A newly registered Finnish political party, which has turned into an umbrella organization for the nation’s slew of nationalist organizations with extreme views, has set its sights on the forthcoming parliamentary election in 2023.
The Blue-and-Black Movement (or Sinimusta Liike) is made up of members of the radical wing of the former youth organization of the Finns Party (dissolved because of a bitter ethno-nationalism row), anti-immigrant street patrol group Soldiers of Odin and the disbanded and banned neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement.
The party has proclaimed its goal to nominate candidates in all electoral districts ahead of the looming parliamentary elections to win at least one seat in the Finnish Parliament and make its voice heard.
The Blue-and-Black Movement garnered the necessary support to register as a party and admittedly intends to offer radical nationalists a legal vehicle for participating in decision-making instead of having to “settle for operating in the shadows”.
The movement promotes itself as a radical nationalist party that aims to protect the interests of white Finns and foster the Finnish way of life. However, the Ministry of Justice considered the party’s initial program so radical and anti-democratic that it had to be partially rewritten to be accepted for registration.
“We’re a party that maintains a racial identity. So you can think of us as a racist radical-right movement in the sense that we do feel that Finns are more valuable than foreign populations,” the Helsinki Times quoted Tuukka Kuru, a former member of the youth wing of the Finns Party and leader of the Blue-and-Black Movement, as saying.
According to the Helsinki Times, he also made no secret of the fact that his movement has adopted many fascist traits.
“If you’re talking about a movement that opposes capitalism, is nationalistic, highlights mixed economy, is corporative – terms that are commonly attributed to fascism – I guess it’s close to it,” Kuru was quoted as saying.
A number of Finnish pundits called the party's registration and its far-reaching goals in the forthcoming election the single most important development in the nationalist edge of the Finnish right wing since the ban of the Nordic Resistance Movement by the Supreme Court in 2020. Back then, many researchers warned that its members would reorganize and resurface.
The colors of the Blue-and-Black Movement, coupled with its views, bear a striking resemblance to the nationalist and fascist Lapua Movement that existed between the two world wars and was disbanded in 1932 because of a failed coup d’etat known as the Mantsala Rebellion, as well its successor the Patriotic People’s Movement which was banned in 1944. The infamous Lapua movement was known for kidnapping and beating opponents and even abducting a popular ex-president, Kaarlo Stahlberg.