(New York, N.Y.) — The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) released the following statement regarding today’s decision by the U.S. State Department to designate the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13224. Three NRM leaders including its head, Tor Fredrick Vejdeland, are likewise designated under the same E.O. CEP CEO Ambassador Mark D. Wallace said:
“We applaud the State Department’s designation of the Nordic Resistance Movement as a terrorist group. The NRM is a paradigmatic example of an extremist group drawn from the Neo-Nazi far-right: it holds abhorrent attitudes toward LGBT people, Muslims, Jews, and indeed anyone opposed to its ideological vision. Those views have led to the deaths of three people at the hands of NRM members—in a part of the world that is otherwise celebrated for its moderation and lack of extremism.
We hope that today’s decision may also encourage Sweden and Norway where NRM is still permitted to operate—to take tougher steps to curb the activities of this malignant extremist group.”
Initially established as a political party in Sweden in 1997, today the Nordic Resistance Movement (Nordiska motstånds- rörelsen) has morphed into a transnational, neo-Nazi organization with branches operating in Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and Denmark. Although banned by Helsinki in 2020, the group is also believed to maintain a presence in Finland.
NRM is a strictly hierarchical organization and maintains ties with other neo-Nazi, ultranationalist groups outside of the Nordic states, most notably Golden Dawn in Greece, NPD in Germany, and the Russian Imperial Movement (RIM) in Russia.
The group has carried out violence targeting gay people, ideological opponents and, in more recent years, Muslim refugees. NRM members have killed at least three people: anti-racist campaigner Ronny Landin in 1986, trade unionist Björn Söderberg in 1999, and Jimi Joonas Karttonen—a 28-year-old who was assaulted at a Neo-Nazi demonstration in Helsinki and died six days later, in 2016. Finally, former members of the NRM conducted a range of bomb attacks in Sweden after having trained in a camp run by RIM near St Petersburg. These attacks led to the designation of RIM as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) organization by the U.S. State Department in April 2020.
To read CEP’s report on the Nordic Resistance Movement and its leaders, click here.