Finland’s Supreme Court has upheld the decisions of two lower courts, and ordered the Nordic Resistance Movement banned.
The group had appealed those rulings to the Supreme Court, but in its ruling the court rejected the appeal and said the group’s goals are contrary to the principles of a democratic society.
The case has been going through Finnish courts since 2017, with the National Police Board pushing to outlaw the organisation which they say stands against law and order, spreads hate speech about immigrants and Jewish people, and whose members have taken part in violent acts.
The Nordic Resistance Movement has denied these accusations and says it operates within the limits of freedom of expression and freedom of association to meet.
Previous court decisions in the Pirkanmaa District Court, and then the Turku Court of Appeal, have ruled to outlaw the organisation.
Interior Minister Maria Ohisalo (Green) has welcomed the court’s ruling, saying that “defending democracy is always topical. It is important that society protects itself from violent extremism. The Nordic Resistance Movement violated or sought to violate fundamental and human rights.”
Analysts have said that abolishing the Nordic Resistance Movement means new far-right organisations will appear after its demise, with members simply joining the new groups as they are formed.
“As we’ve seen similar cases also in Germany, members could joined other far-right organizations or create a new one, or even run the movement at a grassroots level” Tommi Kotonen a political scientist at the University of Jyväskylä who studies the extreme right told News Now Finland in a 2018 interview about efforts to ban the Nordic Resistance Movement.
“What we’ll see in the future [for the Nordic Resistance Movement] is probably some sort of combination of these alternatives” he said.
It’s been 40 years since the last far right movement was banned in Finland, and Tuesday’s decision marks a new milestone showing courts’ willingness to act against extremist groups.
“Last time when a far-right movement was banned in Finland in 1977, it still kept up its actions in other ways until 2003” said Kotonen.
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