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EESTI ELU reedel, 20. novembril 2020 — Friday, November 20, 2020
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Estonian Music Week’s December 4th LiveStream: Celebrating mutual Nordic Heritage with Lithuanian-Finnish Folk duo Honeypaw English-language supplement to the Estonian weekly “EESTI ELU” Tartu College Publications Founding Chairman: Elmar Tampõld Editor: Laas Leivat 3 Madison Avenue, Toronto, ON M5R 2S2 T: 416-733-4550 • F: 416-733-0944 • E-mail: editor@eestielu.ca Digital: www.eestielu.ca
Can Estonian nationalists advance the Kremlin’s agenda? Yes they can. Through incre dible gullibility. Their source for disinformation? The White House itself. Undoubtedly Vladimir Putin is congratulating himself for the mutual admiration he has so successfully nurtured with Mr. Trump, whose election fraud playbook seems to be written by Moscow. Putin hasn’t needed to spend any effort on preparing a script that players – many of them unwitting – in the USA and elsewhere could use to dis credit an authentic democratic process and deepen the divisions already harming US society. Interior minister Mart Helme (now resigned), former head of EKRE passed on Mr. Trump’s baseless claims the electoral fraud had occurred, thus surely leaving Mr. Trump in power. He emphasized that Biden and his son Hunter were corrupt and that Mr. Trump will win “as a result of an immense struggle, maybe even bloodshed, but justice will prevail”. Helme re ferred to a dream in which he envisioned Mr. Trump walking through a field of “guts and entrails”. The gory and dramatic choice of words couldn’t be better chosen if done by a longin-the-tooth Soviet propagan dist. Helme’s son, Economics minister Martin, has stated that “there is no question that these elections were falsified”. “There is no point in talking about a democracy or rule of law in a situation where elections can be faked so plainly, boldly and on a massive scale.” It’s ironic that the Helmes, who are known to hold a staunchly anti-Moscow stance, would promote notions, albeit probably unintentionally, which would advance a longstanding Russian narrative – that the vaunted US democratic tradition is a sham. The aim of the Kremlin’s propaganda program has always been to widen the divide be tween Americans and their government, regardless of which party is in control. Discrediting the US election system helps to promote that idea. Putin’s sup porters have consistently insisted that Russia’s tightly controlled political dynamics have great advantages over American de mocracy. It makes sense then for Putin
allies in Russia to claim that Trump’s accusations of election fraud are the best validation that democracy is a recipe for disas ter. Countering this are opposi tion leader Aleksei Navalny’s supporters, who see the tem porary confusion and unpredict ability as proof of the invinci bility of a truly free system. Propastop, the Estonian De fense League’s unit of experts on Russian propaganda, has indicated that the Helmes’ accu sations have gained a wide au dience throughout the total spectrum of Russian media. The Helmes are cited as credible sources to confirm what the Kremlin’s narrative has always implied – that US democracy is a facade, only protecting the interests of some political elite. Mart Helme’s references to Mr. Trump’s coined ‘deep state’ is suitably aligned with this. Commentator Mihhail De murin, a former Russian foreign ministry official on the Baltic desk, has approached the issue from a different angle. He sees the Helmes’ supposed initiative in eliminating the right of non-citizens to participate in municipal elections as a wider infringement of voting rights for Russians in general. He ac cuses the ex-interior minister of benefiting from a Trump victo ry: “I hope Steve Bannon sup ports and helps him. And if Trump wins, the more likely that Helme will be back in the saddle again.” The damage that comments on Russian media can inflict on Estonia’s international reputa tion is minimal. But what about the possible erosion of its standing in Western media and in world capitals? They were members of the government, not press pundits, who con demned the US democratic process. Estonia was the only NATO and EU member whose government representatives at tacked the election results and the incoming president elect. Some 270 references about Estonia were counted in just French, German, British and US media alone within one week of the Helmes’ comments. They received coverage not in obscure, peripheral media, but in the mainstream press such as The Times, Foreign Policy, AP, AFO, Frankfurter Allgemeine
Vincent Teetsov Estonian Music Week is con tinuing to present music of many varieties for audiences through its Live-Stream Concert Series. On Friday December 4th at 7:00 PM, on the Estonian Music Week Facebook page (www.face book.com/EstonianMusic Week/) or the VEMU YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/ user/VEMUESC) the series will take a slightly different angle, through an exciting collaboration with the Finnish Studies Program at the University of Toronto. The event also acknowledges Fin nish Independence Day on December 6th. The live-stream will encom pass lectures, talks, and com ments from the University’s Professor of Finnish Studies, Anu Muhonen, and Chief Archivist of the Estonian Studies Centre/VEMU, Piret Noorhani. Noorhani is also Festival Director for Estonian Music Week. Following this, there will be a musical performance from the duo Honeypaw, whose sound is steeped in traditional Lithuanian and Finnish musical and literary motifs. Honeypaw’s members are Jurgita Žvinklyte·, from Lithuania, and Matti Palonen,
who is of Finnish heritage. Žvinklyte· and Palonen met in March 2019, but it was the start of the first lockdown in 2020 when “back-burner stuff be came front-burner stuff” as Palonen explains. There is an undeniably im mense amount of research that is put into Honeypaw’s music, and the band’s grant support from the Lithuanian govern ment has allowed them to re search these traditions. Integral to Honeypaw’s music are Lithuanian sutartine· songs. For those unfamiliar with the sutar tine·, Žvinklyte· describes them
in terms of multiple rhythms and melodies of the same length overlapping. In fact, in some sutartine·, one melody may be countered with the same melody “flipped upside down.” This concept of hetero phony, which Palonen studied in Finland, is almost like weav ing. When the band plays with the Finnish jouhikko (lyre), they may be tuned in such a way that two different keys are played simultaneously, even contrasting major and minor. “It’s about making harmony out of polarizing things” says
Zeitung, The Washington Post, etc., 90 percent of this press focused not only on the Helmes’ initial statements but their repeat comments at fol low-up press conferences and interviews slamming the US and Biden. At the time of this issue going into print, not a single one of the dozens of court filings by Mr. Trump’s lawyers challenging election results at many locations have been found to have the slightest merit due to lack of any evidence of “widespread voter fraud”. In fact, some of his lawyers have resigned from the cases, allegedly due to ethical con siderations. Trump-appointed specialists at the Department of Homeland Security assigned to monitor and expose any signs of election illegality have come to the same conclusion, as have all judiciary making a judg ment. Are the Helmes’ accusations a reflection of the biases of Estonians in general? Opinion researcher Norstar has conclu ded that only the supporters of EKRE, the Helmes’ political party, favour Mr. Trump. Fiftytwo percent of them prefer Trump as the US president. Biden received 18 percent ap proval. The loyalists of most
other parties prefer Biden to Trump, ranging from 90 percent supportive to 6 percent non-supportive. The Centre Party and Russians were 38 for Biden with 28 percent backing Trump. Sixty-two percent of re spondents not affiliated with any party preferred Biden and 13 percent backed Trump. One thousand individuals were ques tioned. Mr. Trump’s rating interna tionally? A fall survey by Pew Research Centre indicated low support overall. Respondents from 13 nations – nine Euro pean states, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Canada – indi cated the lowest ratings for any US president since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Trump’s level of confidence for “doing the right thing regarding world affairs” was an overall average of 16 percent. Only 20 percent of Canadians gave him a favourable yes. Observers have suggested that Trump’s low esteem inter nationally is his perceived lack of steadiness, predictability and trust. Could therefore Estonia’s relations with the US suffer given that it was cabinet-level officials who so vehemently and repeatedly expressed their proTrump, anti-Biden sentiments? Conventional wisdom sug
gests that a feeling of mutual trust between Tallinn and Esto nia will be weakened. But veteran diplomats say this dam age need not be permanent, if it’s not again and again repeated. Perhaps the fragility or strength of the elusive “Esto nian image” internationally is a more relevant measurement. For thirty years, Estonia has en joyed an IT savvy, scoring-hitech-goals-in-the-big-leagues, first-to-shrug-off-its-Sovietlegacy reputation. Travel writers still remind us of the whimsical but gutsy people who “sang their way to freedom”. Not a bad way to be described. It at tracts friends, which is always a benefit for a small nation. The Helme duo has managed to shift this perception. (Let’s re mind ourselves that it’s not the first time that Mart Helme and others in EKRE have gained bad foreign press.) How far has the image been shifted? Don’t know yet. But even more worrisome is realizing that the toxic virus of disinformation spread by Mr. Trump’s White House can so effortlessly infect some members of Estonia’s political leadership. Should they be quarantined as pandemic victims are?
Jurgita Žvinklyte· and Matti Palonen of Honeypaw. Photo used with permission from Honeypaw
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LAAS LEIVAT
