There is a widespread right-wing meme that basically states, “The Left can’t meme.” This came out of the period leading up to Donald Trump’s first election, inspired by the fact that right-wing memes seemed to get much greater traction than leftist memes, being more shocking, simpler, and harder hitting. Years later, it seems that the radicalism of right-wing memes has led to major changes, ushering in a new populist right-wing era. The Left has not kept up. Why do you think this is? Have we seen the same trajectory in Finland as in the United States, for example?

Looking back, I think the ethos of the internet in the early 2000s in Finland was very libertarian — we were very into freedom of speech and anonymity-driven meritocracy on imageboards and explored individuality through early social media such as the IRC-Galleria. I remember Ayn Rand trending among some of my peers as well. So it’s no surprise that the memes brewed in this ambience were quite right-wing, both in Finland and beyond. If you think about memes in a narrow sense as humor, it is also unfortunately easier to punch down than up.

Regarding politics in Finland, I know that some memelords supported and contributed to the rise of the populist right Finns Party but not to the same religious degree as was seen with Trump’s supporters in 2016. So it could be argued that the true “meme turn” in Finnish politics is leftist, and we just had a first concrete glimpse of its impact with the victory of Alma Tuuva aka @pikakahvimemegirl in the local elections in Helsinki.

My memes deal with the experiences of inequality in everyday life and relationships. I also talk a lot about anti-capitalism and comment on political events in Finland. The goal is to make people aware of their own class position and capitalism’s role in producing inequality. In addition, the account serves as a platform for internal discussion within the Left and has its place in the Finnish anti-capitalist “scene.”

Most of my posts are understandable even to those who have never read any leftist literature. However, it’s very important that they don’t underestimate their audience. The points must be both accessible and sharp. No one wants to listen to one self-evident truth after another. The downward talking that occasionally appears in leftist circles, directed at the working class or unemployed, is elitist and alienating. I personally also felt underestimated, even excluded and bullied, in leftist discussion environments at first, because I don’t have a university degree. In fact, even now I sometimes hear that I’m not qualified or credible enough to participate, even though I’ve been doing this successfully for over four years, have built a community around me, and have over 40,000 followers — which, in a country the size of Finland (with a population of 5.5 million), is quite a lot. So I really understand why people don’t participate in the academic discussion. The Finnish “meme left” offers an environment that also makes space for nonacademic contributions to the conversation.

What would you say is specific to Finnish meme culture?

The Finnish meme scene is broad and diverse. Different accounts complement one another and often collaborate. For example, some accounts address similar topics from the perspective of international politics, and some are more theoretical than others. We focus on cooperation rather than competing over who is the most legitimate or credible political voice. Accounts that approach politics through people’s everyday lives rather than through leftist theory are not subordinate to those with a more academic focus. The academic and nonacademic sides of the meme left complement each other.

Many accounts also actively engage with their followers, who contribute to content creation and discussion through messages and comments. This increases the diversity of voices even further.

The Finnish meme community also includes strong representation of gender diversity and neurodivergence. There are also accounts that discuss stigmatized topics like substance addiction or serious mental health issues. In a nutshell, we create space in the media for topics and perspectives that often go unaddressed in traditional media.

What Alma is talking about there is the Finnish meme scene on Instagram, which has in recent years — I would say, since the lockdowns in 2020 especially — become really robust. This is just one platform but a very popular one in Finland.

On the general meme culture in Finland, besides this strong leftist political streak on Instagram, you cannot really dismiss the influence of imageboard culture and how some of the memes cultivated and mutated on Ylilauta have spread to the global memesphere, for example Spurdo Spärde or Apu Apustaja — memetic characters that replicate and mutate especially on the various imageboards. My favorite Finnish imageboard meme is the t., I use it all the time in my text-based messaging — it’s an abbreviation of terveisin (“best regards”) and used to show who is saying something, usually in a sarcastic manner.

Also, on YouTube, we’ve had our own memesphere of weirdness going on for almost twenty years. Ten years ago, we did a collection of that scene’s art in the form of a video history — about 1.5 hours of “YouTube poop” in chronological order. This year we will do a twenty-year recap. . . .

Specific to the Finnish meme culture? Absurdity. Ecstasy in the Baudrillardian sense. “The ecstasy of communication leads to the annihilation of meaning.” Nowadays the kids call it brainrot; we have had it for twenty-years-plus.

Aside from the Right believing the Left can’t meme, it seems the Left really believes this too. There has been a vibrant left-wing philosophy promoting the reading of canonical texts, but it doesn’t motivate people politically at the ballot box. And the Left seems resigned to this in the UK and the United States. What’s holding back the Left? And how did you overcome this with your recent electoral win in the 2025 Finnish municipal elections?

The campaign was perhaps more about art than just memes. My campaign materials — social media posts, flyers, and the campaign video directed by Alisa Nirman — were visually very different from what is typically expected in a political context. The meme-like quality showed more in the aesthetic rooted in internet culture and in the way issues were addressed directly. I’ve received a lot of feedback about the video and other content, with many people saying they felt seen through it. Poverty is often discussed either through victim narratives or survival stories, so there is definitely a demand for it to be addressed in a way that is inspiring, fast-paced, and powerful. People want issues of inequality that affect them to be talked about honestly but without being cast into the role of helpless victims. I believe this is something that comes through in both my memes and my campaign.

My main political goal is to challenge the middle-class norms of both politics and art. That means breaking down the barriers to participation in political discourse that are created by class background. The gatekeeping and hierarchical structures within leftist circles feel paradoxical, especially when the shared goal is supposed to be equality. Those things need to go — ASAP.

I believe Alma got so many votes (more than our sitting prime minister, finance minister, and interior minister — a meme in itself . . .), partly because she represents the meme left, which is evolving into a real political force also offline, and partly because of her public persona. I am a public relations professional, and from that point of view, Alma offers the potential of being a politician who is more auteur than academic, yet nonetheless she’s a debater, a true influencer rhetorician — if you look at @pikakahvimemegirl, the character and political platform she’s built, the language of her memes bows to the tradition of serving the winning argument (servaus in Finnish) — in practice this means that your argument is the strongest, smartest, savviest. I believe this resonates with a lot of people. Some say that some of the people who vote for the ruling center-right National Coalition Party [do so] because they want to be on the “winning team.” I believe Alma is able to catch some of this same energy — her meme rhetoric is “winning,” and people want to align themselves with that. Hopefully this will translate into new voters for the Left Alliance also in the coming parliamentary elections — and yes, we are running!

What advice do you have for the Left in other countries?

Platform the mememakers and meme admins in every way you can.

New political commentators and forms of discussion need support and validation from established political actors. The meme left must be taken seriously in order to be beneficial to the movement as a whole. Otherwise it will remain a marginal phenomenon. Media coverage and invitations to panel discussions and events have, for example, been very important in the early stages of my political career.