Mari Rantanen

Mari Rantanen
Rantanen in 2023
Member of the Finnish Parliament for Helsinki
Incumbent
Assumed office 17 April 2019
Minister of the Interior
Incumbent
Assumed office 20 June 2023
Prime Minister	Petteri Orpo
Preceded by	Krista Mikkonen
Personal details
Born	(1976-03-29) 29 March 1976
Political party	Finns Party

Mari Rantanen (born 29 March 1976) is a Finnish politician of the Finns Party currently serving in the Parliament of Finland for the Helsinki constituency. As a Member of Parliament, she has served as a member of the Committee on Legal Affairs in 2019-2022. Rantanen was elected Chairman of the Committee on Administrative Affairs in November 2022. Before her political career, Rantanen worked as a nurse and as a police officer.

In June 2023, she was appointed Minister of the Interior in the Orpo Cabinet.

Controversies

After her appointment, Rantanen's past remarks came under scrutiny, as she has continuously written about the Great Replacement, even using the hashtag #väestönvaihto (Finnish for the Great Replacement) repeatedly on Twitter. After story was published, Rantanen said on Twitter that he did not believe in conspiracies. - The demographic pressure on Europe and the resulting demographic change that statistics show is a fact, Rantanen added. Prime Minister Orpo says in an interview "Above all, I evaluate how the minister does his job". According to Orpo, this means that the Minister does his job in a way that the Minister of the Interior follows the principles of the government programme and the principles that everyone has signed up to. In its 2020 Yearbook, the Finnish Security Police have identified demographic change as one of the notable ideological drivers of far-right terrorism. It also noted that views based on the theory of population turnover have been highlighted in a number of far-right terrorist attacks.

Ahead of the 2023 Finnish parliamentary election, Rantanen wrote a candidate brief on her website in which she remarked on immigration: "we must not be so blue-eyed (a Finnish term for "naive") that soon we will not be blue-eyed (a feature often associated with white people)".

In an interview with Iltalehti, Rantanen was asked what she meant by no longer being blue-eyed, and she replied: "I mean exactly what it says." She denied referring to racial theories, and when asked if she believed in the Great Replacement, she replied: "I believe in statistics." When asked what kind of statistics, Rantanen answered "demographics," instructed the interviewer to look at demographic changes in Sweden and suggested trying to avoid such changes in Finland. Rantanen then ended the interview.

In 2016, Rantanen wrote on social media that the boats of asylum seekers crossing the Mediterranean Sea should be stopped or otherwise "there will be a war". She also liked a comment that stated that refugees should be left to drown and another that called refugees parasites.The Interior Minister commented on his actions on Twitter on after STT reported on the tampering. Iltalehti has found and seen the post with comments on Facebook. - I have written a lot about politics over the years and I may have inadvertently liked a post whose content I did not agree with. I am a nurse and a police officer. People in distress at sea, or in any distress, will be helped, always," Rantanen writes.