EXTREMISMThe History and Future of the Nordic Resistance Movement
In June 2024, the United States designated Scandinavia’s largest National Socialist organization, the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM), as a terrorist entity. NRM has grown into a pan-Nordic organization with a rigid hierarchy and has expanded with chapters throughout Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and Finland. The designation is a disruption to NRM’s ability to operate, but it is unlikely to dismantle the network that makes up its far-right membership.
On June 14, 2024, the U.S. Department of State designated the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist.1 NRM is estimated to be the largest white nationalist organization in Sweden and has chapters extending out across Scandinavia including Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. The Finnish chapter was banned by the country’s supreme court in 2020, upholding the ruling of a lower court.2 The U.S. designation also named three of NRM’s leaders. This included a man who has contributed to the organization’s activities and growth for the past 20 years, its current leader Tor Fredrik Vejdeland. Listed alongside him was Pär Öberg, a member of NRM’s governing body, the national council, and head of its parliamentary branch, as well as Leif Robert Eklund, another member of the national council and a prominent NRM organizer within Sweden.3 In its release, the State Department stated:
NRM’s violent activity is based on its openly racist, anti-immigrant, antisemitic, anti-LGBTQI+ platform. The group’s members and leaders have carried out violent attacks against political opponents, protestors, journalists, and other perceived adversaries. NRM members have also taken steps to collect and prepare weapons and explosive materials, including on behalf of the group and in furtherance of its goals. In addition, NRM has organized training in violent tactics, including hand-to-hand combat and knife fighting.4
While NRM is primarily a political organization focused on staging protests and producing propaganda, its members train in martial arts, weapons use, and other activities seen as preparatory for, in its view, the coming clash of the races. To that end, NRM members and associates have been arrested and convicted in a slew of targeted violence and vandalism cases, terrorist plots including bombings, and dozens of criminal weapons charges. Members and leadership alike have been arrested during clashes with counter-protesters and police,5 and the organization’s antisemitism pervades its ideology, leading it to blame Jewish people for everything from demographic change to economic troubles to the Russian-Ukraine war. Avowed National Socialists, its members seek to create an ethnostate that not only excludes non-European descendant minorities but also non-Nordic Europeans as well.
