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Thu Jul 11, 2024, 03:05 PM Jul 11

To Blur Or Not To Blur: Exposing Finland's Lakeside Neo-Nazi Meetup

https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2024/07/11/to-blur-or-not-to-blur-exposing-finlands-lakeside-neo-nazi-meetup/

To Blur Or Not To Blur: Exposing Finland’s Lakeside Neo-Nazi Meetup

July 11, 2024

A group of Finnish neo-Nazis and a few international friends have convened once again in Finland’s picturesque lake district for a secretive summertime festival.

Last month, a campground about three-hours drive north of Finland’s capital Helsinki played host to the third edition of what the organisers call the ‘White Boy Summer Fest’, named after an internet meme co-opted by the international far right.

Bellingcat first investigated Finland’s ‘White Boy Summer Fest’ (WBS) in 2023. With the help of Bellingcat’s Global Authentication Project and Discord community, we geolocated the 2022 and 2023 WBS festivals to two separate rural campgrounds in the Kanta-Häme region in the southern lake district of Finland.

Observers warn that neo-Nazi groups use events like these to network, recruit, radicalize and raise money. “WBS is…an essential part of neo-Nazi networks in Finland,” Tommi Kotonen, a political scientist at the University of Jyväskylä and a specialist on Finland’s far right told Bellingcat.

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