Nordic Resistance Movement

The Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM; Swedish Nordiska motståndsrörelsen, Finnish Pohjoismainen vastarintaliike) is a neo-Nazi organization founded in Sweden in 1997 that operates in all the Nordic countries and aims, in the description of researchers at the University of Oslo's Center for Research on Extremism, "to overthrow the current democratic order in the Nordic region and establish a national socialist state in its stead." Its Finnish chapter was founded in 2008.¹ Two members of its Gothenburg cell trained at the Partizan camp of the Russian Imperial Movement in St. Petersburg in August 2016 before a series of bombings in Gothenburg, which the State Department cited when it designated the Russian group a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in April 2020.²³ The Supreme Court of Finland ordered the organization dissolved in Finland on September 22, 2020.¹

Partizan and the Gothenburg Bombings

Anton Thulin and Viktor Melin traveled to St. Petersburg and took part in the Partizan paramilitary course in August 2016, receiving eleven days of instruction. On November 11, 2016, Melin bombed a left-wing bookstore café in Gothenburg. On January 5, 2017, Melin and Jimmy Jonasson, who had no connection to the Russian group, bombed a refugee shelter, wounding one person, and on January 25, 2017, Melin, Thulin and Jonasson attempted to bomb a campground housing asylum seekers.² The Swedish prosecutor who charged Thulin and Melin said their training in Russia was "a key step in [their] radicalization" and may have been where they learned to use the explosives.² All three maintained their innocence; on July 7, 2017, the court sentenced them to terms ranging from eighteen months to eight and a half years in prison.⁴ Secretary of State Mike Pompeo cited the attacks when he announced the designation of the Russian Imperial Movement and its leaders on April 7, 2020, the first designation of a white supremacist group as a terrorist entity by the United States.²³

Dissolution in Finland

Finnish authorities came under pressure to act against the organization in late 2016, after a long-standing member assaulted a passer-by who had protested against a public NRM event in Helsinki; the victim died a week later after leaving hospital against medical advice, and the assailant was convicted of aggravated assault with a racist motive. The National Police Board sued to dissolve the organization in March 2017. The Birkaland District Court ruled for the police in November 2017, and the Turku Court of Appeal upheld the decision in September 2018. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal in March 2019 and imposed a temporary ban, which became permanent on September 22, 2020, when it ordered the NRM and its registered vehicle, Pohjoinen Perinne ry ("Northern Tradition"), disbanded. The court found the group's objectives illegal, its propaganda to include "agitation against ethnic and other minorities," and its stance on violence by its members supportive. It was the first court-ordered dissolution of an extreme right-wing group in Finland since 1977.¹

The ruling did not cover the group's charity, Suomalaisapu, or its party project, Kansan Yhtenäisyys, which had been abandoned after the temporary ban. Members founded a successor group, Kohti Vapautta! ("Towards Freedom!"), in the spring of 2019, and prosecutors considered charging it with illegally continuing the NRM's activities. The organization's Finnish members worked closely from 2017 with the street patrol group Soldiers of Odin, and some activists moved after the ban toward accelerationist positions.¹