A bunch of Finnish neo-Nazis and some worldwide pals have convened as soon as once more in Finland’s picturesque lake district for a secretive summertime pageant.
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 season Fest’, named after an web meme co-opted by the worldwide far proper.
Bellingcat first investigated Finland’s ‘White Boy Summer season Fest’ (WBS) in 2023. With the assistance of Bellingcat’s World Authentication Challenge 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 instructed Bellingcat.
The latest WBS occasion happened 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 enhancing 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 upfront. With out sharing a precise location, they indicated it will 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 preferred summer season 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 lot of neo-Nazi bands. Considered one of these bands was beforehand often called the ‘Hammer Home Band,’ a daily 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 concert events and occasions organised by the Hammerskins. In keeping with 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 incessantly 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 vogue, health and preventing to recruit younger males and boys into the far proper, normalising far-right concepts and making ready them for bodily violence towards 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 outside ring, throughout which some members 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’), considered one of WBS’ co-organisers. In keeping with Tommi Kotonen, an professional 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 among the identical activists, members and trainers,” Kotonen instructed 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 the USA, the primary being the Russia-based Russian Imperial Motion (RIM) in 2020.
To Blur, or to not Blur?
Reviewing pictures and video posted by organisers concerning the occasion, Bellingcat noticed that appreciable steps had been taken to cover the id of the occasion’s members and the placement. 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 buildings seen within the background had been blurred out in comparison with the unique. For example, in the direction of the beginning of the video first uploaded a inexperienced home with a crimson roof is seen for a short 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 probably be used to geolocate the occasion; we hypothesised that the organisers wouldn’t have taken the time to blur the home, amongst different buildings, if they didn’t assume they may enable the occasion to be geolocated.
Consequently, Bellingcat started looking out on-line for imagery of campgrounds within the Pirkanmaa area, provided that organisers had indicated the occasion would happen there and had instructed members to convey tents and sleeping luggage with them to the pageant. Different seen options within the video, together with cabins and an out of doors rest room, led Bellingcat to conclude the occasion happened at a campground.
Bellingcat searched by means of Google Maps photos of quite a few campgrounds within the area, conserving an eye fixed out for inexperienced homes that resembled these seen within the video. We ultimately observed photos 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 happened 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 photos from the Ruovesi campground and the organiser’s social media posts allowed us to substantiate the placement of the occasion. A lightweight-brown cabin, seen in a video of a fight combat, will also be seen in user-uploaded footage from the Ruovesi campground, together with a big boulder that can be seen within the combat footage.
Evaluating pictures and video taken indoors at WBS 2024 to different imagery from the campground confirmed that indoor occasions (musical performances and a dialogue seminar) additionally happened 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 happened at this campground. We used the same course of to find the earlier WBS occasion.
The pictures beneath are from totally different events unrelated to the WBS occasion however present the identical distinctive particulars as seen within the picture above.
The Ruovesi campground seems to be owned by the municipality, provided that details about and reserving for the campground is finished 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 happened there.
“I’ve no details about the matter, individuals or occasions that weekend. A personal particular person made the reservation,” a municipality consultant instructed Bellingcat by electronic 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 submit from a Finnish neo-Nazi weblog promised “there might be extra to return,” 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 members had been additionally linked to [the far-right] subcultural and music scene, both as customers and attending concert events and different occasions, or in some instances additionally producing far-right music,” the political scientist on the College of Jyväskylä instructed Bellingcat.
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