The Myth of the Hopeless Young Generation – An Obviously False Narrative

Finland’s national public broadcaster, Yle, speculated that the reason young Europeans are running riot in the streets of European cities is that their parents expect them to get an education, work, and have faith in the future, but offer them nothing in return except insecurity, expensive housing, and political hot air. And the result, according to Yle, is that young people’s belief in a better tomorrow is wavering, and rather than simply waiting for change, they are demanding it in the streets.

Consequently, many cities in France have resorted to imposing curfews to protect people and businesses. In Italy, meanwhile, the government has been forced to send hundreds of army troops to Milan to maintain order.

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Yle’s explanation of the events unfolding across Europe in recent days raises the question of why, for example, Finnish young people did not behave in the same way during the Great Famine of the late seventeenth century, when roughly a quarter or even a third of Finland’s population died of starvation, and those who survived could hardly have expected to enjoy proper meals either. Instead, hunger was staved off with pettuleipä, bread made with pine bark, rather than proper flour.

Nor did Finnish youth run riot in the 1860s, when the Finnish famine killed seven per cent of the Finnish population. One might well imagine that young people back then had even less faith in a better tomorrow than Europeans do today.

There was probably little such faith throughout the seventeenth century either, when Sweden — of which Finland was then a part — waged continuous wars across Europe, and a huge proportion of young men were conscripted into the army. In practice, this meant a very real likelihood of dying either on the battlefield or from some disease. Yet Finland remained relatively peaceful, and young people did not set fire to churches in Turku or plunder the riches of Oulu’s wealthy tar merchants.

Nor is there any need to focus on wars or times of crisis. From the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth, downward social mobility was by far the most common trajectory for boys in particular. Although people generally belonged to the peasant class in the early eighteenth century, following the Great Wrath — the Russian occupation of Finland during the Great Northern War — the family farm almost invariably went to the eldest son. Younger sons therefore typically had to become farmhands or tenant farmers, unless their parents managed to marry them off as sons-in-law to a farm that had no sons of its own.

In the next generation, they moved down another rung on the social ladder. The younger sons of tenant farmers became farmhands or, particularly from the late nineteenth century onward, industrial workers and lumberjacks who felled trees with hand tools. Yet these young men did not engage in the kind of rioting we are now witnessing in France and Italy, even though everyone knew that most of them would have to spend their lives in a lower social class than their parents.

Rebellion did not break out until 1918, when the revolution in Russia created a power vacuum. Two militant organisations — the Red Guards and the White Guards — were formed to fill it. Their eventual confrontation became inevitable, at the latest, when the bourgeois-dominated Senate declared the Civil Guards to be the government’s armed forces. The Red Guard leadership could hardly accept this, and therefore embarked on a military campaign that ended disastrously for their side.

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Similar examples can be found in other European countries as well, since Finland and its young people are not — and never have been — exceptions. I therefore suspect that the current rioting by young people has some entirely different cause than their supposedly bleak prospects for the future.

One reason for this is that, in reality, people’s lives are easier today than at any other point in human history. In Europe, nobody dies of starvation, and everyone has the opportunity to improve their social standing through education, provided they have the motivation and ability to do so. Hardly anyone dies of infectious diseases either, and in Western countries, young men are no longer dragged off to war to fight for the foolish ambitions of their inbred kings or emperors.

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Finally, I would like to record here a social media post published yesterday on this subject by Heidi Hagelin, one of Finland’s leading journalists:

“This makes me quite happy. They stayed quiet for a long time, even as the future kept becoming more uncertain. A home, a job, and a future. Pretty basic things. If it feels like those things are impossible to achieve, then…”

That really left me speechless. I will therefore refrain from further comment, other than to note that the journalist later came to admit herself that she had been stupid.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
A Forecast of Population Replacement in Western Europe
How Immigration Has Reshaped European Politics

The Ahmed Case: A Tragedy Foreseen

Now 32-year-old Ahmed Abdullahi Ahmed came to public attention in the Finnish media. You can probably guess why without me having to spell it out.

According to the court, Ahmed was guilty of raping a teenage girl and was sentenced to two years and two months in prison. He was also ordered to pay the victim €6,500 in compensation for suffering, as well as more than €3,500 in her legal costs.

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Thus, yet another Finnish girl has had the opportunity to “enjoy” the kind of experiences that were widely discussed ten years ago, when people from developing countries poured across our borders at the invitation of then Prime Minister Juha Sipilä (Centre Party). And none of this should come as a surprise to anyone.

The reason is that, among others, I myself wrote in 2015, on the basis of rape statistics concerning people arriving from the Middle East and Africa, that approximately one in every thousand men living in Finland who belong to such a nationality will, at some point in his life, be caught committing rape and end up in prison for it.

At the same time, I spelled out in no uncertain terms that “this is connected to Finland’s refugee policy in the sense that by admitting a thousand people belonging to such a group into Finland, we are simultaneously making a decision that a woman—most likely belonging to the native population—will be raped on our soil.”

And even earlier, in 2010, I stated that “rapists and other criminals are, to a large extent, people brought here by humanitarian immigration. Thus, while we help people escape miserable conditions by bringing them here, we also undermine the safety of women, especially Finnish women.”

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Fifteen years have therefore passed, like water flowing through Europe's rivers, and none of my predictions has gone wrong. Not even though, at the time, they ran counter to the views and practical policies of almost all European politicians.

It would therefore be a good idea to remind you, my esteemed readers, of one more article I wrote in 2015 in which my predictions proved correct. I will not reproduce its text here, but I encourage anyone who doubts my words to read the full piece here (in Finnish, but AI tools or Google Translate can help you read it in your own language). 

At the same time, I would remind them that I am not dead yet. Consequently, the contents of that article do not yet concern the present day; rather, they remain a vision of the future—but undoubtedly a much more credible one than they were eleven years ago.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
A Professor’s Ten-Point Plan to Fix Europe’s Immigration Policy
Is Immigration Driving the Nordic Countries Apart?
The Swedish Immigration Catastrophe – A Cautionary Tale

The Regulatory Web Is Driving Europe’s Economic Decline

As you, my esteemed readers, have undoubtedly noticed, the European Union’s position as one of the world’s leading economic regions has eroded over the past two decades. This is illustrated by the chart below, which shows the development of gross domestic product (GDP).

One clear reason for this unfavourable trend is the steadily growing — indeed, quite explosive — proliferation of well-intentioned but highly diverse regulatory requirements, namely EU directives. As a researcher, I have even experienced firsthand how they form a kind of regulatory web that effectively prevents publicly funded scientific knowledge from being translated into technological solutions for businesses and drivers of economic growth in the EU.

This has naturally contributed significantly to the EU falling behind both the United States and China in technological and economic development. This is clearly illustrated, for example, by patent application figures. While the Chinese have filed 1.4 million patent applications so far this year, the Americans 262,000, the Japanese 222,000 and even the South Koreans 186,000, the three major EU countries of Germany, France and Italy have filed just over 60,000 applications combined.

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In this respect, it is encouraging that a number of northern member states are seeking to cut the funding allocated to the EU’s central administration, whose bureaucratic inertia spreads into virtually every corner of the Union. That is why I noted with satisfaction a brief news report stating that Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo (National Coalition Party) had announced that Finland could not accept Ireland’s proposal to reduce the EU budget by a mere €140 billion.

According to Orpo, “some savings have been identified, but far too few, and in some cases in the wrong areas.” By the latter, he was referring to budget cuts affecting defence, research and new technologies. In other words, the cuts are being directed at the very areas of expenditure that are most important for the EU’s future, rather than at socialist-style spending, such as cohesion funds intended to reduce disparities between different regions of the Union.

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It remains to be seen, however, what the EU’s administrative machinery will ultimately decide. Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden and Denmark share Finland’s position, but opposition is particularly strong in Southern and Eastern Europe, whose countries benefit from and advocate for cohesion funding — funding that, in many respects, resembles development aid.

Some kind of resolution may be reached at next week’s summit in Brussels. We should hardly expect miracles, however, since all political systems seem to have an unfortunate tendency to expand bureaucracy and endlessly quibble over details rather than trust in the creative power of the market’s invisible hand.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
EU Carbon Sink Policy Lacks Cost-Effectiveness
Polish Politics: A Quiet Success Story
A New Beginning: Economic Independence in the Hands of Developing Nations

A Forecast of Population Replacement in Western Europe

As you know very well – my dear readers – immigration is rapidly changing Europe. In this connection, I came across the following image from Sweden on social media.

It shows, for the countries of Western Europe, the years in which the native population will – according to a mathematical model – become a minority in their own country. The image shows that Switzerland will be the first to reach this point. There, however, the change will not be as culturally significant as in many other European countries, because the majority of immigrants are educated Westerners.

The situation is different in Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Austria and the United Kingdom, which follow next, and where immigration is dominated by people from developing countries. This will mean profound changes in these societies.

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According to the map, Finland would be the last corner of Western Europe where the native population becomes a minority. Thus, decision-makers here still have time to act even after the first European countries have gone through their own changes and their consequences are visible to everyone.

In this context, it is also worth noting that a major change in attitudes towards immigration is taking place in many European societies. As a result, political forces critical of immigration are rapidly gaining strength (example, another).

It may therefore well be that the demographic change in Western European societies will not take place according to the timetable shown on the map, but considerably more slowly. Nevertheless, sooner or later it will happen, due to immigrants of developing-country origin having a higher birth rate than the native European population.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Votes for Sale: Sweden’s Changing Political Culture
Hamtramck: A Test Case for Mass Immigration
From Burden to Benefit: Reforming Immigration in Finland

Arctic Sea Ice Is Growing Despite Summer-Like Weather in Finland

Finnish meteorologist Pekka Pouta reported that in some parts of Finland, the so-called thermal summer is still continuing. This means that the average daily temperature remains mostly above ten degrees Celsius.

This is unusual, as we are already in October, meaning that according to the calendar we are in the middle of autumn. In addition, according to Pouta's forecast, warm air currents will reach Finland in the coming days as well, so the summery weather looks set to continue.

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Based on this, one might imagine that the melting of the ice fields in the Arctic Ocean would likewise continue at a rapid pace. This is not the case, however. During the past few days, Arctic sea ice has expanded rapidly, to the extent that according to the latest data (from the day before yesterday), its extent was greater for this time of year than at any point since 2014.

In fact, Arctic sea ice begins to grow every year in September, including this year. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the average extent of Arctic sea ice in September was the largest since 2022, as shown in the figure below. 

The figure also shows that the average extent of Arctic sea ice in September has, in practice, neither increased nor decreased significantly since 2007. Consequently, the enthusiasm—particularly among the Russians—to use the Northeast Passage for freight transport does not appear likely to diminish, unless the trend in sea-ice extent returns to the downward trajectory seen between 1995 and 2007.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Recent Arctic Sea Ice Decline Is Not Accelerating
Observations on Arctic Sea Ice Challenge the Notion of Particularly Rapid Melting
Stalled Melting of Northern Polar Ice Buys the West Time to Strengthen Arctic Capabilities

Sex-Dependent Quackery: An Evidence Problem in Sex-Difference Research

One of the consequences of the value liberalism that has become increasingly popular in Western countries over the past few decades has been a desire to identify gender-dependent needs in different types of medical treatment. It was therefore interesting to note that Madeline T. Olivier and her colleagues demonstrated in their recent study that claims about sex occur disproportionately often in the titles of neuroscience research articles compared with other fields of medicine.

The researchers therefore wanted to know what kind of research evidence these articles were based on. For this reason, they analyzed 200 recent articles in the behavioral and brain sciences whose titles made a claim about an effect dependent on sex or gender identity.

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The researchers found that only 24 percent of the analyzed research reports supported the claim with appropriate evidence—that is, an effect between the sexes was statistically tested, and the results were consistent with the claim. In nine percent of the studies, an appropriate test was described, but the results were incomplete or entirely absent. In another nine percent, the results directly contradicted the claim being made. In the majority of the articles (58%), the statistical significance of differences in effects between the sexes was not compared at all.

Appropriate evidence was least common in research on behavioral sciences, clinical neurology, neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, and substance use (18%), and most common in psychology (39%). In animal studies, claims were supported by appropriate evidence significantly less often (15%) than in studies involving humans (34%).

Particularly concerning is the fact that the use of appropriate analytical methods was not associated with the prestige of the journal or the number of citations received by the article. In other words, peer review in the field in question has not functioned properly. Thus, neither the publication venue nor the number of citations an article has received can be used to infer the reliability of the claims made in the research.

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Overall, the researchers concluded that claims about effects dependent on sex or gender identity made in the behavioral and brain sciences are most often not based on appropriate evidence. They therefore called into question—and effectively characterized as quackery—the use of sex-dependent research as a basis for medical treatments.

This is an issue that should be recognized both among European physicians and among civil society movements concerned with women's rights and gender diversity. Above all, it should be recognized by wellbeing services counties struggling with their finances, which can hardly be expected to benefit from spending their scarce resources on treatments related to sex-specific neurology or psychology.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Gender Reassignment May Not Help—and Could Even Worsen Mental Health
Who Is Interested in the Rights of Nigerien Homosexuals?
Racial Bias in U.S. Traffic Policing