Paper presenters
- Mattson and Johansson: “The fear of mass invasion: Narratives of racism, politics and democracy in White Supremacist media”
- Tommi Kotonen: “Tropes of political violence and the Finnish far right”
- Wahlström, Törnberg and Ekbrand: “User interaction networks and violent rhetoric in radical right online social media”
- Alexa Døving: The role of Conspiracy Talk in Social media of the Far Right
Abstracts
The fear of Mass Invasion. Narratives of racism, politics and democracy in White Supremacist media
Christer Mattsson and Thomas Johansson, University of Gothenburg
In the 1980s and 90s there were a variety of right-wing extremist and neo-Nazi organizations in Sweden. Since the late 1990s the Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR) has become the main hub for Nordic white supremacists.
The Nordic Resistance Movement, set up in 1997, promotes a racist, anti-Semitic and violent doctrine. NMR is a neo-Nazi organization aiming at establishing a national revolution and to destroy the liberal democracy. In a recent study we have looked closer at Nordfront and some of the key areas addressed on their web page.
We have analyzed three key areas – immigration, democracy and The Sweden Democratic party – from the end of the 1990s until the present. The study shows that there are both stable patterns on the textual and discursive level, and considerable and significant changes. Most notable is the re-figuration of how democracy is understood. During the last years, Nordfront have obviously gained ground, and they now perceive possibilities of actually engaging larger parts of the Swedish population in the struggle for white supremacy. The discussions on Nordfront have become more in sync with larger political movements in the Swedish society.
Tropes of political violence and the Finnish far right rhetoric
Tommi Kotonen, University of Jyväskylä
This paper analyses different tropes used by the Finnish far right during the past 20 years when discussing, justifying and defending the use of violence, also looking at the possible responses by the fellow-nationalists.
Rhetoric has an important role in preparing ground for or finding new alternative modes of political activity. In Finland, there has been relatively little political violence since the WWII, but rhetoric, which often borrows from Anglo-American literature, has occasionally taken very violent forms ranging from self-defense justifications to waging revolutionary violence.
I ask whether there are Finnish idiosyncrasies in the tropes used, and whether those tropes reflect the relatively non-violent nature of the Finnish scene. Paper draws data from different Finnish far right publications, zines, and social media, and from the lyrics of the Finnish RAC-groups. In order to identify and analyze different tropes and master tropes, and study their scope of use and which one is dominating, I will use the tools of contextualized thematic analysis and conceptual history.
User interaction networks and violent rhetoric in radical right online social media
Mattias Wahlström, Anton Törnberg and Hans Ekbrand, University of Gothenburg
The importance of the internet for right-wing political violence has been widely acknowledged, but the mechanisms by which online social interactions contribute to instigating political violence remain poorly understood.
This paper contributes to an understanding of comparatively unorganized low-level right-wing political violence, such as arson attacks against refugee housing facilities, through an analysis of micro-level dynamics on online discussion forums. Previous research has shown that these kinds of attacks are variously perpetrated by organized radical right activist groups as well as by local individuals and groups with rather low levels of organization. Social media discussions are arguably a particularly important factor in relation to the latter category of perpetrators.
Our assumption is that discussions in online social media may contribute to violent action as spaces for emotional and motivational preparation for participants (and presumably also passive readers). We study a text corpus from a radical right social media discussion group comprising over 200,000 users and more than 3 million posts. The data is analyzed using a combination of quantitative content analysis and network analysis in order to capture interactions between users. Interpretations are validated using qualitative analysis of selected discussion threads.
The role of Conspiracy Talk in Social media of the Far Right
Alexa Døving and Terje Emberland, The Center for Studies of the Holocaust and Religious Minorities
In recent years, several Facebook pages have been established in the landscape of the far right. Døving and Emberland’s study of such arenas shows that conspiracy theories play a central role as part of a nationalistic narrative strongly marked by the politics of identity and the theme of a threatened majority. They will give some examples of the patterns of conversation and introduce the term conspiracy talk as a useful analytical concept in the study of ethno- nationalism. They argue that conspiracy talk functions as a legitimation of right-wing extremist ideology: political claims are brought closer to home, made personal and incorporated into a narrative about hope for a homogenous Norway