Finland and the “Slanted Eyes” Outrage: When Moral Weapons Change Hands

The easiest way to understand any political ideology is not to listen to its professions of virtue but to watch how it behaves when circumstances change. Moral systems, like markets, reveal their true function only when they are stressed. That is why Bryan Mercadente’s recent essay on the Finnish “slanted eyes” affair is worth serious attention. He does not treat the episode as a free-speech melodrama or a plea for sensitivity, but as a small diagnostic window into the real operating logic of our ruling moral framework.

The incident itself is beneath trivial. A Finnish beauty queen posts a tasteless photograph. Her title is revoked. Apologies are demanded, found wanting, and ritual denunciations follow. Bryan efficiently disposes of this stage-setting and fixes instead on the only detail that matters: the Finnish prime minister describes the act not as false or even malicious, but as damaging—to Finland’s reputation. In other words, to a brand. That single word strips away the moral pretense and exposes the managerial reality beneath it.

From that point, Bryan does something that almost no Western commentator, left or right, is willing to do. He does not attempt to rescue liberal principles from their obvious hypocrisy. He explicitly rejects that project. He states, with refreshing bluntness, that he is uninterested in abstract fairness and concerned only with power—how it is used, against whom, and whether it can be turned to his own advantage. This is not teenage provocation. It is analytical clarity. By declaring his premises openly, he avoids the self-deception that poisons nearly all contemporary commentary.

On that foundation, Bryan advances a claim that will seem shocking only to those still invested in official mythology: the anti-white moral narrative that has dominated Western public life for decades was never designed to help non-white peoples. Its function has always been domestic. As he writes, its real purpose has been to suppress solidarity, confidence, and resistance among Western populations that might otherwise oppose managerial control. This is not a novel thesis, and it is not a radical one. It is simply one that few writers are willing to state without layers of moral camouflage.

Where the essay becomes genuinely illuminating is in its treatment of the East Asian reaction. Bryan notes that the loudest outrage came from Japan, South Korea, and China, and that this response bears no resemblance to the rhetoric of marginalised client groups seeking protection. It is, instead, the rhetoric of confident societies asserting status. That distinction matters. It transforms the episode from a question of offense into one of leverage.

This observation punctures a silent assumption that underlies much Western discourse: that all non-Western societies internalise Western guilt narratives and share the same psychological posture of fragility and trauma. They do not. Bryan dryly observes that the idea of Chinese or Japanese people being psychologically wounded by jokes about eye shape strains credulity. East Asian cultures have historically displayed strong aesthetic and civilisational confidence. This is not incidental. It destroys the therapeutic justification for the outrage and replaces it with a strategic explanation.

The historical framing is equally sound. Bryan invokes familiar but often misunderstood examples—the Jacobin Terror, Stalin’s purges, the Bolsheviks’ sudden reconciliation with the Orthodox Church—not to moralise, but to illustrate a narrow rule of political history. Ideological instruments are tolerated only so long as they operate downward. Once they threaten elites or empower rivals, they are modified, defanged, or discarded. An instrument designed to atomise a population becomes intolerable when it turns upward.

What makes this essay remarkable is not merely its content, but the discipline with which it is presented. Bryan is sixteen years old, yet he avoids nearly every trap that ensnares older writers: sentimentalism, moral exhibitionism, and the belief that sincerity itself is a form of power. He treats ideology as a tool rather than a belief system and follows that premise to its logical conclusions without apology.

That such an essay appears on the Libertarian Alliance Blog is no accident. There are very few platforms in Britain or North America willing to publish analysis that so openly discards the moral vocabulary of the age. Fewer still will do so when the author refuses to cloak his reasoning in appeals to universal justice or freedom of expression. The result is a piece that many readers will dislike, but few will be able to refute.

In the long run, this is precisely the kind of writing that endures. Moral narratives rise and fall, but analyses that identify how they function, when they fail, and who benefits from them tend to age well. Bryan does not predict liberation or collapse. He predicts adaptation. Our elite will not surrender, but it will recalibrate. History strongly suggests he is right.

That a writer of his age can see this so clearly is not a curiosity. It is a signal. It suggests that the next generation of serious analysts may be less interested in moral theatre and more interested in understanding how power actually behaves when its weapons change hands.