The march leaves from Töölöntori and ends at the Hietaniemi military cemetery.[4] The event ends with placing candles and wreaths at the graves.[5] There are also speeches in connection with the procession.[6]
According to the police of Finland, the march attracted at its peak 3,000 attendants.[7] By 2025, participation had dwindled to 700-800, with counter-protesters numbering 2000-3000.[8]
Origins
The 612 march has been organized by the unregistered organisation 612.fi since 2014. At its founding, the heads of the organisation were chairman Timo Hännikäinen, who is also the owner of the website[9], and vice-chairman Jari-Pekka Marin.[10]
In the first march organized in 2014, members of the far-right Finnish Resistance Movement acted as security officers for the event.[11] Former leader of the FRM, Esa Henrik Holappa has claimed that they played a key role in the initial organisation of the event[11], though this claim has been disputed by both Hännikäinen and Marin.[12][13][14]
Perspectives on the event
The march has been criticized in foreign media as a neo-Nazi "SS march" because the event ends at the Hietaniemi cemetery where participants visit the monument to the Finnish SS Battalion and the tomb of Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim.[15][16] The demonstration is also opposed by the yearly antifascist "Helsinki Without Nazis" event.[17]SUPO has characterized the march as "far-right" and "anti-immigrant".[18] The participants have allegedly given Nazi salutes and attacked the counterdemonstrators.[19][20] According to literature professor Kuisma Korhonen of University of Jyväskylä, the torches symbolize "eternal Finnishness" and are reminiscent of a Ku Klux Klan rally.[21] The march is attended and promoted by the Finns Party while it is condemned by left-wing parties. Iiris Suomela of the Green League characterized it as "obviously neo-Nazi" and expressed her disappointment in it being attended by such a large number of people.[22]
In 2024, two members of the Finnish parliament, Teemu Keskisarja and Sheikki Laakso, stated they planned to participate in the march rather than the traditional gala at the Presidential Palace. The Finns Party leader, Riika Purra, defended their plans on the basis of freedom of assembly and speech, although she clarified that her party did not condone the far-right.[23]Petteri Orpo, while noting he did not have the authority as prime minister to tell people where they "should go and not go", denounced their decision to attend as "inappropriate and wrong."[24]
Finnish Hammerskins have headquarters called "Hammer House" in Uusimaa that hosts participants of the 612 march.[31]
Sarastus has also organized bussing from the cemetery to neo-Nazi music gigs organized in concert with the event.[32]
The far-right Suomi Herää -march, held annually by the Blue-and-Black movement formed as even more explicitly fascist march once 612 disallowed organizational symbols.[33] However, the Nordic Resistance Movement took part wearing Nazi symbols the following years.[34]
The Helsinki Ilman Natseja -protest is organised every independence day as a protest to both the Suomi Herää & 612 marches. In 2025, it outnumbered 612 with approximately 3 000 participants against 600-700, according to organizers and Helsinki police respectively. Police reported around 350 having attended the Suomi Herää march preceding 612.[4][33][8]
↑Although the NRM was officially outlawed in Finland in 2019 due to violent crimes, according to the Finnish Broadcasting Company the members have attended as usual as recently as the last year.[35]
12"On Europe's Streets:Annual Marches Glorifying Nazism"(PDF). B'nai B'rith, Amadeu Antonio Foundation, Federal Foreign Office. 25 March 2023. the main organizers and guests of the event have been drawn from either non-party-affiliated far-right-activists or members of the right-wing populist Finns Party (Perussuomalaiset), its youth organization Finns Party Youth (Perussuomalaiset Nuoret)...The 612-march is a torchlight procession from central Helsinki to the Hietaniemi war cemetery, where participants visit the tomb of World War II-era President Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim and the monument to the Finnish SS-Battalion. There are speeches at both the assembly point and at the cemetery, eulogizing the Battle for Helsinki, depicted by speakers as the occasion "when Germans and Finns marched side by side and liberated the city from the communists."
↑Korhonen, K. (2019). Politics of fire: the commemorative torch rally 612 of the Finnish radical right. European Politics and Society, 21(3), 307–322. https://doi.org/10.1080/23745118.2019.1645423
↑Viding, Kristian (2024-12-03). "Soihtukulkueesta". Suomen Sisu (in Finnish). Retrieved 2025-11-30.
12Potter, Nicholas (6 January 2021) "The Pan-European "Ikea Fascism" of Nordiska Motståndsrörelsen"Archived 13 June 2021 at the Wayback MachineBelltower.News "The exchange has been mutual, with members of Der III. Weg also travelling to Finland: In 2019, party founder Klaus Armstroff visited the head of the Swedish NMR, Simon Lindberg, in Helsinki. Together with a delegation of his fellow party members, Armstroff took part in the “612 March” on Finnish Independence Day. Holiday snaps from their Helsinki trip are even on the party’s website: The delegation visited a tank museum and the Finnish-German military cemetery. There also appear to be links between the NMR and the Junge Nationalisten (Young Nationalists, JN), the youth organisation of the German far-right party NPD. In 2017, the JN also participated in the “612 March” in Helsinki."
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