Protecting the future ‘Us’: a rhetoric-performative multimodal analysis of the polarising far-right YouTube campaign videos in Finland

Figures & data

FIGURE 1. Palonen (2020) encapsulates the form of populism as a tool of analysis.

TABLE 1. Data on the videos (Accessed: 29 April 2022).

Video	Published	Length (minutes)	Viewings	Likes
Ketutus	20 March 2019	6:40	515,519	13,000
Sinimusta	31 January 2021	2:42	14,672	744

FIGURE 2. Levels of the analysis.

FIGURE 3. The two leaders and their backgrounds (Ketutus 6:20; Sinimusta 2:30).

FIGURE 4. Urban sites in Tampere and Helsinki presented in the videos (Ketutus 0:50; Sinimusta 1:34).

FIGURE 5. The politicians wearing half-masks and the monster (Ketutus 0:52, 0:55, 4:11, 5:52).

FIGURE 6. Representations of women in Ketutus (1:54, 1:56, 2:50, 4:49).

FIGURE 7. The BBM talking head stands on the soldiers’ graveyard in front of a cross (0:56), and Ketutus features the Evangelic-Lutheran Helsinki Cathedral (3:19).

FIGURE 8. Representations of white and blue-collar job losses in Ketutus (3:19) and Sinimusta (0:56).

TABLE 2. Exploring the form and contents of populist articulation reveals similarities and differences between the cases.

Populism	Us	Affect	Frontier	Affect
Finns Party	People = monster + protective Finns + white-collar workers	Nostalgy + anger + protection of victims + pride + Lutheran heritage	Corrupt internationalist elite + migrants of 2015–2016	Loathing + greed + egoism + satire of recent past/future
Blue–Black Movement	‘White’ patriotic Finns + blue-collar workers	Nostalgy + pride + protection + Finnish blood heritage	Red + globalists + internationalists + (neo)liberals + non-Finnish migrants	Greed + egoism + rootlessness + xenophobia + historical memory

Palonen, E. 2020. “Ten Theses on Populism and Democracy.” In The Populist Manifesto, edited by E. Eklundh and A. Knott, 55–69. London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

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