A bunch of Finnish neo-Nazis and some worldwide associates have convened as soon as once more in Finland’s picturesque lake district for a secretive summertime competition.
Final month, a campground about three-hours drive north of Finland’s capital Helsinki performed host to the third version of what the organisers name the ‘White Boy Summer time Fest’, named after an web meme co-opted by the worldwide far proper.
Bellingcat first investigated Finland’s ‘White Boy Summer time Fest’ (WBS) in 2023. With the assistance of Bellingcat’s International Authentication Venture and Discord group, we geolocated the 2022 and 2023 WBS festivals to 2 separate rural campgrounds within the Kanta-Häme area within the southern lake district of Finland.
Observers warn that neo-Nazi teams use occasions like these to community, recruit, radicalize and lift cash. “WBS is…an important a part of neo-Nazi networks in Finland,” Tommi Kotonen, a political scientist on the College of Jyväskylä and a specialist on Finland’s far proper informed Bellingcat.
The latest WBS occasion came about as worries develop about far-right extremism and violence in Finland. It was organised by Tulenväki, a Finnish far-right group, together with far-right fight sports activities group Veren Laki (‘Legislation of Blood’).
Regardless of what look like appreciable efforts by organisers to cover the precise location of WBS 2024 — together with modifying and re-uploading a promotional video to blur out background particulars — Bellingcat was nonetheless capable of geolocate the occasion to an island campground roughly 150 kilometres away from the places of WBS 2023 and 2022.
The organisers of WBS 2024 didn’t reply to Bellingcat’s requests for remark.
“A Weekend Stuffed with Music and Preventing”
Organisers publicly introduced WBS 2024 months prematurely. With out sharing a precise location, they indicated it could happen within the Pirkanmaa area of Finland, a sprawling space surrounding/close to the nation’s third-largest metropolis, Tampere. The Finnish lake districts are a well-liked summer time tourism vacation spot because of the area’s quite a few lakeside resorts, cabins and campgrounds.
Much like its predecessors in 2022 and 2023, WBS 2024 featured musical performances by a variety of neo-Nazi bands. Certainly one of these bands was beforehand often called the ‘Hammer Home Band,’ an everyday performer at a venue affiliated with the Finnish department of the Hammerskins; The band can be scheduled to carry out at a Finnish Hammerskins’ annual occasion in July 2024.
As Bellingcat has beforehand written, the Hammerskins are a global neo-Nazi community whose German department was banned by authorities in September final yr. Different performers at WBS 2024, which included bands from Finland and Estonia, have additionally taken half in worldwide live shows and occasions organised by the Hammerskins. In response to a 2023 report by Finland’s public broadcaster, police paperwork counsel 5 males arrested in 2021 over suspicion of planning terrorist assaults had been considerably influenced by Crew 38 Finland, a Hammerskins-affiliated group, and met often with a few of its members.
The Hammerskins even have documented connections to the worldwide Lively Membership motion. Based in 2021 by American neo-Nazi Robert Rundo, the decentralised motion focuses on utilizing style, health and preventing to recruit younger males and boys into the far proper, normalising far-right concepts and making ready them for bodily violence in opposition to perceived enemies.
Lively Golf equipment have emerged as outstanding actors within the far-right community with many popping up throughout Finland together with Helsinki, the place Finnish Hammerskins and an affiliated group Lively Helsinki, have been geolocated.
Representatives of Lively Golf equipment had been out in full drive at WBS 2024. After a Friday evening of performances from a number of neo-Nazi bands, Saturday featured fight sports activities in a makeshift out of doors ring, throughout which some individuals displayed flags of their native group. Lively Membership Estonia posted on Telegram concerning the occasion, stating in English that “Finnish and Estonian Lively Golf equipment met up for a weekend filled with music and preventing.”
The fight sports activities occasions had been hosted by Veren Laki (‘Legislation of Blood’), certainly one of WBS’ co-organisers. In response to Tommi Kotonen, an skilled on far-right extremism in Finland, Veren Laki is linked to the now-banned Finnish department of the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Motion (NRM).
“NRM hyperlinks with Veren Laki are fairly clear, as they’ve a few of the identical activists, members and trainers,” Kotonen informed Bellingcat.
In June 2024, the US Division of State designated the Sweden-based NRM as a terrorist organisation. It was solely the second worldwide far-right group to be designated a terrorist organisation by america, the primary being the Russia-based Russian Imperial Motion (RIM) in 2020.
To Blur, or to not Blur?
Reviewing photographs and video posted by organisers concerning the occasion, Bellingcat noticed that appreciable steps had been taken to cover the id of the occasion’s individuals and the situation. Buildings and background options in movies and pictures had been blurred, presumably to impede identification.
On June 22, the Telegram web page of co-organisers Tulenväki printed a video from the earlier weekend’s occasion and Bellingcat instantly downloaded the video to analyse it.
However simply a short while later the video had been taken down, edited and reuploaded. Evaluating the 2 movies frame-by-frame, Bellingcat observed that, within the newer model of the video, extra constructions seen within the background had been blurred out in comparison with the unique. For example, in direction of the beginning of the video first uploaded a inexperienced home with a crimson roof is seen for a quick second. Nevertheless within the second video that was uploaded this home was totally blurred out.
This indicated to Bellingcat that the inexperienced home with a crimson roof and chimney might doubtless be used to geolocate the occasion; we hypothesised that the organisers wouldn’t have taken the time to blur the home, amongst different constructions, if they didn’t suppose they may permit the occasion to be geolocated.
Consequently, Bellingcat started looking out on-line for imagery of campgrounds within the Pirkanmaa area, on condition that organisers had indicated the occasion would happen there and had instructed individuals to carry tents and sleeping luggage with them to the competition. Different seen options within the video, together with cabins and an out of doors bathroom, led Bellingcat to conclude the occasion came about at a campground.
Bellingcat searched by means of Google Maps pictures of quite a few campgrounds within the area, protecting a watch out for inexperienced homes that resembled these seen within the video. We ultimately observed pictures from a campground within the northeastern a part of the area, within the municipality of Ruovesi, that confirmed a similar-looking inexperienced home.
Additional imagery of the campground that we discovered on social media confirmed extra angles of the home. The options of the inexperienced home matched precisely the options of the home briefly seen within the video, indicating it was certainly the identical property. Then in contrast with the unique video, allowed Bellingcat to conclude that WBS 2024 came about at this campground. As well as within the reuploaded video, the organisers additionally blurred out what seems to be a white flagpole within the background, in addition to one other chimney on the identical home.
Additional comparisons of different pictures from the Ruovesi campground and the organiser’s social media posts allowed us to substantiate the situation of the occasion. A lightweight-brown cabin, seen in a video of a fight battle, may also be seen in user-uploaded footage from the Ruovesi campground, together with a big boulder that can be seen within the battle footage.
Evaluating photographs and video taken indoors at WBS 2024 to different imagery from the campground confirmed that indoor occasions (musical performances and a dialogue seminar) additionally came about on the Ruovesi campground. A number of factors of comparability, from lighting fixtures to knots within the wooden on the wall, allowed Bellingcat to substantiate that WBS 2024 came about at this campground. We used the same course of to find the earlier WBS occasion.
The Ruovesi campground seems to be owned by the municipality, on condition that details about and reserving for the campground is completed by means of the municipality’s web site. Bellingcat despatched inquiries to contacts listed for the campground and to the Ruovesi municipality, asking for readability concerning the campground’s possession standing and whether or not they had been conscious a neo-Nazi occasion came about there.
“I’ve no details about the matter, individuals or occasions that weekend. A non-public individual made the reservation,” a municipality consultant informed Bellingcat by e-mail.
Bellingcat contacted the organisers of WBS 2024, Lively Membership Finland and Lively Membership Estonia, however none responded to Bellingcat’s requests for remark.
Within the wake of WBS 2024, organisers and supporters took to social media to boast about their future plans. One supportive put up from a Finnish neo-Nazi weblog promised “there will probably be extra to come back,” from a fourth model of WBS in 2025 to different gigs throughout the nation.
It’s a milieu whose ambitions fear observers like Tommi Kotonen.
“In three latest terrorism investigations in Finland, in all these instances individuals had been additionally linked to [the far-right] subcultural and music scene, both as shoppers and attending live shows and different occasions, or in some instances additionally producing far-right music,” the political scientist on the College of Jyväskylä informed Bellingcat.
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