Extreme-right Responses to the European Economic Crisis in Denmark and Sweden: The Discursive Construction of Scapegoats and Lodestars

Abstract

This article examines extreme-right online media as a site of discursive struggle over definitions of the causes, consequences and remedies of the European economic crisis. The authors focus on two Scandinavian countries, Denmark and Sweden, which have seen a rise in extreme-right activities across different arenas and in different media in the turbulent years since the collapse of global financial markets in 2008. Drawing on a discourse-theoretical framework that builds on the work of Laclau and Mouffe, the paper examines how the currently most active and visible extreme-right groups in these two countries understand and respond to the crisis as an opportunity to fuel anti-immigration discourses and prey on sentiments of instability and insecurity in the broader population, using online media to “involve members and supporters in the discursive construction of racism”. The analysis demonstrates how these groups look to Greece, as the “crisis epicentre”, for culturalist explanations for the Eurozone crisis and to the rise there of Golden Dawn as an inspiration for future mobilisations in Nordic and pan-European coalitions.

KEYWORDS:

• extreme-right activism
• European economic crisis
• online media
• cultural racism
• anti-public spheres
• Denmark
• Sweden

Introduction

In the years since the global financial meltdown of 2008, Europe has witnessed a wave of citizen uprisings and protest movements all across the continent. From the direct actions and massive demonstrations of the Indignados, Real Democracy Now and M-15 movements to the occupations of public spaces by the Occupy movement, citizens have voiced their discontent with governments and with the neoliberal policies and institutions they see as having caused the crisis. In these “years of protest”, much attention has been paid to the role of online media in facilitating civic responses to the crisis and in providing progressive actors and movements with tools that strengthen democratic culture, enable agency and provide new modes of organisation for a better and more just Europe (see, for example, Constanza-Shock 2012; Gerbaudo 2012; Gamson and Sifry 2013; Juris 2012; Bennett and Segerberg 2013). Less attention has been paid, however, to how the financial crisis and the austerity measures subsequently implemented across the Eurozone have contributed to an upsurge in regressive and neo-fascist movements for whom online media play a crucial role in the promotion of extreme-right discourse and activity. This article examines extreme-right online media as a site of discursive struggle over definitions of the causes, consequences and remedies of the crisis. We take as our point of departure the extra-parliamentarian extreme right¹ in Denmark and Sweden, focusing on how different extreme-right groups understand and respond to the Eurozone crisis.

Scandinavian societies have been affected much less severely by the economic crisis than the countries of the Eurozone and Southern Europe (Lapavitsas 2010). In Denmark and Sweden, nonetheless, the crisis has highlighted key contradictions and problems related to the accelerated and largely undemocratic processes of economic globalisation, and the effects of these on local communities across the globe (Bauman 1998). In Scandinavia, welfare-state institutions are increasingly considered economically unproductive and uncompetitive and have been major targets of neoliberal reforms intended to boost private economic activity. In Denmark and Sweden, the general discourse thus mostly construes the crisis as a threat to the future of the “Nordic model” and its welfare institutions. Bauman has argued that austerity measures in social welfare societies such as those of Denmark and Sweden augment xenophobic fears of imminent dangers: “the remnants of the social state are considered as privileges that need to be defended against intruders and strangers” (2004, 99). These ruptures in a welfare system—once based on cultural homogeneity and closed, protective national policies—are triggering in Northern European and Western European societies a rise in far-right ideologies and parties, widespread feelings of social pessimism and cultural racist discourses, thus “reducing the threshold of racist speech in the public sphere” (Lentin and Titley 2011, 140).

In extreme-right circles in Denmark and Sweden, the crisis and its impact on the countries worst affected by it are observed with great interest and fervently discussed in online media. Political developments across the Eurozone are a source of both inspiration and anxiety, as the crisis serves to confirm eschatological fears and ostensibly to legitimise totalitarian attacks against democracy.

Against this backdrop, we ask how the European economic crisis is discursively constructed in the online media of the extreme right in Denmark and Sweden. What, according to extreme-right political imaginaries, are the root causes of the crisis and its possible solutions? Finally, how are political identities discursively constructed around these solutions to the crisis?

Hence, of key concern to this study is how the perceived threats posed by the crisis, its root causes and possible solutions are articulated by extreme-right groups and organisations in Denmark and Sweden, two Nordic countries with a long history as welfare states. We explore the contingency of friend/enemy distinctions in the discursive construction of extreme-right identities by examining how Greece is doubly articulated in Danish and Swedish extreme-right online media as, on the one hand, both the epicentre and the root cause of the crisis and, on the other, both a victim and a key to possible solutions. In this discursive struggle over the meanings and implications of the crisis, the contesting of parliamentary seats by the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn (GD) in Greece marks a discursive shift in how the country is positioned, first as an “enemy” and then as a political ally to be included in a Nordic front against the multicultural threat from the South. This discursive shift and rupture in the construction of a Nordic or European “us” illustrates the contingency and mutability of political identity and discourse.

Understanding the Rise of the Extreme Right in the Context of the Crisis

In our understanding of the current economic crisis, we draw on a range of critical perspectives that bring attention to its systemic nature and the social, economic and financial aspects of its trajectory. Firstly, the crisis is seen mainly to concern the inability of the global capitalist economy to produce adequate capital growth or to sustain high profits (Harvey 2010; Duménil and Lévy 2011). The economy of capital is a dynamic process that relies on constant expansion and accumulation. Expansion means the opening of new markets across the world and the commodification of more and more aspects of social and individual life. Accumulation is concerned with the ownership and standardisation of resources, labour, the means of production and the outcomes of production. Nevertheless, the processes characterising the economy of capital reach limits (Harvey 2010, 123) that require a reinvention of strategies for maintaining the system's dynamics. Austerity, privatisations and the dismantling of social rights on the pretext of the economic crisis are part of such political strategies to re-organise capital growth.

Further, the current crisis emerged as a financial one, and its dominant solutions are connected with fiscal policies. Finance is a form of capital security that maintains the domination of the capitalist classes, because the activity of the “real productive economy” is subject to the control of finance. The financial system is thus an entity “combining class and institutional aspects” (Duménil and Lévy 2011, 13). In a globalised world, the increased importance of finance in policy-making is related to the emergence of the political doctrine of neoliberalism.² This global expansion of economic activity has seriously weakened democracy. The development of free market policies and institutions has not been followed by an equal development of democratic institutions and rights allowing the organisation and control of policy-making by citizens, and this has triggered the most powerful class configurations of neoliberal capitalism (Duménil and Lévy 2011, 19).

The rise of the extreme right in the context of the crisis can thus be understood and explained in three significant ways: as a result of the decline of democratic culture and citizenship and the advent of a nihilistic and cynical culture connected with consumerism, competition and individualism (Dicken 2009); as a result of the re-emergence of nationalism as an ideology of reaction against the negative consequences of economic globalisation for the everyday life circumstances of communities across the world and the disempowering effect of globalisation on popular sovereignty and democracy; and as a reaction to democratic social movements at a time when social struggle is escalating. Fascism, in this context, plays its historical reactionary role in the maintenance of deep social divisions (Poulantzas 1979). The rise of a neo-Nazi movement in Greece and the successful contesting of parliamentary seats by GD,³ the first neo-Nazi party to enter a national parliament in Europe since the Second World War, illustrates the last of the three perspectives described above, but is also connected with the other two. In Scandinavia, however, the recent rise of the extreme right is best explained at this juncture by the first two perspectives. Both Denmark and Sweden have undergone a comprehensive restructuring from open, social democratic welfare states to neoliberal strongholds characterised by rising structural inequality, a growing lack of trust in politicians and political institutions and a general of sense of corrosion of citizenship in the population (Schierup and Ålund 2011).

In this political climate, the extreme right has successfully tapped into popular fears in an increasingly precarious and antagonistic world. The corrosion of democratic identity by neoliberal social norms prompts citizens to buy into individualistic explanations of their socio-historical challenges, rather than systemic ones, and to seek scapegoats for their frustrations, usually in the form of ethnic or cultural “Others”. Witnessing the growth of anger, fear and bigotry among these groups, there is an urgent need for research that probes the political effects of the economic crisis and its neoliberal management in European societies and raises critical questions about the degradation by technocracy and economism of liberal democratic institutions and culture (Crouch 2004). In response to this call, the present study aims to explore and expose the regressive radicalisation of popular discontent for extreme-right ends.

Case Study and Research Design

This study is based on a discourse analysis of 192 articles from online media published by a number of different extreme-right groups, organisations and networks in Denmark and Sweden. The articles all deal with aspects of the economic crisis in Scandinavia and in Europe as a whole. The research focuses on material posted between January 2010, when the Eurozone crisis “officially” started, and April 2013. We acknowledge that the crisis in Europe and elsewhere continues, but set a fixed end date in order to facilitate the collection, study and analysis of empirical material. Specific nodal points of crisis discourse relevant to extreme-right agendas were chosen on the basis of relevant literature and used as keywords in the online search for articles.⁴

The empirical framework also includes the appurtenant debate threads from each article and three background interviews conducted with journalists/activists with expertise in the area. The in-depth interviews were conducted at an early stage in the research process in order to verify information and qualify the selection of the sites and groups to be examined. These interviews involved journalists affiliated with The Research Group, a left-oriented collective of journalists in Sweden, and with the Copenhagen-based group Redox in Denmark, both of which, among other activities, monitor extreme-right groups and websites. The interviews provide insights into the differences, commonalities and, not least, collaborations between extreme-right groups and networks across Scandinavia.

The groups subject to study in this article are all positioned at the far end of the nationalist, right-wing spectrum and all work on the fringes of, or outside, the political system. Groups on this political vector range from anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, ultra-conservative groups to the more militant neo-Nazis, national-socialists and skinheads in the White Pride milieu. Some of these groups aim for participation in formal politics and for electoral gains, while others oppose the political system and seek to abolish democracy as such.

Both Denmark and Sweden have seen since the mid-1990s a decline in violence on the streets by neo-Nazi groups, but a recent rise in “backstage activities” that involve campaigning and recruiting in relatively closed circles (Bjurwald 2010; SOU 2012). Increasingly, extremist groups and networks have been observed to morph into shady net-phenomena that avoid street action (Wåg 2011; Wåg 2013; Statens Medieråd 2013). These days, online activity enables them to remain relatively anonymous while ensuring both the means to communicate internally and the visibility necessary to attract and recruit new members. Violent extra-parliamentarian actors have not yet been able to form a coherent social movement in the Nordic countries, but in terms of online organisation and discourse Scandinavia has become an important propaganda base for extreme-right actors (Boréus and Hübinette 2012).

Denmark and Sweden thus share a number of significant traits, in terms both of how the extreme right works and organises and of their political–economic trajectories through the crisis, from which both countries appear to be emerging more favourably than most other European countries (Schierup, Ålund, and Kings 2014). These two countries make for an interesting case since they represent a region of Europe rarely highlighted in this context, attention being most often directed at Hungary, Italy or Greece, where the rise of the extreme right has assumed a much more visible and openly violent character. Bringing attention to the Scandinavian context shows how, even in the countries least affected—and austerity measures that have been unevenly distributed across Europe—the crisis is seen to breed extreme-right ideology and opportunism in significant and often unforeseen ways.

Selection of Empirical Material in 11 Online Media

The Swedish articles were derived from four different online news media and communities. Nordfront is part of the media repertoire of The Resistance Movement, a National Socialist movement in Sweden that goes under the banner of “the free voice of the North”.⁵

Realisten (The Realist) is the online newspaper of Svenskarnas Parti (SP; The Party of the Swedes), which recruits neo-Nazis, embraces white supremacy ideals and has never been represented in parliament, but won one seat in a local election in 2010 (Grästorp Municipality). SP explicitly tries to position itself as an alternative to Sverige Demokraterna (Sweden Democrats), which they consider to have “gone soft”, letting down its voters since its electoral victory and political influence in the Swedish parliament since 2006.

Nordisk Ungdom (Nordic Youth) is a relatively new organisation established in 2009, with the slogan “the Nationalists for the 21^st century”, for young people with a conservative, protectionist vision of Scandinavia and an anti-EU position. Nordic Youth has been somewhat successful recently in staging a series of spectacular symbolic and gimmicky public events, which were recorded and distributed on YouTube. These videos, intended primarily for online distribution, replace previous forms of recruitment such as flyers, posters and public-square meetings to appeal to a new generation of young nationalists.

Nationell.nu is one of the most visited alternative news and debate websites in Sweden, with close to 40,000 unique visitors a day (Statens Medieråd 2013). Unlike other controversial right-leaning debate sites in Sweden such as Flashback and Axpixlat, Nationell.nu has an editor-in-chief, Richard Langrén.⁶

For the Danish part of the empirical framework, we examined articles published by Danmarks Nationalsocialistisk Bevægelse (Denmark's National Socialist Movement), the leading neo-Nazi party in the country. The online forum of Stop Islamiseringen af Danmark (SIAD; Stop the Islamification of Denmark) was also chosen for analysis. SIAD is an anti-Muslim group founded in 2005, growing out of the pan-European Stop the Islamisation of Europe network. We further extended the scope of the analysis to include articles from Danmarks Nationale Front (DNF; Denmark's National Front). DNF is an activist group that does not aim for parliamentary or local political influence, but explicitly locates itself outside the political system as part of the White Pride movement.

We further included the website Modstand.nu, published by the Århus-based group Vederfølner, and two personal blogs, Uriaposten and Snaphanen, which have become important platforms for anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic debates in both countries. Finally, we included articles published by Danskernes Parti, a rising extreme-right party in Denmark that has ties to the aforementioned Denmark's National Socialist Movement and is currently playing a political card to other anti-democratic groups across Europe, with ongoing efforts to transform its image through partly successful PR strategies (Redox 2013; for a detailed discussion of this reframing process, see also Bjurwald [2010]).⁷

Analytical Framework

The theoretical framework used for the analysis of our data draws on post-structuralist discourse theory (Laclau and Mouffe 1985; Laclau 1996; Mouffe 2005). Political discourses presuppose configurations of a given social crisis/problem, assumptions about who produces it and whom it affects, the problem's solutions as well as ideal and worst-case scenarios. Discourse theory provides us with key concepts to deploy in our analysis of the discursive constructions of the economic crisis and the political identities formed around its possible solutions. Such categories include discursive nodal points, which are key moments in a discourse. In our material, these moments or events include the austerity protests in Greece and Southern Europe and the election campaign and victory of GD in Greece. In practical terms, the identification of these nodal points and structuring moments entailed a first step of coding the 192 articles to identify common themes and patterns in and across the statements made. In the initial stages of the research, the authors thus conducted multiple readings and cross-readings of all articles to ensure reliability and validate the findings and/or revisit and modify the themes identified in the material.

Discursive articulation produces meaning from different aspects of social reality in accordance with the ideas and values of the agent of articulation. In discourse theory, the social is a contingent space, historically produced through the hegemony of meaning. In moments of social crisis, a semantic vacuum is often created in the public sphere, showing the contingent nature of the social (Laclau and Mouffe 1985, 126). Antagonistic agents may then emerge in a competition over social reconstitution, attempting to suture such ruptures with hegemonic interventions in order to establish their own meanings and rationales as society's common-sense (Laclau and Mouffe 1985, 131).

For Laclau and Mouffe (1985, 120), antagonism is primarily discursive, since social (re)constitution relies on the social hegemony of specific ideas and the identification of these by majoritarian groups. Political discourse therefore primarily produces identities in order to achieve hegemony. The groups examined in this study attempt to disperse the extreme right's understanding of the social, its agents, its problems and their solutions, and its own aspirations for social constitution and social life. In this way, the extreme right attempts to gain a legitimate position in society, in the public sphere and in politics. Our analysis draws on the category of political identity to analyse the construction of dichotomies between allies and adversaries that emerge in antagonistic struggles. We therefore focus on chains of equivalence and difference (Laclau and Mouffe 1985, 127) in order to unfold the discursive constructions of “us” and the constitutive “others” that prevent “our” full capacity (to be “free” or “safe” as ethnic communities of Swedes, Danes, Europeans, westerners, etc.). Finally, we disclose the perceived solutions aimed at eliminating the threat and the measures proposed by the extreme right to solve the problem. The central concepts used by the extreme-right groups online to speak about the crisis in the European Union (moments in a discourse) (Laclau and Mouffe 1985, 106) are approached as floating signifiers in order to unpack their inherently contingent and conditional fixation into concrete meanings, and to see the ways in which a signification of the crisis is produced.

The online media sites that are the object of study in this research can fruitfully be understood as anti-public spheres (Cammaerts 2007). Unlike public spheres in their actual, potential or idealised bourgeois form in modern liberal democracies, anti-public spheres do not function as spaces of democratic and civic dialogue or communication. Instead, these anti-public spheres function as forums for anti-democratic propaganda and as spaces empowering reactionary movements. Anti-public spheres fuel popular spite and the general feelings of discontent and disempowerment experienced by large groups of people today. They tend to affirm crude expressions of individual and popular discontent. Based on nationalism, myths and conspiracy theories that reify complex and fluid issues, structures and identities, these spheres work to develop and disperse regressive rationales and agendas and to offer simplistic and eschatological explanations to complex problems (Taguieff 2010 [2005]; Dean 2009, 152). They allow individuals to collectively build and reaffirm easy explanations for the intangible and complex problems that the crisis presents us with. They are sustained “with closure” (Couldry 2002) and information “is controlled and unidirectional” (Atton 2006). In this sense, these public spheres serve as echo chambers in which opinions and ideologies are reinforced and reproduced, and never challenged, critically questioned or held to account. Furthermore, in these online spheres, groups “manoeuvre themselves centre stage of the dominant public sphere through the strategic use of the formal rules of representative democracy and perverting freedom of speech rights to incite hatred, racism and intolerance” (Cammaerts 2007, 74).

Defining the Crisis, Identifying the Enemy, Proposing Solutions and Envisioning Futures

There is no shortage of vivid and histrionic headlines to describe the state of affairs in Europe: “The doomsday of Europe approaches”, “The Jewish crisis—how the Jews destroyed Greece and the world”, “In times of chaos” and “Europe's last breath” are but a few of the ways in which extreme-right groups set the tone in discussions of the European economic crisis in online communities and on news sites. Nor is there a lack of probable perpetrators to be blamed for the crisis: the “global financial mafia”, Muslims pursuing “economic jihad” or a “Jewish bankers’ mob”. One (empty) signifier, however, eclipses all other explanations and works to articulate the root cause of the crisis:

Multiculturalism was not only the decisive factor in triggering the global financial crisis, the implementation of the ideology has eroded Western economies and made them susceptible to crises like the current one. (Lindén 2012).

The main problem in contemporary Europe, according to extreme-right rationales, is multiculturalism. In this narrative, Nordic countries are being transformed into multicultural societies by the influx of migrants—particularly those of a non-Scandinavian or non-European ethnic or cultural background. This invasion is seen as corroding the political, social, cultural and economic institutions of Europe and as threatening the supposed purity of “white” and “Nordic” races. Multiculturalism is thus seen as leading to ethic degeneration, cultural alienation, impoverishment, violence, feminisation and social subordination to foreign intruders.

The economic crisis and the threats it poses to the capitalist system are thus seen as working in tandem with, and as aggravated by, multiculturalism. The intrusion of migrants is seen as weakening the economy and welfare institutions, and migrants as stealing jobs and exploiting welfare institutions at the expense of the “native” population. The advanced capitalist economy of western societies is reified as something concrete and natural that has national characteristics and is “owned” by a racial–territorial community. In the same way, the extreme right produces an image of the economy as natural and stable, and of the economic crisis not as systemic but as a perversion caused by the presence of “the Other” and, most importantly, by the discourses, policies and institutions that have allowed the intrusion of the Other. Although the migrant is the very incarnation of the concrete and tangible perpetrator, a complex set of political ideas, agents, currents and policies are presented as the true sources of the threat. The crisis is seen as a product of several decades of failed policy-making and indecision by politicians in areas related to immigration, particularly their failure to clamp down on crime among immigrants.

The crisis, however, is also considered to provide various opportunities for activists to grow stronger and to draw on one another's strategies across Europe. In September 2012, Nordfront published an article raising the question of whether “a new Hitler is more likely in the context of economic crisis”. A user calling himself/herself “death of multiculturalism” was the first to post a comment on the article, arguing: “Just what the world needs. Freedom, truth and order!” A user called “National” replied:

We DO need a new Hitler. Someone who can clean up the world—or at least Europe and the US—and finish what was interrupted back in 1945. I hope the crisis continues and that the recession will become deeper and deeper. (Nordfront 2012).

Here we see the crisis serving as both a source of anxiety and a hope for the future of the nationalist project(s).

Within these discourses of the recession as an opportunity structure, the Euro-countries most severely affected by the crisis are articulated as nodal points. This is particularly true of Greece and discussions around the “Greek tragedy”, which provide a prism for understanding extreme-right explanations for the crisis more generally:

Normally we in DNF don't do economy because we believe Denmark and the rest of the European population face far greater and more fundamental problems – the demographic changes in our populations. […] When we despite this take an interest in the Greek tragedy it is because this, like any other crisis, offers new possibilities, in particular to DNF. (DNF 2011).

In Sweden, SP similarly encouraged its members and supporters to organise and look to their European neighbours for possible solutions:

We have seen how countries such as Norway, Finland, Denmark, Hungary and Greece have used the chaos and inconsequence of politicians and bankers to their advantage. How can we profit from these negative phenomena? (Realisten 2012).

Defining the crisis and identifying its root causes involves the discursive construction of an enemy to be defeated: a “them” different from the “us” (Mouffe 2005). This threatening Other is defined in racial/ethnic, cultural and political terms. The symbolic figure of the Muslim in particular is a threat to the essentialist western identity proposed by the extreme right. From this vantage point, the Other is a threat not only to the purity of the race, but also to manhood, religious (Judeo-Christian) tradition and a secular/individualist lifestyle. The ideological positioning of each group defines the barriers of inclusion and exclusion. A broader chain of difference, producing the identity of the threatening Other, can be summoned in all the following: Muslims, refugees and unskilled migrant workers from non-western countries, international Jews (sic), ruthless financial capitalists, liberal and bourgeois politicians within international institutions of governance (e.g. the European Union), lefties, feminist and antiracist movements, intellectuals and academics (see, e.g., Henriksson 2010; Nationell.nu 2012a-d). Class is a central element in the threat, since the most threatening migrant populations are those of low economic and social status from “dysfunctional states and countries” (Snaphanen 2012).

The Crisis as a “Greek Mess”

Whereas multiculturalism and Islam can be said to fulfil the function of an external enemy, other agents are positioned as internal enemies. In the period from 2010 to 2011, Greece was persistently positioned as an enemy within Europe's own ranks: a European Other. The material and symbolic position of the European South, and of Greece in particular, in the reporting on the EU crisis provides a point of departure for the articulation of extreme-right ideology in the understanding of and explanations for current developments. Political developments in Greece offer insights into just how wrong things can go in Scandinavia if these countries fail to adopt a radical anti-immigration policy. Further, Greece takes centre-stage in culturalist explanations for the crisis. Discursive struggles over the nature of the crisis, its causes and consequences are framed by designations such as “the Greek mess”, “lazy Greeks”, “a corrupt country”, “a decadent country on the verge of collapse” and “the Greek debt disease”. Echoing mainstream, neoliberal explanations for the so-called Greek crisis, the Greeks are viewed as having lived beyond their means and their overconsumption and decadence as having triggered the crisis, following which the country dragged the rest of Europe down with it:

Just a few years ago school kids all had EU mopeds and the Greeks used their gas-filled cars even for walking distance trips. The food was even more expensive than in Sweden. (Kromann 2012b).

They managed to pull it off for a while—the lazy, calculating Greeks. But as common sense could have told them: “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money” M. Thatcher. (Uriaposten 2011b).

The mass mobilisations against austerity in the late 2000s were met with expressions of indignation and spite. Articles and comments mirrored dominant views in the conservative press expressing the neoliberal view of the crisis and austerity politics (Mylonas 2014, 316):

Greek protestors clueless in Athens: One of the most bizarre aspects of the Greek mess is how completely out of touch with reality the Greeks protesting the reductions in government spending are. They simply do not have a choice … the strikes and protests themselves only increase the need for cuts because they weaken the economy and reduce tax revenues. The Greek union strikes are therefore as stupid as expressing dissatisfaction with the fact that you freeze by reducing heating further or taking off your shirt. (Uriaposten 2011a).

In this way, explanations for the crisis dovetail with dominant political discourse and the mainstream media framing of the crisis, which have been haunted by rhetorical strategies of othering and scapegoating employed to explain the crisis in culturalist terms (Mylonas 2012). In these “blame-games” (Hänska 2013), crisis discourse offers explanations for the malaise in the cultural traits of specific groups that are blamed for triggering or aggravating the crisis. Constructs such as “southern Europeans”, “lazy Greeks”, “greedy, selfish Germans” or “cheats in the Euro family” thus all disregard the systemic nature of the crisis and the one-sidedly pro-market politics of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund programme of fiscal austerity and structural reforms implemented across the so-called PIIGS countries (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain). In extreme-right discourse, this neoliberal construction of the crisis is additionally framed by lay and colloquial explanations using national, cultural and racial stereotypes, along with spectacular pseudo-facts, to explain the crisis, allegedly caused by “tax defying Greeks”, “parasitic Roma”, “Jewish bankers” or “Muslim welfare recipients” and “enslaved sausage-eating Germans”. The definition and exclusion of these enemy groups constitute the boundaries of the extreme-right's ideal identity position and form the basis of the discursive construction of “us” and of who constitute political allies and adversaries.

The Contingency of Political “Friend/Enemy” Constellations

The discourses of the extreme-right position multiculturalism as an ontological threat to “our societies”. From this perspective, the cultural, non-western Other is the opposite of “us”. The discursive articulation of this threat organises the identity of “us”, which is under existential threat. For the extreme right, the scope of “our identity” is defined by racial, geographical, cultural and political characteristics. Scandinavia is the cradle of civilisation and largely seen as a community of “ethnic siblings”. Overcoming the polyvalent nature of the foreign/multiculturalist threat requires alliances between equivalent identities against a common enemy. Signifiers such as “we”, “Sweden”, “Denmark”, “nation” or “Pan-Nordic coalitions” are the nodal points in the construction of identity discourse around a broad Nordic/western/white block of cultural and evolutionary/racial equals.

The dual problem of crisis and multiculturalism transcends national borders, and Swedes and Danes are therefore forced to mobilise and organise accordingly. The extreme right's identity discourse forms a chain of equivalence between related parties. This discursive chain of equivalence starts with the inclusion of Scandinavian and “ethnically Nordic” people, along with those of Baltic States ethnicity extending to those with ethnic origins in Western European and North American societies. An ideal chain of equivalence, according to Nordfront, is “a nationalist Sweden bilaterally anchored in the Nordic countries, including the Baltic region in a Nordic alliance aiming to secure stability and independence from the global financial market” (Söderman 2010).

While race and ethnicity are the prime sources of identity, culture and politics are also strong denominators of commonality. In this sense, the ethnic people indigenous to Eastern Europe and Southern Europe are in some cases included as part of the common front against the same enemy. Variations between the different groups studied show shifts in the importance of race/ethnicity and the occasional recognition of a reformed and potentially “includible” other, in secular, political and juridical terms, based on how well these groups conform to and are disciplined by Scandinavian societies.

Significantly, the people of the North are viewed as the creators of western civilisation, much in line with the pseudo-science of Nazi Germany in the 1930s (Chapoutot 2008). According to the Nazi narrative, people from the North migrated to Southern Europe and created Ancient Greece and later Rome. In the course of time, these Nordic people were outnumbered and defeated by Slavs and Arabs and had to return to the North. As Chapoutot notes, Hitler needed to support his ideology with historical monuments and so, since Northern Europe lacked the monumental architecture of the antique South, his ideology claimed authorship and ownership of important antique legacies. This narrative, sustained in today's neo-Nazi ideologies, offers groups the necessary background for constructing political alliances between themselves and people of different nationalities and non-Aryan origin. Bearing witness to the contingency of political identity construction, political realism and events—rather than fixed and stable us/them distinctions—organise the relationship between extreme-right groups in the northern countries and their southern counterparts.

The Double Articulation of Greece as Scapegoat and Lodestar

In 2012 a major event and political victory within extreme-right circles changed the terms under which allies and enemies were defined and constructed, and Greece moved from being a source of concern to serving as a source of inspiration for how political organisations and a mass social movement might proceed. The electoral success of GD in 2012 triggered a new narrative concerning Greece within the Swedish and Danish groups. In the crisis narrative of GD, immigration (and the influence of left-wing politics) is depicted as Greece's main problem and the true reason for “the Greek tragedy”. In this context, neo-fascism, often describing itself by the more politically correct term “nationalism”, is articulated as the ideology that can foster the agency required for the salvation of Greece. In an article entitled “Only Nationalism can Liberate Greece”, we read:

Today Greece is a decadent country on the verge of destruction … the Greek people have degenerated mentally and physically. The once superior population today lives among overfilled garbage cans and starved cats in the street. The Greek people of today are enslaved beggars! (Kromann 2012b).

After the rise of GD, a discursive shift thus emerged and Greece was seen as having been misrepresented and mistreated by the media and by national governments across the European Union. In the period before GD received massive attention, extreme-right crisis reporting largely followed the neoliberal narrative, positioning Greece as the rotten apple of Europe and austerity policies as unavoidable, necessary and just. In the wake of GD's rise, however, a discursive shift took place towards representing Greece as a victim of the “multiculturalist/Marxist” project of the European Union and this replaced to some extent the idea of Greece as villain:

Congratulations Greece! We are marching with you. Although we are not as big as you yet, it is fantastic to see how the NS movement is growing stronger every week. Heil the North! (Nationell.nu 2012a).

Significantly, the violent and criminal activity of GD in Greece has been viewed as a source of inspiration for groups across Europe to develop similar street tactics and political strategies for becoming stronger and more socially influential:

 … I wish the Greek rebellion may be the spark that ignites the revolt in Europe against and in confrontation with the Muslim mass immigration, the occupation of Europe and the strong criminal hordes of Muslim and other peoples of foreign origin that haunt Europe and various European countries. And, last not least, a rebellion against the EU and national politicians that bunch of conspirators, high traitors and Quislings that deliberately put Europe at risk and sacrifice the people of Europe in the cruel manner of Islam, Islamization in a political superpower (-dream's) service and personal service! (SIAD 2011)

From being proclaimed the villain within Europe's own ranks and excluded from the “us”, Greece was now marked out as a victim, and groups began calling for support and solidarity with a country that was “collapsing” and “faced with an invasion” (Snaphanen 2012; see also Björkquist 2012). The austerity measures were now the work of “evil Jewish bankers” and corrupt EU policies imposed on Greece. In The Realist, the author of a feature column entitled “Only Nationalism can Save Greece” argued that the Greek people had fallen victim to corrupt and power-hungry politicians who had succumbed to the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, with the Minister of Finance, Yannis Stournaras, agreeing to a “buy-out” by Angela Merkel (Kromann 2012b). A feature article in Nordfront described in detail how a visit from a GD member to SP members in Kristianstad, Sweden became an eye-opening source of inspiration for future collaborations and a turning point in how the party oriented itself, now finding inspiration in political developments in Southern Europe (Lindblad 2012).

The notion of “us” thus underwent an important shift at the time of GD's electoral success. Before their rise to parliamentary influence, articles tended largely to exclude the PIIGS countries of Southern Europe—from their discursive construction of a European identity, pinpointing this as a symbolic terrain of struggle between different discourses, legacies and political–historical movements (Bauman 2004).

Solutions to the Crisis and the Imaginary Horizon of a Resolute Future

[…] the solution is really quite simple. We simply will not help to cut down on important things like elder care and schools, all the while wasting money on criminal immigrants that have nothing to do here. Instead, the system should spend billions of dollars to imprison these criminal immigrants; we should take them to the border and send them back to where they came from (Vederføljner 2013).

All ideological constructs are connected with a vision of a harmonious future in which all problems will be resolved. Totalitarian ideologies are accompanied by eschatological visions of the future, and the future envisioned in these narratives of the crisis very much reflects the “palingenetic myth of national rebirth” characteristic of fascist ideology (Griffin 1991), which builds on the idea of an impending “turnaround”, “watershed” or “turning point” that awaits us as “the current crisis or recession will be followed by a new beginning or a rebirth” (Griffin 1991, 33). Two main strands of possible solutions for overcoming the crisis are proposed. Firstly, a policy-orientated solution focused on the organisation of authoritarian institutions and based on economic austerity, a hierarchy of social and political rights, control and disciplinary apparatuses is posited. Secondly, a more obscure and “uncompromising” approach is envisioned, one that is violent in nature and foreshadows a war between migrants and “natives”.

Eschatological notions, supported and dramatised by racist claims, construct a legitimation of fascism's re-emergence as a form of a “final solution” for Greece and ultimately for the world at large. Eschatology is a key component of authoritarian discourse, establishing the imperatives of curbing democratic dialogue and declaring a state of emergency from which an authoritarian society can be built and radical political projects carried out without public accountability (Mylonas 2013, 329). Neo-fascism thus masks its ideology in myths and fantasies of the sublimated category of the nation and its salvation.

Further, solutions to present problems and inspiration for the future are largely sought in the past, with romantic myths of a re-emerging, not-so-distant past of once proud and great European nations and of Ancient Greece, the hotbed of modern civilisation. Indeed, different configurations of Ancient Greece appear in a variety of neo-fascist and neo-Nazi movements in post-World-War II Europe. The French historian Chapoutot (2008), in his book National Socialism and Antiquity, unfolds the centrality of classical Greece (and Rome) to the construction of Nazi identity and the symbolic foundation of a Nazi Europe. For the extreme right in Scandinavia, Ancient Greek history is a source of inspiration. The “miracle cure against multiculturalism” (Johansson 2012) is thus to be found both in Norse mythology and in Ancient Greece:

Both in Ancient Greece and past Nordic societies violent actions of war in combination with strategic planning were paramount in the preservation—or at least survival—of these distinctive societies. At the centre of these tales are the struggle of the individual [ … ] Odysseus’ quests face us with a highly relevant question. Our Greek brothers and sisters did not accept that the fruits of their hard labour were harvested by strangers. (Johansson 2012).

In various ways the debates around the trajectory of the crisis in Greece among extreme-right actors reflect very explicit ways of trying to copy and paste successful strategies and actions of GD. At the same time, they demonstrate an awareness that these strategies need to be adapted to a local context. For example, some users of the online forums expressed concerns that the street soup kitchens organised by GD could not be directly translated into the Swedish context where people did not lack food or resources to the same extent. Instead, groups were encouraged to offer their assistance in the local community in other ways, such as by repairing a neglected football pitch or organising picnics for underprivileged families or summer trips for vulnerable children. These examples all demonstrate how extreme-right groups are explicitly looking for ways of stepping in where the neoliberal welfare state has failed to provide social and community services in all the different spheres in which “Folkhemmet”—the social democratic project—is collapsing.

Concluding Remarks

This analysis demonstrates how extreme-right actors across the Nordic countries are using the crisis as a window of opportunity for preying on sentiments of instability and insecurity in the population. In extreme-right discourses, the politico-economic crisis in Europe works as a source of fear, of affirmation, but also of inspiration and opportunities. Koselleck (2006) has argued that a crisis is a moment of rupture where instability advances by challenging the legitimacy of social institutions, the sense of normality and ideas and discourses that are taken for granted. The crisis itself signifies a moment of rupture, where new socio-political configurations can emerge. Koselleck (2006, 399) argues that the concept of a crisis is used to fit “the uncertainties of whatever might be favoured at a given moment”. The current crisis is connected with formal political restructuring, prioritising the needs of the economy as an objective, natural entity. At the same time, the crisis is connected with the emergence of rival narratives, discourses and actions of social agents dislocated from their structural and symbolic positions. The contingent space that a crisis foregrounds until the moment of its resolution allows for different possibilities and scenarios to emerge, for better or worse. This research demonstrates how extreme-right actors seek to fill with meaning this void created (or incarnated) by the crisis, to make sense of the threats it poses and to offer possible solutions in different local, national and global contexts. Within this discursive construction of the crisis, the double articulation of Greece as both scapegoat and lodestar becomes a prism through which we may come to perceive how extreme-right actors understand themselves, their struggle and their political friends and enemies as contingent upon different events and contexts that can be instrumentalised in the service of specific goals.

This analysis brings attention to the development of regressive anti-public spheres in the context of a deep global economic crisis and to how extreme-right groups use the online media to establish transnational networks for organising and propagating themselves across Europe and the world. The anti-publics thus created facilitate and fortify these activities and constitute an efficient infrastructure for communication and collaboration between otherwise dispersed and “stigmatised” groups across Europe.

It is crucial to uncover and draw attention to what is going on in these obscure corners of the Internet and to demonstrate why the crisis makes this more important than ever. In the past couple of years, Europe has been said to be burning and the European project to be succumbing to the flames. But there is one smouldering fire that we above all need to extinguish. In the words of the Danish National Front:

In 1945, hope was extinguished. A free Europe wanted to prevent the return of capitalism and therefore democracy sent in all forces to quench freedom and autonomy. Attacks came from West to East and the fire was reduced to a flame, but the flame is still smouldering … (DNF 2010).

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Tina Askanius is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Communication and Media, Lund University, Lund, Sweden.

Yiannis Mylonas PhD is Assistant Professor in the Media and Communications’ Department, National Research University, Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia. Email: [email protected]

Notes

1 Disagreement prevails around the use of the somewhat problematic term “extremism” and the key differences between the various labels used to signify political actors on this vector. This results in an inconsistent or interchangeable use of terms such as radical, far right and extreme right. In the present context, we understand extra-parliamentarian movements as expressions of right-wing extremism, while the term far right is applied to political groups primarily concerned with participation in general elections and representation in democratic institutions (see, for example, Eatwell 2000; Rydgren 2010; Zaslove 2004).

2 We understand neoliberalism as a matrix of discourses, myths, practices and strategies that advance the economic understanding and organisation of all aspects of social life (Wacquant 2012, 70). On a political level, neoliberalism focuses on the “liberation” of private economic activity, at the expense of state welfare and redistributive policies, as well as on the dismantling of civil, social and political rights that are seen as obstacles to free market rationales.

3 GD and its allies abroad are trying to distance themselves publicly from their Nazi ideology in order to appeal to the masses as well as to whitewash the crimes of the Nazis. Nevertheless, there are countless proofs of their Nazi identity, such as photographs where GD leaders pose in Nazi uniforms and with Nazi symbols at different times over the last 30 years. See http://www.tvxs.gr/news/ellada/otan-mixaloliakos-kai-pappas-apetian-foro-timis-ston-xitler (accessed 30 June 2014).

4 The search terms guiding the selection of empirical material included Eurozone, financial crisis, economic crisis, public debt, austerity, EU, protests.

5 Nordfront is the online successor to the neo-Nazi tabloid magazine Folktribunen, which was in print until 2002. The former editor-in-chief of the magazine, Klaes Lund, is one of the leading figures in content production for Nordfront.

6 Langrén begun his political trajectory in Nationaldemokraterna, a splinter party from Sverigedemokraterna, in 2001 before initiating nationell.nu.

7 Danskernes Parti has given strong public support to GD, condemning the persecution of its members for criminal activity and plotting against the state and constitution since the revelations that followed the murder of the artist Pavlos Fussas by GD members in September 2013. Danskernes Parti members even visited Greece in February 2014 to participate in mobilisations organised by GD and were photographed with leading GD members.