The Nordic Resistance Movement is a pan-Nordic neo-Nazi organisation with the goal of ‘a united ethnic Nordic Nation.’ Their main concerns are around mass immigration and multiculturalism. It stands as the most recent incarnation of over a hundred years of Nazi ideology in the Nordic region, which became particularly significant over the 1980s and 1990s in Sweden. It is one of the most enduring and most organised extreme groups in the region. The NRM position the ‘Nordic Race’ as facing threats to its ancestral values, its land and its people, composed of fear of the future and the mystification of the past. They envisage the creation of a Nordic superstate, which would include Sweden, Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland – and even possibly some Baltic states.
The NRM was founded in 1997, when Klas Lund and other former members of the White Aryan Resistance were released from prison in Sweden. They established the Swedish Resistance Movement, drawing in former producers of a neo-Nazi magazine, as well as members of the organisation known for the murder of anarchist activist Björn Söderberg. In 2006, the organisation merged with the National Youth Organisation. In 2014, the NRM made its political debut when it was granted a mandate in the local government assembly in the municipality of Ludvika, in Sweden due to exploiting an electoral loophole. One of its key members, Pär Öberg, was elected in 2014 as a write-in candidate for the Sweden Democrats party. The stunt drew attention to the group and placed them on the national stage. In 2016, the NRM established its pan-Nordic credentials, emphasising that they shared ‘the same symbol, the same political ambitions, the same structure, the same leader and the same way of working’ across the entire Nordic region, seeding an international movement. Content on their website is translated into a range of Nordic languages, showing their commitment to representing and unifying the Nordic region.
This change coincided with the resignation of Lund as the leader. His successor, Simon Lindberg, developed strategies to develop the organisation through production of media and propaganda rather than through street-level activism. However, after they failed to replicate their fluke electoral gains in later elections, taking a miniscule share of the vote. Due to this humiliation, Lindberg’s strategies became less popular and a breakaway faction was formed. The paramilitary wing Nordic Strength – headed by Lund – focusses instead at more direct action. Members of this group have been convicted of over 100 violent crimes.
The NSM currently is only believed to have a few hundred active members, but much broader support due to their strategy of spreading extremist ideas to wide audiences. In 2015, it was estimated that almost half of all members had criminal records, often for violence. Around 80% of the members are male, as are all the leadership. As in other neo-Nazi organisations, there is a valorisation of motherhood, seen as the continuity of the Nordic peoples, and a tendency to relegage women to support roles rather than as activists in themselves. The wives of leading members of the NSM have taken on activist roles, however.
The movement has a presence in Finland, Norway and Denmark, and members in Iceland, but remains the strongest in Sweden, where it originated. Many serious violent attacks have been carried out in Sweden, including attempted and completed attacks on centres housing refugees. They have also clashed with anti-racism demonstrators.
In Finland, the local NRM advocates pan-Finno-Ugrism, calling for a unification with Estonia, which has a language in the Finnic family. The Finnish NRM is particularly vicious, rejecting the parliamentary strategy used in Sweden. It has strong connections with National Action, a secretive British neo-Nazi organisation. Members of the Finnish NRM have carried out several violent attacks, and celebrates violence amongst its members – including awarding a member convicted of torturing a man to death with the accolade ‘activist of the year.’ They have also repeatedly vandalised the Israeli embassy. On 2017, legal proceedings to ban the Finnish branch of the NRM proceeded, after a member assaulted a passer-by in Helsinki, who later died of his injuries. After legal wrangling, the ban was finally upheld in the Supreme Court in 2020. This was the first time a group with these politics has been disbanded in Finland since 1977. It is likely that the NRM continues to operate in Finland, continuing their operations under new names. Other wings of the group were not banned and are able to continue to operate. Since the ban, members of the NRM have not been implicated in any crimes in Finland, and have taken a more esoteric turn.
Since Norway was occupied by the Nazis between 1940 and 1945, Norwegians espousing Nazi ideals face additional challenges. Given that collaboration with the Nazis was regarded as treason, and that the name of Vidkun Quisling who headed the Nazi regime under occupation in Norway has become the definition of betraying one’s nation. Nevertheless, there is a presence in Norway. Norwegian police have located weapons owned by a member, and arrested a member who drove a stolen ambulance at a crowd, and who was in possession of weapons, including a submachine gun. There are some registered members in Iceland, but as yet the most activism they have managed is distributing leaflets spreading NRM ideology.
Anti-Semitism appears to have the greatest power to galvanise cross-national activism. In 2019, the organisation managed coordinated attacks across all of these territories (except Iceland), defacing Jewish places of worship. The NRM has also coordinated rallies and events on Jewish holidays across many of its territories. These have the effect of terrorising the Jewish populations of the Nordic countries.
Like other neo-Nazi movements, they have an ideology based in the idea of the renewal and purification of a culture perceived to be under thread from outsiders and traitors. They identify non-white people as ‘race aliens’ who must be expelled from their country, and all politicians as traitors against the Nordic race. Although they represent themselves as political trailblazers, confronting contemporary issues from a fresh perspective, their ideology is recognisably Nazi, with a focus on ‘race’, and calls for the overthrow of ‘global Zionism’ and the replacement of democracy with an alternative political system.
Their mission statement Our Path warns that the Nordic state are controlled by the ‘global Zionist elite.’ The NRM thus seeks to ‘regain power’ from that elite and unite the Nordic states into a ‘Nordic Nation’ able to ‘assert itself militarily, economically and culturally.’
Their online newspaper contains a section entitled ‘The Jewish Question’ which situates Jews as both a profiteering capitalist elite, and as the authors of so-called ‘cultural Marxism’, tying both capitalism and communism into the same ‘Bolshevik-plutocratic Jewish plot.’ Jews are linked to Familiar narratives of undermining traditional morality and causing societal decline – through changing attitudes to gender and sexuality as well as through non-Western immigration. Same-sex attraction is characterised as anti-family and a moral offence.
This imagined Jewish influence is seen as an internal subversion – a theory which has become common since the pivotal American neo-Nazi text, the Turner Diaries, was written in 1978. While anti-Semitism remains at the heart of the NRM’s beliefs, they have capitalised on anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiments. They believe that the arrival ‘foreign races’ in Nordic nations has resulted in the ‘physical displacement and genocide’ of the Nordic people, who they claim have a ‘unique gene pool.’
While most right-wing populist parties tend towards hostility to taking action to redress climate change, the NRM are committed to ecology, based in the position of preserving the natural beauty of the Nordic countries. This is also likely to chime with the anxieties of a younger generation, who will face the worst impacts of climate change in their lifetimes, and an area where it is perceived that mainstream politics have failed to address the concern of the planet’s future.
In keeping with the celebration of nation, the NRM valorise the shared heritage of the Nordic countries. This heritage is more mythic than real, drawing on the symbols of an imagined past rather than the complex realities of history. The symbol of the movement is formed from the combination of two Nordic runes: Tiwaz and Yvgvi, meaning ‘courage, self-sacrifice, struggle and victory’ and ‘fertility, creative energy, purposefulness and focus’ respectively, rendered in the colours of an historic Romanian fascist group. Amongst Nazis who find the heroic Nordic myths appealing, Christianity is seen as emasculating faith, suspicious due to its ‘Semitic’ origins. Klas Lund has described the Christian heritage of the Nordic countries as a ‘thousand years of a spiritual poison.’
Unlike other many underground organisations, the Nordic Resistance Movement operates openly, sharing their contact details, showing their confidence and wish to expand. It also organises regular events, including training in combat skills, which build solidarity as well as their stated aim of preparing for the overthrow of democracy. It has links with the Russian Imperial Movement (a white supremacist movement) and National Action (a British neo-Nazi organisation). They distribute propaganda and proselytise their beliefs, and also produce a magazine. The propaganda features hateful language and violent imagery, serving to intimidate minority populations and the organisation’s political opponents. Despite attempts to limit donations, they have been able to receive up to 1mSEK through cryptocurrency donations.
While violent activity by the NRM has reduced, it is unclear whether this is due to a decline in momentum or a transition towards non-violent means of achieving their aims, which are now directed towards normalising neo-Nazi ideas. Generally, there is a movement away from organised militia towards tactics of leaderless resistance, loosely coordinated via various online platforms. This has led towards a decline in violent imagery towards more mainstream presentations of their positions, leading to increased polarisation, and the promulgation of hateful material online.