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Finnish Nationalist Leader Slapped With Anti-Semitism Charge Over Circumcision Tweet

© AP Photo / Soeren StacheIn this Feb. 2, 2013, file photo, a smartphone display shows the Twitter logo in Berlin, Germany, Twitter unsealed the documents Thursday, Oct. 3, 2013, for its planned initial public offering of stock and says it hopes to raise up to $1 billion
In this Feb. 2, 2013, file photo, a smartphone display shows the Twitter logo in Berlin, Germany, Twitter unsealed the documents Thursday, Oct. 3, 2013, for its planned initial public offering of stock and says it hopes to raise up to $1 billion - Sputnik International, 1920, 10.04.2023
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The fringe Blue-and-Black Movement is largely seen as a legally acceptable facade for several dissolved and banned organizations espousing racist sentiment, and reminiscent of infamous fascist groups of the past in its views and imagery.
The leader of the openly ethno-nationalist Finnish Blue-and-Black Movement, Tuukka Kuru, has been charged over an anti-semitic tweet.
The charges were filed at the Satakunta District Court and cover a tweet posted in 2020, where Kuru commented on male circumcision by stating that the "criminalization of Judaism actually sounds quite good". Kuru himself denied the charges.
The circumcision debate in Scandinavia flared up several years ago, when the Danish government mulled banning ritual circumcision for minors, yet backed down, citing the necessity to protect Jewish religious traditions following pressure from international Jewish groups.

The Blue-and-Black movement was formed in 2021 by hardline dissenters of the nationalist Finns Party and its youth wing following a clash over their ethno-nationalistic views. It also embraced members of the anti-immigrant street patrol group, Soldiers of Odin, and the disbanded and banned neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement.

Nevertheless, they had a rather unimpressive showing in the recent parliamentary elections, winning a mere 0.1% of the vote, as opposed to their mother party, the Finns, which finished second and have high changes of becoming part of the ruling coalition. Kuru, who was previously quoted about the party maintaining "a racial identity," was a candidate himself, yet received a slim 323 votes in the Uusimaa electoral district.
Just to get registered, the party had to heavily weed out its program. Among other things, it removed the idea of launching an ethnic register, which would have revealed the ethnic, linguistic and religious backgrounds of the people living in Finland.
Despite the party's poor showing, numerous Finnish pundits pointed to the mere fact of the party's registration and participation in the election as the single most critical development on the nationalist fringe of the Finnish political scene, following the ban placed on the Nordic Resistance Movement in 2020. Back then, many experts warned that its members would reorganize and resurface under a different banner.
The party's colors hark back to the openly fascist Lapua Movement that existed between the two world wars and was disbanded in 1932, following a failed coup d'etat. Its successor, the Patriotic People’s Movement, was banned as well, in 1944. The Lapua movement also went down in history for kidnapping and beating opponents and even abducting a popular ex-president, Kaarlo Stahlberg.
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