The Patriotic Popular Front (Isänmaallinen Kansanrintama, IKR) was a short-lived Finnish neo-Nazi political party founded by Pekka Siitoin.
Former French Foreign Legion soldier Timo Pekkala organized firearm drills for the group. Members of the IKR were responsible for the Kursiivi printing house arson.
Background Tiedonantaja magazine claimed that Boris Popper had acted as a financier of Siitoin and acquired weapons and ammunition from the military's warehouses for the use of Siitoin's groups.Aleksi Mainio : Terroristien pesä. Suomi ja taistelu Venäjästä 1918–1939. Siltala 2015, luku "Pomminheittäjä saapuu Brysselistä", sivut 255-261Häkkinen, Perttu; Iitti, Vesa (2022). Lightbringers of the North: Secrets of the Occult Tradition of Finland. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-64411-464-3. p. p.137, 147 A founding member of IKR, Tapio Saarni, son of a fish shipping tycoon funded the group.Pohjola, Mike (toim.): Mitä Pekka Siitoin tarkoittaa? Savukeidas, 2015. ISBN 978-952-268-155-3 s. 102
Siitoin maintained contacts with likeminded National Renaissance Party of James Hartung Madole that likewise blended Satanism and Nazism and Matt Koehl's American Nazi Party that promoted Esoteric Hitlerism.Camus, Jean-Yves; Lebourg, Nicolas (2017). Far-Right Politics in Europe. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674971530. p. 99 IKR published National Renaissance Party material in Finnish, and Siitoin appeared in NRP's publications.The Finnish New Radical Right in Comparative Perspective, Jeffrey Kaplan, Published in Kyösti Pekonen, ed., The New Radical Right in Finland in the Nineties (Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press, 1999), page 13-14.Fasismia, terrorismia vai nallipyssynatsien leikkiä? Julkinen keskustelu Isänmaallisen Kansanrintaman toiminnasta loppuvuodesta 1977 Piipponen, Marko ; Yhteiskuntatieteiden ja kauppatieteiden tiedekunta, Historia- ja maantieteiden laitos ; Faculty of Social Sciences and Business, Department of Geographical and Historical Sciences IKR also maintained contacts with the KKK Grand Wizard David Duke and J. B. Stoner in the United States and Fédération d'action nationale et européenne in France.Keronen (2020) pp.29, 41-42Pohjola (2015), pp. 119 IKR also recruited Finns for the war in Rhodesia in its magazine.Keronen, Jiri: Pekka Siitoin teoriassa ja käytännössä. Helsinki: Kiuas Kustannus, 2020. ISBN 978-952-7197-21-9, pp.33 IKR also corresponded with the CEDADE that counted Leon Degrelle among its members.Ciarán Ó Maoláin. The radical right: a world directory. Longman, 1987. p. 88. IKR cooperated with Order of Flemish Militants that was led by half-Finnish Bert Eriksson and that perpetrated multiple firebomb attacks against minorities.Tommi Kotonen: Politiikan juoksuhaudat – Äärioikeistoliikkeet Suomessa kylmän sodan aikana, Atena, Jyväskylä 2018.p. 88.
Siitoin also extended an invitation to Wiking-Jugend to visit him, and Wiking-Jugend did hold a camp in Finland in 1976 and created controversy by plastering posters calling for the release of Rudolf Hess. Kotonen. 2018. p. 185.
After IKR members had sent multiple letter bombs to political enemies and held a parade in Nazi uniforms, authorities had had enough. IKR was banned in 1977 as contrary to the Paris Peace Treaty forbidding fascist organizations. However, Siitoin immediately founded a new party called the National Democratic Party.Valtakunnanjohtaja Pekka Siitoimen Päivät Parrasvaloissa - Äärioikeistosta käyty keskustelu Helsingin Sanomissa 1970-luvulla. Viivi Koli, Tampereen Yliopisto, 2024Piipponen, M. (2023). Fasistien salaliitto vai kommunistien provosointi? – Vuoden 1977 kirjapaino Kursiivin murhapolton määrittely sanomalehdissä. Kriminologia, 3(1), 73–93. https://doi.org/10.54332/krim.125095
The party operated its own printing house that published its magazine, Finnish translation of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and holocaust denial books. According to a member list confiscated from Siitoin, the party had about 100 core members. Peripherally involved people who were involved in the distribution of material was about 1600.Kotonen. 2018. p. 181.
References