When celebrities went to politics: The stories of people’s faces going to politics

I was watching a documentary about the late Finnish boxer and wrestler Tony Halme. It was a pretty good film, pretty dramatic and enterntaining to watch. The documentary told his whole life story, starting from a poor family, and ending as a successful wrestler and a politician. Yes, that’s right. A politician. He became a candidate in the parliamentary elections in 2003 for True Finns Party. He got over a triumphant 16,000 votes, and got to the parliament. Tony Halme was known for his very controversial opinions about the immigrants, and he was racist. His speech was foul-mouthed, and full of racial slurs. Tony Halme called the president Tarja Halonen a lesbian, and he wanted to give more harsh punishments to criminals. Tony Halme ended his career in politics in 2007, when he got voted out.

Tony Halme’s story is one of the examples of celebrities going to politics. In this article, I will dive into the subject. Let’s start with the most lesser-known one, the Niko Omilana’s election journey. Niko Omilana is a British youtuber, who tried to become the mayor of London. Because he’s a content creator, he prioritizes content above all else. He got 5th most votes in London, and lost the election. Since Niko Omilana is a prankster, the whole running for a mayor was a prank taken to a next level.

The election campaigning is pretty good idea, but in Finland, many politicians who put a lot of money on election campaigns almost basically payed themselves in. But one conservative politican called Sebastian Tynkkynen did an election campaign with a zero budget, and got in. Many True Finns Party’s candidates got themselves in by posting their content on Tiktok. The content was polarizing, and alienated the other parties. The party got very popular among the young people.

One of the most popular rappers, Kanye West, decided to run for the president of United States. He announced his campaign on Twitter in the US independence day in 2020. He used a simple ”YES!” as a slogan, and used his own song of course as the campaign song. The choice for slogan was pretty poor, since it’s pretty lazy to use just a simple ”YES!” as a slogan. That’s what the bad-old Hitler used to say in his election campaign. He made that poster that basically said ”Greater Germany? Yes!”. Well, in 2023, Kanye West said on TV that he hated jews, and liked Hitler. Coincidence? Perhaps. Hitler wasn’t a fan of black people either, so Kanye West wouldn’t survive the Nazi regime, and get gassed. A black person supporting Nazism is like a Tutsi supporting the Hutu supremacist regime. Kanye West’s campaign was a tossup, and he got a miniscule 70,000 votes. Althrough the failure, he doesn’t give up, and runs for a presidency in 2024. We’ll see, what will happen then.

The very known actor that doesn’t need any introduction, Arnold Schwarzenegger decided to run for the congress for the Republican Party. He started his political career in Austria, but he wasn’t a politician. He was a weighlifter for the Austrian People’s Party. He even starred in an anti-drug music video. He became a governor for California in 2003 for 4 years, and resigned on 2007. Schwarzenegger was pretty liberal compared to the other Republicans, he wanted a withdrawal of the US troops in Iraq, fought climate change, advocated for stem cell research, and advocated for universal health insurance. Schwarzenegger did a pretty gigachad move in 2021, when he told that anyone that wouldn’t get vaccinated were schmucks.

One actor that got to be the president of the United States, was Ronald Reagan. Reagan was an actor until the 1960s. He ruled as a president in the 1980s, and made a great legacy. His slogan ”Make America Great Again” (MAGA) was reused by Donald Trump in the 2016 election. Ronald Reagan was a devout anti-communist, and decided to bolster the military spending. Reagan was almost killed, but although the bullets were close by his heart and pierced his lung, he survived. In the early 80s, the US economy suffered a hit from an economic recession, but the economy started to recover by 1983. Reagan did a lot of budget cuts, and wanted to make sure that the government would stay away from the economy. Ronald Reagan was a neoliberal in economic policy, like Margaret Thatcher from the UK. Reagan demanded the Soviet leader to tear down the Berlin wall.

Volodymyr Zelenskyii was a comedian and an actor before his presidency. He made a show which was called ”Servant of the People”, which almost predicted his presidency, minus the Russo-Ukrainian war. The war didn’t take place in the show, but it took place in our timeline. He even played piano with his wang. Yes, that’s right. You can look it up if you want to. It’s pretty hilarious. Zelenskyii won the elections using his social media to gain more attention to him, and the Ukrainian people loved him. Volodymyr Zelenskyii is another gigachad, who stayed in Ukraine, and didn’t go on exile. He doesn’t give a shit what Putler says, and he just carries on. Volodymyr Zelenskyii is jewish, and Putin calls him a nazi. (If you didn’t know that, which you probably should have known. Not all people follow politics, so I don’t blame you if you don’t follow politics. Not all people are interested in politics, which is a bad thing to democracy, but you can learn more about politics if you just believe in yourself.)

There are a lot of different celebrities in politics, some failed their election campaigns, some had become the leaders of their countries. Celebrities are a fun addition to politics, and celebrities in politics could bring more people interested in politics. But if they rise to power, they would be incompetent leaders, who won’t know how to fix the problems. So some celebrities that would have the knowledge, could maybe rise to power like Zelenskyii and Reagan. In democracy, anybody could rise to power, not just few oligarchs or military generals.