- Tommi Kotonen, University of Jyväskylä: On the campaign trail with extremists: Ethnographic observations on the Blue-Black Movement and its involvement in the Finnish parliamentary elections in 2023
- Ryan Switzer, Stockholm University: An ethnographic account of emotions and far right stigma: How barriers become resources for a movement
- Christopher R. Fardan, C-REX, University of Oslo: 'No racists in our streets' – local responses to far-right anti-Islam mobilization in Norway and Denmark
Abstracts
On the campaign trail with extremists: Ethnographic observations on the Blue-Black Movement and its involvement in the Finnish parliamentary elections in 2023.
Tommi Kotonen, University of Jyväskylä
The Blue-Black Movement (BBM, Sinimusta Liike) is a Finnish extreme-right political party officially entered into the party register in June 2022. Their program describes the party as 'radical, traditionalist, and Fennophile.'
The BBM participated in the parliamentary elections in Finland in April 2023, and this paper studies their campaign based on data gathered through participant observation, interviews with party members, and online observations. One of the explicit aims of the campaign was normalizing fascism. However, among the members, there was confusion about the meaning of the term 'fascism,' and many were unwilling to adopt it. Their shared identity leaned more towards that of a nationalist activist.
The study focuses on how the BBM interacted with voters, the means of persuasion they employed, whether they encountered any hostile reactions, and, in general, how candidates with little or no experience in elections perceived the campaigning and its objectives. These themes address the broader questions of why and how an arguably antidemocratic party conducts an election campaign and what it signifies for its members and the party.
An ethnographic account of emotions and far right stigma: How barriers become resources for a movement
Ryan Switzer, Stockholm University
Throughout my ethnographic fieldwork in the Swedish far right movement, nearly all activists whom I met described being stigmatisation as a result of their views. Painful stories of job loss or alienation from one’s family reoccured throughout my interviews. Committed nativists must learn to handle the social sanctions of being associated with racism, violence, and fascism. How do far right activists negotiate the stigma of their ideology? How does far right stigma—initially a barrier to entry for some sympathisers—become a resource which the movement uses in their own framing and activists incorporate into their political identities? This article explores that process through the lens of emotional sociology. Based on a year and a half of fieldwork in Sweden’s non-parliamentary far right movement, I argue that activists learn the cultural narratives of “waking up”, the a rhetoric of care, and humorous “label games” in movement free spaces. These narratives engage emotional mechanisms which translate the shame imposed by stigma into the warmth of collective belonging. I conclude by reflecting on the ethical implications of engaging with far right activists’ traumatic senses of victimisation.
'No racists in our streets' – local responses to far-right anti-Islam mobilization in Norway and Denmark
Christopher R. Fardan, C-REX, University of Oslo, Anita Nissen, Aalborg University & Iris B. Segers, C-REX, University of Oslo
In recent years, various far-right actors have engaged in anti-Islam protest events such as Qur’an burnings in pursuit of their racist anti-Islam political agenda. This practice has been particularly prevalent in Scandinavia, where heavily mediatized Qur’an burnings have led to heated national and international political discussions concerning the limits of freedom of expression and the promotion of anti-Muslim sentiment. This paper explores anti-Islam mobilization in the context of Denmark and Norway through the lens of local resilience, mapping the strategies that local authorities and civil society organizations have developed in response to far-right protest events in the period 2019 to 2023. We explore the ways in which local strategies have (more or less) successfully managed to prevent escalation at the protest site and promoted democratic participation and the reaffirmation of liberal democratic values in the face of hate. In doing so, this paper contributes to literature on far-right localism, and localized forms of democratic citizenship.