2025

Kotonen, Tommi; Kovalainen, Heikki

This chapter analyses the anti-refugee arson attacks in Finland between 2015 and 2017, exploring their links to the online environment, and especially to certain Facebook groups supporting and sometimes also inciting those acts. The study is based on police and court data on attacks on refugee reception centres in Finland, and on findings regarding the social media activity of the perpetrators. The attacks are analysed as what Daniel Koehler has called hive terrorism, which he has defined as fluid networks centred around shared opposition to democratic government and immigration and mobilizing activists from mainstream society more or less spontaneously for terrorist and other violent acts. The perpetrators often had no background in extremist organizations but were in most cases influenced by far-right rhetoric via social media. The chapter starts with the analysis of the hive, focusing on the most popular anti-refugee Facebook group in Finland, called Rajat Kiinni! (Close the Borders!) which, at its height, had more than 10 000 members and discussions produced hundreds of posts per day. The chapter analyses the role and significance of this hive for the attacks conducted and explores how the perpetrators shifted from online to offline activism.