Dan Boeckner, a 48-year-old Canadian musician, posted deeply offensive remarks about Estonians on X on 12 March, drawing the ire of Estonian expatriates in Canada and elsewhere.

Boeckner, the frontman of Wolf Parade, a Québécois indie rock band, and a touring member of Arcade Fire, another Québécois indie rock outfit whose work has featured in Rolling Stone’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, wrote that “Estonia is made up of beet and onion slop eating Hungarians who polished the cocks of German horses for 1000 years before being elevated to sapience by the USSR”.

What made the post even worse was that, in this entirely unprovoked and incomprehensibly vile outburst, he was reposting a statement by Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and a former prime minister of Estonia. Kallas’s original post read: “The EU continues to hold Iran accountable. Today, EU Member States ambassadors approved new sanctions targeting 19 regime officials and entities responsible for serious human rights violations” – a statement wholly unrelated to Estonia, Estonians or the Soviet Union.

It is not known what prompted Boeckner’s comments.

Kaja Kallas, whose post on X prompted Boeckner’s response, was Estonia’s first female prime minister, serving from 2021 to 2024. Since 2024, she has served as the EU’s foreign policy chief and as a vice-president of the European Commission in Ursula von der Leyen’s second Commission.

Marcus Kolga, one of the leaders of the Estonian community in Canada, responded to Boeckner’s comments by compiling an open letter* – which anyone can sign – addressed to Wolf Parade, Arcade Fire, Boeckner and the producers of Heated Rivalry, a Canadian television programme that has used Wolf Parade’s music. In it, he wrote that Boeckner’s “statement is vile, dehumanising ethnic abuse. It is not satire. It is not wit. It is hate dressed up as provocation.”

“What makes it even more offensive is that, as posted, it was directed at Kaja Kallas, Estonia’s former prime minister and now one of Europe’s most senior foreign policy figures, serving as the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission,” the open letter states.

“When a female leader is targeted with degrading ethnic and national abuse, the message extends beyond her. It conveys contempt not only for Estonia, but also for Estonian women in public life.”

“Kaja Kallas has become one of Europe’s clearest democratic voices against imperial aggression and authoritarianism,” it adds.

* https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScbah-Vbh61P-CqwxicXs8WbhQ5z9bUFdqCiXzE4yp1MHL59g/viewform?pli=1