The election of the new leader of Finland’s largest opposition party has been overshadowed by the resurfacing of an old photograph showing him with two near-naked men who are giving a Nazi salute.
Antti Lindtman, the new leader of the Finnish Social Democratic party (SDP), is pictured with four of his friends at a Christmas party in his secondary school over two decades ago. While Lindtman is posing with a fake handgun and wearing a balaclava, he is not giving a Nazi salute.
The 41-year-old initially had to contend with the image when it began circulating a few weeks ago - and it has come back to haunt him after winning the SPD leadership, succeeding the country’s former prime minister Sanna Marin.
Former Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin (left) with her successor as leader of the SDP Antti Lindtman (right)— (Lehtikuva/AFP via Getty Images)
Lindtman has attempted to distance himself from the image, which he has said is genuine. “Even though the pictures are from my youth, I’m not hugely proud of them,” Lindtman told Ilta-Sanomat, a Finnish newspaper.
He said the photograph had been taken by his school filmmaking club as part of a series, which he had requested be removed from its website 15 years ago. However, he said the image was leaked to social media by someone.
When asked about the Hitler salutes, he said: “It seems the guys went a bit too far with their poses … I was not and am not a Nazi sympathiser. Not back then and not now. Quite the contrary: I don’t think the neo-Nazis liked my [political] views even then.”
This comes after the SDP, which is now Finland’s main opposition party after narrowly losing a parliamentary election in April, faced questions over its party secretary.
Mikkel Nakkalajarvi, 33, beat his neighbour’s cat to death with a shovel during a summer holiday in 2006 yet did not disclose this to the party. The crime was only revealed 13 years later by a newspaper during the 2019 European election campaign.
Nakkalajarvi attempted to make a virtue of his troubled record at the SDP party conference on Saturday, telling delegates: “I want Finland to be a country where anyone can become anything — a country where everyone can succeed, but also fail and try again.”
The Independent has approached Antti Lindtman for updated comment.
