Finnish press radicalised society over a century ago – historian draws parallels to today’s social media

A new book by non-fiction author Pertti Rajala examines how the sharp rhetoric of the early 20th-century Finnish labour press deepened societal divisions long before the 1918 Civil War, with striking parallels to today’s polarised media landscape, reports Yle.

Rajala’s study focuses on the Sosialidemokraatti newspaper, published in Pori between 1906 and 1918, which amplified class struggle narratives without directly inciting violence. The paper’s inflammatory language—labeling opponents as lahtari (scabs) and framing society as a battle between oppressed workers and exploitative elites—mirrored and intensified Finland’s growing divide.

Though initially advocating parliamentary reform, the paper’s editorial line shifted toward supporting armed revolution by 1917, reflecting broader radicalisation within the Social Democratic Party. Rajala, a former regional governor and party member, acknowledges the dire conditions faced by workers at the time but argues that skilled writers escalated tensions through increasingly aggressive rhetoric.

“As with today’s social media, the writing spiralled out of control,” Rajala said. “Many didn’t realise how seriously others took these words. There was also a competition over who could be the most extreme.”

Prominent figures like future Prime Minister Väinö Tanner, who edited the paper from 1906 to 1910, opposed violent revolution, but others faced brutal consequences. Journalist Juho Rainio, a critic of both bourgeois elites and revolutionary excess, was executed without trial by White Guard forces in 1918 after clashing with radicals in the paper’s editorial team.

The book also revisits the “red” and “white” terror that marked the war’s end, including the massacre of Ahlström company officials and the execution of prisoners in Pori—acts the Sosialidemokraatti condemned but failed to prevent. Rajala warns that the era serves as a cautionary tale about media-fuelled polarisation, noting that recent research—such as Helena Pilkke’s Sanomalehtien sisällissota—traces the origins of the conflict to press rhetoric following the 1917 Russian Revolution.

“The development began in the papers,” Rajala concludes.