Klas Lund

Last updated

Klas Lund
Born
Klas Henrik Pontus Lund

(1968-02-14) 14 February 1968 (age 56)
Lidingö, Stockholm, Sweden
NationalitySwedish
Known forFounder of the White Aryan Resistance, Nordic Resistance Movement and Nordic Strength

Klas Henrik Pontus Lund (born 14 February 1968) is a Swedish neo-Nazi and since 2019 the leader of the combat organisation Nordic Strength. [1]

Contents

Lund was previously a founder of White Aryan Resistance (VAM) in 1990, and leader of the Swedish Resistance Movement (SMR) from 1997, now part of the wider movement known as the Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR). He has convictions for bank robbery and manslaughter. [2]

Biography

Lund was sentenced to four years in prison for the manslaughter of Ronny Landin in 1986, who had intervened in an attack against three immigrants in Nynäshamn. He was released after two years in prison. [2]

In 1990, Lund and two others founded the White Aryan Resistance, an underground racist group that became a centre for some of Sweden's most militant far-right extremists. [2] He also ran a skinhead office at Fryshuset which functioned as a recruiting base for VAM. [3]

In 1991 he was sentenced to six years in prison for a bank robbery in Vemdalen, [2] in which members of VAM used weapons from a heist against a police station in Lidingö. He has also been convicted for abuse and several times for illegal possession of weapons. [4] He founded the Swedish Resistance Movement and became its first leader in 1997. He was the leader of the group until 2015. [5]

In October 2004 he escaped from the prison in Mariestad, where he served six months for illegal possession of weapons. [2] He was not apprehended until March 2005, in Kristiansand, Norway. [6]

Nordic Strength

In August 2019 several of the leading members of NMR broke out and established the paramilitary organisation Nordic Strength, with Lund as the leader. The reason was that they considered the NMR's political strategy not sufficiently radical. The breakaway group describes itself as an elite combat organisation with tough physical requirements on its members. [7] [8]

Related Research Articles

White Aryan Resistance was a militant neo-Nazi network active in Sweden between 1991 and 1993.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Youth</span>

National Youth was a Swedish neofascist and openly racist organisation. National Youth was closely linked with the Swedish Resistance Movement. SÄPO classified it as a white power organisation and Expo classified it as a Nazi organisation.

<i>Expo</i> (magazine) Swedish magazine

Expo is a Swedish anti-racist magazine started in 1995 by Stieg Larsson. It is issued by the non-profit Expo Foundation. The magazine, issued four times a year, contains investigative journalism focused on nationalist, racist, anti-democratic, antisemitic, and far-right movements and organisations. It also publishes articles and podcasts on the Internet on a more regular basis. The people responsible for Expo make no connections with specific organisations or political parties, but work together with individuals and organisations that share Expo's platform. The chairman of the Expo Foundation is Charles Westin.

Until the late 2000s, terrorism in Sweden was not seen as a serious threat to the security of the state. However, there has been a rise in far right and Islamist terrorist activity in the 21st century.

Bill Riccio is a leader in the white power skinhead movement in the United States who gained public notoriety for his appearance in the 1993 documentary Skinheads: Soldiers of the Race War. He has been convicted numerous times on illegal weapon possession charges, the most recent of which was in 1992.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Islam in Sweden</span> Islamic organization in Sweden

Swedish contacts with the Muslim world dates back to the 7th–10th centuries, when the Vikings traded with Muslims during the Islamic Golden Age. Since the late 1960s and more recently, Muslim immigration from the Middle East, Balkans and parts of Africa has impacted the demographics of religion in Sweden, and has been the main driver of the spread of Islam in the country.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nordic Resistance Movement</span> Pan-Nordic neo-Nazi movement

The Nordic Resistance Movement is a pan-Nordic neo-Nazi movement in the Nordic countries and a political party in Sweden. Besides Sweden, it is established in Norway, Denmark and Iceland, and formerly in Finland before it was banned in 2019. Terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp has described the NRM as a terrorist organization due to their aim of abolishing democracy along with their paramilitary activities and weapons caches. In 2022, some members of the United States Congress began calling for the organization to be added to the United States Department of State list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. On 14 June 2024, the United States Department of State designated NRM and its leaders as Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kent Ekeroth</span> Swedish politician and economist

Kent Alexander Ekeroth is a Swedish politician and economist, who represented the Sweden Democrats in the Riksdag from 2010 to 2018. Ekeroth has been involved with operating the news website Samhällsnytt and its predecessors since the beginning of his parliamentary term.

Nazism in Sweden has been more or less fragmented and unable to form a mass movement since its beginning in the early 1920s. Several hundred parties, groups, and associations existed from the movement's founding through the present. At most, purely Nazi parties in Sweden have collected around 27,000 votes in democratic parliamentary elections. The high point came in the municipal elections of 1934 when the Nazi parties were victorious in over one hundred electoral contests. As early as January 22, 1932, the Swedish Nazis had their first public meeting with Birger Furugård addressing an audience of 6000 at the Haymarket in Stockholm.

Lars-Inge Andersson best known as Lars-Inge Svartenbrandt, later Lars Ferm and even later known as Lars Patrick Carlander, was a Swedish criminal. Svartenbrandt spent almost 40 years combined in prison for several robberies, violent crimes, and prison escapes. He was described as the "most dangerous man in Sweden". Svartenbrandt described himself as an "uncurable psychopath".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dragomir Mrsic</span> Swedish actor

Dragomir Mrsic, nicknamed Gago is a Serbian-Swedish actor, sports consultant and sports leader.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Martin Kinnunen</span> Swedish politician (born 1983)

Martin Anders Kinnunen, is a Swedish-Finnish member of parliament for the Sweden Democrats party. He was previously the press secretary for the party, as well as leader for the party's youth organisation the Sweden Democratic Youth (SDU) between 2005 and 2007. He took over that position from Jimmie Åkesson and was succeeded by Erik Almqvist.

Vera Marta Birgitta Oredsson is a German-born Nazi politician active in Sweden.

Alternative for Sweden is a far-right political party in Sweden. It was founded in March 2018 by Gustav Kasselstrand and William Hahne, along with other members of the Sweden Democratic Youth, who were collectively expelled from the Sweden Democrats in 2015. It advocates the forced remigration of immigrants and Sweden's withdrawal from the European Union.

On 15 December 2013, violent clashes took place during an anti-racist demonstration in the Kärrtorp district of Stockholm, Sweden. The demonstration was organised by Linje 17, its name referring to the Stockholm Metro Line 17 that runs through Kärrtorp. The demonstration was violently attacked by neo-Nazis. Two demonstrators and two police officers were injured and hospitalised.

Nordic Strength, ,, ,, , is a Nordic neo-Nazi activist organisation, founded in August 2019 by leading members of the Nordic Resistance Movement, including its leader Klas Lund. Members of Nordic Strength have been convicted of over 100 violent crime and weapons offences. In April 2021, Nordic Strength opened a gym for training in combat skills and tactics.

Klas Magnus Söderman is a Swedish far-right activist, author and christian identity pastor. He is also the former spokesman for the terror-classified by the US state department Nordic Resistance Movement.

<i>Nya Dagbladet</i> Swedish far-right online news site

Nya Dagbladet is a Swedish online newspaper associated with the National Democrats, a defunct far-right political party in Sweden. It is known for promoting conspiracy theories, including Holocaust denial and white genocide, as well as anti-vaccine misinformation, alternative medicine and pro-Kremlin propaganda regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fredrik Vejdeland</span> Swedish construction worker and leading neo-Nazi

Fredrik Vejdeland born on October 3, 1978, in Östersunds församling, Jämtland County, is a Swedish construction worker and leading neo-Nazi who, since February 2024, is the leader of the Nazi organization classified as a terrorist organization by the United States Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM). Since June 14, 2024, he has been classified by the United States as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" together with two other leaders in NRM. The assessment and classification was made in connection with the entire organization NRM being classified as a global terrorist organization.

References

  1. ↑ Baas, David (13 August 2019). "Oro för mer våld efter nazisternas splittring". Expressen (in Swedish).
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Flood, Linda (21 December 2013). "Gun-Britts son blev offer för nazistvåldet". Expressen (in Swedish).
  3. ↑ "Samordnat tillslag mot ledande nazister". Expo (in Swedish). 25 November 2003. Archived from the original on 22 August 2010.
  4. ↑ "Vit makt-organisationer i Sverige". Göteborgs-Posten (in Swedish). 30 July 2011. Archived from the original on 12 April 2013.
  5. ↑ "Nordiska motståndsrörelsen (NMR)". Expo (in Swedish). 19 September 2022.
  6. ↑ "Klas Lund gripen i Norge". Dagens Nyheter (in Swedish). 23 March 2005.
  7. ↑ Folkö, Robin; Leman, Jonathan (20 August 2019). "Nya nazistgruppens innersta krets – fälld för över 100 brott". Expo (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 25 January 2021.
  8. ↑ Kasurinen, Anton; Leman, Jonathan (27 February 2020). "Här är nazisternas nya högkvarter - ett tidigare församlingshus". Expo (in Swedish). Archived from the original on 6 January 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.