DEM VOLKE DIENEN

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Category: Europa2

In the tradition of past years, three demonstrations were held in Helsinki which drew plenty of attention: the “Finland Wake Up” organised by the fascist Blue-Black Movement, the nationalist “612 Torch March” and the leftist “Helsinki Without Nazis” (HIN).

Lots of crowd at Narinkkatori.

According to an unconfirmed estimation the Helsinki Without Nazis gathered about 1500 demonstrators, and it stopped at Runeberginkatu causing, as it did last year, a change in the route of the 612 Torch March. According to the police, the Finland Wake Up and the 612 Torch March gathered 250 and 400 participants.

The demonstration halted its advance and threw a few smokes to signal that.

Helsinki Without Nazis was red

The red bloc consisting of several organisations was among the largest organised blocs in the demonstration. The environmental movement, the Kurds, and the anarchists also organised blocs, although the symbols of the Kurds were banned by the police with laughable pretexts i.e. in fact to maintain the “NATO-accord”.

Red colour at the Helsinki Without Nazis demonstration. In the picture, material brought by various organisations.

Also a Maoist contingent was seen in the demonstration, which was equipped with red flags adorned with the hammer & sickle and carried a banner: “Forwards in building the international anti-imperialist front!”

Combative anti-fascism

A little protest took place at the Ateneum corner immediately after the Finland Wake Up march had gone on the move.

Protest at the Ateneum corner.

Bigger was coming at Kiasma, when over a dozen of masses lead by communists  intruded the Mannerheimintie (major road on the route of the fascist march, transl. note), from which the riot police with their horses drove them to the sidewalk. Also the “less lethal” FN-303 is seen in the pictures, but it wasn’t used. The situation forced the police to halt the Finland Wake Up march for about 3 minutes.

A group of demonstrators intrude the Mannerheimintie.

The riot police getting physical with the demonstrators.

The masses regrouped immediately again right at the side of the road, from where they were forced with police horses to withdraw deeper into the sidewalk, so that the fascists could march in peace.

Despite the severe police repression, the demonstrators maintained their action without losses in personnel or material, and they continued protesting also when the Finland Wake Up was able to continue after the police had cleared the road free for the fascists.

Demonstrators maintain their struggle as the Finland Wake Up moved past with heavy police escort.

The bourgeois media and live-streamers documented the incident. Iltalehti (yellow press tabloid, trans. note) drew attention to the Maoist ideology of the protest.

Screen capture from Iltalehti: “Extreme-right Finland Wake Up encountered counter-protesters by the Mannerheimintie.
– Death to fascism, freedom to the people, shouted the counter-demonstrators.
The small counter-demonstration was organised by Maoist communists.
– Long live Lenin, long live Mao Zedong, shouted the counter-demonstrators.
The small counter-demonstration by the Maoists was separate from the wider Helsinki Without Nazis demonstration.”

According to the information of our editors, these were the only organised protests against the Finland Wake Up march, even though the gathering of the Helsinki Without Nazis started at the same tick of the clock when the situation at the front of Kiasma took place. In addition to these organised protests, there were also individual anti-fascists shouters.

We want to underline this fact, because according to reports some anarchists demanded the removal of communist symbols from the HIN. But where were those anarchists when the communists were struggling against the police, managing to halt the march of the fascists to the Parliament, be it only for a moment?

If anyone in this country is struggling against fascism and the reactionarisation of bourgeois democracy without fearing police repression or the possibility of a temporary defeat, it is the communists and not the anarchists. To demand the removal of communist symbols is most crude hypocrisy.

Evaluation of the day

For already two years in a row the few in numbers but determined communists played the role of a real forefront fighter against fascism. What they’re fighting against is shown in the fact that the police had to use severe force to push them aside so that the fascists could hold their obscene speeches on the steps of the Parliament House. The Parliament House is a symbolically central place, because “the parliament is typical institution of bourgeois democracy” (Mariátegui) and according to the current constitution in Finland it is precisely the parliament which represents the highest power.

Liberal democracy is still the dominant faction of the bourgeoisie in Finland, but it’s reactionary liberalism which has allowed, blatantly breaking against the Paris peace treaty, the registration of the Lapua-type fascist Blue-Black Movement as a party and letting it to the Parliament House. Such is the democracy in Finland, boasting about its “progressiveness”!

It is that same thoroughly rotten and reactionarising democracy, which anarchists defend against fascists – and against communists!

It is the same NATO-Finland democracy, which banned the Kurds’ flags from HIN appealing to transparent and unconvincing explanations. When the trilateral memorandum of Finland, Sweden and Turkey was published, some “experts” so flamboyant with their degrees explained how supposedly it wouldn’t mean anything, but already back then the analysis of our editors pointed out that it means exactly this.

Against all of this rotting order stands Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, and the 6th of December of this year has once again proven that it and only it is able to struggle at the forefront. The bourgeois reactionary rule will be shaken ever more, when this correct and justified leadership is joined by the growing protest of the masses.