National populism and gendered vigilantism: The case of the Soldiers of Odin in Finland

850207CAC0010.1177/0010836719850207Cooperation and ConflictAharoni and Féron
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Cooperation and Conflict
2020, Vol. 55(1) 86 –106
National populism and
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The case of the Soldiers
of Odin in Finland
Sarai B Aharoni and Élise Féron
Abstract
Based on a discursive analysis of various media reports published in 2015–2018 by and about
the Finnish right-wing street patrolling organization Soldiers of Odin (SOO), we explore the
gendered dimension of contemporary vigilantism. We find that street patrolling as a practice of
vigilantism, is justified in this case by using representations of the cityspace as a place of friction
between locals and newcomers and of the street as a locus for enacting gendered and racial/ethnic
identities. Our findings suggest that SOO’s vigilant practices exhibit a mixture of traditional and
new features of masculinity. We argue that the activities of anti-immigration groups such as the
SOO in Finland demonstrate a feminist security dilemma concerning the way securitization of
public gender-based violence is used to enhance militarized performance of white masculinity.
We identify four recurring themes that are used by group members to portray themselves as part
of a legitimate social movement: protective masculinity, militarized masculinity, supplement of the
state, and indigenous masculinity.
Keywords
Finland, gender-based violence, populism, vigilantism
Introduction
This article explores a particular gendered manifestation of anti-migration politics and
activism following the rise in numbers of asylum seekers entering the EU by focusing
on a Finnish right-wing street patrolling organization called the Soldiers of Odin (SOO),
founded in October 2015. The group has been organizing street patrols meant to protect
Finnish women from different forms of public gender-based violence by migrants. The
appearance of SOO reflects the way debates around migration to Finland have been
increasingly polarized with ‘advocates of tolerance’ and ‘immigration critics’ clashing
in TV shows and internet forums, but also in the streets through demonstrations and
counter-demonstrations.
Corresponding author:
Sarai B Aharoni, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, P.O.Box 653, Beer-Sheva 8410501, Israel.
Email: saraia@bgu.ac.il

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Based on a discursive analysis of publicly available sources written by and about the
SOO in Finland, we offer a gendered reading of anti-immigrant sentiments and reactions.
We argue that these were not just triggered by an ongoing fear of loss of economic privi-
leges under neoliberal and austerity politics (Mäkinen, 2016), but also by anxieties from
the diminishing status of white heterosexual masculinities. Concurrently, we identify four
recurring themes that appear in the SOO’s self-presentation which are used by members
to portray themselves as part of a legitimate social movement: protective masculinity,
militarized masculinity, supplement of the state, and indigenous masculinity. One concept
that is of particular relevance for explaining the overall logic of these different themes is
that of ‘white border guard masculinities’, developed by Suvi Keskinen. White border
guards are characterized by ‘a fixation on borders, border-control, cultural boundary work
and exclusions that are treated as necessities in the changing setting’ (Keskinen, 2013:
227).
By focusing on the practice of street patrolling which is organized as a response to
sexual harassment, we seek to add another perspective to the growing literature in femi-
nist security studies on everyday peace and urban conflict in contemporary Europe
(Björkdahl and Buckley-Zistel, 2016). We find that street patrolling is a practice of vigi-
lantism that is justified by using representations of the cityspace as a place of friction
between locals and newcomers; and of the street as a locus for projecting and enacting
gendered and racial/ethnic identities. As such, we develop the concept of gendered vigi-
lantism by exploring the way practices and discourses about sexual harassment, particu-
larly street harassment, reinscribe geographical boundaries between Europeans and
asylum seekers. We conclude that understanding the formation of street patrols as a
performative act of white militarized masculinity is highly important for understanding
current patterns of mobilization among national-populist supporters and, thus, deserves
more critical attention.
Securitizing public gender-based violence
Feminist engagements with practices of public harassment of women by ‘strange’ men
have been systematically developing for several decades. Street harassment was defined
by Micaela di Leonardo (1981) as an interaction that occurs when strange men accost
women whom they perceive as heterosexual in a public place. ‘Through looks, words, or
gestures the man asserts his right to intrude on the woman’s attention, defining her as a
sexual object, and forcing her to interact with him’ (di Leonardo, 1981: 51–52). This
scholarship shows that in certain contexts, harassment by strangers is more prevalent
than non-stranger sexual harassment (Macmillan et al., 2000) and identifies the prevalent
types of interactions between unacquainted men and women to include staring, whis-
tling, groping, flashing, stalking and various types of sexist or homophobic slurs. It has
yielded important insights into the ways harassment objectifies women and limits their
ability to be in public spaces such as streets, markets and public transportation (Bowman,
1993) by increasing women’s fear of rape and limiting their movement (Fairchild and
Rudman, 2008). Nonetheless, policy discourses about women’s public safety have been
incomplete, particularly because it is hard to arrest, prosecute and even prove that such
incidents occur. Also, the tensions between the articulation of lived experience of sexual

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Cooperation and Conflict 55(1)
harassment and ‘the boundaries necessary for legal and policy interventions’ may encour-
age different discourses and connotations of such incidents (Vera Gray, 2016).
Within feminist security studies, which aim to broaden the concept of security and
include gendered experiences and standpoints (Tickner, 1992), there has been little inter-
est in the different approaches to what constitutes public harassment, how to name it, and
what is the harm it entails to women as individuals and as a group. Compared with other
forms of violence against women, including honor killings (Hansen, 2000) or wartime
rape (Baaz and Stern, 2009), public manifestations of ‘everyday’ gender-based violence
are seen as a domestic issue, linked with crime or welfare, which fall out of the core
interest of security studies and global politics. However, cross-national evidence reveals
that various countries have recently instituted policies to minimize street harassment as
a response to security threats. For example, during the Arab Spring, sexual harassment of
women protesters in Cairo was narrated through two different sets of spatial representa-
tions of Tahrir Square—either as a liberating space where women can experiment with
new forms of public bodily presence, or as a violent and repressive place dominated by
hyper-masculinized Arab men. Sexual harassment politics in this case served as a ‘cru-
cial laboratory for testing and reformulating the mix of emancipatory and repressive
governance practices that constitute contemporary gender-sensitive “human security”
regimes’ (Amar, 2011: 299).
Situated within the feminist literature on security, our case study continues to investi-
gate contemporary ways in which masculinity and militarization are co-constituent in
civilian contexts through everyday praxis and popular media (Enloe, 2016). Our focus on
the process of securitization of sexual harassment in Europe was guided by three theo-
retical assumptions. First, that spatial practices of everyday violence, which are gener-
ally invisible and trivialized, can transform by means of representation into dramatic
signifiers of social conflict over urban space. Second, that the political vocabulary of
intersectional analysis is useful for expanding research on street harassment and the
debates associated with it. Moving beyond the common articulation of masculine versus
feminine subjects to portray the indivisibility of race and gender, recent cases imply that
certain feminized bodies are more vulnerable than others in the public sphere (e.g. black
or lesbian bodies) and that these vulnerabilities are represented unequally (Fogg-Davis,
2006). Finally, we join the feminist critique of the Copenhagen School’s top-down defi-
nition of securitization as a process that involves formal security agents (states, militaries,
international organizations) by exploring how communities and individuals take part in
expanding the meaning of security (Hudson, 2009). When public harassment is secu-
ritized, it is often perceived as an existential threat not only to women, but also to the
broader collective. In nationalist contexts such occurrences may be linked with a percep-
tion of women’s bodies as biological carriers and signifiers of the collective. Consequently,
the emergence of fraternal organizations, which aim to prevent gender-based violence,
...