Keijo Kaarisade

Keijo Kaarisade is a Finnish social media figure whose writings are parodies resembling what leftist ideologues create unironically. He has created fake aliases and sent parody opinion pieces disguised as pro-leftist / pro-intersectional to Finnish newspapers and successfully had them published. After he has outed himself as the true author, the newspapers have normally either deleted the articles from their websites or unlisted them in such a way that only the direct link still works. Of course, the paper version cannot be unprinted. His texts are in Finnish, but in this article they've been translated. Despite the fact that Finnish personal pronouns are gender neutral (i.e. there are no separate words for "he" and "she" in Finnish), Keijo still has (as of June 7, 2021) pronouns in his Twitter bio, "tämä/tuo/se", which translate to "this/that/it".

Keijo is a fairly common Finnish male given name, but no such surname as Kaarisade exists. Kaarisade means "Arc rain", while the Finnish word for "rainbow" (sateenkaari) consists of the same words in reverse order and the word sade ("rain") in genitive (sateen). Thus sateenkaari translates literally to rain's arc.

History

Keijo's Twitter account used to be @vihapuhepoliisi ("hate speech police"). That account was suspended in 2019 but the author later came back with the account name @keijomedia. In mid-August 2021, Keijo launched a YouTube channel and soon after that also announced that he had reached 10,000 followers on Twitter.

Example Opinion Pieces

The same on two newspapers

On June 16, 2019 Keijo Kaarisade successfully had his "opinion piece" ending in the following sentence:

"However, feminism should not acquire the Soviet Union as its role model, but instead seek for the best practices from different compass points and justice models."

published in both Helsingin Sanomat and Aamulehti, which are both very large and well known mainstream Finnish newspapers. For Helsingin Sanomat he used the alias Elina Kemppi and for Aamulehti the alias was Elina Kemppi-Pirhonen. Kemppi and Pirhonen are both Finnish surnames, but together they form a spoonerism Pimppi-Kerhonen, which would mean "Little Pussy Club". In this text, the initial letters of the five last words (käytäntöjä eri ilmansuunnista ja oikeusmalleista) spell KEIJO.

The publishers of this piece apparently thought that replacing the current western justice system with a non-western one could be a good idea.

Aamulehti deleted this piece from their website after it was revealed to have been written under a fake alias, but Helsingin Sanomat kept it but added the following disclaimer to the beginning of the article: "It became known to the HS [Helsingin Sanomat] editorial board that the author of this opinion piece was not a real person. The same made up article was also published in Aamulehti. The editorial staff apologizes for what happened." On the Aamulehti website, the original link leads to a text with a title "Opinion piece deleted" with the content reading "We have removed the opinion piece because its sender appeared under the wrong name. The article itself was within the bounds of good manners and, for example, did not contain intrinsically erroneous or offensive claims."

July 22, 2021: "Finnishness is a strategic narrative"

On July 22, 2021 Keijo had his piece "Suomalaisuus on strateginen narratiivi" ("Finnishness is a strategic narrative") published in Helsingin Sanomat. He used the alias Sofia Hannonen claiming to be a Master of Science who has majored in Nordic history. In that piece he wrote e.g. (originally in Finnish and without wiki links):

• "Accusations of colonialism have, up until these days, been easy to dismiss by appealing to the fact that the independent Finland has never been an empire like Britain. In reality, the Finns benefited under Sweden's and Russia's governance, among other things, from infrastructure investments",
• "In addition, the whiteness of Finns significantly leveled power relations", and
• "The innovations of colonialist countries, as well as exotic import products, always found their way all the way to the North. Even cabbage rolls are originally from Turkey, from the military expeditions of the Sweden–Finland of the 1700s."

The next day a correction was added on Helsingin Sanomat's website: Correction July 23 at 13:10: It has afterwards become known to the editorial board that this opinion piece was composed under a made up name. The editorial board apologises for the mistake.

About three weeks later, on August 14, 2021, Keijo announced on Twitter that Aamulehti had also published the same piece, well after it was publicly known to be written by Keijo. This time the title was "Millaista tarinaa kerromme itsestämme?" ("What kind of story do we tell about ourselves?"). Now, the link to the article on the Aamulehti website leads to a page that says "Opinion piece deleted" followed by "This opinion piece has been deleted. Aamulehti has subsequently learned that the author of the article has appeared under the wrong name." The alias used in the Aamulehti version was Sofia Hannonen, just like in Helsingin Sanomat, but the hometown of the supposed author was different in the two publications. For Helsingin Sanomat it was the capital Helsinki, while for Aamulehti it was Huittinen, an inland town in the southwest of Finland.

April 12, 2022: "Archives open responsibly"

On April 12, 2022, Keijo's opinion piece titled "Archives open responsibly" (Arkistot auki vastuullisesti) was published on the Left Alliance party's newspaper Kansan Uutiset. In that piece Keijo, using Sonja Hannonen as his alias (instead of the earlier alias Sofia Hannonen), argued that "the digitization and display of old archival material could raise national self-esteem and thus nationalism among Finns" and that "[t]he National Library and the National Archives should take responsibility for the material of Finnish origin that they digitize and publish, so that it does not give resources to racism."

June 17, 2022: "Saminess on display during Pride weeks"

On June 17, 2022, an opinion piece titled "Saminess on display during Pride weeks" (Saamelaisuus näkyviin Pride-viikoilla) was published in Helsingin Sanomat under the name Sonja Hannonen. Later that day, Keijo tweeted the following:

"Sonja Hannonen calls for Sámi-themed pride workshops in HS's column. Is this written by the "Sonja Hannonen" who is known from previous Keijoings, or by someone else with the same name?

What do you think? ☺️ @SaarikoskiLaura @SaskaSaarikoski @KaiusNiemi"

The three tagged Twitter accounts belong to Helsingin Sanomat journalists.

In the opinion piece, "Sonja" argued that "Sámi awareness could be promoted in Pride-themed workshops with the opportunity to learn about the use of Sámi objects and costumes during the procession."

The Sami people (also spelled Sámi or Saami) are the only indigenous people living in Europe, and their homeland consists of an area that covers parts of northern Finland, Sweden, Norway and northwestern Russia.

Reply on July 2, 2022

On July 2, 2022, Helsingin Sanomat published Keijo's response to this same opinion piece. In it, Keijo, using the alias Elina Kantola, suggested that next year's theme for Pride should be indigenous peoples. Keijo shared his "response" to his own "opinion piece" on Twitter on July 5, and nowadays the Helsingin Sanomat website says on the pages of both opinion pieces that the pages have been updated on July 6 and that "[i]t has come to the attention of the Helsingin Sanomat editorial team that this opinion piece has been written under a fake name. The editorial team apologises for this."

Example Tweets

• April 8, 2021 with regards to the same infamous paternity fraud case that the Honey Badgers talked about on this livestream:

"In the name of the recogniser, the recognised person and the Holy Spirit. Amen.", sharing the link to this article reporting about the paternity fraud and the upcoming law change it has inspired

That same article also tells about the attempts at replacing the words mother and father in childbirth situations with synnyttäjä "birther, birth-giver" and tunnustaja "acceptor, confesser, recogniser" in the parenthood act.

• May 26, 2021 sharing this article about the EU donating at least 100 million surplus AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccines to poor countries:

"This is what white supremacy and structural racism is. In Europe they inject Pfizer, to Africa they donate 100 million surplus-AstraZenecas. Don't Black Lives Matter and George Floyd mean anything any longer? #dogvaccine #racism #apartheid #BLM"

• May 31, 2021, with regards to the scandal surrounding Finland's Prime Minister Sanna Marin's private meals, to which she had used on average 845 € (300 € for breakfasts, which was the amount initially reported) per month of taxpayer money between January 2020 and May 2021:

"In the future, we could avoid needless (money) wasting and corruption scandals by granting ministers a 2000-5000€/month quota for expenses that need not be separately explained. It would reduce stress, motivate to focus on the essential and reduce corruption. #keijosolves #breakfastgate"

• June 16, 2021, when Juhana Vartiainen (male, from the National Coalition Party ("Kokoomus")) was elected as Mayor of Helsinki and he gave an interview in swimming trunks:

"Why does no one question the credibility of Helsinki's new mayor @filsdeproust [Juhana Vartiainen's Twitter account] as he gives an interview in swimming trunks? #doublestandards #patriarchy

In the name of #feminism and #equality Keijo demands also Marin [Sanna, the female Prime Minister] to be interviewed in a swimsuit. [smiling face with sunglasses emoji] [one-part swimsuit emoji]", sharing a link to this article about the interview

Later that day, an elected Member of Espoo City Council from the Social Democrat Party shared a picture of Marin on the left and of Vartiainen in the swimsuit on the right, with the text being "Gender and politics". Keijo shared that tweet and commented it: "Good try but Keijo is still the fastest in the west at these" followed by a link to Keijo's original tweet translated above. (At the time of these tweets, neither of these people had yet started their jobs as mayors or council members, but the election was just over).

• August 18, 2021:

"Populists complain that Trump was banned from Twitter but the Taliban are still allowed to tweet "Islamists' propaganda" and "misinformation". Keijo thus taught the Taliban how to avoid getting banned: do not share your thoughts about COVID, vaccines, women's rights, LGBTQ minorities etc."

• September 25, 2021, after the famous singer-songwriter Chisu had apologised for having a braids haircut the TV show Vain elämää (the Finnish version of The Best Singers), saying that it was cultural appropriation:

"Could the programme Vain elämää simply just be cancelled due to Chisu's hate hair? A mere apology is no longer enough. #culturalappropriation

Cancelling the program or cutting out Chisu's parts would be the least Nelonen and Sanoma Media could do in favour of antiracism."

(Nelonen [Finnish for "Number Four"] is the name of the Finnish TV channel airing the show, and Sanoma Media is the company that owns the channel.)

• October 22, 2021, after Member of Parliament Sebastian Tynkkynen (from the Finns Party) had asked if any University of the Arts Helsinki student could sign up for two credit course titled About whiteness (texture, not skin tone) (that's the official English name of the course, however it would be more accurate to use the word structure instead of texture; Finnish: Valkoisuudesta (rakenteena, ei ihonvärinä)) and deliver the materials to Tynkkynen:

"Keijo appeals to the students of the university of arts course "About whiteness (texture, not skin tone)": do not tell what you are being taught. Science and arts are not designed to withstand open review. Thank you."

• On March 8, 2022, Keijo tweeted this womenworsting parody:

"Wars increase inequality between the sexes. Light glass ceilings become downright reinforced concrete plates. Women are put into bomb shelters or moved out of the way while men get the power to romp on state property and make decisions about grenade concentrations and missile strikes. #feminism"

• April 27, 2022, with regards to Elon Musk buying Twitter:

"Whenever dictators have taken power, the first thing they have done is to introduce broad freedom of speech. The alarm bells should now be ringing, and loudly! #freedomofspeech #ElonMusk #Hitler"

See Also

• Grievance studies hoax
• The Babylon Bee
• Titania McGrath

External Links

• Twitter
• Blog
• Youtube
• Interview by Ivan Puopolo on YouTube
• A tweet in English