; nobody puts the opposing case.
The concept, and why it is worth keeping
Rostila proposes sumutus as a Finnish word for gaslighting, and the episode is at its best where it distinguishes that from ordinary selective framing. The difference matters: selective framing chooses which true things to report, while gaslighting attacks the listener’s confidence in what they observed.
The concrete case
The Tampere reception unit is the useful example, because the disagreement is not about the price. It is about how the tender was specified — which is the shape most public cost controversies actually take, once the headline figure is set aside.
Watch
The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: Vasemmistosumutus | Tere Sammallahti Onni Rostila | Neuvottelija 352. A Finnish edition of this episode is published at www.neuvottelija.fi.
In depth
The Neuvottelija AI editions carry a long-form write-up of this episode: English · suomeksi.
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People and topics
Guests: Tere Sammallahti, Onni Rostila
Topics: Free Speech & Society