Nordic Resistance Movement

This report by the Countering Extremism Project highlights the Nordic Resistance Movement, a neo-Nazi terrorist organization operating in the Nordic countries. Click here for the full reading: https://www.counterextremism.com/supremacy/nordic-resistance-movement

Introduction

Formed by neo-Nazi nationalists in Sweden in 1997, the Nordic Resistance Movement (Nordiska motståndsrörelsen, or NRM) is a transnational, neo-Nazi organization with official chapters operating in Sweden, Finland, and Norway. The NRM also draws support from neo-Nazis in Denmark and Iceland, though the group has failed to establish formal branches in those countries. A 2017 report by European anti-racism organization Expo named NRM as the primary force responsible for a rise in neo-Nazi activity in Sweden in 2016.

The NRM subscribes to a nationalist socialist, or neo-Nazi, ideology that is avowedly anti-Semitic, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, pro-white, and pro-Hitler. The NRM has held numerous anti-immigration rallies, and has hung signs throughout Sweden, Finland, and Norway reading “Refugees Are Not Welcome.” In its 2015 party platform “Our Path,” the NRM warns that the Nordic states—as well as the entire Western world—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.”

NRM members reportedly receive martial arts training and are educated on how to respond if fighting arises in the streets.* In addition, the group previously sold a knife inscribed with the maxim “The struggle demands more than only words.”* In a 2016 interview, NRM-Sweden leader Simon Lindberg said that he joined the group because its members are “strong in the streets, they dare to fight back the scum.”* However, Swedish prosecutors believe that three NRM-Sweden members—charged in June 2017 in connection to three bombings on a far-left café and two refugee centers in November 2016 and January 2017—were “dissatisfied” that NRM leadership had not wanted to use violence “to the same extent” as the three men. Prosecutors believe that two of those men had received military training in Russia before returning to Sweden to carry out the bombings, though it is unclear from whom they received training.

NRM-Sweden officially registered as a political party in July 2015 under the name “Nordiska motståndsrörelsen”—the same name used for the larger NRM-Sweden movement. The group was inspired to enter politics after one of its key members, Pär Öberg, was elected in 2014 as a write-in candidate for the Sweden Democrats party in the Ludvika municipality's local elections.* However, NRM-Sweden is not believed to have made political gains, and the movement is reported to lend most of its efforts to extra-parliamentary activities, such as violence, intimidation, and crime.* Finland banned the NRM in November 2017, but the group has continued to stage demonstrations there while appealing the decision.

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Violent Activities

NRM leaders and members have carried out numerous attacks against gay people, Muslim asylum seekers, and the group's ideological adversaries. In 2017, the European NGO Expo found that a quarter of NRM's members had been convicted of violent crime.

On January 25, 2017, Swedish authorities discovered an IED—which had failed to detonate—outside of a Gothenberg compound housing refugees. Authorities believed the incident was linked to the November 11, 2016, bombing at the Syndikaliskt Forum Kafe as well as the January 5, 2017, bombing of the refugee lodging center.* In June 2017, Swedish prosecutors charged three unnamed NRM-Sweden members in connection to the far-left café and refugee center bombings.
On January 5, 2017, individuals allegedly associated with NRM-Sweden detonated homemade bombs outside of a refugee lodging center in Gothenberg, injuring an immigration officer.
On November 11, 2016, individuals allegedly associated with NRM-Sweden detonated a bomb at the Syndikaliskt Forum Kafe in Gothenberg, though no one was injured or killed in the attack.
On December 17, 2013, at least 30 NRM-Sweden members carrying smoking flares attacked participants of a peaceful, anti-racism demonstration in the Stockholm suburb of Kärrtorp. Four people were injured in the ensuing clashes, which also resulted in the arrests of 28. In June 2014, a Swedish court sentenced four NRM-Sweden members, including spokesman Emil Hagberg, to between six and eight months in prison for instigating the December riots.
In July 2010, police arrested several NRM-Sweden members after they attacked guards during an NRM demonstration at a music festival in the Swedish city of Piteå.

Rhetoric

NRM Website, June 2017: “The homolobby promotes popular enemy decadence and anti-culture, which helps to undermine and dissolve the natural structures of society. Thus, the very premise of a further existence for our people.”*
NRM Manual, August 2016: “The [NRM] has gone to battle against the enemies of the Nordic region, and continuously fights for the freedom and survival of the Nordic people - in a future free and united nation-socialist Nordic region.”*
NRM-Sweden spokesman Emil Hagberg in an interview with London's Daily Mail, February 2016: “We are National Socialists [Nazis]. Our main aim is the protection of Sweden's [white] people and culture. We don't want our [white] people to disappear from the earth. People come to us because they see the streets are full of Somalis and Syrians and they are starting to listen to us because we have been warning of the dangers of immigration for years.”*
NRM-Sweden leader Simon Lindberg in an interview with National Vanguard, June 2016: “[NRM members are] strong in the streets, they dare to fight back the scum.”*
NRM-Sweden official statement praising an attack on refugee children by a mob of Swedish nationalists in Stockholm's central train station, January 2016: “Police have clearly shown that they lack the means to stave off [the refugees'] rampage, and we now see no other alternative than to ourselves hand out the punishments they deserve.”*
Party platform, 2015: “From our point of view, National Socialism [Nazism], [as] proven during the short time it held power in Germany, has been the only form of government that has significantly threatened the destructive forces [i.e. Zionism] that rule the world. From 1945 until today, these same destructive forces have continually conducted political genocide against the Nordic and ethnic peoples of Europe. They recognize National Socialism as the chief enemy of their worldview, because it delivers a strategy of survival for our race….”