Nordic resistance movement

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Flag of the Nordic Resistance Movement with Tiwaz rune

As "Nordic Resistance Movement" (Engl. Nordic Resistance Movement NMR, abbreviated after the Swedish name) since 1997 incurred composite of groups of designated since 2015 neo-Nazism in Scandinavia . Subgroups exist in Sweden ( Nordiska motståndsrörelsen ), Norway ( Nordiske motstandsbevegelsen ), Finland ( Pohjoismainen Vastarintaliike ), Denmark ( Den nordiske modstandsbevægelse ) and Iceland ( Norræna mótstöðuhreyfingin ). Your goal is the formation of a Nordic Republic in all of Scandinavia through a Nordic "War of Freedom".

The association is counted as part of right- wing terrorism because of the declared willingness of many members to use violence, weapon training, attacks and attempted attacks . Terrorism researcher Magnus Ranstorp sees the association's aim to start a race war and spread his ideology of violence. He recommends a ban on the organization.

Sweden

Information booth in July 2017 in Visby , Gotland

Svenska Motståndsrörelsen (from 1997)

In Sweden, the neo-Nazi Klas Lund announced the founding of the Svenska Motståndsrörelsen (SMR; "Swedish Resistance Movement") party in the newspaper Folktribunen, which he ran, in December 1997 . Lund came from the militant skinhead scene and, together with other skinheads, had killed a man in 1986 who had rushed to the aid of migrants who were threatened by them. He was sentenced to eight years in prison for murder, two of which he served. Then he founded the network Vitt Ariskt Motstånd (VAM; "white Aryan resistance"). It had a revolutionary claim, was inspired by the terrorist writings The Turner Diaries and Hunter by William Luther Pierce, popular with neo-Nazis, and saw the right-wing extremist terror group The Order from the USA as a model. To finance their intended revolutionary uprising, Lund and his group carried out several bank robberies. Lund was sentenced to six years in prison for this. During this time he said goodbye to the loose concept of leaderless resistance that had previously been pursued and now preferred a strictly hierarchical form of organization with the long-term goal of radicalizing the population through constant propaganda and street activism and winning them over to a general revolution of the “white race”. To this end, he founded the newspaper Folktribunen , which became his party's publication organ from 1997.

Lund led the group as a leader whose orders could not be questioned. He also gave strict rules for everyday behavior. The members often come from the National Youth, founded in 1995 and dissolved in 2006, and the VAM. The core of their ideology is the anti-Semitic conspiracy theory of an alleged world Jewry and allegedly harmful influences “of the Jews” on Swedish society and the world. In addition, there is a devaluation based on racism of all people who do not correspond to the own racial ideal of the " Aryan ". According to its members' newspaper Budkavlen, the SMR sees itself as the spearhead and driver of a revolutionary resistance movement. She relies on uncompromising violence in street fighting and demands of her supporters to hit opponents first and with full force, to pursue them if they escape and to further injure them. Lund called on the members to arm themselves.

Neo-Nazis who later joined the SMR murdered union leader Björn Söderberg in 1999 and stole weapons from the Swedish army. According to an investigation by the NGO Expo in early 2014, 65 of 119 SMR activists had a criminal record in 2013, 51% of them for acts of violence such as murder, manslaughter or assault, 49% for gun crimes and 17% for incitement to racial hatred. In December 2013, around 30 armed SMR members attacked visitors to an anti-racist festival in Kärrtorp , Stockholm , including women with small children. Many of the attackers received prison sentences for this. The SMR is considered to be the most violent neo-Nazi group in Sweden because of its criminal record.

At first the SMR covertly represented the ideology of National Socialism since 2006 and is aiming for a general revolution that is to create a “Nordic state” for the “Nordic race”, primarily through extra-parliamentary struggle. It is relatively tightly organized in the neo-Nazi spectrum and has strict admission criteria: full members must devote themselves entirely to the organization and their everyday struggle. The SMR does not rely on rapid growth, but on fully committed, action-ready, ideologically stable anti-Semites and racists as members. In 2001, the SMR split over issues related to "race", Jews, strategy and methods of action. A part switched to the newly founded party Nationaldemokraterna (National Democrats), which included more intellectual activities (metapolitics such as the New Right ) and later moved closer to the Identitarian Movement . The SMR, on the other hand, tried to expand to other Scandinavian countries in accordance with its transnational goal.

Nordiska Motståndsrörelsen (from 2015)

In autumn 2015, founder and leader Klas Lund withdrew from the group and was initially replaced by a four-person committee. From December 2015, Simon Lindberg emerged as the new leader. Under him, the SMR was renamed Nordiska Motståndsrörelsen (NMR). Lindberg was previously active in the Nationalsocialistisk front (NSF) and its successor organization Folk Fronten . Another well-known member is Magnus Söderman, against whom Russia imposed an entry ban in May 2015 .

Until 2015, NMR's activities had mostly been limited to propaganda, internal training, and combat training. Starting in 2015, the group organized many larger and smaller rallies and marches with uniforms, shields, flags and banners, increased by applicants and supporters. To do this, they chose particularly provocative occasions. They violently attacked LGBT parades, demonstrated in front of tens of thousands of counter- demonstrators on May 1st during the Almedalen festival week on the island of Gotland and on Yom Kippur 2017 in Gothenburg . In November 2016, three men from the NMR environment carried out a bomb attack on a pub in Gothenburg and in January 2017 on two homes for asylum seekers . Whether they were acting on the orders of the group or by themselves remained unclear in their criminal proceedings. The attacks took place in the context of an enormous increase in arson attacks on such facilities from 2015 onwards. The perpetrators were found through traces of DNA on fragments of the explosive device. Charges were brought against the leader of the Gothenburg cell, Viktor Melin, and two other NMR members, Anton Thulin and Jimmy Jonasson. Shortly before the attack, the men had traveled to Russia to train with a Russian paramilitary unit that had previously fought on the Russian side in the war in Ukraine since 2014 . Court documents show that Melin and Thulin participated in the paramilitary program " Partisan " in Saint Petersburg , which is organized by the Russian Imperial Movement (RID). NMR has been in contact with RID for years. On the RID vk.com page, pictures of Melin and Thulin were published showing the two men posing armed. During a raid on Melin's apartment, notes in Russian on bombs and weapons were confiscated. The explosives used were identical to the explosive devices that were used in an attack on a left-wing organization in November 2016 and in an attack on another refugee shelter in January 2017. According to the prosecutor, the paramilitary training in Russia was the decisive step in the radicalization of the perpetrators: there they learned how to make bombs. In July 2017, they were sentenced to one and a half to eight and a half years in prison.

Norway

In 2003, the Swedish SMR formed a first offshoot in Norway from former members of the Norwegian skinhead group Boot Boys (" Boot Boys "). At the same time, she renamed her newspaper Nationell Motsånd , opened its Norwegian version Nasjonal Motstand and the website Patriot.nu . Because two Boot Boys murdered Benjamin Hermansen in 2001 and had committed other bank robberies, the leaders had to serve several years in prison. After that, there were hardly any recruits for the group in Norway. This remained limited to Oslo and Kristiansand and soon stopped its activities.

In 2010, Haakon Forwald joined the Swedish SMR as the only Norwegian member at first and then tried to revive the inactive subgroup in Norway. Soon thereafter, the Nordfront website appeared as the Norwegian version of the SMR website. In the beginning she mainly took over and translated their articles, but gradually also published reports on her own activities, especially on nightly sticker campaigns. From 2016, the group's public appearances increased significantly. These included a large rally in Kristiansand in July 2017. Since 2015, the Swedish core group has also expanded its activities under its new leader.

Finland

In 2008 Esa Henrik Holappa founded a branch of the Swedish SMR called Suomen vastarintaliike in Finland . According to him, the American Richard Scutari was his role model. He was sentenced to 60 years imprisonment in 1989 as a participant in terrorist attacks by The Order group . While in custody, he retained his influence in the white power movement. Holappa began correspondence with him at the age of 17 and published it as a book together with the Swedish SMR member Magnus Söderman . According to her, Scutari brought Holappa in contact with Söderman and instructed him to found the Finnish branch of the SMR.

It is estimated to have fewer than 100 members, but appears to be growing and is currently active in at least five cities in Finland. Some came from the neo-fascist group Musta Sydan ("Black Heart"), which was founded in 2010 and has since dissolved . This in turn was connected with CasaPound Italia , the Identitarians, the right-wing extremist martial arts group White Rex in Russia and many other neo-fascist groups. The SMR later separated from Holappa and banned him as a dropout and traitor. In 2018, the Constitutional Court of Finland banned the Finnish branch of the SMR.

In 2019, the banned Finnish group tried to demonstrate in Helsinki on Finland's Independence Day (December 6), as in the previous year . To do this, she had renamed herself Movement for Freedom . The police banned the rally two days beforehand.

Denmark

In Denmark, a former member of the Nationalsocialistiske Bevægelse (DNSB) tried to found an offshoot of the SMR for the first time in 2013. Apart from a few sticker campaigns near the Swedish border, the group remained inactive. This was possibly due to the strength of the right-wing national parties Danmarks Nationale Front (DNF) and Danskernes Parti (DP) at the time. After its demise, a Danish sub-group of the SMR was re-established in 2017. It accepted former DNSB members and members of the defunct DP and forms the youngest branch of the Scandinavian NMR network to date. Its establishment is also attributed to a decline in the traditionally strong Danish Antifa .

cleavage

In 2019, a group led by SMR founder Klas Lund and Norwegian Haakon Forwald left their NMR subgroups in Sweden and Norway. The reasons they cited were internal conflicts over strategy, above all the question of whether one should continue to organize traditional mass rallies as a political party or focus more on underground activity than before. The dropouts formed the new group Nordisk Styrke ("Nordic Force"). It is not yet clear whether it will be able to compete permanently with NMR.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Svensk leder af en nynazistisk bevægelse: 'Vores mål er at overtage magten i hele Norden'. Dr.dk, February 27, 2020 (Danish)
  2. ↑ Jacob Aasland Ravndal: Transnational Militancy in the Making , Oslo 2019, PDF p. 10 f.
  3. ↑ a b Svenska Motståndsrörelsen. Internet archive / Expo.se, March 2016
  4. ↑ Jacob Aasland Ravndal: Transnational militancy in the Making , Oslo 2019, PDF page 11 f.
  5. ↑ Sweden's right-wing extremists are mobilizing. taz, November 24, 2003.
  6. ↑ Manuela Caiani, Ondřej Císař (Ed.): Radical Right Movement Parties in Europe. Taylor & Francis, London 2018, ISBN 1138566713 , p. 197 f.
  7. ^ These Swedish Nazis Trained In Russia Before Bombing A Center For Asylum Seekers. In: BuzzFeed News , July 22, 2017; White Russians: Russian Extremists Are Training Right-Wing Terrorists From Western Europe. In: The Daily Beast , February 8, 2017.
  8. ↑ Jacob Aasland Ravndal: Transnational militancy in the Making , Oslo 2019, PDF page 12 f.
  9. ↑ Jacob Aasland Ravndal: Transnational militancy in the Making , Oslo 2019, PDF page 13 f.
  10. ^ Helsinki Police ban neo-Nazi demonstration on Independence Day. News of Finland, December 4, 2019
  11. ↑ Jacob Aasland Ravndal: Transnational Militancy in the Making , Oslo 2019, PDF p. 14 f.
  12. ↑ Jacob Aasland Ravndal: Transnational Militancy in the Making , Oslo 2019, PDF p. 15