Finnish Neo-Nazis kill a person

[Askold]

I am still trying to find an English article about it, but TL;DR version:

Last week, "Suomen Vastarintaliike" (The Resistance Movement of Finland) held a protest against the kinds of things that Neo-Nazis hate. During the protest several leftists came to shout at them and insult them, the "Resistance" members beat up one of them and left him lying in a pool of blood. They also helpfully provided a video of the latter parts of this incident, posted it on Youtube and even bragged about "teaching some manners to a commie" on their official website. Week later the victim died of brain hemorrhage and the beating he got is likely to be the reason for his death.

The police kept quiet about this for a while but after the news of this spread on the social media in Finland they were forced to open an investigation rather than simply ruling it as an accidental death. At the moment they are "Trying to find out which particular groups were present at the incident" because the afforementioned video, the "incident" occurring at a Neo-Nazi event, the video clearly showing the flags of the Resistance and the Resistance making a written confession are apparently not enough for them to declare that they have a suspect.

[dpareja]

Of course they don't, the suspects look like us and not scary foreigners.

[Askold]

Translation: "Score for the men and women of the Resistance for not taking any shit from commies. The streets ran red, not with the commie ideology but with the blood of the reds! Hooray for national socialism!"

The video of the protest:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McPcU1ztMb8" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McPcU1ztMb8</a>

Finally something in English:
http://kaivuri.info/finnish-man-dies-after-being-assaulted-by-neo-nazis/

[SCarpelan]

To be more precise, they pushed him causing him to fall and hit his head on the pavement, not actually beat him up. This shows why such thing (pushing someone) is considered an assault. It sounds to me SVR had no intent to cause serious harm this time despite them being a violent crowd in general. This is not a defense of their ugly ideology and violent tendencies since they have caused also intentional and serious harm to people in the past: they assaulted a former anti-fascist activist they had a grudge with in my town a couple of years ago and also have attacked a Pride crowd with tear gas.

[Askold]

They are also spamming the net with claims that the victim was a druggie and a communist. Neither of which appear to be true based on facts currently available.

And if they had no intention to kill him they certainly aren't showing any regret and all the comments I've seen so far are actually bragging about his death and claiming that he deserved to die.

[SCarpelan]

And if they had no intention to kill him they certainly aren't showing any regret and all the comments I've seen so far are actually bragging about his death and claiming that he deserved to die.

No, they aren't and they are certainly gloating about his death which goes to show how despicable they are and how dangerous their ideology is since they have shown themselves to be prepared to back up their words with actions. I'm just saying that based on the reporting on the assault it seems they didn't beat him up or intentionally hurt him that seriously - they just don't care it happened and think he deserved it anyway.

Edit:

An update: the suspect is in police custody after he gave himself up to them. The police has several eyewitnesses and there are no other suspects in the case. According to the police they had interviewed the victim in the hospital and he had told the police he had spat at the protesters when he passed by them. After the death of the victim the police had reclassified the crime being investigated to an aggravated manslaughter.

The reason there were no police around was that the police was given the notification about a planned public gathering late in the night - but within the six hour time limit the law requires - and the information given to the police was also misleading. According to the notification there would only be some people distributing leaflets with no mention of a protest or even who would be organizing the activity. It will be seen if there are consequences about giving a misleading notification to the police.

The fact that the suspect gave himself up to the police and there are no other suspects confirms my suspicion that despite the SVL using this in their propaganda this was just an individual member losing his self-control after getting spat at. Based on the previous cases the MO seems to be that when the organization supports a violent action there are several people involved in an organized strike and the suspects hide from the police at least for while. The violence is also more brutal than just shoving someone. Based on what I've read about them the organization has a high regard for discipline and I guess they didn't want to protect a member who didn't have an "official" approval for his violent action.

Edit2: Botched the abbreviation.

Yet another edit to give a picture about how organized the right-wing extremists are internationally: this discussion reminded me about an interview (in Finnish) with Esa Henrik Holappa, one of the founders of SVL. He has quit the organization and nowadays tries to fix his past mistakes by telling his personal story and exposing his knowledge about the Neo-Nazis. He names Richard Scutari as his mentor in Neo-Nazi ideology and he was also in regular correspondence with David Duke and few infamous European Neo-Nazis. SVL itself is a Finnish branch of a Nordic Neo-Nazi organization.

Still editing: According to new information (Finnish again, sorry) the suspect is the same person who made the notification to the police. In his book the aforementioned former member Esa Holappa named this guy as being in charge of SVL activities in Helsinki. Previously I could understand how the police might not have paid much attention to some random people planning to spread leaflets but the notifier's identity should have and probably did rung figurative alarm bells in the police station. Yes, there was both an anti-immigration and an anti-racism demonstration going on elsewhere in the city and the police had to put resources to keep them separate but not paying attention to a known violent organization's planned activity elsewhere isn't excusable. There is a lone police van visible in the background on the video SVL published about the incident which suggests that the police was aware something might happen but didn't take it seriously enough and failed to prepare properly. A more visible police presence could probably have prevented the incident altogether.

Luckily there has been discussion about how the right-wing extremism should be taken more seriously and people are demanding legislative action. A few leftist bloggers have also pointed out that SVL is already violating several statutes of the law by for example explicitly promoting armed rebellion and there is no need to start limiting free speech in ways that might have unintended consequences. The officials just need to stop ignoring the danger and enforce the existing laws.

[Askold]

Finnish news are FINALLY calling the neo-Nazis neo-Nazis and demanding action.

Sadly most of the action seems to be for a new law that would outlaw the organization and even the parties in the government are jumping onto this bandwagon.

...I say sadly because the organization is already illegal. They have openly declared as their objective to violently overthrow the government (it's against the law to make an organization with that agenda) they are a paramilitary organization that mimics an army with the organization specifically built to function in squads, platoons and battalions and there is enough evidence to declare them to be an organized crime organization which is also illegal. Instead, if the government makes a new law against "dangerous political organizations" or something we are going to have to worry about the slippery slope (and it wouldn't be the first time we outlaw communist organizations or whatever the current government doesn't like.)

[SCarpelan]

More news: the assault was all more violent than the first reports I read. The police says the victim had argued with the protesters and spat on the ground before walking away. At this point the suspect had reportedly taken a running start from 10 meters away and kicked him in the chest.

[Askold]

The witness statement also contradicts the Neo-Nazi version of the event where the victim and others were the ones who were violent and the Neo-Nazis "taught some manners to the most violent of them." And the claims of the victim being a drug user are still being spread on the social media. The Neo-Nazis know how bad this is and therefore they are trying to spread as many false version as possible so that they can claim that the mainstream media is the one lying.

And the killer surrendered to the police. Not that he had a choice really. His face was on the net, he himself and the others had bragged about the attack and unless he could have left the country he would have been found sooner or later.

(Whether he turned himself in for a smaller punishment or simply because he was actually struck by guilty conscience when he realized that his playful kick killed someone is not clear at the moment.)

EDIT:

a) It may be that the victim really was a drug addict. Which obviously does not make it OK to beat him up and unless there is new evidence his behaviour wasn't violent like the Nazis have been claiming. This has raised a discussion on how drug addicts get unfair treatment and are censored out of the picture whenever possible, even claims that if his parents had admitted the victim's drug addiction this case would have been buried "because of course he did something do deserve it, that's what those druggies do."

b) The Finnish government parties seem to have a trouble connecting this attack with Neo-Nazis. The prime minister (who is from a party that I had supported throughout my voting era) made a short statement that did more connecting violence (general violence, distanced from this incident) with immigration than anything else and didn't mention the Neo-Nazis. The leader of Finns made a few sentence statement saying that their party condemns "all violence" but did not mention the incident or Neo-Nazis. It looks like they are either afraid to mention what really happened OR they are trying to build a fake equivalency with "the other side also does bad things."

c) I am getting tired of racists defending the Neo-Nazi by going "BUT WHATABOUT ALL THOSE FINNS WHO HAVE BEEN KILLED BY IMMIGRANTS? DON'T THEIR LIVES MATTER??!! THE MUD-FACES ARE CHOPPING OFF HEADS BY THE DOZENS BUT YOU DAMN SUVAKKI WHORES DON'T EVEN CARE!"

[Askold]

And now the counter-protest as a reaction to the homicide and the Neo-Nazi protests: http://finlandtoday.fi/a-mass-demonstration-against-rasiscm-and-neo-nazi-organizations-kicks-off-on-saturday-in-helsinki/

My guess is that compared to the less than 30 people the Neo-Nazis usually manage to drag out into standing behind their cause, this protest will have at least 2000 people.

And then the usual suspects are going to cry and complain how the anti-racists are at least as bad as the Nazis. They are already complaining that anarchist/leftist violence is ignored since it is "better kind of violence." (A reference to a politician, who when he had complained about right-wing violence was countered with "what about the leftist violence then?" and he replied by explaining that leftist violence is different in that it is usually directed at organizations and institutions rather than people. This interview was later mangled and people usually lie and claim that he said that the leftist violence is "better violence.")

EDIT:

There were 5 protests in Helsinki yesterday. The anti-racism protest with 10'000 or 15'000 people (depending on who you ask) two separate counter-protests to this one, a protest against the Syrian war and one protest for "traditional marriage." Elsewhere in Finland there were numerous other smaller protests against racism, with our current Prime minister taking part in one of them.

Members of Finns are at the same time mocking the anti-racism protest because one of the organizations in it is according to them "horribly racist and violent anarchist organization" (In this case they mean by racism that they are racists against whites...) and proudly claiming that they took part in the protest and made the stupid anarchists use whistles provided by their party (which would logically mean that all the insults and accusations against the politicians taking part in the protest should count for them as well..)

For the record, the politician from Finns who was in the protest a) dressed up as Batman and didn't reveal his identity while being interviewed (possibly because he was taking his Batman costume too seriously) b) Claimed on FB that he only went there because he had been ordered to do so by the party (though I doubt that they told him to go as a Batman...)

The protests were mainly peaceful, two people were arrested but at least one of them was in a pro-Nazi protest. In fact, the police arrested the organizer of one of these protests and the remaining neo-Nazis, now left without a leader look rather sad and powerless:



And yes, that's the counter-counter-protest that they managed to build up and rather accurate show of just how many of the hard-core Neo-Nazis there are in Finland.

Despite all that, racists on the net are still claiming that non-racists are a minority in Finland because out of more than 5 million people they "only" managed to make few thousand people get out on the streets... But when they get 20 (at most) people to join a pro-Nazi protest THEY claim that they represent the silent majority...

[SCarpelan]

Just an addition: the reason the Neo-Nazi leader was detained was that he refused to obey when the police told the Neo-Nazis to move their protest away from the planned route of the anti-racism rally.

Edit:

Now there is some drama in the government ranks. The finance minster and National Coalition Party chair Petteri Orpo also participated in the anti-racism rally and called out the True Finns* for their flirting with the extremist groups and denying the obvious connections. The True Finns chair and foreign minister Timo Soini retorted that he doesn't take orders from other parties.

NCP and True Finns really make for interesting bedfellows that have forced each other to compromise on their sane positions. NCP is economically far to the right but very liberal on the social issues** while the True Finns are extremely conservative - regressive might be a more fitting description - and economically centrist, I'd even say kind of left-leaning in some aspects. The True Finns completely sold out on their economical principles when they joined the government coalition and have kept denying this with a shamelessness that The Orange One would appreciate if he had any sense of self-awareness. On the other hand, the NCP has tolerated the True Finns' racism, homophobia and fanning the anti-immigration sentiments until now. Since the Center Party chair and prime minister also participated in the rally it will be interesting to see if the coalition's fracturing is serious or just superficial.

*I know the official English name has been changed to the Finns Party. This name just rubs me the wrong way and I feel more comfortable using the old translation.

**Their youth organization on the other hand are pretty much Finnish Republicans