The Active Club network, which started in the United States, has started organizing martial arts training in Finland as well. It recruits new people more actively than other far-right groups.
Russian-oriented Pictures and videos from gyms from different parts of Finland have appeared on the Telegram messaging application last year, and especially this year. In them, men dressed in black fight against each other with their faces covered or blurred.
The same groups also do running and muscle fitness exercises in their Telegram posts. One publication also features a man with his hand raised in the Nazi salute, a knife in the other hand.
What is it about?
Publications behind it is the international Active Club network, which has recently started operating in Finland as well. Based on HS’s report, local groups have organized their events especially at public outdoor sports venues in large cities.
Active Club can be considered part of the extreme right, says a docent who has studied the extreme right Tommi Kotonen from the University of Jyväskylä.
According to Kotonen, the local groups have not particularly prominently highlighted their ideals or declared themselves National Socialists. However, according to Kotonen, the background of the activity is clearly nationalism that glorifies white-skinned people and a radical anti-liberal worldview.
According to foreign media, the Active Club movement was founded by a well-known American neo-Nazi Robert Rundo. In addition to the United States, local groups have been established in numerous European countries.
In Finland, local groups operate at least in Uusimaa, Tampere, Oulu and the Turku region.
In addition, a group called Active Helsinki is active in the Helsinki region, whose activities are very similar to the activities of the local groups of Active Club.
Helsingin Sanomat has no definite information on whether Active Helsinki, despite its similar name and activities, is the same group as other groups. Unlike other similar groups, it does not appear to use Active Club IDs in its social media posting.
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Active Club groups try to recruit new people more actively than other far-right groups
Groups the main mode of operation is to organize sports events.
The events can act as a channel for more radical far-right activities, says Tommi Kotonen.
According to Kotonen, the Active Club groups try to recruit new people more actively than any other far-right actor in Finland.
The groups’ social media channels encourage viewers to join existing groups and start new ones. Other far-right actors have also organized wrestling exercises and other sports events in the past, but they have not attracted people as visibly as Active Club does.
According to Europol’s report this year, neo-Nazi groups consider face-to-face meetings and group activities important in their activities, although they are also active online.
Active Club groups do not seem to demand a strict ideology from those who participate in their events. According to Kotonen, it is probably intentional, so that people have a lower threshold to participate in the activity.
When Active Club members attract new people to their sports events, they meet other like-minded people. According to Kotonen, it creates conditions for newcomers to become radicalized and join other far-right groups.
In Finland, it is currently about the activities of a rather small group of people. According to Kotonen’s estimate, there are a few dozen people.
HS tried to inquire about the scope and nature of the activity from Active Club Finland, but the inquiry was not answered by late afternoon on Friday.
Finnish groups publish videos and pictures of their exercise in their social media updates.
In their publications, they also stick racist and anti-police stickers in public places and attach invitations to demonstrations for the upcoming Independence Day.
The publications do not say where the events are organized.
Helsingin Sanomat’s assistant Teemu Nieminen has found out with the help of social media and other open sources where Active Club and Active Helsinki groups have organized their gatherings.
In the capital region, they have gathered at least in Espoo in the sports parks of Otaniemi, Matinkylä, Tapiola and Leppävaara. In Helsinki, Active Helsinki has organized, for example, boxing training at the Hermann skate park under the Hämeentie bridge.
Outside the capital region, there have been events at the Pateniemenranta outdoor fitness park in Oulu and at the Kaukajärvi playground in Tampere.
In one of Active Helsinki’s videos, we first drive a car through Vantaa to Sipoo, after which the men work out in what appears to be a private gym in the video, walk in Nikkilä and eat at the restaurant Sipoo Kellar.
The Helsinki group has also organized an exercise event at the indoor gym in Asikkala, among others.
Nieminen has located the groups’ events based on their own social media posts. He has found out shooting locations for publications with the help of other open sources such as map and image services.
Nieminen is a member of the Global Authentication Project, Bellingcat’s official volunteer community focused on open source research. He has previously located neo-Nazi events in Hämeenlinna as part of Bellingcat’s research.
Tommy According to Kotonen, Active Club is very similar in its ideology to the Sinimusta Liiket, which has been accepted into the party register. It recognizes itself as an openly racist and fascist party.
Active Club and Sinimusta movement characterize themselves as radical nationalists. The same characterization was also used by the neo-Nazi organization Nordic Resistance Movement, which the Supreme Court ordered to be dissolved in the fall of 2020.
The security police have stated that the threat of far-right terrorism has increased in Finland. According to Supo, individual extreme right-wing individuals and small groups constitute a noteworthy terrorist threat.
According to Supo, radicalization takes place especially online.
At the end of October, the Päijät-Häme district court handed down Finland’s first criminal conviction for terrorism linked to the extreme right. According to the verdict, the main perpetrator manufactured firearms for terrorist purposes.
“The threat of violence is especially aimed at representatives of ethnic and religious minority groups and at political actors perceived as ideological opponents. Potential attack targets are also other parties that are considered enemies in the extreme right-wing ideology,” says the security police.
Based on its Telegram publication, Active Club Oulu has organized wrestling training at the Pateniemenranta outdoor gym in Oulu. The group has itself blurred the faces of the participants from the publication.
The protection police refuses to comment on Active Club’s operations in Finland.
“We do not take a stand on individual operators. There is an interest in martial arts among the far-right,” says the security police via email.
Finland The extreme right operates in a more decentralized manner today than when the Nordic resistance movement still existed.
“It can be to some extent intentional that all the eggs are not in the same basket,” says Tommi Kotonen.
One of the operators is Hammerskins. It is an American neo-Nazi group. A group of Finnish extreme right-wingers acts as its membership department.
“Hammerskins is remarkably secretive and does not reveal anything about itself,” says Kotonen.
The group called Veren Laki, on the other hand, has organized martial arts training and other sports events for the far-right.
“Then there are also individual skin groupings, whose concrete activities are hard to say anything about,” says Kotonen.
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