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A far right organisation that targets hotels housing asylum seekers in Scotland praised a murderous Scandinavian neo-Nazi group recently designated as terrorists by the US government.
The US imposed sanctions on the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) in June in a bid to combat violent white supremacy.
NRM is the largest neo-Nazi group in Sweden and has branches in Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Finland, where it has been banned since 2020.
The US State Department said NRM has carried out violent attacks against political opponents, protesters, journalists and others.
The move by the US prompted the deputy leader of Patriotic Alternative, Laura Towler, to defend NRM on the messaging app Telegram. In a message seen by The Ferret she described the terrorist group as “measured, thoughtful, intelligent, committed and family-oriented”.
In response, an anti-racism group claimed PA’s “friendly links with violent neo-Nazi organisations abroad show that fascist ideas remain crucial to their core project”.
PA did not reply to our requests for a comment.
Fascist groups like Patriotic Alternative try to conceal their fascist ideology and present themselves as a legitimate part of the political spectrum.
Talat Ahmed, SUTR Scotland
Founded in 1997 in Sweden as the Swedish Resistance Movement, the group saw sister organisations spring up in other Nordic countries until they were united in 2016 under NMR.
The group promotes Nazism and seeks a united “ethnic Nordic” nation. It has been involved in violence.
In 2016, a 28-year-old man died after being assaulted by NRM members in Helsinki, Finland. Several members were convicted of a series of bombings at refugee centres in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2016 and 2017.
Finland’s supreme court banned the group in 2020.
The US State Department said in June it was “deeply concerned” about the worldwide threat from violent, racist extremists and that NRM was a “specially designated global terrorist”.
A spokesperson said: “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 organised training in violent tactics, including hand-to-hand combat and knife fighting.”
Commenting at the time, PA’s Laura Towler – whose husband Sam Melia is in prison for inciting racial hatred – wrote on Telegram: “Just woke up to the news that the US State Department have designated the Nordic Resistance Movement a terrorist organisation.
“I have known of the[sic] NRM for about a decade. Every time I have engaged with their members, whether on social media, on a stream or in person, I have found them to be measured, thoughtful, intelligent, committed and family-oriented. They are disciplined like no other organisation I can think of.”
Talat Ahmed, SUTR Scotland convenor and from the STUC Black workers’ committee, said that “fascist groups like Patriotic Alternative try to conceal their fascist ideology and present themselves as a legitimate part of the political spectrum”.
She added: “This includes abhorrent antisemitism expressed in the so-called great replacement theory that says ‘Jewish global elites’ conspire to flood western countries with Muslim migrants, showing how intertwined Islamophobia and antisemitism is in their ideology.”
Ahmed also said that groups like PA present a threat to “minorities, trade unionists, the left and basic democratic rights”, adding: “This is why we must deny them any space to organise in society and build a following using the racist climate created by mainstream politicians.”
In July, Patriotic Alternative held a “national camp” in Derbyshire. “Nationalists attended from the top of Scotland to the south coast of England”, it claimed on Telegram.
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Image: Members of the Nordic Resistance Movement demonstrate in Gothenburg, Sweden, on 30 September 2017. Credit: Carl Ridderstråle
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