In all silence, the Nordic Resistance Movement has started a party project called Kansan yhtenäisyys ry. (People’s Unity, registered association). The initiation of collecting supporter cards to found a National Socialist party in Finland is a panic reaction to the ban on NRM by the District Court.
Party project of National Socialists
The 26th of April 2018 Kansan yhtenäisyys ry association was registered, with the home place marked as Tampere. The president of the association is Petri Sebastian Nordman, its secretary Harri Juhani Aurema, and vice-president Janne Valtteri Moilanen. Nordman is living in Tampere, Moilanen in Helsinki, and Aurema in Ylivieska and all are active members of the nazi organization Nordic Resistance Movement. Both Moilanen and Nordman have worked in the NRM since it was founded in 2008. Aurema joined the organization after having become radicalized in the racist Rajat kiinni (Close The Borders) movement of the years 2015-2016.
The first publication of the homepage of Kansan yhtenäisyys association has been made on the 22th of May 2018. In this messy text, among other things, the ”liberal school system” and the ”perverse entertainment industry” are accused for the decadence of the youth, and the text expresses a will ”to protect Finnish nuclear families from the gay culture marketed by mainstream media and ultra-liberal organizations like Seta [Sexual Equality association]”. The text is in line with the recent activities of the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) which has included harassing children’s school day in Helsinki as well as long-term harassment of sexual and gender minorities in many cities. Although the party project ostensibly strives to take distance to the NRM, the text continues by stressing that the founders are nazis:
We, Petri Nordman and Janne Moilanen, have founded Kansan yhtenäisyys to build a nationalist alternative in Finland, to the corrupt old parties and the international power of money commanding them.
We see that the problems of immigration, economy, and national defense can’t be separated from each other. We are National Socialists because we don’t believe that the same party could promote strict immigration policies on one hand and open borders for labour power and capital on the other.
The text signed by Nordman and Moilanen ends with a defiant demand, in which ”independence at any cost” and ”struggle for it” are declared. What remains unclear is how common people would be more independent under the nazis’ Nordic dictatorship, as the National Socialist program that lead to the execution of millions of people in Nazi Germany was one of the most horrible tragedies of human kind. The party project adheres completely to the ideology of the NRM and behind it are the nazis’ worn-out fantasies of a ”pure Finnish blood-line”.
Banned nazi organization behind the party project
However, Kansan yhtenäisyys party project was published as late as the 9th of June 2018, when the NRM published news of the ”radical nationalist party project” on their homepage. Even though the party project is NRM’s own making, on the organization’s website it’s depicted as if from an outsider’s perspective, even boasting how it stands out from its predecessors with a ”particularly uncompromising program”.
The NRM in Finland became clearly more cautious in its activities since having to go to the District Court of Tampere in Autumn of 2017 after the National Police Board brought the case aiming at abolishing the organization. Names of the NMR’s leadership or of the nazi organization’s fundraising association Pohjoinen perinne ry (Northern Tradition r.a.) are not visible in the party board of Kansan yhtenäisyys. Because of the members of the nazi organization hiding their nazi identity, the persons named for the association of the party project are familiar names of the NRM, because the membership of the nazi organization don’t want to be publicly associated with it. Nordman and Moilanen have worked in the NRM for years and for the past couple of years both of them have been in increasingly visible roles in the nazi organization. Petri Nordman was leading the shouting at the NRM’s Kohti Vapautta (Towards Freedom) nazi demonstration on independence day of 2017, and in the same event the last speech was held by Moilanen who ended the demonstration in nazi salutes. Nordman and Moilanen had the same roles also a few months earlier in the NRM demonstration in Tampere in October 2017.
The NRM’s new and more cautious line was shown already before the decision of the District Court, because in 2017 the indepdence day nazi march, which it held under its own name in 2016, the NRM organized without an official link to the NRM. However, the link was clear, because the demonstration’s name and aesthetics were exactly the same as NRM’s, and its website was registered in the name of the notorious NRM member Paavo Laitinen. According to the NRM, the organizer of the 2017 Kohti vapautta nazi demonstration was ”not the Nordic Resistance Movement but Finnish National Socialists in general”. It was a measure of precaution, by which they strived to ensure gaining the permission in case the NRM got banned by the District Court just before the independence day. The organization was banned just before the independence day, but the police interpreted it so that the NRM still were permitted to march.
Another sign of the more cautious line was the more conciliatory attitude towards other fascist organizations. Already in the Tampere demonstration before the session of the District Court, the NRM announced that other nationalist organizations are welcome to the demonstration with their own symbols. So the whole organization of the Soldiers of Odin attended. However, NMR’s main opponent neo-fascist Suomen Sisu ended its messy communication by recommending its members not to attend the NRM march. Nevertheless the weak position of the NRM was exemplified in how it didn’t dare to react in any way to what practically amounted to a public attack of the Suomen Sisu leadership against the NRM. At the independence day demonstration the NRM was already welcoming other organizations to join with their own banners, which is why Soldiers of Odin, Blood & Honour Finland, and the German Junge Nationaldemokraten joined the march.
The initiation of the party project after the events of 2017 described above, is the NRM’s last resort in case that the decision of District Court to abolish the organization is confirmed by the Court of Appeal and by the Supreme Court.
Demonstration in Turku before the Court of Appeal
The NRM was banned in December 2017 by the decision of the District Court, but the organization complained about the verdict to the Court of Appeal. The session of the Court ofAppeal was held in Turku 28th to 30th of August, and the court made its decision the 28.10. In a predictable move the NRM announced that it would organize a demonstration in Turku ”For Freedom of Speech” on the 18th of August, a bit before their court session. On the same day, the Alliance of Nationalists uniting the far-right organized a demonstration named 188 Flower Stream. The 188 Flower Stream was a disgusting attempt to ride on the tragedy of the mass stabbing in Turku that took place on the same day a year earlier.
Local anti-fascists organized a counter-demonstration named Turku ilman natseja (Turku Without Nazis). The organizers of the anti-fascist demonstration condemned the attempts by the nazis to use the suffering of the victims of the Turku stabbing and their relatives to advance their misanthropic agenda. In the event everyone were invited to tell the NRM and other far-right groupings that ”their hateful and violent movements are not welcome in our Turku!”
The Resistance Movement of Finland (since 2015, the Nordic Resistance Movement – Finland’s chapter) founded less than a decade ago is now at the greatest turning point of its history as it sits in courts waiting for the final decision to the case to ban by the National Board of Police from March 2017. The Turku Appeal Court ruled on Friday 28th of September 2018, like the Pirkanmaa District Court, that the neo-nazi organization Finland’s Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) and its background association Pohjoinen Perinne ry (Nordic Tradition r.a) is to be abolished.
Members of the NRM have committed violence against dissenters year after year. The horrible deeds of the nazi organization extend from the gassing of families with children at the Helsinki Pride to killing Jimi Karttunen. During its existence the NRM has offered mental, moral, and material aid to Jesse Torniainen , the killer of Jimi Karttunen, and has taken in Rami Joukanen, the torture-murderer of a disabled person. Joukanen was kicked out of other nazi organizations in Sweden where he was living during the murder.
It remains to be seen, what will be the attitude of the justice system and the police on NRM’s party project Kansan yhtenäisyys ry if the NRM itself gets banned. Even if the nazi organization was banned, it wouldn’t remove those tens of nazis who the NRM has trained during this decade. Irrespectively of the court’s decision, all freedom loving people must continue creating anti-fascist consensus as well as constructing autonomous movements capable of challenging fascism and the pillars maintaining it (white supremacy, misogyny, racism, class rule, homophobia, and so on).
See also:
- Analysis: Who Participated in the NRM´s National Socialist Demonstration on Independence Day?
- The New Fascist Tradition of Independence Day: The 612 Demonstration in Finland 2014-2016
- The Activist of the Year of the Nordic Resistance Movement in Finland is the torture-murderer Rami Joukanen
- A secretive far-right event in Helsinki on Sunday: international speakers united by anti-semitism and misogyny
- Repentant leader, manslaughter and nazi march – Year 2016 for Finland’s Nordic Resistance Movement
- Finnish nazi group killed bypasser during their street event
- Snitches, weak leadership and degradation of racial theories – Finnish Resistance movement in 2015