The nightless nights of the ‘Nazi camp’: The Finnish far-right’s anti-climate politics in urban space

Abstract

The globally growing climate justice movement has drawn attention to the accelerating climate change and the structural changes that climate mitigation would require. At the same time, there has been a surge and normalization of radical and extreme right-wing groups and parties. Their central element is not only ethno-nationalism and authoritarianism but also anti-climate politics, as they seek to obstruct climate politics, mobilize anti-scientific fictions and discredit scientists and activists. The far right’s intimidation of climate justice activists has been studied by examining its textual and visual discourses in online spaces, but less attention has been paid to far-right anti-climate practices in urban spaces. Drawing on social movement geographies, I aim to contribute to the discussions on far-right anti-climate politics by analysing the spatial strategies of the Finnish far-right’s counterprotests (the so-called ‘Nazi camp’) during Extinction Rebellion Finland’s ‘Summer Rebellion’ in June 2021 in Helsinki. By doing so, I show that far-right anti-climate politics (in the form of climate scepticism and intimidation of climate activists) are not limited to online spaces but emerge through different strategies in urban spaces by which the far-right competes for control over space and visibility and shapes public narratives of climate change and politics.