Lions of the North

“I just want to be the friendly face of national socialism”: The turn to civility in the cultural expressions of neo-Nazism in Sweden

“…While NRM might be the most vocal and visible extremist group in Sweden (and the rest of the Nordic countries), today, it must be understood as part of a much larger and ideologically motley landscape of actors and networks currently making up what we might call the extreme-right movement in Sweden. Teitelbaum (2018) describes the broad and fractious landscape of what he dubs "the nationalist movement" as a triad comprising the militant "race revolutionaries", the "identitarians", and the populist "cultural nationalists". Following this road map, we may place NRM among the "race revolutionaries" who have little compunction about promoting violence and violent revolution as the most direct route to achieving their goals.…”

“…As an outlier case in the Scandinavian context -having experienced considerably more extreme-right violence and militancy in the past two decades than its Nordic neighbours (Ravndal, 2018) -Sweden makes for an interesting and rich site of analysis. While this particular neo-Nazi group, and organised racism in Sweden more generally, has started to gain traction in international scholarship (e.g., Blomberg & Stier, 2019;Hirvonen, 2013;Kølvraa, 2019;Teitelbaum, 2018), insights from the perspective of media and communication studies are still scarce (for exceptions, see Askanius, 2019;Askanius & Mylonas, 2015;Ekman, 2014Ekman, , 2018Krzyżanowski, 2018).…”

“…I draw on a range of critical perspectives on the rise of extreme-right, in some cases violent, movements across the continent and the role of media and culture in these developments. I am particularly inspired by the recent work of Miller-Idriss (2018) and Teitelbaum (2018) who, when read in tandem, make a compelling argument for focusing on the expressive cultural dimensions of extremist narratives and the extra-ideological forces that draw people into extremist movements. Teitelbaum (2014Teitelbaum ( , 2018 considers music as part of a broader repertoire of cultural expressions of what he labels the radical nationalist scene in Scandinavia.…”

“…I am particularly inspired by the recent work of Miller-Idriss (2018) and Teitelbaum (2018) who, when read in tandem, make a compelling argument for focusing on the expressive cultural dimensions of extremist narratives and the extra-ideological forces that draw people into extremist movements. Teitelbaum (2014Teitelbaum ( , 2018 considers music as part of a broader repertoire of cultural expressions of what he labels the radical nationalist scene in Scandinavia. Teitelbaum (2018) argues that the transformation of nationalism in Scandinavia has been perpetuated by a dramatic shift in musical practices on the scene.…”

“…The communicative efforts and discursive strategies through which populist parties have pushed to normalise far-right positions in public discourse have been explored extensively in the context of party politics and official communications (e.g., Cammaerts, 2018;Wodak, 2018), but we know less about the interplay and overlaps between the strategies deployed by mainstream populist parties and more fringe, antidemocratic actors operating at the extreme end of the right-wing spectrum -and often in more direct confrontation with the law. Drawing on recent work suggesting that scholars should approach the extreme right as a cultural rather than political space (only) (e.g., Miller-Idriss, 2018;Teitelbaum, 2018), I seek to understand the extra-ideological forces and the cultural components of a new "Nazism light" with which NRM seeks to mobilise and normalise. Three broad research questions inform the study:…”