Trust Us: Reproducing the Nation and the Scandinavian Nationalist Populist Parties 9781782389286

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TRUST US

Trust Us Reproducing the Nation and the Scandinavian Nationalist Populist Parties

EEE By

Anders Hellström

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

Published by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com

© 2016 Anders Hellström

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hellström, Anders. Trust us : reproducing the nation and the Scandinavian nationalist populist parties / by Anders Hellstrom. pages cm Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-78238-927-9 (hardback) — ISBN 978-1-78238-928-6 (ebook) 1. Political parties—Scandinavia. 2. Nationalism—Scandinavia. 3. Populism—Scandinavia. 4. Multiculturalism—Political aspects—Scandinavia. 5. Scandinavia—Ethnic relations—Political aspects. 6. Scandinavia—Politics and government. I. Title. JN7066.H45 2015 324.2’1830948—dc23 2015013053

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: 978-1-78238-927-9 (hardback) ISBN: 978-1-78238-928-6 (ebook)

To my parents, who from the very start put their trust in me and always encouraged further accomplishments.

E CON TEN T S

Illustrations Prologue Acknowledgments Introduction. Gaining Credibility in the Public Debate

viii x xii 1

Chapter 1. Towards a Multi-Dimensional Political Party Space

31

Chapter 2. National Myths as Political Opportunity Structures and Editorial Writers as Opinion Makers

56

Chapter 3. National Myth Making in Sweden, Norway and Denmark

84

Chapter 4. Issues and Tone towards the Nationalist Populist Parties in Mainstream Press Editorials in Scandinavia with Anniken Hagelund and Susi Meret

112

Chapter 5. Framing the National Populist Parties in Mainstream Press Editorials in Scandinavia with Anniken Hagelund and Susi Meret

130

Conclusion. Similar, Yet Different

168

Epilogue

186

Appendix 1. Coding Instructions

190

Appendix 2. Mean Tone by newspaper

195

Appendix 3. Topics by newspaper

198

Bibliography

201

Index

219

E I LLUSTRATIO N S

Figures 0.1

0.2 3.1 4.1

To have an impact on domestic politics, political parties need to cross the threshold of credibility in order to get access to the zone of acquiescence, thus gaining electoral fortune in the political dynamic of the votes.

8

Election results for three nationalist populist parties, 1989– 2013.

11

The essence of the People’s Home according to the Sweden Democrats.

94

Editorials with the SD as major actor, 2009–2012, Sweden (N=137).

118

Editorials with the FrP as major actor, 2009–2012, Norway (N=313).

119

Editorials with the DF as major actor, 2009–2012, Denmark (N= 134).

120

Mean value of tone for all topics in all years by country and role.

121

Proportion (in percentage) of negative articles where the nationalist populist party is major actor, by country and year.

121

4.6

Topics by country, 2009–2012. ‘Major’ articles (N=810).

123

4.7

Mean value of tone (1–3) for different topics in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish editorials, where the party has a major role.

124

4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5

ILLUSTRATIONS

ix

Tables 2.1

Coding scheme for the analysis of the editorials in twelve newspapers during four years in three countries.

75

2.2

Reliability results: variable Genre.

77

2.3

Reliability result: variable Role.

77

2.4

Reliability results: variable Tone.

77

2.5

Reliability results: variable Topic.

78

4.1

Number of articles in the twelve newspapers.

4.2. Newspapers’ circulation rates in 2012. 4.3

115 116

The most frequently addressed topics in the Swedish public debate, 2009–2012.

125

The most frequently addressed topics in the Norwegian debate, 2009–2012.

126

The most frequently addressed topics in the Danish debate, 2009–2012.

126

A2.1 Mean tone by newspaper, where the party has a major role, 2009–2012.

195

A2.2 Mean tone by newspaper, where the party has a minor role, 2009–2012.

196

A2.3 Mean tone by newspaper, where the party has a major or minor role, 2009–2012.

197

A3.1 Topics in the editorials in the four Swedish newspapers (N= 838).

198

A3.2 Topics in the editorials in the four Norwegian newspapers (N=1458).

199

A3.3 Topics in the editorials in the four Danish newspapers (N= 828).

200

4.4 4.5

E PROLOGUE

Stockholm. Fall 1991. In the streets one evening there was a loud demonstration, with skinheads yelling ‘Sieg Heil’. This was a frightening experience and I stayed out of sight and silently listened to the demonstration. Later I found out that many of the participants in the demonstration were members of what was at the time an obscure organization/party called the Sweden Democrats (SD). Back then the party attracted massive media attention and it does now. Certainly, the reasons why the party appears frequently in the media spotlight differs today from 25 years ago, but the relation between the party and its’ media representations is yet highly contested. In Stockholm that particular evening I was afraid. Since then, society has changed, as it always does. Sweden is not the same. The SD is not the same party. I have myself changed. It is always easier to handle individual fears by creating distance between ourselves and the object(s) of our fear. The alternative is to invest the time to seriously consider the roots of our fears, to recline on the psychologist’s chair, so to speak; but what we find in ourselves might be less than appealing. However, as a society we share a common responsibility to critically reflect on who we are as people and how we feel about living with strangers. There is no short cut. There is no easy way out. We are ultimately afraid of ourselves, of our ability to live with strangers in increasingly diverse societies. These speculations have motivated me to write this book; this is not part of an effort to condemn the parties in the Scandinavian states that suggestively thrive on these emotions. Ultimately, this book comes from a desire of mine to understand the parties’ attempts to achieve, or perhaps maintain, credibility in the political competition for votes. On 14 September 2014, soon after this book was written, there were national elections held in Sweden. The SD rose from 5.7 per cent to 12.9 per cent of the total votes and became the third largest party in Sweden. At the same time, the other political parties in the national parliament refused to collaborate with the party. The mass media and the ‘cultural

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elite’ remain very negative towards the party and seemingly depart from the rhetorical idea that the SD voters are neither racist nor stupid, even if according to many chronicles and editorials in mainstream press voting for the SD is the wrong solution to the problems Sweden faces today (cf. Hellström and Nilsson 2010). Also, fractions of the electorate counter-mobilize against the SD in e.g. street manifestations or at their work places. Everybody, vertically and horizontally, seemingly hates the party – aside from the voters. If anything, this situation reminds us that crossing the electoral threshold is not enough to provide an impact on domestic politics. You also need to cross the threshold of credibility. This is what this book is about. For their voters, the SD represents a credible voice against ‘the elites’, though. In the post-election trauma, explanations in the media for the SD’s success point to correlations between municipalities with high unemployment rates and the electoral fortunes of the SD (Dagens Arena, 24 September 2014), while others instead emphasise that this postulated correlation lacks empirical support (Expo Idag Blogg, 17 September 2014). However, most analyses argue that dense immigration populations in the municipality do not always have significant effect on the electoral fortunes of the SD. It is not that simple. Looking more closely at the scholarly literature, from the voters’ perspective, the perceived congruence between the mainstream parties in the field of immigration policy sustains the propensity to vote for the SD as an alternative voice (Loxbo 2014). The immigration issue resurfaces in numerous policy areas, from traditional welfare policy to the disputes over wolf hunting, but it is not (at least not always) the main issue in its own right. From the SD voters’ perspective, it is perhaps by now hard to distinguish between the two larger parties, the liberal-conservative party (Moderaterna) and the Social Democrats. The SD thus offers an alternative voice for people who are united in a feeling of not being listened to, but who yet refrain from blatant racism. If anything, the emergence and continuous electoral success of the SD has brought with it increased polarization in the public debate in Sweden. The Danish People´s Party in Denmark and the Progress Party in Norway have brought with them similar tensions. If anything the development of these three parties in the three countries remind us of the polarization in the electorate all across Scandinavia.1

NOTES 1. In the epilogue, I will further discuss recent events in Swedish politcs and also in Denmark and Norway.

E ACKNOWLEDGME N T S

My office is currently located at the Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare (MIM) at Malmö University, which is probably the best place to work at that I ever could have expected. Extraordinary people from various disciplines socially and intellectually interact on a daily basis with one another, sharing a mutual interest for understanding and analysing migration-related issues (among many others). This book is my contribution to a research project, which I chair, financed by NOS-HS (Nordcorp) during 2013–2015. The title of this project is: Ideological Transformations, Organizational Development and Mainstream Reactions: A Comparison of Populist Parties in Four Nordic Countries. The results presented here evolved in fruitful dialogue with the other project participants with whom I meet on a regular basis. I am also attached to the Department of Global Political Studies (GPS), and I fortunately benefit from their activities. Within the GPS department, I enjoy the company of and share experiences with fellow teachers in the fields of International Migration and Ethnic Relations (IMER), European Studies (IPES), International Relations (IR) and Political Science. An early version of the first chapter of this book was presented at a GPS research seminar. I am truly grateful for the valuable comments that derived from that session. I presented the introduction chapter at the Department of Political Science in Gothenburg in September 2014. This resulted in a truly fruitful discussion that helped me to improve on the text. Thanks for this. The third chapter developed from a joint essay written together with Magnus Wennerhag, which was published in Partezipazione et Conflitto (PACO). Previous versions of this essay were presented at the Nordic Political Science Association (NOPSA) meeting in Vaasa (August 2011), the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) meeting in Copenhagen (April 2012), the Association for the Study of Nationalities (ASN) meeting in New York (April 2012), the Department of Political Science in Oslo (May 2011), the International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion (IMISCOE) meeting in Amsterdam (August 2012) and the Italian Soci-

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ety of Political Science (SISP) meeting in Rome (September 2012). I am grateful for the valuable comments that stem from these sessions and also for permission from Fabio de Nardis from PACO to republish some material from that essay in this book. Chapters 4 and 5 were co-written with Anniken Hagelund (Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo and Institute for Social Research, Oslo). Font. and Susi Meret (Department of Cultural and Global Studies, affiliated with CoMI (Center for the Studies of Migration and Diversity, Aalbord University). This co-operation has been a true pleasure throughout and definitely enhanced the quality of the whole book. Thank you. An earlier draft of our work was shared at the IMISCOE meeting in Malmö, August 2013, at the ECPR Workshop “Defending or Damaging Democracy?“ in September 2014 and at a networking meeting with Nordic Populism (NOPO) in March 2015. Thanks for all the valuable comments on that draft. Tine Albjerg Liingaard assisted us with the collection of data in the Danish case. She did a wonderful job. Worth also mentioning is that Susi Meret and I have recently initiated a joint research network within IMISCOE. Jenny Kiiskinen, Emil Edenborg, Björn Fryklund, Anna Bendz, Henrik Emilsson, Bo Petersson, Ioana Bunescu and Christian Fernández have read various chapters at different stages of the working process. Anniken Hagelund, Christian Fernández, Anna Bendz and Brigitte Suter also helped me with the text on the book’s back cover. In the last minute I wrote an epilogue to the book in order to also include more events. Anna Bendz, Henrik Emilsson, Emil Edenborg and Cristian Norocel all gave me relevant feedback on this text. Thank you very much for all your comments and constructive feedback. Inge Dahlstedt helped and encouraged me with the SPSS work. Angela Andersen did the proof reading of the translation of the quotes. Thank you. I would also like to send a thank you to the five test coders who helped me conduct the reliability test, the details of which are presented in chapter 2. Thank you Jenny Kiiskinen, Björn Fryklund, Henrik Emilsson, Niklas Orrenius and Axel Bengtsson. An extended thanks goes to three anonymous peer reviewers who all contributed to make the book much better. Finally, my three children, Benjamin, Minja and Anie, share with me their wonderful enthusiasm, energy and joy, which this book definitely benefits from.

E Introduction Gaining Credibility in the Public Debate

Scene 1 Sweden. Election day, 19 September 2010. The votes have been counted. In the national elections the Sweden Democrats (SD) did for the first time cross the electoral threshold to parliament with 5.7 per cent of the vote. Lars Ohly, leader of the Left Party (Vänsterpartiet), is invited on television to comment on the election results. On his way to the make-up room he is accompanied by the popular TV journalist Kristian Luuk. They are chitchatting, a conversation which is broadcast live to the viewers. After a short while Luuk reveals to Ohly that he will not be alone in the make-up room, but be sharing space with Jimmie Åkesson, the SD party leader. When Ohly finds out, he turns around and walks out. Ohly explains his behaviour to the press afterwards: ‘I represent all of those who the Sweden Democrats are against and I will never have anything to do with racists’ (Maktkamp 24, 19 September 2010).1 Scene 2 In summer 2012 approximately 2000 Roma people without accommodation are seeking refuge in Oslo (Osloby, 14 July 2012). Stian Berger Røsland, municipal commissioner for the mainstream-right party Høyre, explains his worries: ‘The free movement of people is a progress in Europe, and it is good news for all Europeans who wish to apply for a job in another country. But at the same time it requires that everybody can support themselves when they are abroad. Europe is torn by economic and social uneasiness, and it is a difficult time in which to have the free movement of people. The situation in Oslo illustrates the conflict between the different concerns.’ The current leader of the Progress Party, Siv Jensen, agrees with Røsland that the Roma people who cannot afford a living on their own should be sent back home: ‘It is people who are not capable of earning their own living that are prone to commit criminal acts. Everybody who follows this case sees what is going on. Enough is enough, set up a bus and send them out’ (Aftenposten, 16 July 2012).

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Scene 3 In 2008 Lene Espersen was elected party leader of the Danish Conservative Party. She was also the deputy prime minister of Denmark. In the coalition government that from 2001 to 2011 ran the country, her party was in the governmental position. In 2009 Denmark hosted an annual climate conference; before the event began, Espersen said: ‘If you go around thinking that the greatest threat to our existence is the environment, which threatens to flood your life the coming decades, then you better think again. The greatest threat against Denmark and Danish values is Muslim.’

The excerpts included here concern credibility. In the Swedish case (scene 1), Lars Ohly does not treat the party leader of the Sweden Democrats as a legitimate adversary. Ohly does not see any chance of having a normal exchange of views and ideas with Jimmie Åkesson. The SD is not considered a credible political opponent. The Norwegian case (scene 2) shows that the Progress Party (FrP) leader employs a tougher tone, compared to the representative from the mainstream-right party, based on perceptions of what ‘everybody’ already knows. Yet they do share similar opinions. In September 2013 Høyre won the national elections; but more importantly, they opened the doors for governmental co-operation with the FrP and they now form a minority government together with tacit support from the two other bourgeois parties, Venstre and Kristelig Folkeparti. In Denmark (scene 3) the harsh tone towards Islam is today used also by mainstream political actors such as, in this case, the deputy prime minister. Based on these excerpts both the FrP in Norway and the Danish People’s Party (DF) in Denmark are seemingly more aligned with their political adversaries, compared to the SD in Sweden. Gaining credibility in the political space requires reaching out with a particular political agenda to presumptive voters. The aim of this book is to explore similarities and differences between the three nationalist populist parties in Sweden, Denmark and Norway in terms of credibility in the public debate. The book deals with political communication and party political dynamics, focusing on three nationalist populist parties that mobilize voters in their countries who are concerned and perhaps worried about increased levels of ethnic diversity in previously more homogenous national states. Theoretically, I contribute to the literature on various explanations for the rise of nationalist populist parties in established liberal democracies. I here emphasize the structural conditions for national identity formation in the three Scandinavian countries. I present the argument that parties outside mainstream consensus not only have to cross the electoral thresh-

INTRODUCTION

3

old to affect domestic politics, but also a threshold of credibility; i.e. they have to communicate their political claims from credible ethos-positions. Whereas there are obvious fissures in the public opinion on national identity and immigration, I here presume that a nationalist political party needs to tap into popular notions of national identity in order to affect domestic politics. In short, policies cannot be changed until the cultural codes are altered, even if the changes have electoral support. Of course, this is not a zero-sum game. If a ‘new’ political party gains a substantial amount of electoral fortunes, it can attract other parties to co-operate with them even if the parties do not always agree with each other. But in order to do so, to provide an impact on domestic politics, the cultural codes need to be congruent with the ideals of the new party. Crossing the electoral threshold is not enough; a political contestant also needs to cross the threshold of credibility. The SD is not there. But the DF and FrP are. Empirically, the book contributes with an initial test of the threshold of credibility, focusing on the three nationalist populist parties in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. These parties channel demands of the electorate, united in an increased reluctance towards diversity in the Scandinavian welfare states. The test has been conducted through analyses of the party manifestoes (how these parties attract voters and aim to reach the zone of acquiescence by references to popularly held sentiments and dreams of past days’ social cohesion) and also through the reactions to the electoral fortunes of the parties under study in mainstream press editorials. The basic argument is that the parties need to be conceived as credible political actors on the editorial pages in order to provide an impact on domestic politics.

The Audiences Rhetorical claims both presuppose and constitute convergence and a sense of community belonging between the sender and the receiver (Kjeldsen 2013: 185 –187). Who is then capable of assessing whether a party falls in either category, of being credible or not? Is it the voters or perhaps instead the political or cultural elites who decide what counts as credible, and what does not? Belisa Marochi (2010: 28) explains in her Ph.D. thesis that ‘the audience in which claims are made are crucial for the claim to have momentum’. Important to note is that the stable ethos-positions are not necessarily a quality of the sender, but rather attitudes of the receiver(s) who assess the claim (Kjeldsen 2013: 156). In general, our opinions about the claim makers reflect our ability to interpret or accurately assess

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the claims being made (ibid.: 127). The sender thus constitutes her or his own audience. With particular appeals to the people, the sender already decides who the audience(s) is (ibid.: 344). Here I address both the claims made by the nationalist populist parties themselves (see chapter 3 in this book) and also how the opinion makers mediate these claims in the public debate (see chapters 4 and 5 in this book). The same claims can be seen as valid in front of one audience, while still rebutted in yet another. To illustrate this, the claim that a country cannot handle more immigration can be positively received by the majority of the participants in a discussion forum on the Internet and yet be falsified by most journalists and politicians commenting on this claim in mainstream print media. Instead of discussing one public debate, we should instead refer to multiple publics, recognizing the evolvement of various counter-publics (Fraser 1990; Goodwin 2011). It matters also from which position this claimed is being articulated, the position from where the message is being sent.

Chapter Outline The book concentrates on a comparison of the nationalist populist parties in a delimited region – i.e. Scandinavia. Hitherto research on this party family has been mainly devoted to country-specific cases, or to comparing two countries.2 More generally there are larger studies in which the Scandinavian countries are included (Art 2011; Betz 1994; Kitschelt and McGann 1995; Mudde 1997; Norris 2005). However, in such studies the contextual knowledge is, at least to some extent, so forced as to be insufficient. Moreover, these large-N studies are dependent on well-informed single-case studies (Dahlström and Esaiasson 2013). Phrased differently, it is important with so-called thick descriptions of features such as political rhetoric and mainstream reactions to make sure that any type of large-N study makes the correct interpretation of a single case. The other way around, this comparative study contributes as well with more analytical depth for single-case studies that benefit from comparative knowledge. Given that the Scandinavian countries are fairly similar in terms of demand-side factors (degree of industrialization, levels of unemployment, welfare state systems and so forth), a Scandinavic comparison offers a unique opportunity to isolate the effects of the supply-side factors. In short, supply-side factors emphasize the dynamics of how mass opinion translates into party political preferences (see e.g. Gorodzeisky and Semyonov 2009; Semyonov et al. 2006).

INTRODUCTION

5

In this introduction I will first turn to the concept of credibility in relation to the structure of political competition. Second, I introduce the general wrapping of my study: how the universal welfare states in territorial bounded spaces manage ideals of multiculturalism and (ethnic) diversity. To this controversy, the three nationalist populist parties offer a particular answer, and I thirdly introduce the labelling issue as it regards this particular party family. Fourth, I turn to the general analytical guise of my own study, drawing on Ole Wæver’s (2001) layered discursive approach, to clarify how the basic structure of national identity formation intersects with the nationalist parties’ claim-making strategies. From this follows my emphasis on the forms of politics and the main analytical categories guiding the analysis: nationalism and populism as communication strategies. Finally, I make explicit some limits of the study and present a chapter outline for the book.

Credibility It is not what you say that most matters, it is rather from which position you articulate yourself (Hellström 2006: 19). Provided that the listener/ reader shall seriously consider what is being said and/or written, a political message has to be articulated from a credible position. This might not be important for extremist parties or movements, though I suggest that any political party that wishes to allocate a significant proportion of votes needs to cross the threshold of credibility in order to communicate its politics effectively to the audience and, ultimately, have a significant impact on domestic politics. Credibility is a narrower concept than e.g. legitimacy. Credibility explicitly concerns political language and how we interpret the claims being addressed in the public debate. It concerns the construction of ethospositions in the public debate. The Swedish case epitomizes a situation where the public discussion is extensively polarized. The polarization in Sweden consists of two contrasting camps. On the one hand, there are those, like Ohly, who actively pursue the argument that the SD is a racist party, deeply ingrained with the legacy of a deplorable Neo-Nazi past.3 On the other hand, the SD voters might think that they vote for a decent party that is being ridiculed and sidestepped by the political and cultural elites of society (including Ohly), all in the spirit of political correctness. Still, the SD gathered enough voters to enter into the national parliament. There is a struggle of meaning concerning what counts as credible and what does not. The art of reproducing the nation features different elements, depending on

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the claims of national cohesion made by the sender. Whereas a grand majority of the Swedish population tends to agree with Ohly, there is a significant minority that would contradict this claim and instead argue that only the SD speaks the truth. In the perspective of the political establishment, the SD does not merely express the wrong views; ultimately, the SD also represents an evil. In the mainstream public debate, the SD is viewed as something ‘the cat dragged in’. However, some would say that despite this collective denouncement of the party, other parties have taken over the SD’s problem formulation; from a party political perspective, the political opponents from the other camp risk being accused of sleeping with the enemy: ‘representatives along the political spectrum seek to, on the one hand, distance themselves from SD and, on the other, indicate that perhaps the other camp is to be blamed for the advancement of the SD’ (Hellström and Nilsson 2010: 68). In terms of credibility, the SD is a highly interesting case. A majority of the voters would concur with the (mainstream) media reporting on the party and the unwillingness of the other parliamentary parties to cooperate with the SD. A significant minority of the voters, though, would instead unite against the cultural and political elites to articulate sympathies for the ‘radical underdog’. In Norway the FrP attracted 16.3 per cent of the vote in the 2013 national elections, and the party has a legacy from the early 1970s. In 2013 the party celebrated its fortieth anniversary, and since its inception it has held seats in parliament (Jupskås 2013). It remains clear that the views and attitudes of the FrP are also shared by some of the other parliamentary parties. The party is not ‘new’ and is certainly big enough to be recognized as a regular political adversary in Norwegian politics. The 2013 national elections led to, for the first time, the party entering into government. As we shall see, in terms of both historical legacy and influence, the FrP is very different compared to e.g. the SD in Sweden. In terms of credibility, it is relevant to ask whether the FrP uses similar rhetoric as the SD. In the Danish case I deliberately did not choose an excerpt from a DF representative (see above, scene 3), but instead from the leader of the Conservative Party. In the literature, Denmark is usually described as a case in which the other parliamentary parties and many other public actors adapt to the restrictive language of the DF in an attempt to steal back lost votes (Green-Pedersen and Krogstrup 2008; Rydgren 2010). In terms of credibility, the DF is closely associated with the general tone of the mainstream debate on immigration in Denmark (see further Hellström and Hervik 2014).

INTRODUCTION

7

This all perhaps suggests a study of credibility that features an extended time frame, including time periods that precede the initial progress of the FrP in the 1973 national elections, the DF in the 1998 elections in Denmark and the SD in the 2006 national elections. Of course, I will take into account the parties’ different stages of development to explain differences between them in terms of credibility. Faced with internal ruptures and a lack of a solid organizational base, a party is a likely candidate to become a ‘flash phenomenon’ (Taggart 2002), and thus abruptly suffer from heavy losses in their electoral support after having crossed the initial parliamentary threshold. Many of these ‘new’ parties mobilize voters around an anti-establishment agenda that helps them to cross the initial electoral threshold. Antonis A. Ellinas (2010: 15) relies on the Sartorian notion of a ‘threshold of relevance’. Once the party has crossed this threshold, it is likely to moderate its claims to address a broader audience, which the mainstream parties will find more difficult to ignore. At this latter stage, it is increasingly important to focus on the internal party arena, i.e. the organizational capacity of the new parliamentary party. Here, however, I will limit myself to, synchronically, analysing the same period (2009–2012) in the three countries, exploring the status of the three parties only after all parties are in the parliament.4

The Zone of Acquiescence In order to achieve a large enough amount of voters to remain in the national parliament, to gain additional electoral fortunes and provide an impact via e.g. coalition making, it is important to remain within the safe ‘zone of acquiescence’ – to avoid making claims that are perceived as too extreme, e.g. too leftist or too rightist (Norris 2005: 20). In this comfortable zone the voters would consider what you have to say even if they do not agree with you. Under conditions of perfect competition, Pippa Norris assumes, a majority of the voters prefer parties that operate in the zone of acquiescence, articulating policy proposals that are acceptable to the public, though the receivers do not necessarily have to conform to the content of these arguments. Successful parties thus shape their policy proposals within this zone, as already discussed by Anthony Downs in the 1950s (1957), and they therefore tend to converge at the centre, minimizing the risk of losing votes. I believe that the structure of this zone goes beyond left and right and does not merely correspond to electoral support, but also credibility. The dynamic of public opinion and the failure of the mainstream parties to notice a shift in the zone of acquiescence – i.e. their failure to fully con-

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sider a shift between the voters’ (unsatisfied) demands and the supply – provides openings for new political parties to challenge the mainstream parties (see e.g. Rydgren 2004). The zone is never static but varies accordingly, due to what is depicted as extreme or normal in the public’s eye. The excerpts from the scenes above indicate that the zone, and thus what is considered as acceptable and normal, varies between these three otherwise similar countries. Importantly, the zone also varies over time. What is depicted as extreme today was perhaps depicted as normal in the 1960s and vice versa. Even if my focus here is oriented towards the early 2000s and on, we should not assume an eternal time perspective. The contours of this zone are never static, but vary in space and in time. Your ethos changes every time you open your mouth, Jens E. Kjeldsen (2013: 133) explains. I here focus on the ambitions of three nationalist populist parties in three similar socio-political contexts (i.e. the three Scandinavian countries) to cross the threshold of credibility in order to establish a credible position from where they can make their voices heard. In order to create a niche in the electoral market, a new political party needs to be recognized as both credible in the voters’ eyes and an underdog in relation to the governing elites in public debate. It has to be ‘radical’ in the sense that it has to answer to voters who are not being satisfied (enough) by the other parliamentary parties. The new party has to establish a niche in the political space.5 Otherwise, it will not be perceived by voters as being dissimilar or alternative enough.6 Also, considering the recent national elections in Sweden in September 2014, it seems fair to say that all three parties have gained a considerable amount of votes. The SD, however, has – at least not yet – been able to impinge on domestic politics. In terms of policies, Sweden had adopted a more generous asylum policy after that the SD has entered into parliament than before when the country was more in tune with equivalent European countries. This goes against the trend in the rest of Europe (Emilsson 2014). Herbert Kitschelt (2012: 237), in his ‘minimalist supply-side model’, suggests that ‘parties’ perceived policy positions are not instantly and

Figure 0.1. To have an impact on domestic politics, political parties need to cross the threshold of credibility in order to get access to the zone of acquiescence, thus at the same time gaining support from the moderate voters and also increase possibilities of cooperation with mainstream parties.

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freely chosen; they are based on ideology and reputation. Parties build up a cumulative stock of perceptions that shapes people’s view of their policy position.’ I shall here devote attention to how the three nationalist populist parties go about communicating their politics effectively enough to optimize their voter support. In the public debate the listeners/readers interpret the articulated messages differently, depending on whether the sender manages to balance on the tightrope between radicalism (potentially in the zone) and extremism (outside the zone) – no matter what is actually being said – and thus adopt a credible and stable position in the zone of acquiescence. This activity is tantamount to what I refer to as the construction of stable ethos-positions. A standard criticism of rational-choice approaches relates to the oblivion of the strong passions involved in e.g. national identity formation (see further e.g. Özkirimli 2010: 124). Instrumental and interest-based rationality – e.g. that all political actors seek to maximize voting support – tends to omit the central functioning of morality and passions involved in political mobilization. This is important, not least since Norris’s model on the zone of acquiescence relies on standard rational-choice assumptions (2005: 20): ‘The theory assumes that under conditions of perfect competition, rational voters will choose the party whose position is closest to their own ideological preferences and will shun the parties furthest away. … Rational parties seek to maximize their share of votes and seats by adopting the ideological position closest to the median voter.’ Focusing on credibility in the dynamic of political competition, I thus add to her model, highlighting reasons and emotions7 and thus the interaction between politics and language. This move invites an understanding that does not primarily engage with a one-dimensional left-right scale, where the median voters prefer politics that are neither too leftist nor too rightist. Conversely, I suggest that the nationalist populist parties need to endorse both reason and emotions to cross the threshold of credibility. At root here is the question of trust: can we trust the person (or in our case the party or the party representative) making eligible political claims that we are, hypothetically, willing to listen to? This is core for my analysis of the political claims made by the three nationalist populist parties and how these claims are being mediated on the editorial pages. The ethos-position crystallizes in the interaction between how the parties (positively) present themselves and how their antagonists respond to this challenge. For a claim to have its desired effects it needs to be compatible (not necessarily identical) with already existing beliefs and popular notions of e.g. national identity. In the political communication of the votes the analyst needs to engage with both the content and the form of politics and thus avoid narrowly

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focusing on, though not omitting, logos. In the analysis of political rhetoric and political persuasion, the three concepts of Logos, Ethos and Pathos are often used to classify and assess, for instance, a political speech (Kjeldsen 2013: 33). Logos refers to rational political communication. It is based on facts, and its ultimate virtue is reason. Ethos refers to the speaker’s ability to establish reliable arguments. The ultimate virtue is credibility. Pathos appeals to emotions and the speaker’s ability to invoke feelings and generate enthusiasm. The ultimate virtue is passion. Ideally, a political speech should manage to balance these three virtues. The failure to reach equilibrium may twist virtue into the reverse – i.e. reason risks turning into dogmatism, credibility risks perverting into moralism and passion may degenerate into pathology. In logocentric political argumentation, the distinction between content and form dissolves: the way we talk corresponds with what we intend to say. After the (re)discovery of the linguistic turn in social sciences, though, it is quite ordinary to claim that the way we talk has constitutive effects.8 I will not go into further detail on that here, except to emphasize that political communication is ambiguous and thus has productive force.9 In democratic societies political authority rests ultimately on the demos (the people), and political communication also serves to rationalize and justify political authority in view of the public – thus the need for credibility (ethos) and passion (pathos).10 The question of how we authorize political power in representative democracies is balanced between the direct demands of the citizenry and the representative elites’ mediated power. I here argue that this basic insight concerns the fundamentals of political research. This is neither necessarily a normative plea to engage with the sociology of emotions (Barbalet 1998) nor a hope for a vision of politics that is perfectly reasonable and thus completely logocentric. The analytical category of emotions both relates to the moral aspects of politics (ethos) and the passionate investment in politics (pathos). The language of morality, to do what is right, alluding to ethos, and the passions invested in language, alluding to pathos, might suggest very different things. In the formation of ethos-positions in the public debate it makes sense to conceive of the two rhetorical virtues, taken together, as distinct from logos, though. My approach thus endorses both moral sentiments (ethos) and passions (pathos) in the political language. The so-called affective turn in contemporary sociology emphasizes how the affective appeals involved in popular culture are being interwoven with everyday politics. As a consequence, there is a growing demand for more emotion in the field of politics: ‘Far from being an oppositional dichotomy, the relationship between feeling and reason is one of deep interconnection and works complementarity. To invite emotional engage-



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ment is to facilitate rational discourse, not to banish it’ (Richards 2004: 340). Barry Richards explains the intersection between culture and politics in some greater detail (ibid.: 342): ‘popular culture is increasingly entering and shaping politics, constituting everyday politics in the content and channels of political communications, in the dynamics of public opinion, and in the values and decisions of individual citizens’. Of course, some political observers are reluctant to embrace or worried about this development as it risks the spectralization of politics (see e.g. Wendt 2012; Mazzoleni 2003). Another approach, which is also congruent with mine, would be to acknowledge that the study of political communication has to consider the forms of politics and not merely the content. I will thus here focus on political rhetoric and not for instance the implicit ideological content; i.e. what can be read between the lines or unveiled as the exact nature of voter demographics. This rhetoric could be focused on maximizing voter support, but not exclusively. The political language adopted by the three nationalist populist parties is employed to enable them to cross the threshold of credibility while still remaining underdogs in the public debate. The three parties put under scrutiny here radicalize mainstream concerns about multiculturalism, the failure of integration mantra and popular worries about extra-European immigration to create a niche in the electoral market (see further e.g. Hellström 2010). All three parties are relatively successful in this regard, but I argue that only two of them (the FrP and the DF) occupy a credible position in the political competition for votes in the early 2000s. This might, in turn, help us to explain their varying electoral fortunes, at least before the 2014 national elections in Sweden (see figure 0.2).11 25 20 15

The Sweden Democrats TThe Danish People’s Party TThe Norwegian Progress Party

10 5 0 1989 1991 1993 1994 1997 1999 2001 2002 2005 2006 2007 2009 2010 2011 2013

Figure 0.2.  Election results for three nationalist populist parties, 1989–2013.12

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Multiculturalism and/or Welfare in Scandinavia The debate around the role and position of the three nationalist populist parties in the three Scandinavian countries poses an even larger question about how we live together in increasingly diverse societies. How do the Scandinavian universal welfare states, with historically homogenous populations, tackle challenges of ethnic diversity? Are the ideals of multiculturalism compatible with the welfare states’ aims of equal redistribution, bounded by the territorial limits of the national state?13 The current economic crisis amplifies differences of positions, attitudes and reactions towards migration into Europe, both within the nationstates and at the European level. While some welcome ethnic and demographic diversification, there is growing concern over the effects of immigration on the economy, on the labour market and on welfare. These anxieties are related to the cultural impact of migration on national identity. But no matter the premises, positions often translate into curbing and controlling migration flows and into demands for political action directed against refugees, asylum seekers and labour migrants. Within this context, popular xenophobic sentiments today show different and more dangerous faces. Different kinds of outbursts against people of non-native backgrounds (or members of minority groups) are part of the everyday experiences of many minorities, e.g. Jews and Muslims in Europe, who are subject to various forms of discrimination, exclusionary practices, deprivation and unfair treatment. It is by appealing to these xenophobic attitudes that nationalist populist parties in Scandinavia endeavour to transmute these sentiments into political influence and to mobilize voters on the basis of these issues. The question of how multiculturalism can best be merged with the universal welfare state has recently gained prominence in the scholarly field (see e.g. Kivisto and Wahlbeck 2013a; Taras 2013). This debate also creates tension in public opinion between those who embrace increased diversity and those who resist it. The question of how the Scandinavian states have chosen to tackle the challenges of ethnic diversity lies at the center of this book. How do the core elements of the ideology, practices and rhetorical claims of multiculturalism merge with the Social Democratic welfare state, and the visions of a just and equal society (Kivisto and Wahlbeck 2013c: 327)?14 In order to scrutinize this relationship, one can dig deeper into the various countries’ policy making or public opinion. Here I have chosen a different angle: I will focus on discourse and not on policy. More specifically, I will focus on how national identity (how the state, the nation and the people are merged together) is being reproduced by

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the parties and discursively negotiated through public debate. This is both to analyse how the nationalist populist parties in these countries mobilize voters along conflicting notions of national identity and migration and to study the reactions to these claims in the public debate. This discussion dwells, however, on an even larger philosophical debate between universalism and particularism, between liberalism and democracy. We will explore this further in the next section.

The Paradox of Liberalism and/or Democracy The paradox of liberal democracy, according to Chantal Mouffe (2000), is that it combines the incongruent ideals of the universal (liberal) rights of the individual to be protected from both state oppression and the ‘tyranny of the masses’ with the particularistic democratic right of predestined demos to popular sovereignty by means of majority rule. According to Mouffe, this paradox constitutes the dynamic of representative democracy. The paradox lies at the core of much debate on the challenges of ethnic diversity to domestic welfare regimes; it deals with universalist claims of inclusionary practices in territorial bounded spaces – hence in this case the Scandinavian national states. Seyla Behabib (2001) emphasizes – turning to e.g. Immanuel Kant and Hannah Arendt – that universal principles founded on cosmopolitan rights under the observance of human rights need to be circumscribed within particular civic communities. While scholars have argued over the right balance between universalism and particularism, the proper balance can probably never be resolved in national democracies, however ‘its impact can be mitigated through a renegotiation and reiteration of the dual commitments to human rights and sovereign self-determination’ (ibid.: 47). From my point of view, democratic politics always involve negotiations over the balance between universalism and particularism. And the role of and debate around the nationalist populist parties in the Scandinavian states draws on this classic philosophical controversy. It deals with the fundamental question of who belongs to particular communities (Bosniak 2008).15 One practical implication of this is the reminder that democratic politics, and perhaps migration policy making in particular, is tied up with morality and is thus not merely about administration. Among others, Mouffe (2005) has emphasized that politics today is increasingly being played out in the moral register between good and evil, rather than merely between left and right. To speak the language of morality in the sphere of politics is to make explicit the passions of representative politics; it alludes to instinct rather than to rational deliberation.

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Before I continue to further explain my own approach, I will present the objects of scrutiny for this study and thus approach the labelling issue as it regards the three nationalist populist parties.

The Nationalist Populist Parties Whereas most scholars agree there exists a ‘new’ party family that pursues a strong anti-immigration stance, there is hardly any consensus on how to label it. Some would prefer the label ‘extreme right’ (e.g. Goodwin 2011) to signify parties that ultimately jeopardize liberal democratic institutions and values. Others – perhaps more common today – would adhere to the notion of radical populism (or right-wing populism). To name a few examples: ‘extreme right’ (Carter 2005; Ignazi 2003), ‘radical right’ (Norris 2005), ‘populist-radical right’ (Mudde 2007), ‘far right’ (Ellinas 2010), ‘neo-fascism’ (Arnstad 2013) and ‘right-wing populists’ (Ivarsflaten 2008). In his comprehensive and oft-cited overview of populist radical right (PRR) parties in Europe, Cas Mudde (2007) extrapolates three main components of what – according to him – constitutes the ideological core of the populist radical right – namely, nativism, authoritarianism and populism.17 Nativism (what e.g. Jens Rydgren [2006] refers to as ethno-nationalism or ethno-pluralism) holds that the natives share devotion to their native country, and that the non-native ideas and people are considered fundamentally threatening to the homogenous national state. Authoritarianism implies a firm belief in a strictly ordered society based on law and strong family values, sometimes also associated with the reliance on a strong charismatic leader. These parties are right-wing oriented when it comes to socio-cultural issues such as national identity, immigration and queer politics. These parties tend to support socially conservative platforms on issues of e.g. family, religion and also immigration (cf. Akkerman and Hagelund 2007; Zaslove 2004: 74; Rydgren 2012; Norocel 2010). Finally, populism,18 in Mudde’s framework, suggests a ‘thin’ ideology (2007; see also Freeden 1998; Fieschi 2004; Stanley 2008) that divides society into two antagonistic homogenous groups, the ‘corrupt elite’ versus the ‘pure people’, and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté general. Populism is aimed at surpassing old class cleavages and the classic left-right divide to instead mobilize all kinds of voters along an anti-establishment agenda. In Mudde’s view the PRRs are radical rather than extreme, since they generally respect democratic procedures and pursue their politics through parliamentary channels. They also dismiss violence and other extra-par-

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liamentary activities to sustain political change. However, their politics are yet radical in the sense that they are critical of certain fundamental liberal democratic values such as freedom of religion and tolerance of minorities (Mudde 2007: 26). According to Hans-Georg Betz and Carol Johnson (2004), these parties are certainly opportunistic and claim to represent the true democratic voice of the people, but in their rhetoric a more extreme ideology shows its true face. According to the authors, these parties endeavour to overthrow the current liberal democratic regime and replace it with ethnocracy, a society which shows priority to a particular ethnic collective. There is a risk, Mudde adds, that such analyses, which tend towards the periphery, risk failing to acknowledge the mainstreaming of the extreme at the centre of politics. Commonly, the prefix ‘right-’ is added to signify parties that combine neo-liberal policies on socio-economic issues with authoritarian views on e.g. immigration, religion or abortion – Kitschelt referred to this as ‘the winning formula’ (Kitschelt and McGann 1997). The ‘New Right’, as it was developed in France under the label La Nouvelle Droite, is a composite term for parties and movements that endeavoured to counter the dominance of ‘the left’ (Declair 1999; Mudde 2007; Hellström and Nilsson 2010: 58). However, among the ‘new-right’ parties, arguably, there are both welfare-chauvinistic parties and more classic ‘neo-liberal’, anti-statist parties.19 Economy is a secondary issue for these parties, Mudde claims (2007: 119). He thus rejects the idea that neo-liberal economies constitute a defining characteristic. The SD, for example, combines Neo-Right rhetoric with a strong defence of the Social Democratic welfare state, which distinguishes it from the more neo-liberal-oriented parties that dominated this party family in the 1980s. The only thing in common for these parties, Elisabeth Ivarsflaten (2008) holds, is that they mobilize voters along a strong anti-immigration appeal. In the analysis, she tests three grievance models found in the literature dealing with seven so-called successful cases across Europe. The other so-called grievance models, related to e.g. changes in the economy and levels of political corruption, lack significance in the sense that they cannot explain the electoral fortunes of these parties in this oft-referred-to study. For Mudde and others (e.g. Stanley 2008) inclined to categorize populism as ‘thin ideology’, it is not enough to distinguish the PRR party family merely on the basis of its populism, rather it combines elements with other -isms, such as nationalism, managerialism or radicalism, to constitute a full-fledged ideology.

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By ‘nationalist populist parties’, I refer to parties that, more or less frequently, pursue politics and rhetoric around the populist divide between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’ centred on the nation – or rather the nation-state – as an exclusive category of reference (Hellström et al. 2012). Appeals to ‘the people’ are essential to recognize, and are used by the nationalist populist parties to provide their distinct interpretations of what constitutes national identity.

A Layered Discursive Approach To establish an ethos-position in the field of political communication is, in short, about creating an image of the party that is capable of attracting voters. In my context, this ultimately concerns the rhetorical means by which the three nationalist populist parties aim to present a positive self-presentation. The party claims evolve in constant interaction with the societal contexts where they are articulated – i.e. what generally have been referred to as political cultures (Edgerton et al. 1994). These political cultures, following e.g. Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba (1963), have an independent effect on the political structure of representative democracy (ibid.: 20). Ole Wæver (2001) shows how perceptions of national identity and thus ‘the Nordic’ people are played out in recent debates over European integration in the Nordic states. There are country-specific discourses of national identity that affect the public opinion and voting preferences and party cleavages in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, as well as in Finland. This framework, what Wæver (2001: 31) refers to as layered discursive structure, specifies how public debates around Europe are internalized in the domestic structure in the Nordic countries. It is built around three layers. Even if I concur with his reasoning that the debate on Europe is internal rather than external, I will here stick to two tiers, since I am restricting myself to the domestic public debate and how the positioning on the nationalist populist parties in the public debate (second tier) depends on already normalized notions of the state, the nation and the people in the socio-political development of the three countries (first tier). In other words, I am here not engaged with actual policies, neither on the national nor the European levels (cf. ibid.: 38). What I will show here is that parties eager to play ‘the nationalist card’ (Ellinas 2010) need to communicate their politics in harmony with popular notions of national identity. This is also how we can analyse domestic reactions to the electoral fortunes of the established actors in domestic societies. According to Wæver (ibid.: 29), discourses on national identity

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and thus the negotiations of the proper balance between nation, state and the people elucidate what can be said and done, what statements are eligible and which are not (first tier). To this extent, this book illuminates the ‘borders of normality’ in the political competition of the votes. My ambition is to bring to light issues of national myth making in the Scandinavian states (first tier) and analyse how the three parties under scrutiny utilize these myths to mobilize voters and attract attention to their politics, to ‘specify change within continuity’ (Wæver 2001: 31). Analysing how the nationalist populist parties take advantage of popularly held national myths to attract more voters constitutes the second tier. Since these parties do not operate in a vacuum and my ambition is also to compare their role and position in the domestic public debate, I turn to the mediation of their claims, here focusing on the editorial writers as pertinent opinion makers (see chapters 4 and 5). In the public debate there is a struggle of meaning concerning what constitutes national identity in the first place, and thus national identity formation involves both layers. In sum, the layered discursive framework features the cultural codes from which new policies can be made. It is both highly dynamic and constitutes the basic structure on national identity, which is how I operationalize the art of reproducing the nation. In more precise terms, this book engages with the negotiation of meaning attributed to the concept of national identity in the three countries. This involves not only the content of politics, but rather the forms – i.e. how politics is being wrapped and presented to the voter.

The Analysis The first tier of national identity reproduction is presented and discussed in both chapters 1 (more generally) and 3 (more specifically). The analysis of the second tier proceeds in two steps. First, I will assess the parties’ self-presentation. In what ways do the parties present themselves in e.g. electoral manifestos and party programmes? This stage corresponds to what the critical discourse analyst Teun van Dijk (1993: 72) refers to in his investigation of elite discourse and racism as positive self-presentation. He shows how the denial of blatant racism is ‘the stock of trade in racist discourse’ (ibid.: 81) in e.g. parliamentary debates in Western democracies on e.g. minority rights and the refugee situation. This approach is akin to what Ruth Wodak (2008: 55) refers to as an outsider perspective: ‘discourses about minorities, frequently embedded in the positive self-presentation of politicians which manifests itself, inter alia, in disclaimers and even in the denial of racism’. I here focus on how

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the issues of national identity (assumptions of what ‘we are’) are being negotiated by references to e.g. minorities (assumptions of what ‘we are not’) in the manifest political language embraced by the three nationalist populist parties. Van Dijk’s argument is, basically, that for mainstream society (e.g. the mainstream parties) it is important that ‘our party’ and ‘our country’ are regarded as, comparatively, particularly hospitable and benevolent towards ‘the others’. While his study primarily concerns mainstream society’s denial of racism, I will here explicitly focus on how the three nationalist parties mobilize voters along a positive self-presentation in the political communication of their policies, focusing on issues of national identity and immigration. The denial of racism and the embracement of liberal values such as tolerance, the separation between the public and the private, the values of gender equality and the democratic principles of self-determination (cf. Delanty et al. 2011: 9–11) are important features of the route from extremism to the mainstream, perhaps especially so for the nationalist populist parties. To gain credibility in the political sphere it is important to recognize these liberal values as salient and worthy of defence. This suggests why these parties, on the one hand, articulate a clearly conservative and essentialist view on gender hierarchies at the same time as the emphasis on ‘gender equality’ is held against e.g. the Muslim minority population. This is key to understanding how the parties pursue particular interpretations of national identity, which harmonizes well with the first tier of national identity formation. At this stage of the analysis I am interested in the subjective auto-referential category of self-representation (Brubaker and Cooper 2000: 18). The main question guiding my analysis here is: How do the three nationalist populist parties communicate their politics by means of using national myths to gain credibility and thus boost the possibility of allocating more votes? The ideological positioning of these parties crystallizes in the interaction between the self-images and counter-images adopted by their antagonists (Hellström and Nilsson 2010: 66). In the second empirical section, then, I will focus on how the mainstream actors diagnose and frame their political opponents, in this case the three nationalist populist parties. The media can hinder new political parties from obtaining their goals, but they can also push them forward and thus help them enter into or remain in the zone of acquiescence (Mazzoleni 2003). At this stage we approach what van Dijk (1993: 84) refers to as ‘negative other presentation’. In van Dijk’s analytical framework, this concerns subtle but nonetheless derogatory remarks about immigration and the migrants made in order to e.g. ‘oppose the taboo and tell the truth about

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minorities’ (ibid.). The statements build on the assumption that conflicts are unavoidable and certain cultural encounters are impossible to resolve (Hervik 2011: 232); hence, cultural differences are depicted as incommensurable and impermeable. In the second part of the analysis of the second tier, then, I discuss the reactions to the parties’ claims on the editorial pages in each country. My point here is that the negative other-presentation might also concern the nationalist populist parties and their representatives as such (Hellström and Hervik 2014). I have elsewhere argued that the unambiguous resistance of all the other seven parliamentary parties to engaging in dialogue with the SD in Sweden provides the SD with an underdog identity that it can use to actively refute the establishment (see e.g. Hellström et al. 2012; Hellström and Nilsson 2010; Hellström 2010; for a comparison with the Danish case see Hellström and Hervik 2014). The SD is being subject to a cordon sanitaire erected by the other seven parliamentary parties (Rydgren 2006).20 In order to operationalize the mainstream reactions, I turn to the continuum between permissive and repressive political environments. The political scientist David Art (2011: 44–49) uses this continuum in his ethnographic study of the party activists in what he refers to as the radical right in Western Europe. His argument is basically that these parties are likely to attract extremists rather than moderates in repressive political environments. This will, in turn, make it less probable for the radical right party to cross the threshold of credibility and attain a larger voter share, since the party activists will continue to generate disapproval among the larger majority of the population and thus obstruct the party ambition to achieve credibility. The moderates, who are sincerely concerned about the non-political costs of joining the party (such as fewer job opportunities and fear of personal injury), feel less inclined to engage with a party that is not regarded as credible in the eyes of the general public (i.e. the ‘average voter’). As a consequence, it is much easier, Art argues, to recruit skilled and educated activists to these parties in Norway and Denmark than it is in e.g. Sweden (cf. Ivarsflaten and Stubager 2012). In sum, Art’s analysis suggests that the political environment is, comparatively, more permissive in Norway and Denmark in relation to the FrP and the DF, respectively, which contributes to the relative success of those parties, in contrast to the SD in Sweden. Yet the demand for a more restrictive or ‘responsible’ immigration politics is salient in all three countries. This continuum thus explicitly refers to the degree of openness in the public debate for the three nationalist parties in the three countries and is thus not a general assessment of the public debate as such.

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According to Art (ibid.: 46): ‘A strong cordon sanitaire will lead to a larger percentage of extremists within the party, as well as those who have little interest in achieving high office at all. … When a cordon sanitaire is not in place, however, joining a radical right party can be an attractive option for moderates and opportunists.’ I will use the same continuum somewhat differently, focusing on the political rhetoric rather than the activists’ incentives to become members of the party. I will nevertheless scrutinize to what extent the political environment, ranging from repressive to permissive, affects the opportunities for the nationalist populist parties in Sweden, Denmark and Norway to cross the threshold of credibility in the electoral market. Art notes that very few studies deal with the reactions to the radical right (ibid.: 47). I believe it is important to assess both the self-presentation and the political environment in order to provide an accurate assessment of the ideological positioning of the party in the electoral market. The central question guiding my analysis at this second stage is: How do the editorial writers in each country react to the challenges posed by the nationalist populist parties in parliament? In chapters 4 (mainly quantitatively) and 5 (mainly qualitatively) I will explicitly address these concerns. Given the fact that the general framing of this study deals with how the issues of welfare and/or multiculturalism are played out in the Scandinavian context, this question addresses concerns about national identity and the art of reproducing the nation, in relation to the three nationalist populist parties. In order to proceed with this task, I will next make explicit the analytical categories of nationalism and populism as particular communication strategies guiding the subsequent analysis.

Nationalism and Populism as Communication Strategies Nationalist movements and nationalist ideologies tend to be associated with secessionist movements. Alternatively, nationalism is seen as residue from a violent twentieth century and its remnants today are merely manifest in various extremist groupings. These views, following Michael Billig (1995: 6), fail to acknowledge the nationalism of our common sense: that nationalism can be banal, non-violent and possess a reassuring normality (cf. Hellström et al. 2012: 191). With nationalism, I here refer to how the nation is continuously imagined as a cohesive whole. It happens now and here, not merely before or elsewhere. Nationalism in the political communication of the votes refers to claims of community cohesion centred on ‘the nation’ as a common frame of reference. In a famous essay from 1882 the French historian

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Ernest Renan argued that the nation is a daily plebiscite (Renan 1994). Now, in the art of reproducing the nation the nationalist populist parties address claims to social cohesion in the nation against ‘the other’. At the same time, their antagonists are reproducing the nation in the way they react to the claims articulated by these parties. The nation is a daily plebiscite in the sense that it constantly reproduces itself. It is dynamic and thus its features are open to changes. According to Craig Calhoun (2009), nationalism is a discursive formation that signifies a particular way of thinking around social solidarity and continuously reproduces national self-understanding (cf. Özkirimli 2010: 187).21 Following Calhoun, I understand nationalism as rhetoric, a discursive formation, which ‘takes shape within history and informs history’ (Calhoun 2009: 9). Following Umut Özkirimli (2010: 206–209; see also Hellström et al. 2012), nationalist claims provide a communication strategy that: (1) divides the world into homogenous and fixed identity positions; (2) creates a temporal linkage from the past through the present and by way of extrapolation into the future to demonstrate the diachronic presence of the nation; and finally (3) is based on a preoccupation with the national territory, imagined or real. In this vein, it is nationalism that creates the nation and not the other way around. Nationalist claims reify and naturalize the nation as something natural and commonsensical.22 I do not suggest that the nationalist populist parties are the only parties using nationalist claims in their political rhetoric, but when the nation acquires a political roof, ‘it becomes absorbed into the environment of the established homeland’ (Billig 1995: 41; see also Özkirimli 2010: 171). It should come as no surprise if the parties employ nationalist rhetoric (second tier) so as to present a positive self-presentation, which taps into popular conceptualizations of the balance between the state, the nation and the people (first tier). In the art of reproducing the nation, and thus the negotiation of meaning of national identity, these parties represent a prominent voice and argue against multiculturalism, but are, in general, positive of national welfare (for the natives). In sum, I conceive of nationalism as a particular communication strategy, tying together, discursively, the two layers of national identity formation. Populism is frequently used as an insult in political speech (Oudenampsen 2010; Hellström 2010). It connotes demagoguery, opportunism and politics as form devoid of content and so forth. This is confusing. Populism is a vital concept in political theory (Canovan 2004; Hellström and Lennhag 2011; Hellström 2013; Hellström and Kiiskinen 2013) and concerns fundamental ambiguities latently present in our representative democracies. It relates to direct appeals to ‘the people’ (versus ‘the elite’) and ‘therefore tests the tolerance of representative politics’, as argued by

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e.g. Paul Taggart (2000: 114). Populism might be both a corrective and a threat for democracy, as suggested by Mudde and Cristóbal R. Kaltwasser (2013). What I will focus on here is that the concept of populism signifies an essential aspect of political messages, rather than a defining characteristic of the sender as such (Rooduijn et al. 2014). These messages convey a certain conceptualization of, or appeals to, ‘the people’ against ‘the elites’, on the one hand, and those parts of the population that are not considered part of this well-respected group, on the other – i.e. the silent majority. Merijn Oudenampsen (2010: 11), for instance, argues that the ‘tea party’ used a particular notion of ‘the people’ to speak against ‘the elite’. In our case, we would see more directly that the immigrants, hypothetically, are excluded in the populist claims for national cohesion. In other words, the immigrants are not part of ‘our people’ and are thus deprived of political legitimacy (ibid.).23 A populist movement might rely on a certain ideological populist position, against the elites, embrace a particular populist style to attract voters or pursue the populist logic between the people and the elite to gain credibility for a particular political programme. It is easy to get sidetracked here, as populism can mean different things for different populists (see endnote 16). It is also a contested issue between academics. Populism, in my view, refers to appeals to the people, morally detached from the elite, in the everyday political communication between the elected representatives and the citizenry (Hellström 2013). However, rather than finding the ‘best’ definition, I here envisage populism in the political communication between the mediated elite and the people in the public debate (see further ibid.). Recently, Matthijs Rooduijn and Teun Pauwels (2011: 1272) have addressed ‘the methodological issue of how populism could be measured’. They suggest that populism can be measured across time and space by both classic and computerized content analysis. Here I am not primarily interested in measuring different degrees of populism in e.g. electoral manifestoes; rather I focus on the manifestation of populism in the political communication between the people and the mediated elites. Focusing on particular appeals to the people provides a means to analyse articulations of populism in democratic action, devoid of normative presuppositions. I do not intend to solve this issue by e.g. calculating the amount of references to ‘the people’ in the parties’ rhetoric, but rather by scrutinizing how ‘the people’ is posed against ‘the elite’ in the parties’ self-presentation. Analogously, I do not intend to measure the degree of nationalism in the parties’ manifestos, but to recognize nationalist claims in the political communication of the votes. In the analysis I thus conceive of both

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nationalism and populism as particular communication strategies, and seek to assess the congruence between the two layers of national identity construction in the three countries.

Limitations of the Study: What the Readers Should (Not) Expect The first wave of Nordic populism arrived in Finland in the late 1950s with agrarian populism (Fryklund and Petersson 1981). The Finnish Rural Party, under the leadership of Veikko Vennamo, mobilized rural smallholders with anti-establishment rhetoric combined with criticism of the processes of urbanization and modernization and how they threaten the ways of living and values of the rural population. The Finnish Rural Party, the predecessor to the True Finns, had its parliamentary breakthrough in 1966 and was a member of government from 1983–1990. The party went into bankruptcy in 1995 and the True Finns party was formed from the ashes of the populist agrarian party with both personal and organizational continuity. Recently, the True Finns party has gained significant electoral fortunes and has a salient, potentially credible, voice in the debate on national identity and immigration in Finland (Jungar 2012; Norocel 2009). The party is from May 2015 in the Finnish government and its’ party leader, Timo Soini, is the country´s foreign minister. For these (and possibly also other) reasons, it would have made sense to also include the True Finns in this study; however, I have chosen not to include Finland. Firstly, it is not possible for a non-Finnish speaker to engage closely enough with the tone of their debate. Secondly, Finland’s political history differs from the other three cases: in Finland there was a civil war in 1918 and from this followed a special relation to the rising Soviet empire, and in Finland there has historically been a strong presidential power. For future research, however, I consider it useful to also incorporate the Finnish case in my comparative approach. In this book I engage with political rhetoric in general terms and, more specifically, in terms of credibility. I will leave aside a number of relevant aspects of the progress and further development of the nationalist populist parties in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. Let me mention a few of these before I move on to my own analysis: (1) While I focus on the manifest messages provided by the parties themselves and how their opponents react to their presence, I will not reveal any secrets of what is meant behind the rhetoric and what allegedly can be read between the lines. This is rather commonsensical, as put by Ole Wæver (2002: 26) in outlining a post-structuralist

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understanding of identity construction: ‘Discourse analysis works on public texts. It does not try to get to the thoughts or motives of the actors, their hidden agendas or secret plans.’ (2) My book makes use of some basic features from the field of rhetorical analysis, but I do not intend to make a particular contribution to this field. (3) I do not engage with policy transformations; e.g. how the Danish policies on immigration and integration have been affected by the long-term presence of the DF in Danish politics (Boréus 2010). In terms of influence, the reader of this book should not expect any qualified stipulations or answers to the question of how the actual policies in the country have changed due to the varied presence of the nationalist populist parties. (4) I will pay less attention to public opinion, and the nature of the demand for restrictive immigration policy as such, for instance the attitudes towards immigration (Gorodzeisky and Semyonov 2009), changing levels of trust in the political institutions (Rydgren 2006) or poll surveys about how the nationalist populist parties position themselves on the right-wing scale (Sannerstedt 2015; Holmberg 2007; Meret 2010; Marsdal 2008). (5) What is the relation between the party leader and the party members? This book does not deal with organization, or interviews with e.g. party representatives to increase the knowledge. Organizational characteristics appear to be intrinsically linked to ideology (Zaslove 2008; Taggart 1996). This might also dovetail with an emphasis on the gender dimension of populist authority, which I thus leave aside here (see further e.g. Norocel 2010, 2013; Meret 2015). (6) There are obvious limits to my context-sensitive approach. While I focus on the appeals to ‘the people’ in the rhetoric of the three nationalist populist parties, it could have been interesting to also engage with e.g. the Social Democratic parties. (7) While I contribute with knowledge of the public debate around the claims made by the three nationalist populist parties in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, my material is limited to the editorial pages and thus I can only capture a small fraction of the public debate.

Chapter Outline In the first chapter I will, in brief, discuss the socio-political context (the dominance of social democracy, the development of the universal welfare state and so forth) and current changes – i.e. from the stable five-party regime to the socio-cultural shift and the present-day multi-dimensional party space. This corresponds to the first discursive layer. I will also here

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introduce the historical legacies of the parties put under scrutiny in this study. The chapter then continues with a brief discussion on the explanations (supply and/or demand) given in the literature to explain the relative fortunes of these parties in the national parliaments. Here I make explicit my own contribution to this field: national myths as political opportunity structures. In the second chapter I explain which analytical concepts I will use in the subsequent analysis, and most importantly how. The chapter also discusses some methodological issues, such as a reliability test, related to the analysis. I argue that the three parties put under scrutiny radicalize mainstream concerns about what unites the natives into one nation against the political and cultural elites to create a niche in the electoral market. In more precise terms, I here analyse if and how the nationalist populist parties in Sweden, Denmark and Norway use myths of national exclusiveness and myths about the common man to radicalize popularly held sentiments to attract votes; i.e. appealing to ‘the national people’ and ‘our’ shared history. I consider national myths to be a relevant political opportunity structure in the political competition of the votes. This is the first section of the second discursive layer. The second chapter also lays out the analytical framework for the study of the mainstream reactions in the political debate and in the media debate, the second part of the second tier. What are the roles and positions of the three nationalist populist politics in the domestic public debates? I shall identify dominant, sometimes competing, frames in the public debate, as manifested in the national news reporting, in order to discern the views and opinions about the SD, the DF and the FrP to contrast ideas about national identity, articulated from different positions in the debate. The material that is collected for this analysis is based on an initial statistical overview of the tone towards the party and the topics dealing with the parties on the editorial pages in each country. The third chapter deals with the uses of national myths in the party programmes of the SD, the FrP and the DF. This analysis explicitly focuses on the positive self-presentation of these parties and their endeavours to cross the threshold of credibility in the political competition of the votes.24 Naturally, the potential reactions of mainstream society to the presence and development of these parties varies over time. The zone of acquiescence and thus the borders of normality in the public debate are dynamic. The fourth chapter compares, synchronically, how these parties and their claims are negotiated on the editorial pages in four leading newspapers in each country during four years (2009–2012). The analysis is, firstly, based on descriptive statistics to provide a general pattern of

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the tone used towards the parties and which topics are discussed. From this quantitative analysis, we then proceed with a frame analysis of the selected material, to provide a deeper understanding of how national identities are negotiated and from which positions (chapter 5). These two chapters (4 and 5) are written in collaboration with Anniken Hagelund and Susi Meret, two country specialists with in-depth knowledge of the public debate in Norway and Denmark, respectively. The book’s conclusion sums up our main findings, taking me back to my general focus and bringing attention to the struggle of meaning of what constitutes the ‘the common man’ as essential for the art of reproducing the nation in Scandinavia.

NOTES 1. All quotes in the book, if not otherwise stated, are translated into English by the author. 2. There have been no systematic comparisons of the nationalist populist parties in Scandinavia since the seminal study by Björn Fryklund and Tomas Peterson (1981) in the early 1980s and shorter articles by Arter (1992), Svåsand (1998) and Widfeldt (2000) about one and a half decades ago. More recent research is limited to either Norwegian-Danish comparisons (Bjørklund and Goul Andersen 2002; Goul Andersen and Bjørklund 1990), Norwegian-Swedish comparisons (Svåsand and Wörlund 2005), Swedish-Danish comparisons (Green-Pedersen and Krogstrup 2008; Hellström and Hervik 2014; Rydgren 2010), Denmark compared with other countries (Meret 2010), Norway with other countries (Akkerman and Hagelund 2007), or single-case studies (Hagelund 2003; Hagelund 2005; Hellström and Nilsson 2010; Hellström et. al 2012; Rydgren 2002; Taggart 1996). 3. It is, however, possible to vitalize and reinvigorate parties, as in the less amenable fascist past, which e.g. the Italian example shows (see e.g. Fella and Ruzza 2011). Italy represents, however, a completely different socio-political context compared to what we are dealing with here. 4. In chapter 3 I will extend this time period to also include material that leads us further back to the inception of these parties. 5. In the literature the term ‘niche-party’ is used to categorize parties that mobilize voters along a single issue (Erlingsson et al. 2014). 6. From a Laclaudian (Laclau 2005) perspective, the ‘new’ party makes coherent a set of fragmented demands, unanswered by the established parties, via a chain-of-equivalence. From this operation, on the basis of these demands the ‘new’ party offers a ‘new’ political programme that is attractive to voters who, supposedly, are tired of the established parties. The ‘new’ party might as well be able to attract ‘new’ voters.

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7. Analysing e.g. collective material experiences of colonial oppression, for instance post-colonial feminists, shows how the post-colonial subject articulates its identity through both material experiences and discourse, through both reason and emotions (De los Reyes 2012: 15). Structural phenomena (such as colonial hierarchies) are potentially being internalized by both the oppressors and the oppressed. How we come to being as people clearly intersects with how collective markers of identity are being transmitted in the first place (Hellström 2006: 46). 8. As noted by, among others, Jacques Derrida (2004: 365), there is no undivided point of reference (logos) from which we can derive unbiased facts, but supplements to temporarily compensate for this ‘lack’. 9. Consequently, the role of the elites is not to simply represent the words and interests of the constituency. In the act of representation, ‘the people’, as an object (and subject) of popular mobilization, is constituted as a consequence (Canovan 2005). This perspective on representation enables us to see that the role of language extends beyond the mere mirroring of real events and real relations. There is an infinite struggle of meaning and there is no final and definite answer or solution of the proper meaning of a given concept; any articulation takes place in a ‘field of discursivity’ (Laclau and Mouffe 2001: 105; Hellström 2006: 56). Furthermore, following Richards (1965), we need to abolish the vain belief in the doctrine of correct usage of language – there is none. From this perspective, metaphors are not simply ornamentations used for decorative purposes in e.g. political speeches. Rather, the sometimes contrasting and competing associations connected to particular uses of metaphors constitute meaning (see further Norocel 2013). 10. In this literature, it is common to refer to the mild emotions as ethos and the more strong feelings as pathos (Kjeldsen 2013: 125). I here choose not to separate the two, emphasizing the emotional investment embedded in political communication. Jorinde Seijdel argues (2010: 20): ‘Some may have forgotten, but politics still involves more than public management, the capacity to dream collectively, to tell stories; politics still contain a form of mythology.’ 11. In the elections to the national parliament in September 2014, the SD did very well, with approximately 12.9 per cent (49 seats) of the total votes, and almost caused a re-election. In the epilogue of this book I discuss further this and other recent events in Scandinavian politics. 12. The Danish and The Norwegian Progress Parties secured their first seats in the national parliaments in 1973. In the most recent elections, held in September 2013 in Norway, the Norwegian progress party dropped significantly (16, 3 per cent of the total votes from 22, 9 per cent of the total votes) and 29 seats out of 169 in total, but remains highly influential and despite its losses it still ended up in the government. The 1998 national elections in Denmark were the first elections in which the Danish People’s Party participated. They gathered 7.4 per cent of the votes and gained thirteen seats in the parliamentary assembly. Their election results have been relatively stable since. In

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the national elections in Denmark June 2015 the DF with its’ current leader Kristian Thulesen Dahl achieved 21, 1 per cent of the votes (37 seats out of 179). In Sweden the SD has attracted more and more voters but is yet (at least before the 2014 national elections) considerably smaller than the other two parties. In the elections to the national parliament in September 2014, however, the SD scored 12, 9 percent (49 out of 349 seats in the national assembly) of the total votes and almost caused a re-election. This was avoided in the last minute due to the so-called December compromise, uniting all the parliamentary parties excluding the Left party and the SD in order to make minority governance possible. In October 2015 the compromise was, however, abandoned. Worth mentioning is that in Finland the True Finns grew from approximately 4 per cent in the 2007 elections to approximately 19 per cent in the 2011 elections. In the elections for the European Parliament in May 2014 both the True Finns (12.9 per cent) and the Sweden Democrats (9.7 per cent) increased their voting results compared to the previous elections to the European Parliament. At the same time, the Danish People’s Party became the largest party in Denmark with 26.6 per cent of the votes. Since Norway is not a member state, the Norwegian parties did not run for the European Parliament. My focus on immigration policy in this regard bears considering how we view ourselves in relation to others, as put by Kivisto and Wahlbeck (2013c: 332): ‘Immigration policy is precisely the policy area where the tensions between diversity and universalism has manifested itself most forcefully’ (cf. Borevi 2013). The path chosen by the Scandinavian states was the implementation of multicultural rights to the old indigenous populations but less so in relation to the ‘new’ immigrants. This corresponds to the much-cited distinction of Kymlicka (1995) between indigenous groups and ‘new immigrants’ in the debate over multiculturalism. My particular contribution, in this regard, rests on the role and positioning of three nationalist parties in Scandinavia over the continuous reproduction of the nation, tackling ethnic diversity in this region, balancing claims of multiculturalism and welfare. The issue of citizenship lies at the core of this debate, and while scholars could argue that aliens also need to enjoy rights attributed to ‘equal citizenship’ (Bosniak 2008: 15), the underlying ideology underpinning the three parties put under scrutiny in this study rather argues that citizenship status should be reserved for the natives within the nation-state. In order to facilitate understanding I will use this abbreviation in the book. Mudde uses this definition to classify approximately one hundred political parties as Populist Radical Right, both in Western and Eastern Europe. My approach is limited to three PRR parties in Scandinavia. For instance, it is much debated in the party politics literature (and also within the party as such) whether the FrP should be labelled nationalist-conservative or rather

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19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

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(neo-liberal) populist (see further Ravik Jupskås 2013; Jungar and Ravik Jupskås 2014). The concept of populism has been ascribed to a diverse set of parties and movements, such as Péronism in Argentina, the US People’s Party in the late nineteenth century and the narodniki movement in Russia, that differ drastically from the populism of Jörg Haider, Jean-Marie Le Pen, Pim Fortuyn, Silvio Berlusconi and so forth (see further Canovan 2004; Westlind 1996; Canovan 2005; Hellström 2013). Paul Taggart (1996) applies the term ‘new-populism’ to separate immigration-sceptic parties that oppose the system from historical fascism, and yet Piero Ignazi (1992) uses the term ‘neo-right’ to instead stress the continuity between historical fascism and the neo-right parties. Anders Widfeldt (2000) suggests that notions such as ‘extremism’, ‘right-wing radicalism’ and ‘populism’ are all problematic, as these labels are generally used pejoratively and rarely shared by the parties themselves. However, as the label ‘populism’ connotes ‘friends of the people’, more and more parties tend to use this label themselves. The term ‘racism’ is definitely even more controversial, but likewise there is hardly any consensus when it comes to this concept. Biological racism is contrasted with e.g. ‘cultural racism’ (Taguieff 1990), ‘racism without races’ or ‘neo-racism’ (Balibar 1991) to signify political controversies that are not, at least any longer, played out as differences between races, but instead between cultures or civilizations. Yet this position of stigma (Ramalingam 2012) is used by e.g. the SD to renegotiate the moral virtues of Swedishness to ‘performing their own victimhood’ (ibid.: 18). Vidhya Ramilingam (ibid.: 21) concludes: ‘Shame and other emotions employed in social exclusion and stigma, are powerful political tools that may be manipulated both by the stigmatizers and the stigmatized.’ The threshold of credibility crystallizes in the interaction between how the parties present themselves and how the mainstream political actors react to their presence. The structure of political competition is highly dynamic and fluctuates in time (also within the same country) and also in space (between the three socio-political contexts). In turn, the political climate can be more or less polarized at various instances of time. We do not necessarily live in a ‘post-national’ era, and nations still categorize our experiences and shape community bonds and social cohesion, whether we like it or not. Michael Billig’s (1995) much-referred-to notion of banal nationalism suggests that nationalism can be banal, non-violent and possess a reassuring normality. By means of banal nationalism we, the citizens, are constantly reminded of our membership in the nation and our loyalty to it. The rhetorical figure, part of the whole, is generally referred to as a synecdoche. It means that a particular section of ‘the people’ is used to represent the whole. Since not all claims are politically represented, as the society can

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never be grasped in its totality (Laclau and Mouffe 2001: 127), these claims are the source of political dissatisfaction. The nationalist populist parties in our study might, hypothetically, organize otherwise fragmented claims of political dissatisfaction into a cohesive political programme, via a chain of equivalence (Laclau 2005; Laclau and Mouffe 2001). ‘Thus populism revolves around the transformation of singular democratic gaps into one collective gap, a crystallization point of political dissatisfaction’ (Oudenampsen 2010: 12). 23. The empirical analysis derives from an article published in Partezipazione et Conflitto, written by myself and a colleague (Hellström and Wennerhag 2013).

E c ha p te r 1

Towards a Multi-Dimensional Political Party Space

n a 1912 debate with Hjalmar Branting, the leader of the Social Democratic Party, the conservative scholar and national parliament member Rudolf Kjellén (1864–1922) argued for his vision of Swedish society as ‘the People’s Home’ (folkhemmet). Kjellén insisted that the political institutions should mirror the particularities of the national character and not divide the country (Berman 2006: 164; Berggren and Trägårdh 2009: 169; Hall 1998: 217). He welcomed the workers’ movement, but strongly resisted the class struggle that, in his view, only served to weaken the nation (Trägårdh 2002: 84). Instead, Kjellén hoped for a kind of ‘National Socialism’, based on corporatist principles – subordinating the class struggle to national cohesion and welfare (Stråth 2012: 28).1 According to e.g. Lars Trägårdh (2002: 77) and Sheri Berman (2010: 162–167) the Social Democrats relied on a national narrative that portrayed Swedes as intrinsically freedom loving and pragmatically democratic. We shall return to the particular metaphor of the People’s Home throughout the book (see in particular chapter 3). What is noteworthy at this stage, however approximately one hundred years after the abovementioned debate is that in popular memory today, the history has reversed itself. References made to the People’s Home are generally attributed to the Social Democratic dominance in Swedish politics after WWII and the art of social engineering of the Swedish society (Hellström and Wennerhag 2013; Persson and Arvidsson 2012: 181). The Social Democratic parties dominated the social integration of the national state in Norway, as well (Sejersted 2011). The Social Democratic project, which seriously kicked off when the Social Democrats let go of their more radical Marxist aspirations (Berman 2006) – later in Norway than in Sweden – was fully realized when the parties seized governmental

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power and stayed in that position in the decades that followed the end of the Second World War: ‘During the 1930s to1960s Sweden and Norway became what has been called Social Democratic “one-party states”’ (Sejersted 2011: 5). In Denmark, as well, the Social Democratic Party enjoyed governmental power in the post-war years, but has been less dominant compared to its Nordic counterparts (Persson and Arvidsson 2012). The early democratization phase, according to Persson and Arvidsson, much depended on the farmers’ movements and the strong ideological positioning of both Venstre and radikale Venstre (see also Fryklund and Peterson 1981). In Sweden and Norway the Social Democratic parties in the 1930s collaborated with the agrarian parties to realize their political visions. All in all, despite some obvious differences, the socio-political development of the three countries shares many similarities. During the inter-war period, Nazi-style parties never came close to a parliamentary breakthrough in Scandinavia and the mainstream right was not influenced by fascism to the same extent as in many other European countries (Sejersted 2011: 76). Sweden, Norway and Denmark were characterized during the post-war period by high political stability, universal welfare states, similar party families and most parties being closely linked to distinct social groups (Demker and Svåsand 2005). Between the 1930s and the 1960s the party system remained essentially ‘frozen’ (Lipset and Rokkan 1967). These countries share many common socio-political attributes, thus a similar plot in which the national identity is being formed. The structural conditions are thus similar, even if they are not identical. The Scandinavian Social Democratic parties from the 1930s onwards combined visions of modernity with ideas of economic growth and state interventions in the market economy – the Scandinavian model (Stråth 2012; Sejersted 2011). The Scandinavian model of combining strong and active welfare states together with market economy reforms under Social Democratic governance constitutes the socio-political historical context in which the SD, the FrP and the DF operate and make their rhetorical claims. In terms of unequal income redistribution, Sweden has the lowest level of inequality in the world, while Denmark ranks fourth and Norway fifth (Kivisto and Wahlbeck 2013b: 11). The crucial issue is then how low levels of economic inequalities merge with an appraisal of diversity; not all the voters considers this to be a perfect match and this book focuses in particular on three parties who mobilize these voters. After the Second World War the Scandinavian political systems were dominated by a five-party model and the building up of universal welfare

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systems by technocratic means.2 In the 1973 national elections, however, both in Norway and in Denmark new political parties managed to gain enough voter support to gain access to the national parliament. The 1972 referendum on the European Communities (EC) in Norway and Denmark especially gave rise to new cleavage dimensions across party lines, corresponding to strong anti-statist sentiments (Hansen 2001; Neumann 2001). According to Marie Demker and Lars Svåsand, who compare the political development in Sweden and in Norway, Norway has never really recovered: The dividing line around the EC shredded the Norwegian parties in a profound and painful way, this rupture has remained in Norwegian politics and the political system has not been able to overcome it. … Also in Sweden the referendum on membership in 1994 led to convulsions in the party system. … This rupture could be handled within the frame for the established party system. (2005: 34; cf. Fryklund 2008: 299)

Today, all across Europe new political parties are challenging the established party hierarchies, politicizing new issues such as immigration and law and order that do not neatly correspond to the socio-economic cleavages between welfare and capital. It is thus not only the question of membership in the European Union that creates new challenges for established patterns of political competition; in more economically successful member states such as Finland new political parties can also mobilize voters around other political issues (such as immigration and gender) to gain electoral fortunes. Antonis Ellinas (2010: 26) makes, in this regard, references to ‘the socio-cultural shift’ in contemporary European politics. ‘New’ political parties gain an influence in European politics by means of politicizing so-called socio-cultural issues to challenge traditional party structures (see e.g. Bornschier 2012). In the competitive space for voting support, then, Herbert Kitschelt and Anthony McGann (1997: 15) convincingly argue that the political space of electoral competition should be seen as two-dimensional, including both the socio-economic cleavage structure (welfare versus capital) and the socio-cultural (libertarian versus authoritarian values) cleavage structure. Their argument is basically that ‘the new right’ has established a niche in post-industrial societies, combining authoritarian views on issues such as gender, the environment and immigration with a market-friendly view on the economy. What has been referred to as a ‘new politics’ (Taggart 1996) thus operates along this particular axis, with e.g. the Green parties and the PRR parties, typically, representing the opposite poles (see e.g. Ignazi 1992).

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In this chapter I will first briefly reiterate the development of the political systems in the three countries towards a (more) multi-dimensional political space. Second, I will focus on the historical legacies and chronological development of the three parties put under scrutiny in this book. Third, I will, in brief, discuss both demand-side and supply-side explanations given to explain the varying electoral fortunes of the parties in domestic politics. This chapter thus deals with the first discursive layer for national identity construction in the Scandinavian countries.

The Historical Context At the end of the nineteenth century the Scandinavian states shared experiences of and suffered from a massive emigration to the United States. Processes of urbanization, political and religious demands against dissidents and a difficult financial and demographic situation for the natives triggered many people to move in search of a better future. By around 1900 it had been estimated that approximately one-fifth of the total Swedish population had emigrated to the United States in the late decades of the nineteenth century (Persson and Arvidsson 2012: 184). In 1913 a governmental report on emigration (led by Gustav Sundbärg) was conducted in Sweden. The overall conclusion was that emigration must be halted through the improvement of social conditions (ibid.; Hall 1998). During this time, ideas of eugenics were popular and widely shared. In the founding of the international institute for eugenics in 1922 in Uppsala, Sweden, the contrasting ideals of scientific progress and cultural purity were politically sanctioned and ingrained in the social integration of national cohesion in the Swedish society (Hagerman 2006). After decades of free immigration to and between the Nordic states, immigration was sharply limited and, eventually, the problem of emigration was rephrased as a problem of immigration. In 1927 a new law on immigration was passed in the Swedish parliament, which made a restrictive policy on immigration permanent (Persson and Arvidsson 2011: 193–197). In particular, the immigration of Jews from Germany and, in general, immigrants from the Eastern parts of Europe were to be halted. In 1905 Norway became independent from Sweden after a stunning victory for independence in a public referendum: 368,208 in favour, 184 against (Elgenius 2011: 117). Before the union with Sweden, during which Norway had a separate constitution, Norway had been governed under Danish rule since 1814 after the Napoleonic wars. It is perhaps not surprising, as Gabriella Elgenius (ibid.: 118) suggests: ‘The freedom-rhetoric

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of the 17 May (the national day in Norway, my addition) celebration was from the beginning positioned against the neighbouring countries.’ In the early twentieth century the struggle for national independence in Norway was inherently linked to progressive democratic forces (Sejersted 2011: 10), while in Sweden there was no such break in historical continuity (ibid.: 11): ‘One could say that Norway was democratized before it was industrialized, while the opposite was the case in Sweden.’ In the shared desire for economic modernization, the formation of democratic nation-states is deeply entangled with ideas of economic progress. Despite these tendencies towards an increased acceptance of ideas of racial biology and an outright fear of immigrants from the eastern parts of Europe, no outright extreme party (communist, Nazi- or fascist) had a parliamentary breakthrough in the Scandinavian countries. In the 1930s the previously internationally reputable centre of eugenics and its founder Herman Lundborg gained less and less political recognition (Hagerman 2006: 382–383). Also the national socialist party gained very limited success, even if ideas of racial biology reverberated in mainstream society and among the mainstream parties – for instance all the parliamentary parties in Sweden approved the inception of the racial biological institute. However, if in the early 1920s e.g. the Social Democratic Party was divided on these issues, the mainstream parties clearly turned away from anti-Semitism and racial biology only a decade later (ibid.: 384–387; Norocel 2013: 140).3 As put by Kitschelt and McGann (1997: 123): ‘Rural smallholders stayed away from the extreme Right and could be co-opted into an alternative coalition that also included the labour movement and elements of the industrial bourgeoisie.’ Rather than a fascist or communist orientation of the modernist project, another political movement had a breakthrough: the Social Democratic movement. Accordingly, the Social Democratic movement had to attract voters from the cadre of the petit-bourgeoisie to create alliances so as to achieve governmental power (Linderborg 2002). In the consolidation of the democratic nation-states the worker movements in these countries mobilized supporters to, step by step, translate these demands into party political preferences. In the Nordic states it is obvious that National Socialism failed to gain significant ground. According to Sheri Berman (2006: 6), the ideology of Social Democracy was the most successful ideology of the twentieth century: ‘Its principles and policies undergirded the most prosperous and harmonious period in European history by reconciling things that had hitherto seemed incompatible – a well-functioning capitalist system, democracy, and social stability.’ In 1920 Sweden had its first Social Democratic prime minister, Hjalmar Branting. In Norway the first Social Democratic government, which

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lasted for only two weeks, was set up in 1928. In Denmark the first Social Democratic government, led by Thorvald Stauning, began its first period in office in 1924. The parliamentary turbulence was much evident in the Scandinavian states during the 1920s. From the 1930s and on, interrupted by the Nazi occupation (Denmark and Norway) and a coalition government in Sweden during the Second World War, the Social Democratic parties were dominant, not to say hegemonic, in the political conciliation of the emergent democratic states. But it is important to remember that the Social Democrats always had to co-operate with other political parties to maintain their governmental position. In the decades that followed the Second World War, national politics was remarkably stable and constituted by coalition building and compromise making between the various societal interests. This was also a time of economic progress and democratic reforms to level the cleavages in the society. The immigration issue was, during this period, not salient and the demographic composition of the population was comparatively homogenous. The five-party model – three mainstream right parties (one liberal, one conservative, one agrarian), one Social Democratic and one revolutionary socialist – remained intact for a long period of time (Demker and Svåsand 2005).

Immigration after the Second World War Since the second half of the nineteenth century, immigration to Sweden has been substantial. In 2011 the Swedish immigrant population consisted of approximately 15 per cent foreign-born individuals and another 4 per cent with both parents born abroad. In Norway approximately 13 per cent of the total population was either foreign born or had two immigrant parents. In Denmark, finally, a little more than 10 per cent of the total population was either foreign born or had immigrant parents. As we can see, Sweden has a larger immigration population compared to its neighbours. In total, the immigrant population in Sweden is almost twice the size as in Denmark and Norway. Already in 1968 with the formation of Invandraverket, Sweden was institutionally prepared to deal with the integration issue some twenty years before Denmark and Norway (Brochmann and Hagelund 2012). On a ‘kindness continuum’, according to Grete Brochmann and Anniken Hagelund (ibid.; see also Lithman 2013: 255), Sweden is at one extreme liberal pole with an ensuing support for generous integration policies with Denmark on the opposite side (much more restrictive path) and with Norway somewhere in between. There is a fear in Norway that the country is drifting towards the Danish position and thus e.g. exaggerating the

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cleavage between the universal decency of the natives and the cheating behaviour of the immigrants (Lithman 2013: 257). All three counties belong to the upper strata – more liberal than authoritarian when it comes to attitudes to immigration and immigrants (see further Lithman 2013). The difference in terms of density has, however, a negative correlation with public attitudes, with Sweden having the most immigration-friendly population. As put by Yngve Lithman (2013: 252): ‘If there is a relationship between “immigrant density” and attitudes to immigrants, it is a positive one.’ None of the Scandinavian states are thus entirely homogenous, but the demographic challenges have provoked different political reactions. One of the reasons for this difference relates to the varying electoral fortunes and influence of the three nationalist populist parties put under scrutiny in this study. According to Brochmann and Hagelund, Scandinavia constitutes a social laboratory for how ethnic diversity is handled by previously more homogenous nation-states that nowadays have expanded welfare states and a more heterogeneous demographic structure. In the 1950s and 1960s immigration to, in particular, Sweden pursued a policy to neutralize labour shortage in the industrial sector (Borevi 2013: 147). In the following decades, with increased need for assistance to the world refugee situation, Sweden, in particular, was among the industrial countries with the highest per capita intake of refugees. Recapitulating the integration diachronically, the adaption of immigrants and their descendants, in economic terms, in particular, was positive during the first decades after the Second World War, but has decreased gradually since the 1970s. This weakening integration has been much debated in the Scandinavian states. It is my contention that in order for us to understand the electoral fortunes of ‘new’ parties, we need to acknowledge the historical socio-political context in which they operate, the first tier of the layered discursive structure. It is obvious that this entails, more in Sweden than in Norway and Denmark, recognition of the Social Democratic dominance in post– world war politics. Actually, no new party made it into the parliament. Not until 1973. This is also when this story begins.

The Historical Legacy of the Populist Radical Right Parties in Sweden, Norway and Denmark While the three Nordic states share a similar socio-political history, they differ in terms of opportunities for new political parties to challenge the established party hierarchies.

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If the workers movement, together with the liberals, in Sweden or the urbanized farmers in Norway and Denmark dominated the political development in the early phases of national conciliation, this situation looks, naturally, very different today. New political parties emerged, and the role of the parties has, in general, shifted (some would say for the worse) in the latter half of the twentieth century.

The New Democracy and the Sweden Democrats in Sweden In comparison, Sweden is a latecomer. There was no electoral breakthrough of a corresponding progress party in Sweden in the early 1970s. In fact, the five-party model remained intact in Sweden for a longer period than in the Nordic neighbouring states. However, in the 1988 national elections the Swedish Green Party broke the five-party consensus and crossed the electoral threshold to the national parliament.4 And in the 1991 national elections a new political party rose and crossed the parliamentary threshold. New Democracy (Ny Demokrati [NyD]) showed many similarities with the two Progress Parties in Denmark and Norway. The question remains: Why was there no progress party in Sweden back in the 1970s? While Kitschelt and McGann (1997) refer to differences between the countries in terms of taxation procedures, Rydgren (2006: 29) draws attention to the fact that the Centre Party became a kind of ‘surrogate populist party’ in Sweden, mobilizing voters on issues pertaining to the environment and nuclear power (see also Fryklund and Peterson 1981).5 With the Green Party in a stable parliamentary position, the Centre Party lost its capacity to monopolize voters most engaged with ‘green’ issues. Anti-immigrant sentiments also held huge potential for electoral mobilization in Sweden, but these were primarily channelled through local assemblies and local referenda (Edgerton et al. 1994). In the latter half of the 1980s voter opinion started to shift to the right in socio-economic terms (Boréus 1994), and there was also an awakening protest dimension in Swedish politics (see further Rydgren 2006). In other words, at the time of its arrival the ground was prepared for the emergence of the NyD in the Swedish national parliament. The NyD used a rhetoric that mobilized fragmented voters against the establishment, high taxes, bureaucracy and also immigration; however, the party quickly disappeared from the political scene (Westlind 1996; Taggart 1996; Rydgren 2006). The NyD was run like a business franchise (Art 2011: 178). Internal fractions within the party (between e.g. Bert Karlsson and Ian Wachtmeister) and the lack of local party organization soon led to the collapse of the party. Wachtmeister himself decided to

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annul his so-called political project. In the 1994 parliamentary elections the party lost its representation in national parliament. Consequently, the NyD has been referred to as a flash-party in the literature (ibid.: 56). The NyD, especially with Wachtmeister as its leader, was clearly oriented towards a neo-liberal view on economic politics, combining this position with an authoritarian view on socio-cultural affairs – ‘the winning formula’ (see introduction). When the NyD was in national parliament, the SD mobilized ‘angry young men’ in the streets against immigration and showed limited interest in parliamentary activities. On 30 November 1993 SD organized a manifestation to celebrate the late king of Sweden, Karl XII (Hellström and Nilsson 2010). Approximately one thousand people took part in the event, which ended in chaos and violence. This particular night in Stockholm, the entire city centre could listen to the crowd yelling ‘Sieg Heil’ (Tamas 2003; see also this book’s prologue). In 1989 Anders Klarström was elected the first party leader. Klarström was previously a member of the neo-Nazi party Nordiska rikspartiet and had, like many of his party affiliates, a criminal record (Larsson and Ekman 2001: 126; Ekman and Poohl 2010). Other party members of the party executive had a similar background, later with tentacles to movements such as the White Arian Resistance (a violent Neo-Nazi group, active in Sweden between 1991 and 1993), or they were involved in the growing industry of White Power music. Definitely, the SD has a much more extreme legacy compared to both the FrP and the DF. It is similarly the case that the party has changed drastically since – to what extent this is the case is much debated, as we shall see in chapters 4 and 5 of this book. However, it already from the start had laid out the basic contours of its political agenda in its first party programme from 1989. The overall aim is, accordingly, to turn Sweden into a homogenous national community, populated by culturally similar individuals. All native Swedes should enjoy the same basic democratic rights, and it claims to present a democratic viable alternative in Swedish politics contrary to the parliamentary parties who only wish to secure the interests of the privileged few, ‘the elite’. The SD developed from a small neo-Nazi organization to a party that now attracts voters from all the other parties – plus those who usually abstain from voting.6 During its history, it has gradually abandoned demands such as reinstatement of the death penalty and resistance towards extra-European adoptions, and party members expressing ‘extremist’ views are occasionally being expelled. Today, the SD claims to represent the man on the street, to advocate a ‘responsible’ immigration policy (in their view, Swedish immigration policy is extreme) and tough policies on

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integration. Some – including those within the party ranks – would call it assimilation policy. In the late 1960s and early 1970s Sweden developed a consensus on the crucial interplay between multiculturalism and assimilation, which in many ways provide the backdrop to the contemporary discussion on challenges of diversity in Sweden (Wickström 2013). All the parliamentary parties, excluding the Sweden Democrats, allude to the multicultural practices of integration. If the original thrust of the so-called progressive assimilationism was that assimilation was an emancipatory force, protecting the individual against unwarranted collective straightjackets, the SD today envisages a particular mood of Swedishness that the immigrants need to adapt to in order to be recognized as Swedish citizens. It is a particular form of assimilationist strategy embedded in the cultural form of the nation-state, not an escape away from it. In party documents the SD refers to the days of the Social Democracy under Prime Minister Tage Erlander (1946–1969) as the period when the People’s Home was at its peak and this is conceived as the type of national community that it wishes to restore. In 2001 the SD was in practice split into two, and the more radical activists formed a new party (Nationaldemokraterna, ‘The National Democrats’), a move that facilitated the transformation of the SD into a more pragmatic and moderate party (Erlingsson et al. 2014; Art 2011; Rydgren 2006). In 2010 the SD crossed the 4 per cent electoral threshold to the national parliament for the first time, with 5.7 per cent of the overall votes. Before 2006, when it gained seats in approximately half the country’s local municipalities, the SD was a marginal phenomenon in Swedish politics and its position in the political competition was rather weak as a consequence.

The Progress Party in Norway In the 1973 national elections the Norwegians faced a new political competitor, though it was initially less successful than its Danish counterpart. It won four seats in the national parliament under the name of its founder, Anders Lange. Previously Lange was a member of the conservative party in Norway but he was tired of its inability to radically alter the dominance of the Social Democratic Party in Norwegian politics. The mainstream right parties won the 1969 national elections but were unable to radically depart from the outlaid Social Democratic route (Kitschelt and McGann 1997: 126). Anders Lange, similar to Mogens Glistrup in Denmark, was rigidly opposed to traditional party organization. It has been said that Lange ran the

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party as a private enterprise (Ravik-Jupskås 2013). The political agenda was to reduce taxation to enable a shrinking of the welfare state. But the thrust was equally authoritarian. Lange showed e. g support for the South African Apartheid regime (see further Lodenius 2015). Lange passed away in 1974 and his successor, Carl I. Hagen, was equally telegenic but unlike his predecessor he believed in traditional party organization as a means of securing long-lasting success. Hagen was elected party leader in 1978 and held this post until 2006 (Ekeberg and Snoen 2001). Under his leadership the party also changed its name, inspired by its Danish counterpart, to the Progress Party. Initially the party argued for reductions in taxes and public intervention (Fryklund and Peterson 1981: 212). From the 1970s and on, the party broadened its appeal to combine the original anti-statist stance with a pro-authoritarian view on law and order, and later also on immigration. This move from taxation to immigration constitutes, according to Kitschelt and McGann, a winning formula in the allocation of votes in the electorate (see also the previous chapter in this book). They (ibid.: 138) write: Progress parties in the late 1980s are likely to draw support on a significant working-class constituency that has responded to the parties’ new xenophobic and authoritarian appeals and on small businesspeople with authoritarian and ethno-centrist dispositions rather than white-collar and professional electorate.7

The ensuing ‘proletarization’ (Betz 2004) of the electorate of the so-called far right, at first attributed to the Front National, had later led to the relative success of these parties and ‘lower-class citizens vote for them despite their economic profile rather than because of it’ (Bornschier (2010: 26). The FrP has thus had a long and rather stable position in Norwegian politics. It grew to become one of the largest opposition parties in the Norwegian national parliament, and in the national election in 2009 it was supported by almost a quarter of Norwegians voters. It took a major step back in the polls in the recent national elections held in September 2013, but is by now part of the government. Even if the party had already in the 1970s argued against development aid, ‘immigration was not made into a significant political issue by the FrP until the mid-1980s’ (Hagelund 2003: 52–53). During the 1990s the immigration issue gained salience in the party’s repertoire as they also started to warn voters about the dangers of cultural heterogeneity; i.e. immigration was transformed from an economic to a cultural issue. What is significant for the FrP is its liberalist and explicit anti-statist stance, though this position has become more pragmatic over time. The

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argumentative logic is that the welfare state gives priority to immigrants instead of native Norwegian taxpayers. The FrP is concerned with the alleged discrimination against Norwegians, and argues that the immigrants (or any other groups, for that sake) do not need special treatment. In the 1990s social inequalities were increasingly linked to questions about cultural diversity, and according to the FrP, cultural diversity risks encouraging fragmentation and creating further inequality and injustice in Norwegian society. Following Hagelund (2003: 57) the immigration issue was not only problematized; the debate was also moralized and polarized between the FrP and the rest of the Norwegian parties. Officially, the FrP distances itself from racism (and for instance from the SD and similar parties) to instead talk about honesty and tolerance. The FrP endeavours to unite employers and employees against the (Social Democratic) state, which – the FrP argues – has intervened too much in welfare politics.8

The Progress Party and the Danish People’s Party in Denmark In 1973 Denmark became a member of the European Community (EC), and this was also the year when the Progress Party and its leader Mogens Glistrup made their debut in the national elections. It went well; with 15.9 per cent of the vote, it became the second largest party in parliament. Its politics was oriented against high taxes and public spending in general. However, the party lacked a stable organization and was overly dependent on its leader. And in 1983 Glistrup, who on national television had previously declared that he avoided paying taxes, was found guilty of tax fraud and sent to prison. On the two-dimensional political space, discussed above, the party was inherently market-liberal and culturally libertarian, although its voters were found to be more traditionally conservative and thus share proauthoritarian values (Kitschelt and McGann 1997). The party had no natural predecessor, which made it easier for political entrepreneurs, such as Mogens Glistrup, to create a party from the scratch. Before the 1973 national elections, Denmark was between 1968 and 1971 run by a mainstream right coalition government that yet failed to deviate much from traditional Social Democratic politics. In 1971 a Social Democratic minority government again seized governmental power and co-operated with the culturally libertarian parties on the bourgeois side of the political spectrum. The opportunities were there to mobilize voters who wanted a radical shift and invigoration of domestic politics. The Danish Progress Party thus managed to politicize the tax issue and also the EC issue to gain substantial electoral fortunes in the 1973 national

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elections. Gradually, the party became more authoritarian and thus more attuned with its electorate. The ideological thrust was directed against those abusing welfare services; i.e. the party featured a kind of welfarechauvinism. The party went into gradual decline, though. There was no profound backdrop to the general anti-taxation issue and no stable political organization that could team up to secure its initial success. The neo-liberalism of the Danish Progress Party motivated its anti-immigration profile. The party attracted both traditional right-wing-oriented voters who were in favour of market-liberal solutions and also voters from the mainstream left who championed authoritarian political views concerning family values, and also immigration. In contrast to the right-wing-oriented voters in continental Europe, the Scandinavian right-wing voters were during the 1970s and 1980s in Denmark (and Norway) deeply committed to democracy (Kitschelt and McGann 1997: 138). The lack of stable political organization eventually led to the collapse of the party, but the strong anti-immigration sentiments remained in the electorate and these were channeled in the formation of a new political party. In 1995–1996, under the chairmanship of Pia Kjaersgaard, the DF evolved from a splinter group of the Progress Party. In the 1998 elections the DF gained half of their votes from people that earlier cast their votes for the Danish Progress Party. In these elections the DF gained approximately 7 per cent of the votes. Their presence initially created much controversy and antipathies among the mainstream political actors. In 2001, however, the DF became the supporting cast of the mainstream right government under Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, representing the liberal party Venstre (Trads 2002; Bjerre 2009). The DF aspired to become a socially responsible party and gradually let go of its neo-liberal tendencies (Trads 2002: 26) in order to better reach their target groups in the electorate who were instead in favor of welfare-state arrangements (Meret 2010: 106).9 The party developed a political language that spoke for ‘the weak’ in society. This emphasis on social responsibility became thus embedded with the party´s harsh stance on immigration. In the recent national elections the Social Democrats again seized governmental power and the DF was made part of the opposition. Yet it received 12.3 per cent of the votes in the 2011 national elections. In addition, the other parliamentary parties in Denmark have taken up the DF’s aggressive anti-immigration stance. Sune Laegaard (2013) has even characterized the official Danish path as explicitly anti-multiculturalist, and the policies remain the same also with the Social Democratic Party in government after the 2011 national elections, though the discourse does

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begin to soften. The previous mainstream right government, with the DF as the supporting cast, according to Laegaard (ibid.: 176) successfully played ‘the immigrant card’.

Summing Up the Historical Legacies of the Nationalist Populist Parties in Scandinavia To sum up, the FrP came to prominence in the 1970s by successfully combining neo-liberal policies and authoritarian views on socio-cultural issues. They recognize and appreciate Norway’s Christian heritage, they endorse family values, argue for tougher punishments for criminals and praise the defence industry (see e.g. Fremskrittspartiet 2009). Otherwise, their ultimate aim is to strongly reduce the role of the state in everyday social relations. The DF evolved as a splinter branch of the Danish Progress Party in the 1990s and is more likely than its predecessor to speak for ‘the weak’ in the society. The SD started out as an extremist party in the 1980s and the 1990s, but has managed to access the national parliament in Sweden in 2010. Unlike the two other parties in the comparison, the SD party lacks what Elisabeth Ivarsflaten (2006) refers to as a stable ‘reputational shield’ to fend off accusations of racism and xenophobia. It enjoys a very limited impact on domestic politics on immigration and integration, but continues to allocate enough voters from both camps to suggest a drastic cut on immigration to Sweden and a significant hardening of the national integration policy. Can we say that these parties belong to the same party family? Over time we can see that they seem to increasingly converge, despite their very different historical legacies (Jungar and Ravik Jupskås 2014). Combining the two dimensions of political mobilization, the socio-economic and the socio-cultural axis, these parties articulate a clear welfare-chauvinistic message; the national welfare should be for the natives foremost. There is a growing consensus in the academic literature that these parties are ‘right’ only when it comes to culture. Concerning the economy, they are seemingly at least very ‘flexible’ (Mudde 2007: chapter 5). What unites the so-called radical right in Europe, rather, is the combination of having a clear ‘traditionalist-communitarian’ position on the cultural axis of political competition and a clear anti-establishment position, thus siding with the ‘silent majority’ against the elites (political or cultural) (Bornschier 2012: 3; Rydgren 2012). The face of this internal enemy (the elite), however, shifts in different political environments. As shall be apparent in the analysis, the progress of these parties should be related to the Scandinavian welfare model and the Social Democratic

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dominance in national politics. This is different from continental Europe. My specific contribution, in this regard, would be to analyse to what extent these three parties gain credibility in the political space using the political opportunity structure of national myths, which is how I operationalize the reproduction of the nation in the political rhetoric of the three nationalist populist parties according to the discursive approach outlined above. In other words, the two layers of national identity discourse intersect. In what remains of this chapter, I will focus on the different explanations given to the varying electoral fortunes of the PRRs.

Explanations for the Progress of the Populist Radical Right Parties In the literature there is a wide range of explanations for the varying electoral fortunes of the PRRs in various parliamentary assemblies. I do neither systematically test these explanations in my analysis, nor is my ambition to offer the ‘best’ explanation. I here emphasize uses of national myth making (chapter 3) as a separate political opportunity structure. In the other empirical chapters (4 and 5) I turn to the public debate and, more specifically, the question of how the editorial writers in the three countries frame the role and position of the three parties, ranging along a continuum from repressive to permissive. This approach corresponds to, as earlier mentioned, the layered discursive approach focusing on issues pertaining to national identity in regards to the ideological positioning and mainstream reactions of the three nationalist populist parties in this study. My approach is mainly oriented to the supply side – i.e. an emphasis on the sender in the process of political communication. This is not to say that other explanations are redundant or completely astray, but rather here I argue for the need for context-sensitive comparative analyses. I understand political opportunity structures as the ‘consistent – but not necessarily formal or permanent – dimensions of the political environment that provide incentives for people to undertake collective action by affecting their expectations of success or failure’ (Tarrow 1988: 85). Rydgren (2006: 14–22) suggests that the political opportunity structure needs to have the following characteristics: the appearances of niches in the electoral arena (e.g. ‘new’ political parties emphasizing ‘new’ political issues not sufficiently recognized by the mainstream parties); voting behaviour that is structured along the socio-cultural cleavage structure and appropriates parts of the socio-economic cleavage structure (i.e. the political debate shifts attention from ‘welfare vs. capital’ to ‘life-style poli-

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tics’); high salience for immigration issues; a high degree of convergence in the political space (e.g. the difference between the mainstream left and the mainstream right vaporizes); and a high degree of openness of the political system (e.g. the parliamentary threshold). Furthermore, according to Rydgren (ibid.), it is also important how other political parties respond to the emergence of the PRR parties (whether they choose to debar, defuse or adopt PRR politics) and how the media reacts (e.g. to what extent the ‘new’ parties gain access to the media space to orchestrate their politics). In the last section of this chapter I shall go into some detail about the content of these explanations and present the argument that ‘national myths’ constitutes a relevant political opportunity structure in their own right. They can, potentially, be used to affect the electoral outcome of political parties. In chapters 4 and 5 I shall argue that the political environment as it crystallizes in the public debate, manifested on the editorial pages, works permissively and/or repressively towards the nationalist populist parties. Indeed, mainstream media can both obstruct the nationalist parties and push forward their demands in the public debate. If the parties are going to fill the latter role, as I have previously argued, it is not enough to cross the electoral threshold, they also need to cross the threshold of credibility.

The Demand From a general perspective, much research has previously focused on structural explanations for the emergence of the PRRs (see e.g. Betz 1994; Kitschelt and McGann1997; Betz and Immerfall 1998; Hainsworth 2000; Rydgren 2002). Many Western democracies face an increasing demand for politics that represent people who express antipathies towards demographic changes in the society as a consequence of immigration. Many of the manual workers have traditionally voted for the Social Democratic parties; now they tend to vote for the PRRs instead. They claim to defend the rights and interests of the working native population who have lost their influence and no longer feel represented by the Social Democrats (Rydgren 2012). The ‘losers of modernity’ (Betz 1994) are seemingly attracted to the efforts of the PRRs to rebuild their confidence when society at large seems oriented towards individualization rather than traditional collective community making. The development towards a post-industrial and multicultural society has left many people behind. The restructuring of the economy, the new class cleavages and the general decline of stable party political preferences based on sectorial interests pave the ground for new

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political parties to represent the demands of the disoriented working class and small stakeholders (ibid.). The ‘losers of modernity’ are not attuned to the structural changes in the post-industrial societies; their cultural capital therefore weakens as a consequence. In current research it is common to distinguish between cultural and economic factors, as Simon Bornschier and Hanspieter Kriesi (2012: 27) recently argued in a study that correlated class position and voting preferences: Cultural, not economic modernization losers support the extreme right. The only structural element shaping this world-view is gender. … The extreme populist right’s traditionalist-communitarian ideology provides a dual remedy for this uncertainty. Not only do these movements champion the return to the orderly, culturally conservative society characteristic of the post-war decades, but in their demarcation from immigrants, they also contribute to an upgrading of this group’s self-consciousness.

Another explanation that, normally, is associated with the demand side is the theory of ethnic competition. This theory builds on assumptions that the PRR voters seek to reduce the competition from various minorities on e.g. the labour market, the housing market and perhaps also on the marriage market (Rydgren 2005; Rydgren 2007; cf. Osanami Törngren 2011). This way of reasoning corresponds to the so-called Group Threat theory (Blalock 1967), which suggests that the majority population fears enhanced competition as a consequence of a dense immigrant population. It assumes that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods, the ethnic competition is severe and impacts voter preferences among the natives in these areas.10 The so-called halo effect suggests that areas that are impeded by social marginalization nearby immigrant-dense areas are more likely to vote for PRRs (Rydgren and Ruth 2011). Even when these areas are themselves not immigrant-dense. In their study, Jens Rydgren and Patrick Ruth (2011) found a correlation between low levels of education and income and electoral support for the SD. These hypotheses rely on the basic premise that a growing sense of xenophobia triggers voters to change their party political preferences. New parties that skillfully utilize such a ‘master frame’ in their political platform might attract voters who e.g. feel that the national identity is under threat (Rydgren 2005; Caiani and Della Porta 2011). To this one could also add studies that focus on a general feeling of political dissatisfaction and resentment among the population in relation to a growing support for anti-establishment parties that mobilize voters

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along this dimension (see further Rydgren 2006: 19) to offer an alternative to the status quo. While many of these explanations, to a varying extent, bear some empirical significance, there is a growing consensus among scholars that demand-side explanations for the current rise of the PRRs in contemporary European politics are insufficient – or even misguided (Mudde 2007; Bornschier 2012). There is not necessarily a significant correlation between levels of unemployment, slow economic growth, the size of the immigration population and the electoral fortunes of the PRR parties (Rydgren 2007). Studies vary; some show a correlation, others do not (see the prologue). Mikael Hjerm (2009; see also Lithman 2013) shows, for instance, that there is no correlation between anti-immigration sentiments and the proportion of visible minorities. Furthermore, explanations that are too general often fail to explain variations in electoral outcome (Rydgren 2012). Recent comparative research on the PRR parties tends to focus more on supply-side factors (e.g. party ideology and organization as well as the system in which they operate), rather than a mere focus on the demand for such parties, to explain varieties in their electoral fortunes in different countries; hence, these parties do not merely attract protest voters (see e.g. Goodwin 2011).11

The Supply To explain the PRR challenge to established party hierarchies, then, scholars need to emphasize the political opportunity structures in the electoral market, or so the argument goes (Bornschier 2012; Rydgren 2007; Norris 2005). To put it differently, the ‘new’ cultural conflict in the two-dimensional political space between progressive and universalist ideas of the ‘new’ left and the ‘radical right’ ‘could only unfold where the established cleavage structure left the space and did not succeed in organizing these new issues’ (Oesch 2012: 35). In other words, the political actors need to offer an attractive supply answering to the demands raised amongst the electorate. We can analyse this supply in terms of political opportunity structures, as outlined above. First, scholars agree on the idea that new political parties mobilize voters around new issues that are not supported enough by the mainstream parties. Much post-war politics was shaped around the socio-economic cleavage structure between the left (more prone to accept an active welfare state) and the right (prone to accept more market-oriented solutions). As already mentioned, we need to consider the development of a multidimensional space. Whereas the new Social Democrats tend to drift away

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from their original constituencies, the manual working class, the ‘new left’, tends to frame e.g. social policy in terms of values instead of merely the economy (Bornschier 2010: 28). As a consequence, the PRRs attract voters from the original worker parties – those who are authoritarian rather than libertarian on the socio-cultural axis of political competition. In political systems where ‘culture’ and life-style politics are more important than traditional socio-economic issues, this opens up an opportunity for new authoritarian parties to establish a niche in the electoral space. Following e.g. the rise of the Green movement and the politicization of identity politics, the socio-cultural axis of political competition has gained in salience.12 The question of what knits citizens together in a distinct, often national community has recently had strong repercussions in European politics. Scholars have devoted attention to a value shift in European societies after the Cold War and the coming to the fore of movements such as anti-globalization, gay rights and environmentalism that put greater emphasis on socio-cultural issues and life-style politics rather than the socio-economic cleavage between labour and capital. On the other side of the political spectrum scholars have identified a backlash, building on traditionalist-communitarian values, to the alleged erosion of the link between nationality and citizenship following processes associated with globalization and the supra-nationalization of the European Union (see e.g. Rydgren 2007). For instance, Bornschier (2010: 5) argues: ‘The rise of the populist right is a consequence of the growing salience of the new cultural dimension of conflict at the expense of the economic state-market cleavage.’ However, it remains important to be context-sensitive. For instance, it is clear that the Pim Fortuyn list13 did not neatly belong to the traditionalist pole; conversely, in the Dutch political system the dynamic of political competition plays out differently, compared to e.g. in the three Scandinavian states (see further Bornschier 2010). This complex transformation of European societies has, according to some scholars, generated a national-level identity crisis (Ellinas 2010) that prompted various politicians to restore the linkage between the national people and the national territory, to reinstall order by means of tightening the boundaries between us and them through references to ‘identity’, ‘culture’ and ‘civilization’ (see e.g. Appadurai 2007). Simultaneously, the traditional parties suffer from membership loss and electoral drops as they face difficulties in answering to the shifting demands of the electorate, which was particularly obvious in the context of the financial crisis around 2011. Ellinas (2010) thus recognizes this socio-cultural shift in many stable democracies towards a polarization between, on the one hand, those

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embracing post-material values and thus inclined to pursue a political agenda that rests on cultural pluralism and, on the other hand, those resisting such views to instead find preferences for cultural protectionism. In this socio-cultural shift (ibid.: 26) calls are made in the political debate for strengthening the national identity under the perceived threat of potential foreign terrorists or internal sleepers. This shift is especially clear in countries in which the PRRs have made and are making headway. These parties suggest politics that generally disfavour immigrants in relation to the native population. To understand the complex transformations of European societies following on from this shift, a recognition of the different roles played by the various PRR parties in their respective national context is essential. Along the cultural axis of political competition, tradition and particular values gain precedence over pure material interests involving e. g. taxes or dental care – what Bornschier refers to as ‘the primacy of politics’ (2010: 23). In this regard, immigration from culturally remote regions puts the perceived cultural homogeneity of the natives at risk. This might in turn explain why the PRRs prefer to help refugees in their heath instead of letting them in the country. Second, the convergence between the established parties in political space provides yet another favourable opportunity structure for new competitors. Peter Mair (2002) points out that the political identities of the mainstream parties are increasingly blurred. Ingrid van Biezen, Peter Mair and Thomas Poguntke (2012) argue that the traditional parties suffer from membership loss and electoral drops as they face difficulties in answering to the shifting demands of the electorate. Chantal Mouffe (2005) links the Social Democratic turn to the political centre and the abundance of conflicts along the socio-economic axis to the recent electoral fortunes of the PRRs. In her view, the moralization of politics has taken speed due to this increased party convergence. This provides opportunities for new political parties to occupy the position of political underdogs. Kitschelt (2013: 237) assumes that voters might shift their party preferences if the mainstream parties share similar opinions between them concerning economic distribution. In other words, if there is a great degree of convergence – i.e. most parties move towards the middle – voters might instead focus on the cultural dimension in looking for political alternatives. Third, the overall structure of the political competition of the votes also constitutes a relevant opportunity structure – i.e. how the mainstream parties react to the progress of the PRRs. Tim Bale et al. (2010) show how the Social Democratic parties, traditionally split between progressive and conservative voters, have responded with rather different approaches to the challenge of the PRR parties: to either hold their initial ‘generous’

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approach; to defuse the immigration issue; or to adopt the politics of the PRR parties. Acknowledging the transformation of the party system into a twodimensional space (socio-cultural and socio-economic cleavages), Bornschier (2012) contends, it is relevant to consider the interplay of the mainstream parties (the left and the right) along the cultural axis to explain the varying progress of the PRR parties in different countries (in his case, France and Germany). While the other parliamentary parties in Denmark have adjusted themselves to the politics of the DF, the Swedish cases illustrates, conversely, that the other seven parties are careful not to be associated with the SD. A loosening up of the moral distance towards the SD risks credibility losses as the mainstream parties might be accused of stealing (back) the SD votes as a consequence (Saveljeff 2011). This resistance, Rydgren (2010) concludes, has motivated a strategy of cordon sanitaire, adopted by the other parties to answer (or rather not answer) to the challenge posed by the SD in Swedish politics. Fourth, then, media visibility structures the political opportunities open for the new political parties to communicate their politics to presumptive voters. Ellinas (2010: 18) writes: ‘media exposure can push minor parties into mainstream debate, give them visibility, and legitimate their claims’, and Rydgren (2005: 255) suggests that there is a lack of research devoted to the role of mass media in explaining the PRR parties. The media can push these parties forward, but it can also debar their progress; hence, ‘the institutions of the mass media play a crucial roles in the dialectic of democracy versus populism’ (Mazzoleni 2003: 2). Ellinas’s book (2010) on the relation between the rise of the ‘Far Right’ and the media has two main theses. Firstly, the party positioning on national identity issues structures the opportunities for the PRRs to enjoy their initial electoral breakthrough. Secondly, it examines how the media exposure attributed to the political newcomer (or lack thereof) can explain or possibly hinder the newcomer in gaining electoral fortunes in the course of party development. Faced with internal ruptures and a lack of a solid organizational base, a party is a likely candidate to become a ‘flash phenomenon’ (Taggart 2002), and thus abruptly suffer from heavy drops in their electoral support.14 Many of these ‘new’ parties mobilize voters around an anti-establishment agenda that helps them to cross the initial electoral threshold. Once in the parliament, however, it is difficult to maintain this underdog position as they become, in fact, parts of the establishment. The media is not, perhaps, always equally important. Christoffer GreenPedersen and Jesper Krogstrup (2008) downplay the media’s role in e.g.

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the politicization of the ‘immigration issue’ and its importance in the political competition for votes in Denmark. What this short summary reveals is that no single explanatory factor alone enables a comprehensive-enough explanation of, with variations also in time, the varying electoral fortunes of the three nationalist populist parties. This book, as the reader has hopefully observed, does not contain a systematic test of the explanations listed above.

Supply and Demand This summary reveals that ‘new’ parties need to occupy an available niche in the electoral market in order to gain substantial electoral fortunes – hence, to match support with demand. This can be done by politicizing issues – so-called socio-cultural issues – previously not much focused on in the public debate and in the political space, appealing successfully to voters who might feel neglected by the mainstream political actors. In the end, it is not all together clear how to separate these two main categories or sets of explanations (supply and demand). Daniel Oesch (2012: 40) has convincingly showed how ‘the new left’ and ‘the new right’ attract opposing electoral groups in Denmark, Norway, Switzerland and Austria: ‘The New Left thus relies in all four countries on the middle classes, whereas the radical right is clearly dominated by the working classes.’ In this way, Oesch argues, ‘the old left’ is similar to ‘the radical right’ in terms of their voting preferences. Or to put it differently, the working-class segments of the electorate are more likely to vote for the radical right if the cultural axis of political competition gains in salience over the economic cleavage structure. This is because they hold both strongly authoritarian views and traditionally left-wing views on the economy, e.g. preferring a strong state with control over the economy to free-market liberalism with limited state involvement (ibid.: 47). True, there is a strong demand for anti-immigration politics in the Scandinavian countries, as well, even if we are more used to living with strangers in diverse societies today, at least compared to before (Demker 2014). For anti-immigration attitudes to transmute into polices, however, there has to be a supply answering to that demand. I suggest that the nationalist populist parties need to cross the threshold of credibility in order to mobilize ‘anti-immigration’ voters and co-operate with mainstream parties, to affect domestic politics in their desired direction – i.e., national welfare against multiculturalism and the blending of cultures. Herbert Kitschelt (2013: 224) puts it clearly: ‘Only where demand and supply meet will socio-cultural dispositions translate into actual vote

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choices.’ There is a tendency in mainstream media to project negative feelings – i.e. they are not like ‘us’, poorly educated, working-class men. This has recently been noted in the scholarly literature: ‘The Progress Party and the Danish People’s Party have thus succeeded to mobilize and – even more importantly – to maintain the working-class votes, by responding to the demands coming from these social groups and left unanswered by the other political parties and in particular by the left wing’ (Betz and Meret 2012: 109). Given illustrations from the situation in Germany and Great Britain, Bale et al. (2012) convincingly argue in the same volume that it is rather the mainstream right (as opposed to the radical right) that benefits from the waning of the Social Democrats and their move towards the centre. In other words, when and if the Social Democratic parties aim to steal back the votes from their PRR competitors by suggesting a tougher stance on integration and a limitation of immigration, the mainstream right is likely to gain votes instead.

My Contribution I here argue that ‘national myths’ constitute a relevant political opportunity structure that, potentially, can be used to affect the electoral outcome of political parties – to harmonize the two layers of national identity formation. The national myths and how their meanings are negotiated provide the structural conditions upon which the current political competitors struggle for votes. In sum, it is not enough to rely on one factor only to explain the varying electoral fortunes of the PRRs. I here suggest that a deeper inquiry into the political history of both the countries and the parties can provide us with some ideas, though not a complete answer to why some parties manage better than others. In the next chapter I will explain how I will do my analysis.

NOTES 1. This occurred some years before the foundation of the National Socialist Workers’ Party in Germany. Proponents of the Third Reich popularized many of Kjellén’s ideas after his death (for instance his notions about geo-politics and Lebensraum). During his lifetime he expressed clearly anti-parliamentarian and autocratic stances and argued that Sweden should side up with Germany in World War I. Even though such ideas in practice lost their public credibility in Sweden, in particular after World War II, it is noteworthy that Germany-friendly views were widely shared by large parts of the academic

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elite in Sweden, partly reflecting the fact that Germany was seen as the leading research nation in the early twentieth century (Lagergren 1999; Witoszek 2002; Tingsten 1961). According to Brochmann and Hagelund (2012: 7): ‘The welfare state is a political institution that uses economic redistribution to realise defined objectives on behalf of all of society. It is based on a social contract, which ensures that the working part of the population supports children, young people by taxing labour and consumption.’ The welfare state is universal in the sense that everyone in the society is entitled to the same rights and obligations. In 1941 a new sterilization law was enacted in Sweden. This law was used against not only the sick people in the Swedish society, but also against those – mainly women – who were perceived as being too promiscuous. Even if no outright extremist national socialist party gained a strong foothold in the Scandinavian countries, ideas of racial biology were not absent from the public debate and in national legislation activities at around this time (see further Hagerman 2006: 391). The Green Party was not alone, though. Already 1985, in electoral co-operation with the Center party, the Christian Democrats entered into the national parliament for the first time. After the 1991 national elections the party got into the parliament again, this time based on its own merits. It was also the Centre Party, and not the liberals or the conservatives, which was the dominant party in the bourgeois government coalition that governed the country between 1976 and 1979 and thus broke forty years of uninterrupted Social Democratic rule. This government was dissolved, much due to the nuclear issue. Socio-economically, the SD voters are in between the two blocs in national politics in terms of opinion preferences (Sannerstedt 2008). The party attracts mainly men, but not necessarily the socially marginalized people. Comparatively, though, the party attracts voters with strong working-class identity (Nilsson and Schön 2010). The party stands out, both in terms of its candidates and its voters, in issues pertaining to immigration, gender and law and order – i.e. by holding conservative stances (Erlingsson et al. 2014; Norocel 2013). By way of conclusion, Erlingsson et al. (2014: 210) show that the SD ‘is more than a single-issue party. Regarding their position in the issue space, we showed that they take most conservative position of all parties on all non-economic issues, whereas they take a centrist position on the economy.’ Recently, Kitschelt (2013: 242) has himself admitted that the winning formula, perhaps, no longer combines a market-liberal view on the economy with an authoritarian view on socio-cultural issues, though. The winning formula thus chiefly corresponds to the situation in the 1980s and is not equally applicable today (see e.g. Mudde 2007). There is a potential niche for a leftwing (economically speaking) party with an authoritarian outlook, however there is hardly any such political party in Europe today. Following Kitschelt

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(2013: 243), the traditional petty bourgeoisie has shrunk to virtual non-existence and has been replaced by IT entrepreneurs who are unlikely to align themselves with the radical right. According to Bornschier (2010: 25), today economic preferences play no role in the mobilization of the radical right. Considering the party’s original critique of high taxes and welfare-state interventionism from the mid-1970s, Cas Mudde (2007: 47) classifies the party as neo-liberal populist. Concerning the social composition of DF’s electorate, Meret (2010: 228) shows that in the 2007 elections the party had a relatively higher percentage of workers amongst its voters (+24 per cent in relation to the average of all parties) than the Social Democratic Party did (+7 in relation to the average). A competing hypothesis (the contact hypothesis) states, however, the opposite: that more contact between the inhabitants triggers mutual recognition between the majority and various minorities in ways that positively correlate with a wider acceptance for ethnic diversity in these areas. Even empirical research confirms that these parties do not attract protest voters more than other parties do (Van der Brug et al. 2000). In the early 1990s Ignazi (1992) suggests that the Green parties and the ‘new right’ stand on opposite sides of the socio-cultural cleavage structure in liberal democracies. In other words, the salience of this conflict dimension gave rise to opposing trends, what he referred to as the ‘silent counter revolution’. Individual self-realization and other post-material values stand against movements that, conversely, privilege cultural belonging and national community cohesion. The Pim Fortuyn list was a political party in the Netherlands led by the charismatic openly homosexual Pim Fortuyn. He was assissinatated on 6 May 2002, only a few days before the national elections were held. Previously he was an university teacher and columnist. He combined anti-immigrant rhetoric with an equally strong support of socio-culturally liberal values of the Netherlands such as women´s rights and gay rights. But the current rise of the PRRs is merely not to be dismissed as a flash phenomenon. Conversely, we have seen in many national parliaments that the PRRs have grown to become rather stable in the parliamentary affairs and in some countries they certainly also influence governmental policies. In short, the PRRs do not seem to go away. The most recent elections to the European parliament in 2014 testify to this general trend in countries such as Great Britain, France and Denmark.

E c ha p te r 2

National Myths as Political Opportunity Structures and Editorial Writers as Opinion Makers

he question of how more homogenous populations previously dealt with increased levels of diversity has no straightforward answer. The changing demographic composition invites highly emotional responses among the population, between those who intuitively embrace increased levels of diversity and those who resist it. The debate around the three nationalist populist parties in Scandinavia taps into these issues. It breeds contrasting perceptions of national identity. The reproduction of the nation thus entails how national identity is negotiated and attributed to a certain meaning. My focus on national identity, as I have previously indicated, is centred on determining how it is being negotiated in the public debate, rather than on providing a finite answer to questions about what the nation really is. What I will show here is that these parties, mobilizing frustrations and concerns in the electorate about the demographic changes in the Scandinavian countries, communicate their politics through popular notions of national identity. Their antagonists in the political and cultural fields then respond to their claims, articulating an opposing conceptualization of national identity. The discursive formation, the rules of what can be said and done in this context, illuminate the borders of normality, which surround the zone of acquiescence. Approaching this zone, political actors with the ambition of having an impact of domestic politics need to articulate their political messages from stable ‘ethos-positions’ – thereby crossing the threshold of credibility. This provides the backdrop to how I will proceed with the analysis. I rely on a modified version of Wæver’s theory of the layered discursive structure. The first tier consists of contrasting notions of what constitutes

T

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the relation between the state, the nation and the people in the three Scandinavian states. How is history written? I suggest that the three nationalist populist parties’ uses of national myths in their political rhetoric provide a particular meaning of the first tier. The struggle of meaning for what constitutes the proper balance between welfare and diversity in the Scandinavian states lies at the centre of the second part of my empirical analysis. My analysis of the self-presentation of the parties and the mitigation of their claims in the public debate thus constitutes the second discursive layer of national identity construction. I will here discuss the concepts that will be used in the analysis and also provide some methodological, technical guidelines. In the analysis, I have chosen to have longer empirical chapters to emphasize the comparative approach, rather than have nation-specific (shorter) chapters. To recap, in the first part of the analysis (chapter 3) I shall deal with how the three parties positively present themselves. My main research question guiding the analysis at this stage is: How do the three nationalist populist parties communicate their politics to gain credibility and thus boost the possibility of allocating more votes? A comprehensive comparison of the ideological positioning of these parties in domestic politics also needs to take into account how the audience(s) respond to these claims, though. I focus here on the mitigation of the claims made by the nationalist populist parties on the editorial pages, not on the responses made by the audiences. My main research question guiding the analysis at the second stage is: How do the editorial writers of the major newspapers in each country diagnose and respond to the challenges posed by the three nationalist populist parties?

Myths The basic hypothesis underlying the first empirical chapter of this book is that the three nationalist populist parties take advantage of national myths. This is not to present an alternative narrative of the nations they wish to defend against external and internal threats, but rather to accentuate and radicalize popularly held sentiments of what attaches the natives with the nation they allegedly belong to; what brings the national people together in the nation. These particular myth-making processes thus bridge the two tiers in the layered discursive formation; a negotiation of which cultural codes could and should provide the basic structure from which the proper balance between welfare and multiculturalism is obtained. The three nationalist populist parties could and perhaps should remain radical in relation to the governing elites, but avoid being perceived as

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extreme by the voters. If we agree that politics is not merely about the administration of already-made decisions, but also about the imagination and hopes for a different and better society, then it makes sense to also consider the role of populism in contemporary representative democracies. A deeper inquiry into the relation between populism and (representative) democracy provides essential guidance for how we can come to terms with the role of national myth making in the contemporary electoral competition. I here explain positive self-presentation in terms of populist appeals to the people and references to national myth making. The uses of myths are certainly not limited to allegedly populist parties, ‘however, the use of imagination and storytelling is an essential ingredient in populist politics’ (Oudenampsen 2010: 8). As argued by Merijn Oudenampsen, without imagination it is not possible to appeal to ‘the people’, a vital aspect of populist rhetoric; in other words, a fundamental cry for a vitalization of democracy that extends the role of the people, thus inducing them to actively participate in governance. This activity thus conveys an idea of democracy that suggests that the people do not simply vote and trust the representatives to make the right and just decisions, but rather take an active role in democratic governance (see further ibid; Ranciere 2007). I thus resist the temptation, here following Taggart, to take ‘the populists at their words’, allowing them to be truth-sayers and the only legitimate opposition; the populist are per definition neither ‘right’ nor ‘left’, but should rather be understood as ‘chameleonic’ (see further e.g. Taggart 2003). I shall here focus on how the three nationalist populist parties use populist rhetoric to provide positive self-images, not contradicting popular notions of nationhood, but rather accentuating these claims to mobilize support from the people against the political and cultural elites. This also entails bringing in distinct interpretations of who ‘the people’ are, supposedly not the immigrants. To remind the reader, populism, as I use it here, is seen as the property of the message and not necessarily a label to single out various political parties (cf. Rooduijn et al. 2012: 3). In the book’s conclusion I will return to the notion of the two-faced nature of populist claims, affecting both the nationalist populist parties in the public debate and also their antagonists. More precisely, I will analyse if and how the three parties, which I label as nationalist populist parties, use stories and myths of the nation to bind together seemingly heterogeneous, yet unsatisfied demands of the electorate to a political programme of national cohesion (cf. Laclau 2005; Oudenampsen 2010). These claims, then, give a particular form to ‘the people’ (ibid.). The invocation of national myths, in this sense, might

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serve to make concrete an image of the national community that the national people could identify themselves with (Oudenampsen 2010: 14). To identify positive self-presentations of the three nationalist populist parties, in this regard, serves a wider purpose extending beyond mere party politics; it determines different conceptualizations, or stories, about how the society is and should be imagined. I will in chapter 3 look further into how the three parties put under scrutiny in this study use national myths to establish a radical (but not extreme) position within the zone of acquiescence. After all, politics without imagination is mere technocracy. A deeper inquiry into the ambiguous relation between democracy and populism shows this to be the case.

Populism and Democracy Democracy does not merely constitute a formal system for decision making and preference formulation; it also conveys visions about who, ideally, should be representing whom. The ultimate source of authority in democratic governance is centred on the category of the people. In essence, representative politics represents the interests and wishes of the population to embody and realize the popular will. Talking in the name of the people, usually described as the trademark of populism, is essential for all political parties trying to maximize voting support. It has been argued that populism, previously at the fringe, now belongs to the political mainstream (Mudde 2004: 542). Herein is an ambiguity. The so-called populists share with the mainstream political culture the conviction that the legitimacy of democratic governance lies with the sovereign people. The fear of the people as the uneducated masses suggests that the people need to be controlled and kept in check by responsible elites, according to Francisco Panizza (2005: 15): ‘Traces of the original image of the people as dangerous and irrational plebs still resonate in late modern politics.’ Anyway, the people are a legitimizing force in representative politics (Näsström 2007: 624). Political representatives who claim to speak in the name of the people in order to reclaim power of the people against the ruling elites (e.g. the king, the government) rely on myths about popular authority. The uses of myths about the people are it seems something that we cannot do without and, according to Margaret Canovan (2002: 417): ‘this emperor has no clothes, but to keep the system functioning we must go on admiring his imaginary robe’. The mythology of the people is thus constitutive for the everyday political communication between the representative elites and the people.

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Benjamín Arditi (2004) recognizes that populism, like any other concept in the political vocabulary, revolves around the poles of the politics of scepticism and the politics of faith – on the promises of human salvation and redemption (the politics of faith) on the one hand, and institutional stability and pragmatism on the other (the politics of scepticism). This distinction, introduced by Michael Oakeshott (1996: 66–67), should not be equated with a particular ideology, political party or governmental system. Rather, these poles represent two distinct logics that in their ideal form organize the activity of governing in modern politics. In short, the politics of faith refers to the perfection of humankind; its faith in human activity serves the pursuit of human emancipation and the improvement of the human character. The misfortunes of political or religious dissent are, in this vein, treated as errors to be corrected and suppressed by minute governance. The politics of scepticism, by contrast, shows no blind trust in human excellency and the activity of governing is limited to and given by the law. This logic objects to any imposition of governmental activity to determine human activity. Margaret Canovan (1999) says that populism follows democracy like a shadow. Populist mobilization, then, constitutes a reaction towards politics-as-usual (Arditi 2004: 142). Populism is an important reminder that politics is (also) about shaping and realizing popular expectations and visions, not merely about administrating decisions taken by ‘them’.1 Drawing on Oakeshott’s distinction, Canovan (2004: 245) elaborates on two faces of democratic politics: redemption and pragmatism. The pragmatic side is about maintaining an institutional design to manage conflicts and disagreements without anyone involved getting hurt. Conversely, the redemptive face expands on the idea of popular sovereignty and raises claims about bringing the masses into politics. Democracy as an ideal form of governance constitutes a redemptive vision to enable the citizenry to realize ‘the good society’. In its actual implementation, though, democracy features certain institutions and is pragmatically concerned with stability and order. In its particular form, the pragmatic view features e.g. free elections, a multi-party system and the rule of law. It is illusory, Canovan predicts, to imagine democratic governance without redemptive impulses. She (1999: 14) makes a comparison to the role of the church in modern secular societies, referring to Max Weber’s idea that ‘a church is an institution in which religious charisma is routinized’, in which the voice of God is mediated and institutionally arranged. The analogy suggests that populism thrives in societies that suffer from a lack of balance between the two faces of democracy – to ignore the re-

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demptive impulses inherent in democratic politics is similar to running a church in which the congregation lacks faith in religion. Given that politics is not merely about the aggregation of rational interests or sensible deliberation, but also about mobilizing passions, frustrations and enthusiasm in the name of the people, populism plays a significant role in modern representative politics. In this vein, populism relates to various modes of identification rather than merely to individuals or parties (Panizza 2005). Populism, in this vein, constitutes a particular kind of democratic protest (Abbott 2007). Populism brings a flavour of the politics of faith to democratic politics. This shows in the positive self-presentation of the nationalist populist parties, but also in how the editorial writers mediate their claims in the public debate, what I have previously discussed in terms of negative other (re-)presentation. Populism has a double-face (Hellström and Kiiskinen 2013) and reminds us that political rhetoric is not merely about reason and the content, but also about emotions and the forms of doing politics. This is not a normative claim, but rather an empirical statement that we need to acknowledge, both as citizens of democratic societies and as researchers of social phenomena. Of course, it is possible to also analyse other means of articulating a positive self-image. The strategy of moderation (Hervik 2011) has been used by these parties for quite some time as a means of entering into the zone of acquiescence. One possible route forward for these parties is to radicalize mainstream beliefs and popular sentiments of national cohesion. It is indeed possible to look deeper into the debate on e.g. immigration, integration and national identity and compare this debate, synchronically and diachronically. However, I shall here focus on how the parties themselves act within a nation-specific setting and, hypothetically, take advantage of popular memories of the nation and images of ‘the people’, also shared by most people and not just the core voters of these parties. Important to note, at this stage, is that the process of myth making is neither causally linked to a pre-modern ethnie,2 as suggested by e.g. the ethno symbolists (see further e.g. Özkirimli 2010: 150–152), nor completely arbitrary – i.e. the three parties deliberately try to persuade the voters to vote for them and thus accommodate an alternative imagination of the nation. Rather, I would hypothesize that these parties radicalize and accentuate popularly held sentiments to challenge established party hierarchies. That is also why and how I turn to the concept of myth, not to insinuate fabrication of reality but to emphasize how these three parties frame the national community. In short, myth making refers to the emo-

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tional investment embedded in democratic practices and what I above referred to as the politics of faith.

(National) Myths Myths are powerful rhetorical instruments used to provide substance to political claims for national cohesion (Bottici 2007). A myth, in this view, is not the opposite of ‘truth’ or a deliberate distortion of reality. Rather, myths constitute the plot in which the community identity is being formed (Stråth 2000: 20). In short, national myths, in my analysis, provide answers to the question of how the nation, the state and the people merge. In this context it is natural to turn to the semiologist Roland Barthes, who some decades ago discussed the relation between myths, language and reality. It is apparent in his works that myths are not about the fabrication of reality3; rather, myth is a type of speech and provides a system of communication (Barthes 2000; Fiske 1994). Myths are regularly experienced as naturalized, ‘innocent speech’ (Fiske 1994: 118). According to Barthes the myth, then, is a ‘second-order semiological system’ (2000: 99). Its function is not to conceal, but to distort history: ‘Myth hides nothing and flaunts nothing; myth is neither a lie nor a confession’ (ibid.: 116). By invoking myths as particular speech acts, the sender (the signifier) claims to turn nature into destiny. Myths are depoliticized speech acts in the sense that they are used to ‘empty reality’ (ibid.: 131) of its everyday ambiguities and abolish the complexity of human activities. In Barthes’s writings much attention is devoted to the bourgeoisie and how its representatives, successfully, have merged into the nation and pervaded all social relations in e.g. the French society. According to Barthes myths are on the right. Myths on the left are possible, Barthes argues, only when the promise of revolution is abandoned and when the left instead agrees to ‘wear a mask, to hide its name. … Left-wing myth never reaches the immense field of human relationships’ (ibid.: 135–136). Myths stem from the dominant class/ideology in the society, but obscure their origin; hence, they are thereby depoliticized and naturalized. In the Scandinavian countries it is primarily the Social Democratic parties that in the twentieth century monopolized the meaning of the nation and thus transformed history into nature (Linderborg 2002). The history of Social Democratic myth making does not contradict the bourgeois history writing of the nation (ibid.). The Social Democratic myth making had to adjust itself to the bourgeois society in order to be successful, inheriting similar myths about founding fathers of the nation and ideas of a ‘golden age’. Nevertheless, national myth making in the Scandinavian

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countries was, as we have seen during the post-war years, to a large extent shaped and mediated by Social Democracy. The Social Democratic influence on national myth making shows, hypothetically, in the rhetoric and activities of the three nationalist populist parties. By ‘national’ myths I refer to particular narratives that aim to glue a distinct people to a particular national community. Invoking myths implies the augmentation of certain values that bring community cohesion. This process has historical roots, rather than deriving from the natural order of things (Stråth 2000; Barthes 2000). An emphasis on myths in the analysis thus points to elements that are constitutive for the formation of the national community. History, and not nature, thus provides the backdrop to the formation on these myths. Myths of the nation are, hypothetically, increasingly important in insecure times when the outside world appears to be in flux and questions of who ‘we are’ in relation to what ‘we are not’ gain in salience (Appadurai 2007; Hellström and Hervik 2014). In these times, it is noteworthy that mainstream political actors also frequently ‘play the nationalist card’ (Ellinas 2010: 28). National myths thereby represent distinct claims for national cohesion, which allegedly gain in salience as a consequence of demographic changes in society. Daniel J. Hopkins (2010) has shown, by introducing the so-called politicized place hypothesis, that anti-immigrant sentiments tend to gain political significance in local settings (in the United States) where local communities are undergoing sudden demographic changes and national political rhetoric emphasizes the immigration issue. Translated to our context (the Scandinavian countries), if mainstream politics emphasize national identity issues around Europe, this enables the nationalist populist parties to gain additional recognition for their ambition to gain credibility by means of invoking and accentuating national myths. Returning to the set of explanations provided in the end of the first chapter, we could here add that the use of national myths by political actors, hypothetically, offers a response to a demand among the electorate for a more stable political organization of (national) societies – i.e. for national cohesion. During modernity, political myths were used to satisfy popular demands of continuity and stability. I consider the use of political myths as a reoccurring social phenomenon, through which social cohesion is reproduced by means of both symbolic representation (e.g. rituals, traditions, memory making and customs) and peoples’ lived experiences (Stråth 2000). Through political myths, different actors give significance to certain narratives of the past (Bottici 2007: 14). However, political myths do not merely tell and retell narratives – ultimately they enjoy a moralizing capacity and, potentially, legitimize political actions.

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Important to recognize here is that the emphasis on myths does not have to be oriented towards the past, but can also be used to mobilize support for future redemption. The early twentieth-century philosopher and movement intellectual Georges Sorel insisted that myths, unlike religion, are future oriented and serve as tools for political mobilization (Sorel 2004 [1908]: 124–129). For Sorel, the myth of ‘the general strike’ sustained the proletarian struggle, and hence mobilized the fragmented workers’ demands into a united whole by means of the class struggle. Sorel effectively broke with the classic materialist approach of Marxism (history materialism) to instead suggest that people, hypothetically, unite politically in classes by means of common myths (see also Oudenampsen 2010: 15). The Sorelian conceptualization of myth was used by both Mussolini and Gramsci (who was imprisoned during Mussolini’s regime) to propagate the social mobilization of people by the common invocation of myths, rather than by pure material interests (ibid.). Certainly, Gramsci and Mussolini mobilized and made use of distinctively different fractions of ‘the people’. It is certainly tempting to analyse how the populist leaders incarnate the image of the national myth in their persona, such as for instance Geert Wilders in the Netherlands. I shall instead focus on how the collective body of the parties themselves, hypothetically, provide these images. It is, as we shall see, the collective of free farmers or the collective of individual workers that embody the leading figure in the continuous negotiation of the proper balance between the state, the nation and the people in Scandinavia. This makes more sense, I will argue, since in all three of our cases the leaders aim to represent ‘the common man’, rather than be a leader of the people. Nevertheless, I will argue that national myth making provides a potential political opportunity structure to be utilized by the nationalist populist parties in the public debate. As put by Oudenampsen (2010: 20): ‘Politics still involves imagination, the capacity to dream collectively, to tell stories; politics still contains a form of mythology.’ It is from this perspective that I will go ahead in my analysis to assess how the three nationalist populist parties, hypothetically, make use of national myths to cross the threshold of credibility and thus gain access to the zone of acquiescence. The route forward to accomplish this task, I here argue, is to make the rhetorical uses of national myths congruent to the basic structure of the relationship between the state, the nation and the people. Combining reason and emotions, as I previously suggested, is needed to cross the threshold of credibility; therefore realpolitik must be combined with dreampolitik (Duncombe 2010: 23). As we have learned from earlier studies of public opinion (ibid.; Lipmann 2010), politicians need to provide credible images of e.g. the nation that ‘the people’ can iden-

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tify themselves with. This is fully encapsulated in e.g. the SD’s use of the People’s Home, framed as a metonym for the Swedish society.4 It is, following e.g. Walter Lippmann, who was acting as advisor for various American presidents, to struggle for ownership of the symbols and thus enjoy access to people’s fantasies (Duncombe 2010). The metaphor of the People’s Home is powerful as a political mobilization tool, since it might appeal to a large section of (Swedish) society; it captures peoples’ fantasies of a long-lost utopia. I shall here investigate if and how the three nationalist populist parties take advantage of myths of the nation to gain credibility and thus gain access to the safe zone of acquiescence. The different legacies of the three parties and how they use national myths to emphasize their ‘normality’, hypothetically, provide us with different explanations for how they muddle through the electoral competition in their respective countries, connecting the second layer of national identity formation with popular notions of national cohesion. How do I, then, go about measuring the uses of national myths in the party programmes? One option is to count the number of words related to myth making in the party manifestoes. However, this approach is seemingly too simplistic and does not clearly enough display how national myths are being used in the parties’ self-presentation. For instance, if the word ‘national identity’ is used X times by a particular political actor, this does not convey precise information about how myths of the nations are used to communicate a certain message to the voter. The counting of words and thus a computer-based content analysis might serve as valid indicator provided that you choose the right words and create a useful ‘dictionary’ for the analysis (Rooduijn and Pauwels 2011: 1275). The problem of validity prevails in this kind of analysis, though. As argued by Rooduijn and Pauwels (ibid.: 1276): ‘Yet the computer-based analysis is less content valid. After all, here the systematised concept of populism is not adequately captured by its indicators.’ To answer my research question, then, any such analysis needs to seriously engage with the context in which such words are being used. A manual qualitative approach is therefore needed. At the same time, the notion of ‘national myths’ is vague and hard to operationalize. I have chosen to detail two national myths (cf. Hellström and Wennerhag 2013) in proceeding with the analysis, which corresponds to how I operationalize the structural conditions (the first discursive layer of national identity formation) of the relation between the state, the nation and the people in the three countries. The myth of national exclusiveness moulds the national people, demarcated from the non-natives, into ‘the nation’ as a community of belonging. What constitutes the nation in terms of both ethnic and civic values and

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traditions according to the party documents thus provides me with the first operative indicator of the analysed material. I will also scrutinize the myth of the common people, which relates to the broad masses of the population seen in opposition to the political, economic and/or cultural elites of society. While the first myth deals with the national community, the second myth relates explicitly to the national people and how they are being defined and mobilized as distinctively national in relation to the various societal elites.

The Myth of National Exclusiveness Common symbols such as the national flag and the celebration of national days are used to ‘authenticate the boundaries between those who belong and those who do not’ (Elgenius 2011: 3). Most modern nation-states are founded on such myths of national belonging. Taggart (2000: 95) refers to the concept of the heartland to signify ‘the positive aspects of everyday life’, and it is simultaneously a construction of an ideal world that is constructed retrospectively – a vision derived from the past and projected onto the present (ibid.: 95–98). The heartland constitutes a claim to a common spirit foundation that creates a sense of belonging to a culturally homogenous population. Appeals to the heartland nurture a semblance between ‘the virtuous people’ who share precedence to their predestined home, and is founded on beliefs of a long-lasting past that have been diluted by the contemporary ‘elites’. In this regard, appeals to the heartland epitomize nationalism as a particular communication strategy for obtaining national cohesion. This is, however, not the only way to reproduce and communicate national exclusiveness. Ideas and stories of what makes ‘our’ nations distinct from ‘others’ are told, deliberately or inadvertently, on a daily basis and might seem commonsensical and benevolent. These stories can be about articulating certain civic virtues of nationhood (such as tolerance, gender equality, social cohesion and human rights) that are demarcated from other nationalities or religions. National exclusiveness refers to the ways in which national communities are being reproduced as distinctively exclusive. This can be done both by civic and/or ethnic means. In the analysis, I ask: What constitutes national exclusiveness according to the three PRR parties put under scrutiny here?

The Myth of the Common People Canovan (2004: 251) argues that the special quality enabling the ordinary people, by means of mobilized common action, to transcend into the po-

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sition of ‘popular sovereign’ rests upon the invocation of political myths of past foundation and future redemption. According to Canovan, modern political systems cannot work properly without a certain mythology of ‘the people’. Political representatives who claim to talk in the name of the people express their mandate in the realm of political myths. This is a permanent condition for modern representative politics, as I see it here following Canovan. ‘The people’ often means, on the one hand, the masses or the lower strata of the population, and on the other hand, the citizenry of the state or the nation. Canovan (1999) distinguishes between three different ways of referring to ‘the people’ in political discourse. First, it could refer to the united people, in contrast to the political elites that are accused of dividing the people, causing societal fragmentation. Second, this appeal addresses the view that politics ultimately should be restricted to our people, i.e. the population of the heartland. This appeal is distinguishably exclusive, as it demarcates which groups of people – or ideas – belong to ‘the people’. Third, Canovan talks about the appeals to the common people against the educated and privileged cultural elites. This appeal regularly presupposes that the interests and views of the ordinary people are overridden by the political and economic elites, and ridiculed by the cultural elites. Certainly, parties labelled as populist use this appeal to mobilize supporters against the establishment, including the values, norms and interests shared by the elites. Even if this has often been the case historically, this myth does not necessarily need to be a myth about a specific nation or nationality. Analysing such appeals, the analyst needs to distinguish between the different kinds of elites (economic, cultural and/or political) that are at play. This means that this antagonistic relationship between the common people and the elites can be identified according to different cleavage structures, and/or by stressing disagreement on socio-economic or socio-cultural issues. In this analysis, I wish to scrutinize whether ‘the common people’ envisaged by the PRR parties is primarily ‘the national people’ – i.e. if and to what extent the demos is based on perceptions of a particular ethnos. Furthermore, I shall analyse whether this myth is used to attract voters, not only along the socio-cultural conflict dimension (anti-immigration, conservative gender politics, etc.) but also in relation to the socio-economic cleavage structure. Traditionally, the Social Democrats emphasized socio-economic issues, which dominated much post-war policy making in the Scandinavian countries (see previous chapter). This policy making was tied to egalitarian myths of ‘the common people’ (e.g. the People’s

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Home in Sweden). Given these structural circumstances, and the fact that the Social Democratic parties have been regarded as partly abandoning their traditional welfare-statist egalitarian agenda, it is thus expected that such well-established interpretations of ‘the common people’ would provide opportunities for the Scandinavian PRR parties to broaden their electoral agenda. Therefore, I here ask if and how appeals to the common people are adopted by the three PRR parties. My focus here concerns how the three parties positively present themselves by, hypothetically, invoking and accentuating national myths in the political communication of the votes. Populism, defined as a particular communication strategy centred on making appeals to the people against the elite, will be used in the analysis. The analysis hereby focuses on how the three parties accentuate already existing attitudes among the population and politicize them to present a political program that provides distinct interpretations of the nation and the nationals (Kjeldsen 2013: 352). Hypothetically, then, as discussed in the first chapter of this book, the references made to national myths by the three nationalist populist parties shift according to the historical legacy of the parties and the socio-political development in these countries; i.e. this is how the two layers of national identity as discursive formation intersect. In other words, rhetorical claims aimed at the pursuit of positive self-presentation identify and accentuate already-existing societal beliefs (e.g. to make them more salient), mobilizing voters who have already expressed concern for the shifting demographic composition of their home country. In the annual survey from the SOM Institute in Gothenburg, the share of the population that wants reduced immigration to Sweden has continuously decreased over time, but is still generally larger than is accounted for by all other parliamentary parties, save for the SD. According to a recent estimation from the SOM in 2011, fewer people than ever before – 41 per cent of respondents – are against allowing more immigrants into Sweden (Demker 2012).5 At the same time, according to Carl Dahlström and Peter Esaiasson (2013) there is a significant gap between the voters and the elected representatives on this issue. There is thus an available niche to be utilized by a ‘new’ anti-immigration party to satisfy the demand among the voters for a more rigid immigration policy. This result is interesting in its own right, however the demand for a more restrictive immigration policy is a fact all across Europe and this also goes for the Scandinavian countries (Mudde 2007; Gorodzeisky and Semynov 2009). However, despite the progress of anti-immigration parties across Europe such as Jobbik in Hungary or the Golden Dawn in Greece, the popular attitudes towards immigration in Europe have not become more negative (Bohman and Hjerm 2014).

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Still, what is important at this stage of the analysis, then, is that the relevant audience that is potentially attracted by the rhetorical claims made by the three nationalist populist parties are the people that demand less immigration. The three parties, then, aim to satisfy this demand by offering a supply that accentuates national myths in the political communication of the votes. In 1968 Gunnar Sjöblom suggested that political parties make use of three arenas to pursue politics, strategies and arguments (Hellström and Nilsson 2010: 56–57). Political parties (1) need to consider the internal party arena and the internally agreed-upon statements and viewpoints; (2) seek to maximize their votes and are therefore sensitive to public opinion; and (3) seek to compromise with other political actors in the parliamentary arena to enjoy an effect on official policy making. Hypothetically, the same claims are addressed differently in the three arenas. My overall concern here is with scrutinizing how the three parties go about communicating their politics to the relevant audiences, both to the party members and to prospective new allies (the first arena mentioned by Sjöblom above) and also in the public debate (the third arena mentioned by Sjöblom). At the first stage of analysis, I will use primary party documents such as party programs, electoral manifestoes and so forth. I will use party documents from the inception of the parties up to present day. I will also complement this with additional material, such as a book by the Danish People’s Party about Denmark’s future, published in 2001. The main author is Kristian Thulesen Dahl, who was recently elected party leader. Most importantly, in the third chapter I base my analysis on primary material from the parties themselves. I will specifically analyse how and if the three parties, in their documents, refer to national myths to achieve their political agenda, to substantiate their claims for national cohesion. The second part of the analysis, to which I now turn, deals with how their claims are mitigated on the editorial pages.

From the Sender to the Audience(s) Successful rhetorical claims establish a viable connection between the sender and the relevant audience(s) (Kjeldsen 2013: 89). Important to note is that it is wrong to refute the claims by the nationalist populist parties as merely manipulative. Rather they are attempts by political actors to achieve credibility and to gain additional electoral fortunes – and part of the political game. These claims, as I suggest here, are part of successfully gaining credibility in the political competition for votes. To be successful,

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a political claim needs to be accepted by the relevant audiences; it must cling on to basic presuppositions among the listeners and satisfy the demand for e.g. a more restrictive immigration policy and a tougher integration policy. In other words, the sender needs to be viewed as credible. As put by James N. Druckman (2002: 243) in his discussion of the differences between framing and manipulation: ‘A speaker can engage in successful framing only if his or her target audience believes the speaker is credible.’ In this regard, it is important to note that the sender does not merely respond to static presuppositions, but rather actively shapes the views of the audience(s) that fit his or her own claims. The art of reproducing the nation in the Scandinavia countries concern negotiations of the meanings. In turning to the editorial pages, I am not suggesting that editorial writers constitute or accurately represent the relevant audiences of the nationalist populist parties, but the claims made by the three nationalist parties of national identity are negotiated and mitigated on these pages, among other places. The role and position of the three parties goes thus through the editorial pages. This is how the empirical chapters in this book connect: the positive self-presentations of the parties themselves are debated and negotiated on the editorial pages. If mainstream media is hostile (negative other (re-)presentation), and not only negative or reflective, towards the three nationalist parties, they are less likely to have their desired impact on domestic politics – turning their interpretation of the cultural codes (the balance between the state, the nation and the people) into actual policy making. I am here interested in differences between the three parties in terms of their initial ethos (Kjeldsen 2013: 133); that is, the ethos that is ascribed to the sender before they actually say anything. In order to make the relevant audiences listen to you and, then, preferably accommodate your views, there is a possibility that the messages actually affect political preference formulation; i.e. gaining acceptance for a particular world view might in turn motivate audience(s) to act on this world view (ibid.: 253). In short, credibility and ethos are not isolated qualities of the sender, but to a large extent depend on how the listeners (the voters) respond to the claims being made (ibid.: 156). In the second stage of the analysis, I will empirically analyse the ideological positioning as manifested in the editorials of four leading newspapers in each country. At these places of political communication (topoi) I will envisage dominant frames in the debate on national identity and immigration (interpreted as the topic Social Cohesion and Conflicting Values) and, in particular, the position of the PRRs in these discussions. I understand the editorial writers to be opinion makers that act as mediators, communicating messages from the (elite) arenas to the reader(s);

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as Gianpetro Mazzoleni (2003: 11) writes in a study on the relation between (neo-)populism and the media: ‘When populist rhetoric and debates resonate in the press or on television and news commentary offers the audiences certain cues to interpretation (critical or favourable), one can expect that the public perception and processing of those events will reflect to a certain extent the “frames” of the news media.’ This is why it is relevant to analyse not only the claims on national identity made by the three nationalist populist parties, but also how these claims are commented and reacted upon by ‘the media elite’ on the editorial pages. This ‘mediated space of appearance’ (Silverstone 2007: 30), then, ‘provides the setting where such judgments and decisions are presented and represented, debated, and sometimes, to all intents and purposes, made’. Actions and opinions are set in train in this particular space. Drawing on Hannah Arendt, Roger Silverstone (ibid: 30) argues that the mediated space is the source of communication in the public space and, like the polis in ancient Greece, it is mostly elitist and exclusive. The mediated space represents and aspires to resemble the face-to-face interaction between people. It is based on appearance and becomes the judgmental space for decision making and preference formulation that we all relate to. The media reflects our everyday environment. Political scientist Maria Wendt has examined the festival-like performance in Sweden taking place the first week in July each year, Almedalsveckan. All the leaders from the parliamentary parties are there. They give one speech each on different evenings during the week. They are certainly not alone. Public relations agents, representatives from major interest organizations and also many journalists are there to cover the events. It is all about visibility, to make your voice heard in the cacophony of voices and seminars, happenings, speeches, talk shows and DJ battles. Almedalsveckan is an example of what Mazzoleni (2013: 10) refers to as the ‘mediatization’ of political life. Politicians have modelled their communication strategies after mass media. According to Wendt (2012: 13): When phenomena are being created only to be mediated and what is being mediated becomes what ‘is’, then the media reality also becomes our reality. From that point of view, the media does not simply describe reality, but to a large extent also constitutes the political and national space in which we live our lives. … The citizen has become a spectator. The voice has been replaced by the eye.

Among those opinion makers that frame our ‘national and political space’ in Wendt’s words or our ‘mediated space of appearance’ if we instead use Silverstone’s, the editorial writers are important actors.

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According to the public opinion researcher John Zaller (2002: 36), ‘the flow of information in elite discourse determines which considerations are salient’. Indeed, the editorials only represent a particular and small fraction of this reality, but they are nevertheless influential. Their opinions are important and recognizable voices in the public debate and are distributed, via e.g. twitter and Facebook, to other mediators (such as journalists in local newspapers, blog writers and so forth). What is written on the editorial pages, in short, does not merely affect the readers of these newspapers – which are probably rather few – but many more people who are exposed to framed versions of the original article. The focus on editorial writers can be understood as an emphasis on salient opinion makers who frame the party and its politics in a particular way. This framing process is further communicated to the public writ large, which then formulate opinions of the issue at stake and might feel motivated to act on the provided frame(s); hence, to transmute cultural codes into actual policies.6 My analysis is limited to the sender and the mediator (which in our case is concentrated to the editorial pages), whereas I do not here provide a systematic analysis of how the various audiences relate to the frames provided by the party directly or the mediator (the editorial writer) indirectly. Silverstone refers to the mediated space of appearance as mediapolis (ibid: 31) ‘in which the world appears and in which the world is constituted in its worldliness, and through which we learn about those who are and who are not like us’ (ibid: 32). Important to recognize at this stage is that Lippmann acknowledged the important role played by the media already, back in 1922. With the First World War in hindsight, Lippmann (2010) argued that pictures made inside our heads of who we are in relation to what we are not were communicated by the press, thus the basis for our public opinion. How the claims made by the editorial writers are received by the relevant audiences (the individual consumers) depends on how this message is being coded (Fiske 2010: 34). This is an old debate in communication studies, and the general conclusion nowadays is that all messages are being coded and the messages generate meaning in this process (ibid.: 43). For my purposes, this means that all claims made by the opinion makers (i.e. the editorial writers) are being coded before being transmitted to the relevant audience(s), who in turn interpret the coding based on their own presuppositions and experiences. This emphasis on interpretation of the message is in line with the ‘semiotic tradition’ (ibid.: 69). In his seminal article Stuart Hall (2006) reconsiders the process of communication from sender to receiver. Before the message can become a communicative event, he argues, the message being sent first must

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become a story (encoded as such), which is further coded by the receivers. I here thus analyse how messages concerning the three nationalist populist parties are enacted as stories in one particular medium: the editorials. All in all, the overall image provided by the editorial writers is appropriated as meaningful discourse (ibid.: 165). According to Hall (ibid.): ‘It is this set of decoded meanings which “have an effect”, influence, entertain, instruct or persuade, with very complex perceptual, cognitive, emotional, ideological or behavioural consequences.’ There are, of course, distortions involved in the activity of communicating a certain message from the sender to the receiver. This incongruence, following Hall, is not necessarily the failure of communication; rather it represents the wide range of interpretations made possible in the communication act. It is this struggle of meaning(s) that we shall engage with. Through editorials, a newspaper communicates its own views on pertinent political issues. An editorial writer does not necessarily aim to persuade the reader, he or she selects what is most salient and communicates this perspective further to the reader. This is not to distort reality or to lie about a particular event or, in this case, a political party. However, collecting data from a set of editorials in the major newspapers in each country provides an idea of how the party as such is framed in the public debate and to which topics the party is associated with. It could be that the reader (and this is often the case) has already made up their mind on any given matter, and thus editorials might simply confirm their predispositions. The opposite interpretation would, of course, be to distrust the newspaper for not providing accurate information about the party; the reader might feel that the newspaper is deliberately distorting information about the party and its ventures. In other words, the editorial writers provide a selective framing of the party based on their own predispositions or interpretations of the party. Whether there is a frame effect, the reader’s interpreting this framing as accurate depends on their own predispositions and experiences. A systematic comparison of the editorials of the major newspapers in each country indicates to what extent the political environment is more permissive than repressive towards the party. My basic assumption is that the three parties operate in three different political environments, ranging along a continuum from repressive to permissive political environments. With this continuum, I do not adhere to a general statement of the political environment or the discussion climate writ large. Rather, I specifically refer to the tone expressed by the editorial writers towards the SD, the FrP and the DF today. In short, in a repressive (towards political party A) political environment political party A lacks initial credibility and has thus not crossed

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the threshold of credibility to reach out to moderate voters. However, if the general confidence in mainstream media and the mainstream parliamentary parties is low, then these media consumers/voters might turn to political party A, since it is the only party that ‘speaks the truth’. The risk is yet that party A might attract extremist voters and party activists instead of the desired moderate voters. Conversely, if party B acts in a permissive political environment then it is easier to gain access to both mainstream media and daily parliamentary activities. Hypothetically, then, the SD acts in a repressive, yet polarized, political environment and needs to cross the threshold of credibility to continue its expansion. The FrP in Norway and the DF in Denmark are comparatively larger than the SD in terms of voter support (2009–2012) and have a much more established and stable position in domestic politics. This will also show on the editorial pages, I anticipate.

Some Further Methodological Considerations I have decided to focus on a period when the three parties are at different stages of party development. The alternative would be to analyse different periods of time (e.g. before and after their initial electoral breakthrough) for each individual case. My focus, however, allows us to compare differences between the three cases here and now. The outcome of this comparative analysis might possibly be explained by the different historical legacies and varying positions in domestic politics of the three parties. The analysis in the book’s second empirical section proceeds in two steps and is spread through two individual chapters. Firstly, a quantitative analysis is conducted of the tone used by the editorial writers in relation to the three parties, and of which topics are being discussed in the editorials when the party is included, as either a major or minor actor. Chapter 4 focuses on these questions. Second, these descriptive statistics will then be used to select the material that will be used in the subsequent frame analysis. More precisely, we will focus on articles included in the topics most frequently addressed in the media material. The results from this comparative study are detailed in chapter 5. The details about the selection of newspapers and the precise number of articles will be made explicit in chapter 4. For now, I will explain how I proceeded with the analysis and bring forth some additional methodological considerations. Chapters 4 and 5 have been written in collaboration with Anniken Hagelund (responsible for the Norwegian case) and Susi Meret (responsible for the Danish case).7 I have myself taken responsibility for the Swedish case.

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Firstly, we developed a coding scheme to statistically collect the data in the four newspapers for each country. The coding scheme has been developed in continuous dialogue. At first, I did an initial test coding of fifty-three articles in the Swedish case to test the accuracy of the variables and values used in the analysis. After discussing the results of this pilot study with my two co-authors, we refined the coding instructions and amended the set of variables. We ended up with the data set shown in table 2.1 (see appendix 1 for detailed coding instructions). Table 2.1. Coding scheme for the analysis of the editorials in twelve newspapers during four years in three countries. VARIABLE Newspapers Year Month Day Genre

Size Role

Tone

Topic

VALUES

1. 2. 3. 1. 2. 1. 2. 3. 1. 2. 3. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Editorial Op-Ed Chronicle Short Medium/Large Major Minor Irrelevant Negative Neutral/Balanced Positive Social Cohesion and Conflicting Values Terror and Violence Public Opinion Parliamentary Affairs Scandals Welfare and Economy Life-Style issues and family EU/European Integration Culture Politics Law and Order Foreign Affairs Environment Infrastructure Migration Politics Internet

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A Question of Reliability A standard objection related to this kind of analysis concerns reliability (or lack thereof). If you ask human beings to make some kind of judgments, based on certain coding instructions, you certainly will never end up with 100 per cent reliability between the different interpreters (Hayes and Krippendorff 2007: 77). At the same time, in order for the interpretation made by the coder to be more than arbitrary and based on a certain degree of coherence between individual coders, then, the analysis of the collected data has to secure a satisfactory degree of reliability. We have therefore asked five individual coders in the Swedish case to each test the reliability of ten randomly chosen articles from the sample. These five individual coders (three researchers and two journalists)8 are all experts in this field and share a huge experience of analysing the SD and/or possess a great knowledge of the Swedish public debate around these issues. If these five test coders would come up with a similar result as the original coder, we can conclude that the results are based on more than arbitrary interpretations, as based on a selective reading of the articles. A good index of reliability, according to Andrew F. Hayes and Klaus Krippendorff (ibid.: 79–80) should be based on the following criteria: (1) The different units, randomly chosen, should be separately coded. (2) The coding instructions should follow the same categories used by the observers. (3) It should constitute a numerical scale, ranging from e.g. 0.00 (no existing reliability) to 1.0 (full reliability). (4) The structure of the coding procedure needs to remain intact. (5) The sampling behaviour needs to be, at least, computable.

Following these basic criteria, we have thus conducted a reliability test for the Swedish case. We have not created an index, however, but tested the reliability of the coding procedure. Given the aim of this particular chapter (chapter 4), we have asked the individual coders, following the coding instructions in appendix 1, with one template article for each value included in the scheme, to estimate (a) the genre of the article and (b) the ordinal values of the variables role and tone. Furthermore, we have also asked them to (c) fill in the topics (1 to 3) relevant for the articles chosen.9 We have only conducted the reliability test in the Swedish case, however, resting assured that the coding of data in the other two countries will be reliable if the Swedish example passes. The results of the reliability test are shown in tables 2.2–2.5. The results from the reliability test for the variable Genre (see table 2.2) show that not all respondents have interpreted our coding instruction in the same way. However, if we exclude coder *5 from the analysis, who is much below the average, we end up with the comfortable aver-

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Table 2.2. Reliability results: variable Genre. Variable (Genre)

Coder *1 Coder *2 Coder *3 Coder *4 Coder *5 Average

Result

10 (10)

8 (10)

9 (10)

7 (10)

4 (10)

7.6 (10)

Reliability result

1.0

0.8

0.9

0.7

0.4

0.76

age reliability result of 0.85. However, this variable will not be used for analytical purposes. We therefore shall conclude that our measurement instructions for this particular variable need to be sharper (the coding instructions were amended after the reliability test was undertaken as a consequence). It is also the case that different newspapers (also within the actual countries) share different policies on this issue, and it is therefore important to separate between on the one hand, editorials (unsigned) and op-eds (signed), on the one hand, and articles published on the editorial pages written by journalists, politicians and so forth who are not employed by the newspaper, on the other (these have been coded as ‘chronicles’, in which there were none in the Danish case). Table 2.3. Reliability results: variable Role. Variable (Role)

Coder *1 Coder *2 Coder *3 Coder *4 Coder *5 Average

Result

8 (10)

8 (10)

9 (10)

7 (10)

7 (10)

7,8 (10)

Reliability Result

0.8

0.8

0.9

0.7

0.7

0.78

The coders were asked to separate between articles that treat the party as either ‘major’, ‘minor’ or ‘irrelevant’. This is important, as we exclude articles that are coded as ‘irrelevant’ on this variable from the actual analysis. The average reliability result (0.78) from the test for the variable Role (see table 2.3) is better than can be measured as a modest degree of reliability (ibid.: 83) and thus sufficient for our purposes. Nevertheless, the result is not excellent and we should therefore avoid jumping to conclusions and urge for some modesty when we interpret the results. Table 2.4. Reliability results: variable Tone. Variable (Tone)

Coder *1 Coder *2 Coder *3 Coder *4 Coder *5 Average

Result

9 (10)

8 (10)

7 (10)

9 (10)

8 (10)

8,2 (10)

Reliability Result

0.9

0.8

0.7

0.9

0.8

0.82

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The reliability of the variable Tone (see table 2.4) is, arguably, the most important. We are explicitly interested in detecting whether the tone towards the parties in the editorials differs between the countries; this test confirms a high degree of reliability of the result. It could be added that this variable actually allows four different results: ‘positive’, ‘neutral/balanced’, ‘negative’ and ‘missing value’. The last category points to those articles that are not assessed as adopting a certain tone towards the party. Of course, this goes for all articles that end up in the category ‘irrelevant’, but also for some articles that are included in the category ‘minor’ (see above on the variable Role); it is therefore not easy, we think, to separate between ‘neutral/balanced’ and ‘missing value’. However, the reliability result (0.82) indicates a high level of congruence between the observer and the test coders. This results for the variable Topic show the congruence between the observer and the individual test coders. The left column shows the different values attributed to this variable. The result shows a proper reliability Table 2.5. Reliability results: variable Topic. Test coders Coder Value (Total) Original *1 1

Coder *2

Coder *3

Coder *4

Coder *5

Total Difference

6 (0)

3 (−2)

2 (−3)

3 (−1)

−6

19

25

5 (0)

2

2

1

0 (0)

0 (0)

0 (0)

1 (0)

1 (+1)

+1

3

14

8

4 (0)

3 (+2)

2 (+2)

2 (+2)

3 (0)

+6

4

21

16

3 (−1)

3 (+1)

5 (+2)

3 (0)

7 (+3)

+5

5

3

1

0 (0)

1 (0)

1 (+1)

1 (+1)

0 (0)

+2

6

10

11

0 (0)

3 (+2)

4 (+2)

2 (−2)

1 (−3)

−1

7

3

4

0 (0)

0 (−1)

2 (0)

0 (0)

1 (0)

−1

8

3

3

0 (0)

0 (−1)

1 (+1)

0 (−1)

2 (+1)

0

9

4

2

0 (0)

0 (0)

0 (0)

3 (+1)

1 (+1)

+2

10

1

1

1 (0)

0 (0)

0 (0)

0 (0)

0 (0)

0

11

2

1

0 (0)

1 (0)

0 (0)

1 (+1)

0 (0)

+1

12

0

0

0 (0)

0 (0)

0 (0)

0 (0)

0 (0)

0

13

0

0

0 (0)

0 (0)

0 (0)

0 (0)

0 (0)

0

14

9

10

2 (+1)

1 (0)

1 (0)

3 (0)

2 (−2)

−1

15

2

2

0 (0)

0 (0)

0 (0)

1 (0)

1 (0)

0

Total

93

85

0

+4

+6

−2

0

+8

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for most variables. However, it is worth noting that the observer tends to include more articles in the category of Social Cohesion and Conflicting Values, while the reverse is the case with the topics Public Opinion (value 3) and Parliamentary Affairs (value 4). When it comes to value 6, Welfare and Economy, we can see that the test coders differ from each other, but the average result is not at all alarming in the sense that it is similar to what the observer has concluded in his assessment of the articles. In this case, we do not have a proper reliability figure, which was one of the criteria mentioned by Hayes and Krippendorff (2007: 79). Still, even without showing a proper reliability figure, the result is satisfactory. We decided not to discriminate between ‘main topic’, ‘secondary topic’ and so forth, as this would have opened up too many possibilities and thus to have endangered the reliability of the study. All in all, we can conclude that the results from the reliability test are satisfactory; other experts from the worlds of both academia and journalism interpret the articles in similar ways as the observer did. Therefore, the results of this study are not arbitrary and isolated to individual interpretations and selective reading of the articles in the sample. Our aim is not to present a study that is 100 per cent reliable, but to have coding instructions (see appendix 1) that are detailed enough to allow for a reliable interpretation of the articles in the Swedish newspapers. We therefore conclude that the situation is, most likely, the same for the Danish and Norwegian newspapers, as well. After having compared, quantitatively, the tone used in the editorials towards the parties, we can assess differences between the countries in terms of political environment, ranging from repressive to permissive. We can thereby test our basic presupposition that the tone in the Swedish editorials is, in general, more negative compared to the editorials in Norway and Denmark in relation to the FrP and the DF, respectively. We shall also here test the hypothesis that the tone towards the party is more negative (compared to the average) in articles dealing with the topic of migration politics. This is based on our previous pre-understanding of the cases. In Sweden, the mainstream parties (and journalists) are explicitly critical, not to say hostile, to the SD’s restrictive approach to immigration (Hellström 2013). In Norway, the FrP is recognized for having a much wider base of issues in their repertoire compared to e.g. the SD – which is also one reason for their success (Ravik Jupskås 2013) – however, when it comes to immigration policy the other parties (and the journalists) are, at least verbally, negative towards the FrP’s harsh attitudes (Hagelund 2003). In the Danish case, the verbal resistance from mainstream actors towards the DF is often strong, even if it is assumed

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that the actors, both from the left and the right, have taken over some of the party’s policies (Hellström 2010; Hellström and Hervik 2014). We shall use these descriptive statistics to identify the main topics of the debate that will be used in the subsequent qualitative analysis in the following chapter. Even if we can use the quantitative approach to test how the parties act in a repressive environment, we use frame analysis at the second stage of the analysis to discuss the content of what is actually being said in the debate. This is key to understanding the rationale behind the study: how the debate on the editorial pages relates to the various uses of national myths to reproduce the nation.

Frame Analysis According to Druckman (2002: 226), frame analysts notoriously evade precise definitions. In his article on the relation between framing and citizen competence, he lists a set of different definitions that have been used in the literature. Frames can e.g. be principles of selection, central organization of ideas that establish a connection between events in a given story or subtle alterations in the statements, or, more generally, framing could denote the various ways that a story has been written (ibid.: 227). More precisely, Druckman recommends that analysts separate between frames in communication and frames in thought − the relation between them constitutes the framing effect: ‘Frames in communication often play an important role in shaping frames in thought … [this] is typically called a framing effect’ (ibid.: 228). Arbitrary information, Druckman continues, quite often fails to impact public attitudes. Rather, successful framing presupposes a sophisticated learning process in which the audience learns to adapt to systematic knowledge (ibid.: 204). Druckman is careful to note that framing should by no means be seen as manipulation. The analyst should also be careful not to overestimate the power of framing: ‘Rather than being manipulated by whichever frame they hear, people tend to delegate to credible sources to help sort through the many possible frames’ (ibid.: 244). What is central in his argument is that the sender can only reach out to relevant audiences if he or she is recognized as credible (ibid.: 243). In other words, the degree of credibility is assessed differently due to genre and thus the place for communication, e.g. the editorial pages or various blogs. Framing thus refers to the manner in which the media organizes communication in order to invoke a certain interpretation by the reader, such as voter support. Frames make sense only against a more comprehensive background of cultural knowledge, organized as figured worlds or cultural models (Hervik 2011: chapter 4). This is also how we will pro-

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ceed with the analysis; the cultural codes that I operationalize as national myths need to tap into public debate issues pertaining to e.g. national identity and immigration. In other words, to provide a veritable impact on domestic politics, the nationalist populist parties need to cross the threshold of credibility – thus not only the electoral threshold. Otherwise they will remain outside the public zone of acquiescence. I here emphasize how media exposure and framing might have an effect on popular opinion, whether this is a problem of definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation or the recommendation for certain actions (Entman 1993; Caiani and Della Porta 2011). I use frame analysis to make sense of how opinions about e.g. the individual party (tone) are formulated along ideological schemas of the political parties in the public debate. The relation between mass media exposure and the dynamics of public opinion is, unsurprisingly, a highly complex matter (see further Hellström 2010; Hellström and Hervik 2014) and shows hardly no causal effects (Bonjour and Schrover 2015). However, when the mainstream press starts engaging with the party as a credible political actor, the individual media consumers, based on e.g. their normative presuppositions and degree of political awareness, formulate credible opinions about the party. A basic premise for my study, in line with e.g. Mazzoleni (2003) and Ellinas (2010), is that the parties need to be visible to presumptive voters in order for the parties to increase their voting share. Mass media can either push forward or obstruct the demands articulated by the nationalist populist parties. This is certainly the case with articles on the editorial pages. Following Mazzoleni (2003: 8), there is a close link between the ‘political’ and the ‘media’ elite (unlike popular media). If the individual party is too negatively presented on the editorial pages it is less likely to be invited to cooperation talks with the mainstream political parties; hence, it is has not crossed the threshold of credibility. Journalists for the regular newspapers, it could be argued, also engage with elements of framing, highlighting ‘some bits of information about an item that is the subject of a communication’ (Entman 1993; 53). Even if journalists comply with the genre’s internal rules of objectivity, a journalistic article yet engages a story by means of selection and thus presents certain aspects as more salient than others (ibid.: 57). Since framing is selective and varies in the saliency assigned to stories, framing operates differently in the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish news media. In other words, the different frames on the nationalist populist parties on the editorial pages in the three countries display contrasting notions of national identity. The analysis is divided into three parts that correspond to what Manuela Caiani and Donatella Della Porta (2011) – heavily influenced by Robert

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M. Entman in this regard – refer to as diagnosis, motivations to action and prognosis. We will use these categories in the frame analysis in chapter 5. It should be mentioned that the separation of frames is done purely for analytical purposes. Sometimes the frames coexist and it is not always clear how to separate between diagnosis, motivation to act and prognosis; often, one particular frame might fit within all three categories mentioned (i.e. a particular diagnosis might motivate a certain act and so forth). The identified frames are unfolded or compressed to different degrees, often in the same statement (Helltröm and Hervik 2014). The first part of the qualitative analysis concerns frames that answer the questions, what is the nature of the party, and how is it described and with which adjectives is the party associated? This is the diagnosis. The second part concerns different frames that answer the question, how is the political party to be contained and by whom? In this regard, mainstream political actors use different strategies to either ban or copy PRR policies. This corresponds to the motivation to act in Caiani and Della Porta’s scheme. The third section of this analysis discusses frames that answer the question, what makes the party attractive and how it will develop in the future? This is the prognosis. In sum, this categorization of frames enables us to decipher contrasting notions of national identity in the three countries, i.e. similarities and differences in the art of reproducing the nation in Scandinavia.

NOTES 1. For instance, political equality is not merely a formal quality, but translates itself into practical experiences (Dahlstedt and Hertzberg 2007). 2. According to Anthony D. Smith (1991), an ethnie corresponds to durable society formations based on a proper name, myths of a common ancestry, shared historical memories, a common culture and a sense of solidarity (for a discussion and amendments to these attributes, see e.g. Eriksen 2004; Özkirimli 2010). Modern nation-state formations, according to Smith, rest on prior ethnic cores. A common mythology is, following Smith, needed to ensure national survival. 3. Unlike Fiske (2010: 121), I do not find it unfortunate that Barthes uses the term ‘myth’. Naturally if we allude to the common understanding of myths as the opposite of truth, it gets problematic. This is obviously not at all what Barthes refers to as myth. 4. Even if we here envisage the party’s collective use of this particular metaphor, we do not need to refrain from also focusing on e.g. Åkesson’s individual uses of this particular metaphor in the party bulletin (Norocel 2010).

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5. In a recent update of this survey, however, popular attitudes are (again) less positive towards generous immigration policy than in the years before (Sandberg and Demker 2013), see Demker (2014) for a discussion and recent summary of the survey results in order to gain a comprehensive idea of the development of public attitudes towards immigration in Sweden, though. 6. This can also be referred to as the two-step hypothesis and is generally attributed to Paul Lazarsfeld (see e.g. Kjeldsen 2013: 340). 7. For the Danish sample, we recruited a research assistant, Tine Albjerg Liingaard, to do the coding of the Danish newspapers. Her work was supervised by Susi Meret, who was the researcher responsible for the Danish part of this study. 8. A full list of the test coders can be found in appendix 1. 9. In the Norwegian and Danish cases, however, the variable topic (and also tone, which is similar to the Swedish case) is not coded if the role of the party in the article is coded as irrelevant.

E c ha p te r 3

National Myth Making in Sweden, Norway and Denmark

n the first of May in 2004 the Social Democratic Party chose not to have their annual demonstration in Perstorp, but focused instead on mobilising supporters in neighbouring cities. The Sweden Democrats saw this as an opportunity to organise a manifestation in Perstorp.1 Surrounded by buzzing helicopters, policemen and counter-demonstrators, some seventy people were in attendance. The deputy party leader at the time Björn Söder (2004) gave a speech in which he paid his respects to Rudolf Kjellén (see chapter 1):

O

[Kjellén’s achievement] was to realize an ideological compromise, combining Conservatism and its respect for traditional values with democracy and reforms against social injustices. Instead of simply watching when the people were divided into different class interests, he tried – just like Verner von Heidenstam2 did – to create a fellow feeling and solidarity, by means of emphasizing our common past and everything that unites us. This vision of Sweden, some decades before Per Albin Hansson suggested it he labelled the People’s Home.

This speech epitomized the ambition of SD to show, on the one hand, appreciation for the conservative organic view of the nation that was aimed at uniting as one the national people and the state and, on the other hand, admiration for the Social Democratic ambition from the 1930s onwards to implement social reforms that were aimed at transgressing class cleavages and thus building up the People’s Home. This excerpt illustrates how a representative of a nationalist populist party builds on particular interpretations of the relation between the nation, the state and the people in his claims for national cohesion. The People’s Home metaphor brings emotive appeals for the consolidation of the Swedish welfare state. With the exception of the periods

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1976–1982 and 1991–1994, the Social Democratic Party was in the governmental position from the end of the Second World War to 2006 when the Centre-Right government began its first period in office. The People’s Home metaphor is frequently used to describe the post–World War II period in Sweden. It also points to the heydays of Social Democracy. The content and the precise meaning of the metaphor shift with time. My interest in the metaphor has little to do with who has the right to use it and who does not. It is perhaps not very surprising that a nationalist party dwells on popular myths of national belonging in the past. Following the basic structure of this book, I highlight the close association between language and politics. I emphasize how this metaphor, metonymically, relates to Sweden in the 1950s and 60s, and is used by the SD (and its antagonists) to invoke both reason and emotion in the political language. In this chapter I will analyse how the three parties put under scrutiny in this study, hypothetically, make use of and radicalize popular national myths to positively present themselves in the public debate to gain additional electoral fortunes. I shall begin with a brief section on national myths in each country (the first layer); I then turn to the question of how and if the nationalist populist parties make use of these myths in their party programmes and electoral manifestoes (the second layer). Necessary details about the analytical concept of myth and further methodological guidelines were discussed in the previous chapter.

Sweden After the Second World War, Swedish national identity was tightly linked to the welfare state. Furthermore, according to Lars Trägårdh (2002: 80), the Social Democrats from the 1930s onwards used a national narrative in which ‘the “national” and “democracy” imperatives were inextricably fused, and with this followed the idea that the state and the people were joined in a common endeavour to safeguard the two freedoms, that of the nation and that of the individual’. During this time the Social Democratic Party also gradually shifted its focus from ‘class’ to ‘people’, a move that reverberated with popular notions of ‘Swedishness’ (Hellström et al. 2012). What is worth noting in this respect is that Swedish national identity was formed as an alliance between promises of individual emancipation and the caring state, what Henrik Berggren and Lars Trägårdh (2009) labelled ‘statist-individualism’. In the political building of the modern welfare state, then, interpersonal relations such as the family and the church

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had a less dominant role in Sweden compared to e.g. countries in continental Europe. The enduring impact of the two freedoms, that of the state and the individual, on the formation of national identity is anchored in the myth of the Swedish yeoman peasant (odalbonden) developed and disseminated in the works of the poet and historian Erik Gustaf Geijer in the nineteenth century (Trägårdh 2001: 133; cf. Hall 1998). In this history writing, the nobleman and mine owner Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson in the Swedish province of Dalarna played a particular role. According to the legend about him, he led the free peasants in a revolt in the fifteenth century against the foreign Danish and German overlords and is thus seen as a liberator of the nation. The rebellion started with a mobilisation of peasants and mineworkers in Engelbrekt´s home area and spread around the country. The rebellion has been seen as a Swedish awakening; a symbol of claims for national sovereignty, directed against the so-called union of Kalmar (1397 – 1523), which united the three Scandinavian countries into one state at the time. With references to Engelbrekt, patriotic sentiments fuse with belief in personal freedom. In Social Democratic history making, the early twentieth-century Social Democratic leader Hjalmar Branting continued the push for freedom and democracy that was started by e.g. Engelbrekt (Linderborg 2002: 283; Trägårdh 2001: 139). In this way, organic cohesion was attributed both to the Swedish national identity and to the political visions of Social Democracy. The Social Democratic Prime Minister Per-Albin Hansson later invoked the legacy of Engelbrekt and famously used the metaphor of the People’s Home to sustain the Social Democratic ambitions to implement universal welfare reforms within a liberal-democratic framework. This route countered the more dramatic social transformations anticipated by the communists and the Nazis. Today, the People’s Home metaphor is thus potentially a myth of national exclusiveness, a nostalgic vision of the Swedish society. Yet it is also a political vision that deviates from and opposes totalitarianism (Trägårdh 2001: 148). In dominant history making, democracy is not simply a method for arranging fair decision-making procedures or an ideology; it is ‘rooted in the very soul of the people’ (ibid.: 139). The People’s Home is both a rhetorical means to pursue social reform and the founding myth of what came to constitute Sweden from the 1930s onwards – i.e. ‘the Swedish model’. The (Social Democratic) political vision associated with this metaphor conveys ideas of who belongs in this exclusive national community – ‘the common people’ of the nation. The potency of this metaphor, following Trägårdh (ibid.: 131), derives from its ability to fuse demos with ethnos

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in the organization of the universal welfare state. The People’s Home metaphor embodies the merging of national identity and the welfare state in Sweden. The role of ‘the people’ in this respect is essentially to recognize, representing the ‘common people’ deriving from the collective of modest peasants that historically have built up the nation (ibid.: 143). The Swedish manner of organizing national identity has allowed later prominent state leaders such as Dag Hammarskjöld (leader of the United Nations, who died in an airplane crash in 1961), Olof Palme (reputable leader of the Social Democratic Party, who was assassinated in 1986) and Carl Bildt (foreign minister, representing the Liberal-Conservative Party in the previous mainstream right government) (ibid.: 152) and up to the current foreign minister Margot Wallström representing the social democratic party, who for instance attack the Saudi Arabian regime for neglecting women’s rights, to set up a moral vision of Sweden’s role in the international arena. As we shall see, this basic structure can also be seen in the moral tone and the emotional investment embedded in contemporary struggles of Swedishness, between the SD and the rest.

Norway While the Swedish Social Democrats use the metaphor of the People’s Home to establish a future vision of Swedish society, Norwegians – including the Norwegian Labour Party – could exploit ‘a whole arsenal of accumulated metaphors, pictures, and ideas that expressed national fellowship’, often connected to the (at the time) very democratic constitution of 1814, and the later struggle for full national independence from Sweden (Sejersted 2011: 165–167). In 1905 the union between Norway and Sweden was dissolved (an arrangement that was made between the states in 1814, when Denmark was forced to cede Norway to Sweden) and Norway became an independent nation-state in its own right. The struggle for independence has left a strong mark on the formation of Norwegian national identity (Elgenius 2011). The celebration of the national day in Norway – to celebrate its constitution from 1814 on the seventeenth of May – featured a muchcelebrated flagging of nationhood (ibid.: 112–115; see also Blehr 2000). Norway was at the time comparatively economically worse off. This changed after the country found its oil revenues, though. Most importantly, the government now entrusted the state much less than in Sweden, and it ha instead been much more centred on catering to regional and local interests (Lithman 2013: 266). According to Lithman (2013: 267), Norway already features diversity in itself:

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If the Swedish state has a high level of legitimacy because of its past success in making the country both prosperous and democratic, one could argue that the Norwegian state derives its legitimacy from its ability to be seen as representative of the various identity groups and range of elements in civil society that constitute Norwegian society.

Nevertheless, a first dominant myth relates to Norway as a strong independent state. The significance of the national day celebrations points towards an exclusive national narrative that celebrates Norway’s interdependence and autonomy from foreign dominance (by the Danes, Swedes or Nazi Germany). A second relevant myth emanates from the tendency of the independence movement to consistently look inwards into the origins of Norwegian history so as to identify particular traits that define Norwegians as Norwegians. This includes ideas of the Norwegian people as particularly close to nature and closely attached to smaller local units, but also that the Norwegians are more likely to conform to an egalitarian view on the social structuring of the national community (Blehr 2000: 50–51). With the inter-war transformation of the Social Democratic Party, from a party oriented towards class struggle into a ‘people’s party’, these narrations of Norwegian history merged with reformist ambitions to level social cleavages, and to counteract economic crisis (Sejersted 2011: 162– 166). It is important to recognize that the post-war period in Norway, similar to Sweden, was marked by a close semblance with the creation of nationhood. Social cohesion was much intertwined with the development of the universal welfare state (Brochmann and Djuve 2013: 221). In this regard, the creation and further development of the welfare state in Norway was to a large extent also a moral construct (ibid.). The making of the modern independent Norwegian state was intertwined with processes of democracy, social citizenship and modernization (ibid.), following the salience of the centre-periphery cleavage structure and the compartmentalization of the country. These demands of homogenization, which follow from these intertwined processes leading to Norway as an independent state, push particular requirements on the incorporation of immigrants, as well (ibid.: 222). To further dwell on this second myth, then, we can look at the pertinent sectorial divisions of Norwegian history – between different regional interests and a salient urban-rural divide (cf. Neumann 2001: 89). We also here find, similar to Sweden and Denmark, the prevalence of the free peasant standing against the dominant civil servants of Norwegian society. There is a potential protest dimension of the Norwegian basic structure, further escalated by the sectorial divisions of the Norwegian society (ibid.: 92f.). The core of the Norwegian national identity is thus

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centred on the people (ibid.: 124). However, similar to Sweden, the ‘peasant myth’ was later ascribed to the ‘workers movement’. In the Social Democratic turn from class to the people the nation was considered the common denominator (ibid.: 103). In sum, national representations thus need to align with the people as the unifying element (ibid.: 126) both in discussions of Europe and in relation to ‘new’ political actors, according to the layered discursive structure of the state, the nation and the people.

Denmark In an introduction to Danish history, Knud J. V. Jespersen (2004: 188– 191) recognizes two national ‘myths’.3 The first emanates from the defeat against Germany in 1864; as a consequence of that defeat Denmark turned into a ‘midget state’ (ibid.: 188) that had to act peacefully in relation to its larger neighbours to secure its own survival. This myth suggests that the Danes are a proud people, yet vulnerable. This historical myth does, however, corroborate closely to the anti-power politics that features in contemporary Danish politics, siding the people with the nation against the state (cf. Hansen 2001b: 61). The second national myth of relevance is, according to Jespersen (2004: 192f), labelled the ‘farmer’s approach’. The poet and psalm writer Nikolaj Fredrik Severin Grundtvig (1783–1872)4 frequently called upon the Danish farmers in his writings and activities. Ola Fransson (1998) argues that the Danish sense of national exclusiveness derives from a relative detachment between society and state. In the 1880s the Danish farmers gained, horizontally, economic revenues based on corporative principles. While the Swedish myth of the People’s Home gained coinage in the mid-twentieth century, and was connected to industrial growth and welfare arrangements, the Danish national myths were, arguably, established earlier and were inspired by the economic expansion of Danish agriculture during the nineteenth century. Denmark should avoid internationally aggravated social conflicts and instead focus on protecting the borders of the nation. The inhabitants, even before it became a consolidated state, consisted of members of ‘the fatherland’, which united the state with the nation in Denmark based on a mutual loyalty to the king (Hansen 2001b: 53). The identification with the ‘fatherland’, according to Lene Hansen (ibid: 54), is based on emotional loyalty rather than merely material and rational interests. According to this second myth, the farmers incarnate the Danish common people and depict the Danes as emanating from the collective of

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farmers, whose assigned decency and diligence were later ascribed to the workers’ movement. ‘The people’ is thus associated with the Danish nation and stands at the same time in potential conflict with the Danish state if it does not secure the interests of the people, as the basis of the organic German-like kulturnation (ibid.: 61).

The Analysis As stated above, I will here examine if and how the three parties under study make use of these national myths to positively present themselves, as made manifest in their party programmes. My argument is basically that we can understand the myths of national exclusiveness and the myths of the common man as particular political opportunity structures hypothetically used by the SD, the FrP and the DF to cross the threshold of credibility in the public debate. In order to do so, the different discursive layers of national identity need to converge.

The Sweden Democrats The SD has its own interpretation of the metaphor of the People´s Home. In his recently published autobiography (2013), Jimmie Åkesson begins the presentation of his diary notes from January 2010 with a fictive prologue by Per-Albin Hansson, who passed away in 1946. Åkesson emphasizes that it is the SD rather than the Social Democrats that continues Hansson’s ambitions to transform Sweden into a genuine People’s Home. The SD uses the People’s Home metaphor as a powerful rhetorical instrument to attach its nationalist political agenda to a greater Swedish tradition of protecting one’s own folks, to radicalize popularly held sentiments for national cohesion. Other actors in the public debate have recently also tended to associate the real existing People’s Home – in general, with references to the Swedish society during the 1950s and the 60s – with cultural conformism and xenophobia (Hellström 2010). Sometimes the People’s Home has more positive connotations, though. In the tabloid Aftonbladet, there was a campaign in spring 2013 to highlight events and people who helped to build up the country, but no longer play an active role. The word used by the tabloid to describe the Sweden that no longer exists is Folkhemmet. The SD thus positively presents itself as the new People’s Home party, invoking memories of the popularly held metaphor that nurtures a backward-looking vision rather than one that looks forward. Indeed, the SD’s uses of this particular metaphor are different from the Social Democrats’.

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Nonetheless, I do not assume that the SD deliberately presents an entirely false image of Swedish society, or gives voice to representations of the common man in Sweden that is completely astray in this regard. Rather, I suggest that its particular uses of the People’s Home metaphor distort, as any other uses do, the meaning of this particular trope in a way that serves their efforts to cross the threshold of credibility.

The Sweden Democrats in Swedish Politics The SD organized an annual meeting on 10 June 1989 where the newly formed party decided on its first party programme. The second sentence reads: ‘We believe that an ethnically and culturally homogenous nation is better equipped to obtain a peaceful and democratic development, compared to a multicultural, heterogeneous state formation’ (Sverigedemokraterna 1989). Certainly, the party has changed quite drastically since then (Hellström 2010); here, however, it lays out the basic contours of its political agenda. A recent programme from November 2011 also emphasizes ideals of national identity rooted in ideological references to social conservatism (Sverigedemokraterna 2011). The aim is to turn Sweden into a homogenous society, populated by culturally similar individuals, where the natives’ interests always come first. All native Swedes should enjoy the same basic democratic rights, and the party claims to present a viable democratic alternative in Swedish politics in opposition to other parliamentary parties who, allegedly, only wish to secure the interests of the privileged few, the ‘elite’. Today the SD claims to represent the man on the street, to advocate a ‘responsible’ immigration policy (in their view, Swedish immigration policy is extreme) and tough policies on integration. David Art infers, however, that the historical legacy of the party continues to plague the daily work of SD party activists (2011: 91). Party members are occasionally being dismissed from e.g. trade union membership or regular jobs as schoolteachers and labour organizations due to their affiliation with the SD (see e.g. Orrenius 2010; cf. Jomshof 2008). Before the 2006 national elections, when the SD had a minor breakthrough, at least in the southern regions of the country, the mainstream parties, effectively, erected a cordon sanitaire against the party, which all in all sustained a highly repressive political environment towards them. Considering the continuum between repressive and permissive political environments as introduced earlier in the book, then, prospective party members seemingly put at risk their physical safety, including that of their families, along with their economic livelihood. This situation dras-

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tically curtails the ability of the SD to interact with the electorate and to attract competent party activists willing to prioritize political preferences over personal safety and economic well-being (Art 2011). In the party documents the SD admirably refers to the days of the Social Democracy under the Social Democratic Prime Minister Tage Erlander, who was in office from 1946–1969. According to the SD this period was the People’s Home at its best and the society that they wish to restore. The SD configures the People’s Home as a mobilizing metaphor for its appeals to a particular national community, with references to past experiences of a culturally conforming Swedish national community with limited immigration. The idea is basically that the universal, and comparatively generous, welfare state cannot handle too much immigration if it means to survive. In November 2012 Jimmie Åkesson and the party board decided on a policy of zero tolerance for racism for all party members. The message is clear: the party is a ‘normal’ party that ought to be included in the mainstream community. Indeed, they still suggest a more restrictive policy on immigration in line with the rest of Europe (so they say), but the party is – like all the other parliamentary parties in Sweden – firmly opposed to racism. This is the image that the party wishes to communicate to the electorate. It aims to widen its political agenda via e.g. claiming that their ideology is rooted in social conservatism and not merely nationalism. This is an attempt to cross the threshold of credibility in the electoral competition. If that is their ambition, which I believe it is, it is not peculiar that the party executive recently adopted a zero-tolerance policy against racism and xenophobia. The SD’s appeal is tied to the moral opposition between ‘the common man’ and the mediated elites. The references to ‘the people’ specifically refer to the broad masses of the heartland, those sharing the particular values attached to the ethos of the heartland. Lars Trägårdh (2002: 77) argues that ‘the concepts of folk, folklighet and folkhem are part and parcel of a national narrative that has cast the Swedes as intrinsically democratic and freedom loving, as having ‘“democracy in the blood”’. The SD’s appeals to the Swedish national society as the ‘heartland’ in need of restoration are not based on ideals of racial or ethnic superiority, rather they rest on the significance of ‘cultural differences’. This is a strategy of moderation and likewise an attempt to create a niche in the electoral market, offering efforts to satisfy demands for a more restrictive politics on immigration as compared to the official line – yet rooted in a long tradition of securing the well-being of one’s own folks before the ‘others’. The SD is careful to walk the line between radicalism and extremism – to avoid accusations of the latter. In this sense, the appeals to the People’s Home epitomize claims for national cohesion against extremism.

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The SD raises claims of increased community cohesion, protecting the universal welfare state against (too much) immigration from culturally remote countries. The appeals to the People’s Home, then, bring attention to a particular conservative foundation of the Swedish society that, according to the SD, current official immigration policy contradicts. To this official Swedish line, the SD represents a counterweight. The references to the People’s Home metaphor in the SD political language provide a key to understanding why e.g. SD representatives could claim that the reputable Swedish author Astrid Lindgren’s book Bröderna Lejonhjärta (The Brothers Lion Heart) is a polemic against the establishment, or that the Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf (who won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1909) would have voted for the SD today, considering her writings on Swedish culture. These symbolic representations of Swedishness create a quite a stir in Swedish public debate (see further Hellström 2010), but they also highlight the SD’s ambitions to emphasize national identity in their political rhetoric. Recently, the representatives of the party articulated some ambiguities concerning the national sentiments of some famous ‘new Swedes’, such as the famous football player Zlatan Ibrahimovic,5 the TV personality Gina Dirawi or the winner of the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest, Loreen (Aftonbladet, 18 November 2012). The SD radicalizes popularly held sentiments that sustain the struggle of what it means to be Swedish in Sweden today and makes references to popular figures in Sweden’s public life. These symbolic representations of Swedishness provoke many in the so-called cultural elite, but at the same time we should remember that the SD has no intention of flattering the elite, but rather to appeal to the ‘common people’ who are (more) likely to share similar doubts (see further Åkesson 2013). The references to the People’s Home serve a similar purpose – i.e. to consolidate a feeling of belonging together in Sweden as Swedes, sharing similar historical memories.

National Exclusiveness The SD articulates a vision of Sweden that is embedded in its uses of the People’s Home as a mobilizing metaphor for social cohesion and cultural conformism. Indeed, the Swedish national identity, after the Second World War, has been tightly linked to the development of the universal welfare state (see figure 3.1). An active welfare state, following this interpretation, requires a sense of basic solidarity between the nationals, based on cultural conformism, in order to work well.

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Figure 3.1. The essence of the People’s Home according to the Sweden Democrats.

In their party programme from 2003 the SD makes references to biological diversity. The different species are all needed for the good of nature, and, analogously, different cultures are needed for the good of humanity. Culture is, according to the SD, eternal and determinant for personal identification. As the SD conceives it, the Social Democratic governments of later decades have deserted the idea of the People’s Home. The SD envisions Sweden and Swedishness as something belonging to an ideal construction of the Swedish society, once shaped by cultural conformism and social cohesion, epitomized by the conceptual metaphor of the People’s Home. The SD seeks to capitalize on a common heritage to, on the one hand, appreciate the ‘old’ Social Democracy and, on the other hand, criticize the ‘new’ Social Democrats for having let the native population down in a naïve appraisal of multiculturalism. This logic entails that the ‘old’ Social Democrats are heroes of the nation, but the ‘new’ Social Democrats have betrayed the natives. References to the People’s Home in the SD political language, arguably, correspond to this particular concern. Especially in turbulent times, this plea for stable national identities might appeal to those parts of the

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electorate that believe they were better off before, as these voters resist changes associated with e.g. globalization: The populist right’s nativist conception of the welfare state serves as yet another means to undermine the established political and cultural elites and their multicultural agenda, which, for the populist right, represents a Trojan horse of globalization since it must invariably lead to the destruction of national communities and identities. (Betz and Meret 2012: 116)

In the literature, this message might appeal to sections of the electorate that feel threatened by a seemingly intense and fierce economic competition over scarce resources (ibid.: 118). This move can be observed amongst PRRs in many European countries, as evidenced by Marine Le Pen’s political campaign in France. The use of this particular metaphor does not causally show that the SD is more closely attached to the Social Democratic camp compared to the bourgeois camp; rather, this metaphor is employed to satisfy a demand among the native Swedes who might be supportive of economic distribution while at the same time careful to claim that the welfare state should be reserved for the natives. In the SD’s interpretation the metaphor is linked to cultural conformism, which allegedly satisfies a demand amongst the electorate towards greater cultural cohesion against forces that jeopardize community stability – i.e. the immigrants. In Étienne Balibar’s words (2005: 25), the immigrants represent the other’s other, equally frightening and ‘fantastic’. The immigrants, the frightening ‘other’, thus represent a source of identification for natives who experience this fear. The annoying difference, to paraphrase Peter Hervik (2011), works constitutively for the construction of collective identities. The People’s Home is a familiar concept that brings emotive appeals for ‘our people’. This provides a means of bridging the distance between the mediated elites and the people on the ground, both to reduce socio-economic cleavages and socio-cultural differences in the national population. The myth of national exclusiveness that the SD wishes to restore is fully embedded in its uses of the People’s Home as a mobilizing metaphor for social cohesion and cultural homogeneity. The People’s Home is both a rhetorical means for pursuing democratic reforms and also the founding myth of Sweden from the 1930s onwards. It is this seamless fusion between demos and ethnos (Trägårdh 2002: 83) that, arguably, appeals to the SD: ‘Sweden is the land of the Swedes. By this, the Sweden Democrats do not imply that we, the Swedes, are better than others,

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rather Sweden is the only place on earth where we have an absolute right to act and develop our special character and identity’ (Sverigedemokraterna 2003). As the SD conceives it – as previously mentioned – the Social Democratic governments of later decades have deserted the idea of the People’s Home. In its election manifesto from 2010, the SD makes this explicit: Our country has let too many people in too quickly. … The irresponsible and non-demanding Swedish integration and immigration politics has also caused segregation, rootlessness, criminality and increased tensions. The multicultural societal order today makes a serious threat to the internal cohesion and stability that conditions the whole solidarity of the Swedish welfare model.

To sum up, the SD envisions Sweden and Swedishness as something belonging to an ideal construction of the ‘heartland’, epitomized by the metaphor of the People’s Home. This, according to the party, is what makes the Swedish national community exclusive. The SD capitalizes on a common heritage by means of invoking the political myth of national exclusiveness to, on the one hand, show appreciation for the ‘old’ Social Democracy and, on the other hand, criticize the ‘new’ Social Democrats for letting the native population down by allowing too many foreign people in (too) quickly and refusing to see the problems of integration, the consequences of which the common people in Sweden suffer from.

The Common People For the SD the Swedish national identity is today being ridiculed; immigration to Sweden from, in particular, culturally remote regions and countries has negatively impeded on the Swedish welfare state (Sverigedemokraterna 2010). The naïve appreciation of multiculturalism is counterproductive to the efforts to assimilate new immigrants into the Swedish society. As a consequence, ‘the common people’ suffer from the deterioration of the welfare state, high levels of criminality and the gradual abandonment of national traditions and values that historically provided the natives with a sense of common belonging. The SD aims to defend the Swedish national identity. According to the SD, this does not suggest that Swedish culture is superior to others, only that the Swedes share an absolute right to develop their own identity in their own country (see e.g. Sverigedemokraterna 2003; Sverigedemokraterna 2010; cf. Rydgren 2006: 110f.). The party defines this view as ‘open Swedishness’: anyone willing to assimilate fully into the

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nation is free to do so. This ambition can take generations to realize, however, since according to this view cultural belonging determines personal identification. The appeals to ‘the people’ are rooted in myths about the freedom-loving, democratic-prone Swedish workers and farmers (the yeoman) that contributed to configure the nationalist conservative currents of the nineteenth century, as well as the Social Democratic movement during the early twentieth century (see e.g. Trägårdh 2002; Stråth 2012). Thereby, myths about the common people are embedded in popular narratives of the Swedish national soul. Finally, references to the myth of the common people enable the SD to distinguish between, on the one hand, ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’, and, on the other hand, ‘decent’ workers and those at the bottom of society – including e.g. foreigners – who are, it is suggested, more crime-prone and less equipped to live up to the standards of Swedish society. ‘The common people’ refers to the common Swedes who are tired of being ridiculed by the political and cultural elites when speaking freely about immigration, which here implies their being opposed to (excessive) immigration to Sweden and e.g. warning against Muslims. We can here clearly detect how the two discursive layers of national identity formation intersect between the SD’s appeals to ‘the common people’ and popular notions of this national myth in popular history writing.

The Future of the People’s Home Metaphor in Swedish Politics Even if the metaphor of the People’s Home was used in public debates, it was never mentioned in the SAP party programmes (until 1990). But still, its weight persisted, and has – especially since the late twentieth century – frequently been used to describe the epoch when Sweden, under Social Democratic hegemony, was transformed into a democratic welfare state. Thus, in popular perceptions the People’s Home symbolized an already accomplished political project of Social Democracy, both by the party itself and its opponents − where the latter, especially from the 1980s onwards, used the metaphor to criticize what was seen as the excessive use of social engineering during the heydays of this project. The People’s Home metaphor could be the articulation of a paradise lost and might point to a period of time shaped by immense social control and repressive standardization. This results from how we choose to fill the concept with meaning. The myth of the People’s Home is neither true nor false, but provides a powerful form for articulating nationalist politics

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and rhetoric – what I previously discussed in terms of dreampolitik, contrasted with realpolitik (Duncombe 2010). The metaphor as such also provides the cultural code upon which future policies can be implemented in harmony with the socio-political development in Sweden. The continuous reproduction of the nation shows both in the political rhetoric of the nationalist populist parties, and in how their antagonists react to these interpretations. This is what can be described as the double face of populism (Hellström and Kiiskinen 2013) – the emotional character of the metaphor also crystallizes in the reactions to the party.6 Returning to the close semblance between language and politics, I can conclude that metaphors are not merely rhetorical ornaments; rather, they give substance to e.g. political claims for national cohesion. The use of metaphors, following Cristian Norocel (2010: 173), enables politicians to transform complicated policy matters into familiar concepts. Norocel argues that Åkesson’s uses of the People’s Home metaphor convey ideas that the Swedish society is profoundly Christian and Swedish. He concludes that Åkesson’s use of the People’s Home metaphor unveils a nostalgic discourse of welfare chauvinism, traditional gender roles, a deeply hetero-normative stance and the entrenched fears of the immigrant Others (ibid.). The metaphor, Norocel (2013: 48) says, embodies the Swedish society as a national family. The media reporting on the uses of the metaphor in the parliamentary period, preceding the electoral breakthrough of the SD in September 2010, converge on the perception that the People’s Home refers to a phase that has already passed (Hellström 2010). The metaphor is regularly associated with the heydays of the Social Democratic project of administrating social reforms. After the 2006 national elections the Social Democratic party was no longer in the governmental position and does not (at least not any longer) monopolize the significance of the metaphor in political communication between the mediated elites and the people on the ground. The embodiment of the People’s Home metaphor as symbol of national identity shows both in the positive presentation of the SD and in the reactions to the SD claims on the editorial pages. I can conclude that the various uses of the metaphor stir up emotions and create controversies in the continuous negotiations of the Swedish national identity – and they still do today. I would like to argue that the key to understanding the significance of the People’s Home metaphor in Swedish politics is that it is, potentially, both inclusive and exclusive. The People’s Home is an instrument of categorization for deciding who is to be included, and who is not. The People’s Home metaphor is relevant to understanding how the Swedish national community reproduces itself, by means of inclusion and exclusion.

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The SD employs the metaphor to positively present itself as a moderate, credible party that thrives on popular sentiments. In so doing, they refer back to a popularly held national myth that is both cherished by the Social Democrats and refers back to the metaphor’s conservative undertones. My conclusion is that the usage of the People’s Metaphor in the SD political rhetoric serves a particular purpose: to gain credibility in the eyes of the voters. The SD’s appeals for the People’s Home embed claims for national cohesion and refer to popularly held beliefs of what constitutes Swedishness. The SD claims to represent the interests and views of ‘the common man’, as the elites have neglected to serve the interests of the people on the ground; in other words, the SD claims to be the new People’s Home party.

Fremskrittspartiet (The Norwegian Progress Party) In the national elections in 2009 the FrP was supported by almost a quarter of the Norwegian voters. It is now in the government. The FrP has a long and rather stable position in Norwegian politics. By 1973 the party had already gained four seats in the national parliament. The FrP started as a protest movement against what it referred to as ‘state capitalism’. In its first party programme from 1973, Anders Lange’s Party set as its primary focus the reduction of taxes –particularly to prevent rising taxes for the rich (Anders Lange’s parti 1973; cf. Fryklund and Peterson 1981: 212). Included in this programme was also a wish to cut down on development aid, especially if this aid was state sponsored, and the suggestion that politicians should avoid having opinions about alcohol and tobacco. Apart from this strong anti-tax approach and rallying against any strong state intervention in the daily life of Norwegian citizens, the party early claimed preferences for decentralization; in Lange’s era this also corresponded with a strong anti-centralist view on party organization.7 In the early days of the party there was no particular focus on immigration policy. The FrP was from the start strongly person oriented and strongly liberalist and anti-statist. It opposed any kind of totalitarian state, including e.g. communism and neo-Nazism (Fremskrittspartiet 1977). In 1978 Carl I. Hagen was elected party leader and started to establish a robust party organization (Ravik Jupskås 2013); before Lange’s death this created great tension between the two strong personalities. Hagen continued in this post until 2006 (Ekeberg and Snoen 2001). Neither when Anders Lange was the party leader nor in the early period of Carl I. Hagen’s presidency of the party immigration was a top priority: ‘immi-

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gration was not made into a significant political issue by the FRP until the mid-1980s’ (Hagelund 2003: 52–53). However, even if the issue of immigration was not made into a salient issue in the party’s repertoire, it already in the 1977 party programme indicated that the topic could possibly gain in salience in the future, when ‘immigration has to be carefully considered’ (Fremskrittspartiet 1977). Labour migration should be permitted, but only in sectors where Norwegian labour craft was unavailable. During the 1990s the immigration issue gained in salience in the party’s repertoire as they also started to warn about the dangers of cultural heterogeneity; i.e. immigration was transformed from an economic to a cultural issue (Hagelund 2003). The argumentative logic is that the welfare state gives priority to immigrants as opposed to native Norwegian taxpayers. The FrP is concerned with alleged discrimination against Norwegians, and argues that the immigrants do not need special treatment. No ‘ethnic group’ deserves special treatment or should enjoy certain group-specific rights, and for that reason the FrP e.g. argues for abolishment of Sametinget.8 In the 1990s social inequalities were increasingly linked to questions about cultural diversity, and according to the FrP cultural diversity risks nurturing fragmentation and the creation of further inequality and injustice in Norwegian society. According to Hagelund (2003: 57) the immigration issue was not only problematized, the debate was also moralized and polarized between the FrP and the rest of the Norwegian parties. Officially, the FrP distances itself from racism (and for instance the SD and similar parties) to instead talk about honesty and tolerance. The FrP explicitly endeavours to unite employers and the employees against the (Social Democratic) state, which, according to the FrP, has intervened too much in welfare politics.

National Exclusiveness In its party programmes the FrP refers to liberalism as its ideological foundation. The FrP speaks, comparatively, very little of a particular Norwegian national origin. However, already in its first party programmes, it is mentioned that the Progress party is rooted and loyal to Christendom, the Western civilization and the unique (albeit loosely defined) Norwegian culture, (Anders Lange’s parti 1973; Fremskrittspartiet 1977). In the programme from 2009 it is mentioned that the party is rooted in ‘Norwegian and Western tradition and cultural heritage, being based on a Christian view of life and Humanistic values’ (Fremskrittspartiet 2009a: 77). More central, though is still the party’s anti-state stance: ‘People are

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better equipped than politicians to decide what is best for themselves and those nearest to them. … Power should be transferred from the politicians to ordinary people’ (Fremskrittspartiet 2009b: 4). This echoes the continuity between the protest movement against state capitalism in the 1970s and the present-day party. The primacy of popular resistance also discursively relates to the strong emphasis on ‘the people’ against the state. Rather than stress the symbiosis of the state and the individual as in the Swedish case (Berggren and Trägårdh 2009), the FrP rather pits the individual and the family against the state. The stance against immigration follows from this anti-statist view. In a recent proposal for a sustainable policy on immigration and integration, the distinction between immigration and welfare is made clear: ‘The immigration to Norway needs to be economically sustainable, otherwise we will not be able to maintain the welfare community in the long run’ (Fremskrittspartiet Bærekraftutvalg 2013: 3). Immigration might lead to internal conflicts, as well as pose an imminent threat: ‘There are reasons to fear that a continued immigration of asylum seekers … will lead to serious conflicts between ethnic groups in Norway. It is ethically indefensible to not tighten immigration to prevent conflicts in Norwegian society’ (Fremskrittspartiet 2009a: 33). It is also better, they argue, to help refugees in their heath, rather than encourage them to seek asylum in Norway by delivering false promises. The restrictive immigration policy needs to be combined with, they argue, an active integration policy that enables the immigrants to adjust to Norwegian society. According to the programme, this is a way forward that would diminish ruptures between groups of people in Norway. In a report about ‘immigration and integration’ from the FrP’s parliamentary group (Fremskrittspartiet 2007), the negative stance towards immigration is motivated by the party’s liberal roots. In a special mention of immigrants from Muslim countries, this report states that ‘it cannot under any circumstances be accepted that Norwegian law is e.g. replaced with Islamic Sharia law, even if this was, hypothetically, done by means of democratic processes. Sharia law is fundamentally anti-liberal’ (ibid.: 8). In sum, it makes little sense to discuss the FrP’s programmatic appeals as rooted in myths of national origin. This issue – along with e.g. the widely contested language question that again divided the country between the urban and rural parts (see further e.g. Bucken-Knapp 2003)9 – belongs to those issues that attract diverse opinions by the party members, and should not be made into a top priority issue in the party programme (see e.g. Fremskrittspartiet 1977). In terms of immigration policy, the party welcomes free movement of goods, services, capital and labour (humans) between countries (Fremskrittspartiet 1997). In the next sentence in the

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programme, however, it says in order to enable free movement, immigrants10 should not be entitled the same rights as native Norwegians. The overall ambition of the party, in this area, is to limit the number of residence permits in Norway and to facilitate the repatriation of immigrants to return to their ‘homes’ as soon as the living conditions in their countries of origin allow (Fremskrittspartiet 2005). The risk of excessive immigration is the internal attrition of society. The myth of national exclusiveness articulates itself in transnational narratives of e.g. Western civilization and human rights. Myths of national exclusiveness in the party programme show in ideas of a country of individual nationals, capable of managing their own affairs, deceived by politicians prone to regulations, excessive taxation and overly extensive welfare services. In comparison with the SD and (as will be shown) the DF, the FrP does not use figures of speech that invoke a specific Norwegian ‘national character’. At the same time, the party is in favour of ‘more’ direct democracy and argues for increased decentralization, which is line with what I earlier discussed in terms of the ‘official’ Norwegian national myths. It is clear that the state is less coupled to ‘the people’ compared to Sweden. The FrP’s uses of the myth of national exclusiveness do not project ideas of restoring the former glory of the Social Democratic era; conversely, the theme of national exclusiveness clings onto individualist visions of a native self-contained citizenry, preparing to freely express their individuality – rather, within the family and not the state. Furthermore, the FrP aims to diminish the tax burden for ordinary taxpayers; the party is in favour of decentralization and privatization of collective goods. In terms of democracy, the role of the state should be minimized and the citizens should themselves increasingly decide on their own matters; hence, the party urges more referenda also on the local level. Conversely, the separation between state and society is at the core of the party’s profile. This is in huge contrast to e.g. the SD in Sweden. In turn, foreign cultures should not be forced onto native Norwegian society by the state: The Progress Party wishes to safeguard Norwegian culture and cultural heritage. The integration of expressions from other cultures should be integrated at a natural pace and should not be a task for the public sector. Norwegian culture lives in a natural interaction with other cultures, and therefore it does not need separate stimuli to absorb new influences – they are best received when they are not being forced (Fremskrittspartiet 2009a: 72).

The critique that underlies this claim is, arguably, the idea that the state is used by the elites to disseminate ‘foreign culture’ in the country.

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The Common People In the election campaign of 1989, Carl I. Hagen debated with then Social Democratic Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. Hagen’s ambition was to show that the FrP was the new worker’s party (Ekeberg and Snoen 2001).11 He distinguished between those that deserved welfare-state assistance and those who allegedly did not. His message was that the ‘decent’ worker should vote for the FrP instead of the Social Democrats. In other words, the decent worker in Norway votes against the (Social Democratic) state. According to Magnus Marsdal (2008), the success of the Norwegian Progress Party in the 2005 general elections (22 per cent) can be explicitly linked to the inability of the Norwegian Labour Party to attract ordinary workers. After decades of being the governing party in Norway, the Labour Party has, according to Marsdal, distanced itself from the people that it claims to represent. In this context, the FrP has emerged as a party that claims to speak on behalf of ‘the common people’ – i.e. the ordinary Norwegian workers. The FrP’s programme makes explicit that the party wishes to ‘introduce an active integration policy based on the rules, norms and values that are supposed to be common for the whole population, and which must have precedence before the interests of individual groups’ (Fremskrittspartiet 2009a: 33). According to the FrP, immigrants should only receive social benefits ‘under the condition that they are willing to integrate themselves and learn Norwegian’ (ibid.: 32), and welfare services ‘should increasingly be linked to citizenship’ (ibid.). It is clear that these demands presuppose that immigrants are unwilling to integrate and take undue advantage of the nation’s welfare services. The FrP makes a sharp distinction between ‘decent citizens’, and those accused of taking undue advantage of the welfare services. This requires, if we listen to the FrP, the banishment of immigrants who are guilty of committing crimes. This is necessary to maintain a general trust in the welfare system, which is also beneficial to those immigrants who are not engaged in criminal activities (Fremskrittspartiet 2009a). It is noteworthy that in Norway there are other parliamentary parties aside from the FrP that use appeals to ‘the people’ to gain support for their politics (Ravik Jupskås 2011). The traditionally agrarian Centre Party, for instance, was formed around the centre-periphery cleavage and often claims to represent the rural ‘common people’. Whereas the SD and the DF, as will be shown below, explicitly refer to the myths of national exclusiveness and the common people in their rhetoric, this is not necessarily the case with the FrP. One possible reason is that the opportunities

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to create a niche in the electoral market based on national myth making are, traditionally, occupied by other parties in Norway.

The Danish People’s Party In the 1998 elections in Denmark the DF gained half of their votes from voters who had previously supported the Danish Progress Party. In these elections the DF gained approximately 7 per cent of the vote and was not considered credible by mainstream political actors. In 2001, however, the DF became the supporting cast of the mainstream-right government under Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the situation changed (Trads 2002; Bjerre 2009). The DF aspired to become a socially responsible party and gradually let go of its neo-liberal tendencies (Trads 2002: 26) in order to better correspond with their target groups in the electorate, which had instead proved to be supportive of welfare-state arrangements (Meret 2010: 106). The party developed a political language that spoke for ‘the weak’ in society. The claims for the enhancement of social responsibility are combined with a harsh anti-immigration policy line in the DF´s rhetoric. Its position in Danish partisan politics is considerably stronger than that of e.g. the SD in Sweden. Notably, other parliamentary parties in Denmark have taken up the DF’s aggressive anti-immigration rhetoric.

National Exclusiveness During the DF annual meeting in 2006 the party’s chairperson Pia Kjærsgaard accused the Social Democrats for having neglected the elderly. In her speech, she states: ‘A real Social Democrat votes for the Danish People’s Party’ (Dansk Folkeblad 2006). Otherwise, the myth of national exclusiveness, in the DF’s political language, is not mainly oriented towards Denmark under Social Democratic governance. Yet, the rhetoric being used is similar to what was previously discussed in the case of the SD. It is much oriented towards Danishness and the Danish nation (see also Bjerre 2009). In its comprehensive ‘working programme’ (Dansk Folkeparti 2009), the party refers, more generally, to the particularities of Denmark’s history. According to the programme, Denmark has generated a culture with certain values (such as gender equality, freedom, tolerance, humour and diligence) that have persisted across time (see also Dansk Folkeparti 2005). The party’s ultimate concern is with safeguarding Denmark’s inde-

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pendence and the freedom of the Danish citizens (Danish People’s Party 2002). The freedom of the Danes and the independence of the Danish nation are formulated in constitutional rights for the individual citizen. Any violation of these rights must be strongly opposed. The Danish welfare state, according to the DF, is dependent on the idea that Danes share a profound knowledge of Danish history and culture; it is therefore important that these subjects be made an early priority in Danish schools (ibid.). The DF claims to protect the welfare state and warns against the dangers of multiculturalism, and in particular it capitalizes on popular fears of radical Islamism (Meret 2010). Already in 2002, it adhered to the notion that the Danish welfare state is built by ordinary Danes who contributed to the wealth and progress of the welfare state through their diligence and loyalty (Danish People’s Party 2002). In a book on Denmark’s future, published in 2001, the party criticized what it saw as naïve appreciation of multiculturalism and claimed that the political elite had avoided speaking frankly about the negative consequences of the current immigration from e.g. the Islamic countries (Thulesen Dahl et al. 2001). According to the party, Denmark is not an immigrant country; they explicitly state that Denmark needs to protect its cultural heritage against foreign elements. The DF argues that a tiny country like Denmark needs to secure its own borders and protect itself against excessive foreign influence. What makes Denmark distinct, according to the 2009 party programme, are the proud traditions of monarchy and Christianity. Certainly, the Danish constitution allows freedom of religion, but, at the same time, the DF follows the Danish constitution and claims it is only the Lutheran, evangelical Christian Church that should be sponsored by the state. In this view, the DF distances itself from the ‘cultural radicals’. The myth of national exclusiveness underpins the foundation of the Danish national community and as such it makes references to narratives extending the nation – e.g. Western civilization and ideals of Christianity. The myth of national exclusiveness is invoked by the DF to describe a small nation that obtained a high standard of living thanks to a historically limited immigration to the country: The way of life that we have chosen in Denmark is extraordinary. It is conditioned by our culture, and in such a small country as ours, it cannot survive if we allow mass immigration of foreign religions and foreign cultures. A multicultural society is a society without inner coherence and unity, and this is the reason why the multicultural societies of this world are shaped by a lack of solidarity and, often, also by open conflict. (Dansk Folkeparti 2009: #22)

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Here Denmark is portrayed as both proud and vulnerable. From this I infer that the DF radicalizes myths of Denmark as a country of free and equal individuals (farmers) to authenticate claims for national cohesion. What this suggests is that the basic structure of the balance of the people, the nation and the state (first tier) affects the structural conditions for the positioning of the DF in domestic politics (second tier). According to the DF, Denmark belongs to the Danes, and the party claims to work hard against any development towards a multi-ethnic society – associated with parallel societies and ghettos – that risks undermining the basic solidarity of the Danes. This vision entails memories of a common cultural heritage that continues to prosper, provided that immigration remains limited and integration works smoothly to teach ‘them’ (the immigrants) how to adjust to the Danish culture. However, the DF sees Islam as incompatible with the Danish value system, and as a consequence most Muslims should be repatriated and sent back ‘home’. In various passages of the 2009 party programme Islamism is mentioned as a totalitarian ideology similar to communism or Nazism. In the DF’s view, poverty is culturally determined, and Denmark should not import the problems of ‘the third world’, but help those suffering in their heath instead. In sum, the party’s rhetoric states that Denmark is on the right path to restoring the glory of the Danish nation. This is very much a result of the DF acting as a supporting party for the right-wing governmental coalition. It has ‘helped’ many people to return to ‘their homes’, and put pressure on the remaining immigrants to fully adapt to Danish culture. The DF combines an organic conceptualization of the nation with a pro-welfare stance – i.e. the welfare depends on solidarity between the citizens and is shaped by a common trust in the country’s values and traditions.

The Common People When the DF gained ownership of the immigration issue in Danish political debate, many other parties – including the Social Democrats – likewise started to frame the concerns of ‘the people’ in terms of values, traditions and the need for enhancing the state’s efforts to integrate immigrants into Danish society (Meret 2010: 109). The ‘common person’, accordingly, believes in the freedom of rights and refuses to be burdened by the interference of political and cultural elites in their everyday life. This tradition, accordingly, appreciates individual integrity and individual rights – i.e. individual responsibility combined with a strong sense

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of diligence (Dansk Folkeparti 2009: #11; cf. Thulesen Dahl et al. 2001: 193). In this view, the Scandinavian people have fought hard to achieve the freedom that is now being threatened by religious and ideological movements that disrespect individual autonomy. The DF makes explicit that the natural foundation of the Danish society is the nuclear family. However, the party’s emphasis on family values and the traditional Christian Danish family is less significant than its resistance to Islam (Dansk Folkeparti 2009: #24). The DF advocates cultural-conservative views on adoption, abortion, gay marriage and gender. At the same time, it expresses its dislike for ‘other cultures’ (predominantly Islamic) that, according to the party, hardly merge with the concerns of ‘the common people’: In Denmark, the immigration from in particular Islamic countries has brought with it other and more feudal family patterns. These values are not compatible with the views on gender roles and women’s rights that have been the norm in Denmark. (ibid.; cf. Thulesen Dahl et al. 2001: 190)

In the art of reproducing the nation, civic values can be used to pinpoint the particularities of the Danish character, as can be seen here. According to this view, the myth of the common people resonates with the idea that the Danes enjoy the right to protect themselves against unwanted visitors. Both the programme from 2009 and the book from 2001 show a great trust in the Danes’ ability to manage their own affairs without too much involvement from the state. For the DF, ‘the common people’ are of native origin and more likely to commit to the values of Christianity, freedom of speech and tolerance. This speaks to the farmer’s approach in national myth making and thus ‘the people’, at least as compared to Sweden, is posed against the state.

Final Reflections ‘Radical right parties have thus turned into a new type of working-class party, as two-thirds of their voters in Austria, Denmark and Norway do not have middle-class status’ (Oesch 2012: 48).12 This does not suggest, I argue, that the PRRs in the Nordic state are more ‘left-wing’ than ‘rightwing’, but that their politics is rather reflected in and formulated in relation to their distinct domestic socio-political (national) contexts. The People’s Home is a powerful national myth in Sweden, previously monopolized by the Social Democrats to realize reforms that led to the universal welfare state. The SD uses this particular national myth to show

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appreciation for the older Social Democrats as well as to criticize the new Social Democrats for having let the native population down. The three parties have attracted considerable proportions of voters from the working class – i.e. previous supporters of Social Democratic governments and policies. In terms of the reappropriation of the heritage of Social Democracy, and of its traditional model of the welfare state, the SD stands out as the party most reaffirming of ‘old’ Social Democracy. The myth of national exclusiveness is for the SD both constituted by a strong welfare state and a reappropriated (Social Democratic) past under conditions of cultural homogeneity. This connection to the Social Democratic past also goes for SD’s use of the myth of the common people in their clearly nativist use of the metaphor of the People’s Home, previously associated with the egalitarian project of the welfare state. These efforts to occupy an electoral niche traditionally associated with Social Democracy can probably account for some of the SD’s partial successes in attracting working-class voters. The other extreme of this analysis is the FrP, which neither reaffirms the Social Democratic past, nor calls for an expanded welfare state. Rather, in the Norwegian case, national exclusiveness consists of a nation in which the individual belonging to ‘the common people’ is managing her or his own affairs, and the intervening state should enjoy less power to interfere in the daily lives of ordinary citizens. More clearly, the FrP demonstrates allegiance to transnational loyalties such as human rights and Western civilization that yet serve to confirm a distance between native Norwegians and the unwelcome (Muslim) others in the country. One telling example of the difference between the SD and the FrP is their view on culture politics. While the SD is eager to cut down on statefinanced funding related to provocative art activities, while at the same time suggesting increased support for Sweden-friendly art, including folk dance (Sverigedemokraterna 2010),13 the FrP claims that all art should manage on its own without protection or financial assistance from the state (Fremskrittspartiet 2009a). In between, we find the DF, whose ideas of national exclusiveness are constituted by extensive welfare arrangements, but where Social Democracy is not seen as a reference of particular historical importance. This corresponds well with Danish national myths that seemingly share roots further back in history than those of Sweden. Most importantly, the role of the three nationalist populist parties, and an understanding of their varying electoral fortunes and shifting rhetoric, needs to take into consideration the socio-political developments of each country and how the different discursive layers of national identity intersect.

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Taking into account the possible issue convergence of these three parties over time, the similarities between the parties rest on a moral separation between ‘the common people’, loyal to the welfare state, and ‘the others’ that are accused of exploiting the system. It is not their specific views on the economy (market versus state) that unites the parties; rather it is their particular chauvinist approach to the welfare state (Kitschelt and McGann 1997: 388; Norocel 2013: 176). In other words, ‘the common people’ is of native origin in all three cases. In turn, this connotes to a particular interpretation of ‘the people’, disassociated both from the ‘elites’ in society and those at the bottom accused of taking undue advantages and thus exploiting the system. Instead, they all argue, it is better to help them in their heath and thus drastically cut down on immigration. Previous research suggests that countries still dominated by socio-economic cleavages provide less favourable political opportunities for PRR parties to thrive on their cultural protectionist agenda (Rydgren 2010). Sweden has often been seen as a country dominated by socio-economic political cleavage, and thus it is not unforeseen that the SD, in order to have political success, makes active interventions along the socio-economic political dimension and in class politics (cf. Fransson 1998), and actively uses national myths that are associated with this cleavage. On the other hand, even though the socio-economic cleavage has been important in Norway as well, the cleavage structures also convey e.g. the centre-periphery cleavage – pitting the urban elites against the people in rural areas. Both Denmark and Norway have had a comparatively stronger anti-statist element, while in Sweden the state, the nation and the people are more congruent. One plausible explanation, then, to why Sweden is ‘more liberal’ than its neighbours, can be boiled down to the intricate interplay between the state, the people and the nation (cf. Lithman 2013). As suggested before, the different layers of national identity making are connected and affect the rhetoric and position of the three nationalist populist parties in the Scandinavian countries. The SD, for instance, shows a rhetoric that is much less anti-statist, compared to the FrP, for instance. In the art of reproducing the nation, Sweden features a much tighter link between the state and the individual, compared to both Norway and Denmark. This also shows in the different rhetorical means employed by e.g. the FrP and the SD. To achieve credibility in public space, then, the three parties act on nation-specific settings to dwell on particular historical legacies as a means of attracting voters and invoking and radicalizing claims for national cohesion. Ultimately, this analysis shows that the historical legacy of these parties and shifting ideological positioning in the overall competition for

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votes mirrors their different relations to both the ‘old’ Social Democratic national heritage and the ‘new’ Social Democrats. This comparison of the nationalist populist parties in similar political environments shows that processes of national myth making take different paths and are not recognized as equally salient by the parties themselves. Furthermore, what unties the three Scandinavian PRR parties put under scrutiny here is, nonetheless, the combination of welfare-chauvinism and cultural conformism, rooted in the appreciation of the native ‘decent’ worker. The analysis shows that the PRR parties in the Scandinavian countries are, by now, all significant political actors with particular views about the (exclusive) nature of the nation and what constitutes ‘the common people’ in the contemporary political debate in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. This is core for the second part of the empirical analysis, which we will now turn to.

NOTES 1. Some examples given here were previously published in Swedish (Hellström 2010). 2. Verner von Heidenstam (1859–1940) is a well-known Swedish author. His poems and books represent preferences for romanticism over the radicalism and realism championed by the radicals who preceded him. Heidenstam won the Nobel Prize in literature 1916. Many Swedish pupils have read and discussed his works in school. 3. In this section, the understanding of national myths rests primarily on Jespersen’s introduction to Danish history making. Even though Jespersen does not use the concept of ‘myth’, his account is very close to my understanding of national myth making in the sense that it offers an understanding of the Danish history that gives significance to certain narratives of the past and ‘defines how the people of a nation see themselves’ (Jespersen 2004: 187). 4. In Danish history writing, Grundtvig is e.g. recognized, and highly appreciated, for ideas of education formation also for the less privileged classes in Danish society. 5. Worth noting is that mainstream sport journalists in Sweden, at least before Ibrahimovic’s breakthrough, also expressed ambiguities concerning his Swedishness, even if he was born in Sweden, though his parents were not (see further Hellström 2010: 97–98). 6. For many commentators, it is highly provocative that the SD refers to the People’s Home metaphor the way it does. In an edited volume on the SD, the journalist Anna-Lena Lodenius (2009: 33) argues: ‘The notion is not used the way it was when Per-Albin coined the expression. … The Sweden Democrats are talking about an ethnically homogenous people’s home, where the

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8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

13.

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overall security rests on that we are all similar.’ As indicated above, though, Per-Albin Hansson did not use the metaphor as e.g. Rudolf Kjellén did either (see further Lagergren 1999). In the 1980s and the 1990s the idea of the People’s Home was much criticized in public debate, but, according to economy historian Jenny Andersson, the concept is yet again popular – this corresponds to a renewed interest in nationalist myths (2009: 58), ‘[which] has to do with that a populist extreme-right approaches the political centre. The Sweden Democrats are shameless exploiters of the People’s Home’s images and myths.’ The cultural chronicler Gabriel Byström states that while the People’s Home was before an including metaphor, it is now used as an excluding one as parties like the SD ‘[have] annexed the concept’ (Göteborgsposten, 10 April 2008; cf. Andersson 2010: 136–137). It is said in the 1973 party programme that those interested can contribute financially to this movement, without being forced to do so by a centralized party board. Sametinget is a parliamentary assembly for the Sami minority population. The language question in Norway, whether to choose Nynorsk or Bokmål, most certainly stirs up strong emotions in the Norwegian population. For once, it epitomizes the tight connection between language and national identity. The party clearly differentiates between refugees and immigrants. The former deserves assistance from the Norwegian state. These are rather few, however. People belonging to other categories, the great majority, do not deserve such help. Marsdal (2008: 280) argues that the FrP successfully plays on the populist divide between the people and the Oslo intelligentsia. Many researchers and commentators, based on their own presuppositions, seem eager to find explanations for the progress of these parties as far removed as possible from their own initial position. In reality, it is not that simple: ‘In West European countries the largest competitors of the radical right are always either the conservatives or the Christian Democrats. However, in most of these countries a small group of potential supporters of the radical right considers voting for the Social Democrats a viable option’ (Van der Brug et al. 2013: 70). Margareta Larsson, a member of parliament, representing the SD, recently argued against a controversial painting of a female vagina in a public school, suggesting that the female artist should be sent to prison (Göteborgs-posten 2014).

E c ha p te r 4

Issues and Tone Towards the Nationalist Populist Parties in Mainstream Press Editorials in Scandinavia

he previous chapter dealt with the question of how the Sweden Democrats, the Danish People’s Party and the Norwegian Progress Party attempt to present a positive self-image, using national myths to a varying extent, in order to gain a solid position in the zone of acquiescence.1 This chapter and the subsequent chapter are focused on if and how they succeed. More precisely, we look at how mainstream media in the three countries reacts to the politics and rhetoric of the three parties. Are there differences in the way the parties are framed and mediatized in the three countries? What is their role and position in the domestic debate about the renegotiation of national identity in their countries? In this chapter we analyse this by way of quantitative data; in the next we perform a qualitative frame analysis of the same text material. There are several reasons for looking more closely at editorials, as was discussed in the second chapter. First, we see editorial writers as influential opinion makers. Apart from their individual opinions, their views are further disseminated by other journalists and commented upon in social media. The editorials constitute an important part of the public discourse on politics and a mediated space where the media elite can freely formulate opinions on timely political issues (cf. Van Dijk 1998). While editorials represent a tiny fraction of the public debate as a whole and do not represent the relevant audience for these parties in their own right, their opinions are nonetheless influential in the ‘mediated space of appearance’ (Silverstone 2007), and also for a much wider public. As explained in second chapter, all of us, as individual citizens, relate

T

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and refer to this particular opinionated space when we categorize our experiences and formulate our opinions about e.g. a particular party. The mediated space of appearance, in this sense, constitutes our reality – i.e. our immediate referential surroundings. Second, the editorials provide us with an entry point from which to study the borders of normality in the three national contexts. Since the media elite tend to side with the political elites more than the challengers (Mazzoleni 2003: 16), a systematic study of the mainstream press editorials is an empirical test of the distance between the political mainstream and the political challenger, here represented by the nationalist populist parties. In order for the parties to cross the threshold of credibility and thus enter into the zone of acquiescence they need to be recognized as credible also by their political opponents. Without having a stable ethos-position in the public debate, from which the party can make its voice heard, it becomes problematic to reach out to the prospective voters and to cooperate in the parliament also with other parties. The complexities of the relations between the sending, mediation and reception of political claims was discussed at some greater length in the second chapter; for now it suffices to say that the focus of this chapter is on the mediation phase of the communication cycle, between sending and receiving a message. Issues pertaining to national identity and the positions of the three national populist parties therein are mitigated on the editorial pages. It is essential to look at mainstream press editorials in order to assess the different roles played by the three nationalist populist parties in the domestic public debate in regards to their claims for national identity. The continuous negotiation of national identity formation crystallizes in the interaction between the positive self-presentation and the possibly negative representation of the party in mainstream press editorials. The analysis proceeds as follows. We have collected editorials and opeds from twelve leading national newspapers in the years 2009–2012. The text material was quantified by the authors, using a common coding scheme. We were particularly interested in the tone of the debate and in the topics which were relevant when the three parties were being discussed.2 When we compare the tone of the debate we look at how the party is being diagnosed and framed in the selected material.3 We have given each editorial text a score from 1 to 3, where 1 corresponds to a negative tone, 2 an overall neutral or balanced view and 3 a positive tone in the editorial towards the party.4 If the editorial writers generally make use of a negative or critical tone when writing about the party, we interpret this as ‘repressive’ political

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environment, in the sense that the mainstream media debate is more repressive than permissive towards the position of the party in domestic politics. Conversely, if the editorial writers are seemingly more positive towards the party, the political environment in relation to the party is more ‘permissive’. This is certainly not an either/or question, and we thus end up with a continuum, ranging from repressive to permissive in relation to the three parties put under scrutiny in this study, as well as relative to the issues debated in relation to the parties. If the editorials in our material are heavily critical towards the parties, in a polarized discussion climate, then the relevant audiences (in this case the presumptive voter) might search for other sources of information and opinions about the parties in social media, rather than the mainstream press. Second, we highlight what the debate is about in articles dealing with the party. We thus compare the topics of the debate. This, indeed, also varies across time. The topics include policy areas and subject areas that the parties are associated with. Based on their historical legacy, past, reputation and experiences, the three parties are approached differently in the editorials. Also, we expect the critical views, tone and degree of ‘negativity’ to differ and to be differently expressed in the three countries. Whereas the tone towards the SD in Sweden is largely negative (Hellström 2010; Rydgren 2007), the case is not necessarily the same in Denmark and Norway towards the FrP and the DF, respectively. Unlike in Sweden, the debate in Denmark is not directly against the DF, and the FrP has been in the parliament for more than forty years and since 2013 is taking seats in the Norwegian government for the first time. In the previous elections in 2009, covered in our sample, the FrP attracted almost a quarter of the Norwegian electorate (Ravik Jupskås 2013). In short, the positions of the three parties in domestic politics differ significantly. We here test the assumption that these differences are also reflected in the editorials. We hypothesize differences in terms of topics and tone. There is reason to suggest that the three parties here considered, given their common anti-immigration approach, achieve more negative attention when the topic is centred on migration and migration-related issues, as compared to when other political issues are at stake. This topic is sensitive and might stir up emotions, since it ultimately concerns who ‘we’ are as people in relation to what we are not (Hansen 2000: 19; cf. Hellström 2006: 160) – i.e. what counts as national identity in relation to what does not. There are certainly differences between the countries in terms of immigration regimes and how the nation is reproduced; Sweden is normally considered to hold more liberal immigration policies than its neighbours, but also to have a climate for debate where there is less space for critique of

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immigration (Brochmann and Hagelund 2010, 2012; Bak Jørgensen and Meret 2010, 2012). We thus also expect there to be national differences. We set up two hypotheses for the quantitative analysis: (1) The tone towards the party in domestic press is more negative in Sweden compared to Norway and Denmark. (2) The tone towards the three parties varies also in relation to which topic is discussed in the editorials; in particular, when migration politics are discussed the attitude towards the party is more negative in all three countries.

Data Material The bulk material consists of 801 articles in four Swedish newspapers, 1329 editorials and op. eds articles in four Norwegian newspapers and 663 articles in four Danish newspapers (see table 4.1). The time period is set to 2009–2012.5 Table 4.1. Number of articles in the twelve newspapers.6 Newspaper

Editorials

Op-eds

Chronicles

Total (2009–2012)

Sweden

206

548

47

801

Dagens Nyheter

84

194

19

297

Svenska Dagbladet

11

96

28

135

Aftonbladet

12

134

0

146

Expressen

99

124

0

223

Norway

560

769

1329

Dagbladet

170

242

412

VG

108

195

303

Dagsavisen

137

191

328

Aftenposten

145

141

286

Denmark

236

427

663

Politiken

0

161

161

Jyllands Posten

109

0

109

BT

0

255

255

Ekstra Bladet

127

11

138

Total

1002

1744

47

2793 (with chronicles from the Swedish case)

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Table 4.1 reveals that the number of articles is higher in Norway compared to the other two countries in the study. As for the genre, different newspapers evidently have different policies – what is a signed or unsigned editorial, how often they make use of external journalists and so forth. The conducted reliability test (see chapter 2) also reminds us that it is not always easy for the individual coders to make precise and identical observations. The selection of newspapers was based on the largest newspapers in each country, primarily those with nationwide reach. Table 4.2 shows the circulation rate of the considered newspapers. The political profile of most newspapers today is mainstream, independently liberal. This reflects the political profile of the news industry writ large. However, in the sample we have also aimed to include a Social Democratic newspaper. We have neither considered regional, local, free nor specialized and niche newspapers, even though, as in the case of free newspapers, in some cases they may have a larger distribution and circulation than those we have included in our sample. Our emphasis on the national arena is, in this regard, based on our ambition to cover the national public debate. In the Swedish case we have selected two morning papers and two tabloids. Of the two morning papers chosen for this study, Dagens Nyheter is independently liberal and Svenska Dagbladet has a liberal-conservative Table 4.2. Newspapers’ circulation rates in 2012. Newspaper

Circulation rates 2012 (1000)

Sweden7

896

Dagens Nyheter

292 (2011)

Svenska Dagbladet

175

Expressen (including Kvällsposten and GT)

217

Aftonbladet

212

8

Norway

524

Aftenposten (morning edition)

225

Dagsavisen

23

Dagbladet

88

VG

188 9

Denmark

313

Politiken

98

Jyllands Posten

97

BT

59

Ekstra Bladet

59

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profile. One of the tabloids is independently liberal (Expressen) and the other (Aftonbladet) is Social Democratic. In Norway, as well, we have sampled two morning papers and two tabloids. The tabloids, VG and Dagbladet, have nationwide circulation and are also the second and third largest papers in the country (as of 2012). Dagbladet is a liberal paper, while VG, although politically independent, has historically been more conservative. The largest paper, Aftenposten, is Oslo-based but with national circulation. Its profile is historically conservative, but less pronouncedly so today. The last paper, Oslo-based Dagsavisen, is not among the largest in the country, but is selected to include a Social Democratic paper.10 For the Danish case, Politiken and Jyllands Posten are the two main morning papers in the country, whereas Ekstra Bladet and BT are the two widely circulated Danish tabloids. Politiken is Copenhagen-based, but it is read nationwide; the paper represents a liberal progressive and moderately left-wing position and is politically closer to the Social Democrats, even though it is not representing the party voice. Jyllands Posten (JP) is considered a less capital-based broadsheet and it has in fact a higher distribution in the Jutlandia region of the country; the newspaper is characterized by neo-conservative and more traditionalist positions. It was also JP that in 2005 published the controversial Mohammed cartoons (see Hervik 2011). Ekstra Bladet and BT are the two largest tabloids in the country. The data material is selected by means of a keyword database search, using the search words ‘SD’ and ‘Sverigedemokraterna’ in the Swedish database Retriever Mediearkivet. In Norway searches have been made in the database Atekst using the search words ‘FrP’ and ‘Fremskrittspartiet’. Correspondingly, in Denmark the search words used in the media database Infomedia were ‘DF’ or ‘Dansk Folkeparti’. To ensure reliability, we conducted a reliability test that is described and discussed in the second chapter of this book. The sampled data was thus quantitatively and qualitatively analysed, resulting in two different parts/chapters: This chapter conveys a systematic test of the two hypotheses, as outlined above. Chapter 5 presents a frame analysis and deals in more detail with the content of the articles and in relation to the reproduction of national identities. An analysis of mainstream media provides a vital test of the mitigation of national identity in the public debate. We focus here on the editorial pages, which is definitely an elite space in this regard.

Coverage Our hypothesis is that the tone towards the SD in Sweden is overall more negative, if compared with the FrP in Norway and the DF in Denmark. We

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come to this on the basis of different factors that have to do, respectively, with the historical legacy of the SD, with the party’s newness and inexperience in parliament, with its lack of reputational shields that can be used to fend off accusations of racism and extremism (Ivarsflaten 2006) and with specific opportunity structures (see chapter 1). In line with the above-mentioned factors, considering the continuum of the political environment (see further introduction and chapter 2; Art 2011) ranging from repressive to permissive, we suggest that Sweden is closer to the former pole.11 As previously explained, this approach does not define a general categorization of the political environment, but refers specifically to the expressed attitudes towards the nationalist populist parties in the editorials. The positions adopted by the editorials towards the party, we hypothesize, should reflect this general trend. In technical terms, in all our analyses we have excluded articles on the editorial pages in which the party had an ‘irrelevant’ role, shorter paragraphs and articles on the editorial pages written by those who were not employed by the newspaper – i.e. ‘chronicles’ (see appendix 1 for detailed coding instructions). As figure 4.1 indicates, articles dealing with the SD on the editorial pages in the four Swedish newspapers are not equally split in the sense that comparatively few articles in Svenska Dagbladet explicitly deal with the SD, either as a major or minor actor. Otherwise the three other newspapers, with Expressen at the top, are all engaged with the SD on the editorial pages in this period. As we can see, there were more editorials on the SD in 2010 when the party entered for the first time in parliament, as compared to before. The exception here is Svenska Dagbladet, which

20 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0

x x x

Dagens Nyheter

x

Svenska Dagbladet Aftonbladet

x Expressen

2009

2010

2011

2012

Figure 4.1.  Editorials with the SD as major actor, 2009–2012, Sweden (N=137).

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Figure 4.2. Editorials with the FrP as major actor, 2009–2012, Norway (N=313).

has limited coverage of the party compared to the other newspapers in the Swedish sample throughout the period of observation. For the Norwegian case, a similar figure (4.2) describes the material in our study, based on articles in the period from 2009–2012. Here we see that the interest devoted to the FrP in editorials is at its highest in 2011, the year of the Utøya massacre. In 2012 the interest dropped back to or below previous levels. However, after 2013 we would probably have seen a new increase as the party has had a historic parliamentary breakthrough and entered government for the first time. There is also a considerable difference in the level of coverage between the papers, with the liberal and rather FrP-critical Dagbladet on top. In the case of Denmark (see figure 4.3), it is worth noticing how editorials having the DF as a major actor tend to reach their peak in 2010 and 2011; the high interest in the DF during 2010 is likely related to the specific welfare reforms discussed by the government in relation to the finance law agreement, the last before the new elections that were held in September 2011. The 2011 entries are mainly to be considered as a result of the upcoming national election. Figures show also that the tabloid BT has been, among the four newspapers here observed, the most committed to writing about the DF in the period 2009–2011. However, the coverage of the party dropped dramatically in the post-electoral period, reaching in 2012 the same level of the other media examined (see appendix 2 and appendix 3 for further details).

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25 20

x

15 10 5

Politiken JP

x

x

BT

x

0 2009

2010

2011

x Ekstra Bladet

2012

Figure 4.3.  Editorials with the DF as major actor, 2009–2012, Denmark (N=134).

The general interest in mainstream editorials towards the DF significantly diminished after 2011, responding to the less significant role played by the party after the general elections, where the DF lost its privileged position as supporting partner to the Liberal and Conservative government, becoming instead part of the opposition, under the ruling government led by the Social Democrats.

Tone Towards the Parties To address our first hypothesis – that the tone of the domestic press is likely to be more negative towards the SD in Sweden when compared to the FrP in Norway and the DF in Denmark – we look at the average mean scores on the variable tone towards the party, coded on a scale from 1 to 3. The lower the score, the more negative the overall position expressed in the editorial is. Figure 4.4 shows the mean value of the editorials in the three countries. Figure 4.5 shows the proportion of negative articles where the party has a major role. Comparing the three cases, the first hypothesis seems to find support. Given our material, it is evident that the SD operates in a far more repressive political environment than do the DF and the FrP. It is repressive in the sense already mentioned above that the editorial writers are seemingly very negative towards the SD in Sweden. In Denmark and Norway, the tone being used is much more balanced. Note that this is not a normative claim, an assessment of whether it is good or bad to be more balanced, but simply an empirical observation that the tone towards the SD is more negative in the Swedish editorials (normatively justified or not), compared to both Norway and, to an even higher degree, Denmark.

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Figure 4.4. Mean value of tone for all topics in all years by country and role.

The tone towards the FrP in Norway is also negative, but there is a noticeable difference in terms of degree when compared to Sweden. In Denmark, the tone shifted considerably in 2012, becoming more balanced than in previous years. However, this can be interpreted in various ways, and it certainly dovetails with the fact that the DF since September

Figure 4.5. Proportion (in percentage) of negative articles where the nationalist populist party is major actor, by country and year.

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2011 belongs to the opposition and had no or only very little influence on the government’s political decisions, in contrast to the years between 2001 and 2011.12 The general tone used in the Swedish editorials might bring about more polarized discussions towards the party, in the sense that the cleavage between those who love to hate the SD and those who actually feel affiliated with the party is huge in Sweden. To be for or against the SD is a matter of identity; how you choose to identify yourself as a person. In this contest of identity politics, the mainstream press editorials take a firm position against the party. Note that there are no editorials that were positive towards the SD in our sample. In turn, this might encourage people sharing little or no trust in mainstream media to find other means – i.e. counter public(s) (Fraser 2000) – to express their loyalty with the party and find more sympathetically framed sources of information and opinion making elsewhere. There is a tendency on the editorial pages in Sweden to share a slightly less negative tone in 2011 compared to the election year 2010. This trend is, however, abruptly broken in 2012, when the number of negative articles featuring the SD as a major actor rose again. In this year, as will be discussed in some greater length below, the party was impeded by a series of scandals that provoked much negative media attention. Looking at the Danish case, it is interesting to observe how the tone of the editorials was increasingly negative in the period 2009–2010 despite the already consolidated parliamentary experience and role of the DF as supporting party to the governing coalition. In 2010 in particular, Danish editorials with the DF as the main subject were very negative. 2010 is also the year when the government and the DF discussed major welfare reforms. The debate about reforms on matters including early retirement from the labour market, pensions and the duration of unemployment subsidies certainly had an impact on the attentiveness, tone and positions of editorials dealing with the DF. The situation slowly changed after the September 2011 elections, also following a more general trend of declining interest in the DF as a whole. Particularly in recent years the tone expressed about the role of the DF in mainstream press editorials seems to have become more balanced, partly endorsing our first hypothesis. The loss of political influence resulting from the return of the party to the opposition also led to a significant drop in interest, reflected by the limited attention to the party in mainstream editorials in 2012 (see appendix 2 for more details about the amount of articles and the average mean value towards the DF by newspaper in the period 2009 –2012).

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In the Norwegian case the trend does not show such fluctuations between the years, at least compared to Denmark. In 2011 there were comparably more editorials about the party as a major actor, which is probably related to the terrorist attacks on Utøya in July 2011 committed by Anders Behring Breivik, previously a member of the FrP. Otherwise, the trend in the election year 2013 is oriented towards more balanced articles, as compared to negative. This again partly endorses our first hypothesis.

Topics in the Debate We now turn to the second part of the quantitative analysis. What are the issues at stake when the editorials put our three parties on centre stage? Are the editorials dealing with the parties in a more negative way when the topic is ‘migration politics’, as compared to when other issues are being debated, as suggested by our second hypothesis? Figure 4.6 shows the distribution of topics in articles where the three parties are treated as major actors. As before, we exclude short articles and chronicles written by people who are not employed by the newspapers. We also exclude topics that have less than ten articles. In appendix 3 we compare the distribution of topics in the selected newspapers and also relate these to mean values. As figure 4.6 reveals, in the Swedish case it is by far the topic ‘social cohesion and conflicting values’ that attracts most articles. It is also

Figure 4.6. Topics by country, 2009–2012. ‘Major’ articles (N=810).

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here that we find articles related to issues pertaining to national identity. It is important at this point, however, to remember that the test coders chose this topic to a lesser extent (see table 2.5) than the observer did. We should therefore be careful not to exaggerate the precise number of articles included in this category. Still, the dominance of the topic in the sample is striking. In Norway it is the topic ‘Parliamentary Affairs’ that attracts most attention. This, perhaps less surprisingly, reflects the fact that the FrP has been seated in the national parliament for the past forty years. In the period of study the party has also been discussed as a potential government partner, both in 2009 (when it polled very well in the spring) and in the upcoming 2013 election. This has provoked much media attention for the topic ‘parliamentary affairs’ in the Norwegian national debate. In Denmark there are many articles during this period dealing with ‘Social Cohesion and Conflicting Values’ (45) and even more articles dealing with ‘Parliamentary Affairs’ (54); to some extent this is also illustrative of the Danish situation, with the DF in fact playing a relevant and active role in parliamentary affairs and still profiling itself as a party with a primary interest in migration and migration-related matters. To address our second hypothesis – suggesting that the tone towards the three parties varies in relation to the topic discussed and becomes

Figure 4.7. Mean value of tone (1–3) for different topics (minimum 8 articles) in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish editorials where the party has a major role.

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particularly negative when this relates to migration politics – we assess to what extent the mean value differs in terms of topic in the three countries. In the analysis we compare the topic ‘migration politics’ with topics that are coded in a minimum of eight articles of the total country data material. In Sweden very few articles (12) in which the SD had a major role actually had ‘migration politics’ as a topic. However, of these all twelve were negative. In articles where the SD had a minor role the mean value is much closer to the average (1.12) compared to the average mean, which was 1.15. In Norway the average mean value of tone for all topics when the FrP had a major role was 1.48. However, in articles that explicitly dealt with migration politics the mean value was 1.13, which, together with ‘Social Cohesion and Conflicting Values’, was the lowest score. The difference in ‘minor’ articles is also considerable between the average means for these articles: 1.82 compared to 1.52 for migration politics, which for ‘minor’ articles was the lowest score of all topics. In Denmark the overall average means in the editorials in which the DF plays a major role is comparatively higher than in the other two countries: 1,09 (Sweden) and 1.48 (Norway) compared to 1.71 for all topics. Looking at the single topics, the tone in the Danish case is also more negative when the topic of the article is related to migration politics or to social cohesion and conflicting values. Dealing with aspects related to parlia-

Table 4.3. The most frequently addressed topics in the Swedish public debate, 2009–2012. Topic

Major

Minor

Total

Balanced/ Balanced/ Negative Neutral Negative Neutral Social Cohesion (and 101+12= 5+0=5 Conflicting Values) and 113 Migration Politics

100+29= 17+4=21 129

223+45= 268

Parliamentary Affairs and Public Opinion

22+22= 44

3+1=4

51+26= 77

13+6=19

144

Welfare and Economy

18

4

46

7

75

Scandals

22

0

1

1

24

Law and Order

5

11

4

4

24

EU/European Integration

4

0

19

0

23

29+28=57

20

20

27

Social Cohesion (and Conflicting Values) and Migration Politics

Welfare and Economy

Culture Politics

Scandals

8

6

8

2+2=4

82+19=101

1

2

0

1+1=2

3+1=4

2

31

49

23+39=62

46+12=58

24+18=42

12

4

Social Cohesion (and Conflicting Values) + Migration Politics

Welfare and Economy

Law and order

11

17

20+17=37

0

1

1+0=1

2

9

24+5=29

6+0=6

Negative

7+2=9

Balanced/Neutral Positive

40+2=42

Negative

7+1=8

Minor

Major

Parliamentary Affairs and Public Opinion

Topic

Table 4.5. The most frequently addressed topics in the Danish debate, 2009–2012.

44+9=53

Negative

Negative

Balanced/Neutral Positive

Minor

Major

Parliamentary Affairs and Public Opinion

Topic

0

4

9

0+3=3

7+1=8

37

110

70+57=127

167+18=185

0

7

0+3=3

2+0=2

Balanced/Neutral Positive

12

44

77

34+33=67

293+91=384

Balanced/Neutral Positive

Table 4.4. The most frequently addressed topics in the Norwegian debate, 2009–2012.

54

156

139+100=239

229+23=252

Total

50

107

163

89+106=195

475+133=608

Total

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mentary affairs, the average is more positive, thus indicating the less contentious nature of this topic as handled by the editorials considered. Thus in all three countries the nationalist populist parties in our study are portrayed in a more negative manner when the issues discussed concern migration and social cohesion – in short, the issues that deal with the Scandinavian countries as multicultural societies. The portrayals of the parties are also overwhelmingly critical, yet more balanced, when other political issues are being debated in the editorials. This indicates the particularly contentious nature of immigration policy in these countries. However, the tone towards the parties in general seems to be at different levels in the three countries, with an overall more negative attitude to the SD in Swedish mainstream media, especially compared to the less negatively inclined Danish media. Again, Norway seems to take up a position in the middle, although closer to the Danish situation than to the Swedish one. Full information about differences between the individual newspapers in terms of topic and tone is located in the appendix section of this book (see appendices 2–3). The results of this analysis tend to substantiate our second hypothesis suggesting that the tone is more negative (below the mean average) when the major topic of the editorials deals with migration and/or migration-related politics. Noteworthy is that the difference between the national newspaper in terms of tone towards the parties is smaller than it is between the countries. This said, for instance Dagsavisen in Norway has a lower average mean value in tone towards the FrP in their articles on the editorial pages compared to Svenska Dabladet’s average mean value in tone towards the SD (see appendix 2).

Conclusions The descriptive statistics presented in this chapter indicate that our initial assumptions about differences in the treatment of the SD, the FrP and the DF were correct. On average, the tone applied in the editorials that discuss these parties was considerably more negative in Sweden, as compared to Norway and Denmark. We also saw that the topic Migration Politics generates more negative articles compared to other topics in the selected material. Our two initial hypotheses have thus been strengthened. All in all this suggests a more repressive political environment towards the SD in Sweden, compared to the other two countries. It is repressive in the sense that the editorials are comparatively more negative than balanced in relation to the SD. One possible explanation is that both the DF

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in Denmark and the FrP in Norway share longer parliamentarian experiences and have very different historical legacies compared to the SD in Sweden. Another explanation is the range of topics that configures the context for the editorials’ analyses of the three parties. In Sweden about half of the editorials discussing the SD (major role) were about social cohesion and migration – precisely the topics that tend to be most closely related to negative depictions of these parties. What is striking is also the ways in which the topic of national identity, the basic structure of the nation, the state and the people (the first layer), is treated in mainstream media on the editorial pages (the second layer). Our results show that the discussion climate is seemingly polarized in Swedish public debate with the ‘elite’ media taking, unanimously, a strong position against the SD. In order to understand and explain the relation between opinion fluctuations and media representations, there is a need in further studies to expand beyond mainstream media. It will otherwise remains an unsolvable paradox in Swedish politics how the SD has made such electoral fortunes, while the ‘elite’ media remains hostile towards the party. It would also indeed be interesting to analyse whether this trend continues after the 2014 national elections. Will the Swedish editorials remain largely repressive in tone towards the SD or are we in fact facing increased convergence between the three counties after the 2014 national elections in relation to the three parties and in the negotiation of the national identity? When it comes to topics, the discussion in Norway was oriented towards Parliamentary Affairs, an issue that often takes the shape of fairly balanced analyses of potential government contenders and coalitions. The Swedish editorials tended to focus more on Social Cohesion and Conflicting Values. In Denmark both these issues attracted ample attention, but there was no one issue that dominated the coverage to the same extent. Overall, the editorial writers were seemingly less interested in the parties’ opinions regarding welfare and economy, at least in Sweden and Norway, indicating that it is still the socio-cultural axis of political competition that generates more attention. At least we could seemingly conclude that the discussion on welfare issues, in relation to the three parties under study here, is deeply ingrained with discussions of what are generally referred to as socio-cultural factors, such as values, national identity and immigration. In the next chapter we will analyse the editorials qualitatively; this allows us to put the results and observations of this chapter in context and to identify some of the ‘dominant frames’ articulated from various positions in the public debate mediated by the editorials gathered in our sample (Hellström and Nilsson 2010: 56; Bergström and Boréus 2001: 158).13

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NOTES 1. This chapter was co-written with Anniken Hagelund and Susi Meret. 2. See appendix 1 for fully elaborated coding instructions. The coding scheme was presented in chapter 2. 3. The tone refers to the language being used to describe the party – i.e. whether it is described in negative, neutral or positive terms. For instance, if the party is described as xenophobic or racist we have coded the article as having a negative assessment of the party. If the party is proven guilty of association with e.g. neo-Nazi movements, we have also coded this as a negative assessment of the party. 4. In the Danish case the original coding distinguished a neutral from a balanced tone, considering the latter likely e.g. if the tone of the editorial puts the DF on the same level as another mainstream party. The variable was later recoded, giving neutral and balanced the same value (2) to operate with a variable consistent with the Swedish and Norwegian dataset. 5. Swedish national (and local) elections were held in 2010. In Norway there was a national election in 2009 and regional and local elections in 2011. There were general national elections in Denmark in September 2011, whereas local elections took place in 2009. In the process of writing this book, national elections were held in Norway, the results of which are accounted for in figure 0.2 in the introduction. Even more recent events, in 2014 and in 2015 (e. g national elections in Sweden and Denmark), are briefly discussed in the book´s epilogue. 6. In the Swedish case, also the chronicles are counted in this table. These were, used in the qualitative analysis in the next chapter. 7. Source: http://www.ts.se/Mediefakta/Dagspress.aspx and http://www.afton bladet.se/siffror/ (both sites last accessed 18 June 2013). It is worth mentioning that the news industry also measures their coverage rate in terms of digital coverage, which is however not included in these figures. 8. Source: http://medienorge.uib.no/?cat=statistikk&medium=avis&queryID=190 (last accessed 18 June 2013) 9. Source: Dansk Oplagskontrol. 10. Alternatively we could have sampled the fourth-largest paper, Dagens Næringsliv, which has a strong business profile. This would probably have given fewer negative framings of the FrP. 11. To recap, in a repressive political environment it is harder for the parties to attract moderate party activists, which in turn makes it more difficult for the party to cross the threshold of credibility. 12. Detailed knowledge of the cases and the differences between the different newspapers in the sample is located in appendix 2. 13. In Hellström and Nilsson’s article (2010) the identified frames were referred to as ‘rhetorical figures’.

E c ha p te r 5

Framing the National Populist Parties in Mainstream Press Editorials in Scandinavia

n this second part of the comparative analysis, the concept of framing is used to detect and summarize the messages channelled by the debates on the SD, the FrP and the DF in mainstream press editorials.1 While the quantitative overview provides the backdrop to our analysis, the attention in this chapter will be explicitly focused on what and how the issues are discussed, how the problem is presented (cf. Bacchi 2009) and what diagnosis, motivation to act and prognosis are outlined in the articles. The frames are identified and discussed in relation to the negotiation of national identities in the three countries. This approach gives us further knowledge of the role played by the three nationalist populist parties in the editorials, and helps us to detect how their claims on e.g. national identity are mitigated in the mainstream press editorials. This also helps us determine how the fissures between welfare and multiculturalism show through in the editorials. While the previous chapter gave some indications, we will now take the opportunity to dwell further on this topic from a frame analysis approach. The chapter begins with a short description of the material used in the analysis. From this follows a brief presentation on the most frequently adopted topics in our material. The quantified data has allowed us to identify the topics, which are most frequently associated with the parties and the extent to which the articles frame the parties within a predominantly negative or more balanced tone. In order to explore these framings in more detail, we have also selected a number of typical articles for closer analysis. For each country two themes have been selected that derive from the quantitative analysis. One concerns public opinion and parliamentary affairs and is characterized by a more balanced tone. The second concerns migration policy and/or social cohesion and character-

I

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izes the party in a more negative manner. In practice, both these pairs of issues can be hard to distinguish, which is why we have here combined them. Analyses of trends in public opinion are often related to analyses of future government constellations. Issues of immigration are often, not least when the parties under study are major actors, linked to discussions about values and cohesion in a culturally diverse society.

Topics in the Swedish Debate Without competition, the most discussed topic in the Swedish material covers the topic ‘Social Cohesion and Conflicting Values’. The preceding chapter provided an overview of the most important topics in the Swedish corpus and how these are divided between articles where the SD plays a major or minor role and by tone (see table 4.3).

Parliamentary Affairs and Public Opinion In total 144 articles in our sample deal with these topics and are coded as having either a negative or a balanced/neutral tone towards the SD in the Swedish corpus. Out of these, 44 editorials were exclusively focusing on the SD as a major actor. The great majority of these articles had a negative tone towards the party. Before the national elections in September 2010, the editorials in our sample suggested different possible means to stop the ‘new’ party (the SD) from entering into parliament. The argument is basically that the SD is different from e.g. the FrP in Norway or the New Democracy, which was seated in the Swedish national parliament between 1991 and 1994: ‘Compared to the New Democracy, the Sweden Democrats are explicitly xenophobic’ (Dagens Nyheter, 25 October 2009). ‘The SD is not an ordinary party of discontent, as for instance the Norwegian Progress Party, at its core it has a xenophobic core with roots in the historical right-wing extremism’ (Expressen, 19 October 2009). In various ways, the editorials tried to convince the voters to not vote for the SD in the national elections. The party is regarded as extreme – it does not belong in the national parliament and it only mobilizes voters on the single issue of immigration. In their ambitions to convince the voters of not voting for the SD, various editorials point to the fact that Sweden has become more tolerant over time, citing various polls showing that the level of xenophobia has decreased in Sweden. In an editorial in Expressen preceding the national elections (25 May 2009), for example, the message is clear:

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Contrary to most other European countries, the level of xenophobia is not thought to be advancing in Sweden. This is not a guarantee against the SD getting into [Riksdagen]2 in the elections this fall anyway, but the party’s claims that it speaks for a silent majority can brusquely be dismissed. The Swede in general has learned to appreciate the multicultural society.

Nevertheless, the SD crossed the electoral threshold to the national parliament in September 2010. In general, the editorials unite in an unambiguous framing of the SD as an unwelcome guest in the national parliament. There are only some minor discrepancies between the newspapers. The tabloid Aftonbladet insinuates that Dagens Nyheter (DN), even if according to our analysis it also make use of a very negative tone towards the SD (see appendix 2), is perhaps sometimes too soft on the SD. DN argues, for instance, that schools should open up their doors for the SD (e.g. allow them to give classroom presentations before the elections), as they do for any other party. This view upsets Aftonbladet (29 March 2011): ‘These are astounding claims made in defence of the Sweden Democrats in the country’s schools. So, the great liberal [Dagens Nyheter] contributes to transforming a nasty, immigration-hostile party, into a regular party that can be treated as any other party. With that a very important dam is broken.’ Aftonbladet only includes articles that are negative in tone (see appendix 2) and this shows through in its rhetoric; the articles are often equipped with strong emotional features directed against the SD and its representatives. The debate around the SD is not primarily about whether the party should increase its influence or not; there is an agreement among all the commentators in the material that they should not. The debate is rather about placing the party as close as possible to the opposite camp (Hellström and Nilsson 2010; Hellström 2010). Aftonbladet has a political profile, which is leaning towards Social Democracy and thus, in general, is critical of the centre-right coalition government that ran the country between 2006 and 2014: A few weeks ago, the TT3 revealed that in 9 times out of 10 the Sweden Democrats voted with the alliance4 in crucial votes … in practical terms, it thereby constitutes the fifth party of the governing alliance. … Does this affect politics? Possibly not in the short run. But in the long run, values and sentiments in the country are certainly affected since a xenophobic party helps supporting the governmental power. (Aftonbladet, 20 April 2011)

It was discussed in the editorials to what extent parliamentary work should be (or rather not be) altered because of the presence of the SD. This relates to a range of issues, from the banal – e.g. sharing lunchroom lines or the coffee machine – to constitutional matters of the number of seats in parliamentary committees. Most editorials in our sample seem-

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ingly agree that the regular rules for parliamentary affairs conduct should not change because of the SD: ‘Basically, it is about showing the Sweden Democrats and their voters, but above all for democracy, formal respect. We may strongly oppose the SD views, but a popularly elected party should not be discriminated in their daily work in Riksdagen’ (Expressen, 22 September 2010a). The argument is basically that we may continue to dismiss the opinions of the SD, but in order to respect democracy we should never hinder party representatives from taking their deserved seats on parliamentary committees. Conversely, it is better to let their voices be heard as early as possible in the parliamentary process (see e.g. Dagens Nyheter, 23 September 2010).5 The only newspaper that is not always in agreement with the rest is Svenska Dagbladet. The tendency in this newspaper is to equate the SD with the Left Party in Sweden, as done for instance by the chronicler Sofia Nerbrand: ‘One way to minimize the SD influence is to treat them in the same way as “the four democratic parties” did in relation to the Left Party-Communists and deny them seats in sensitive parliamentary boards such as the advisory council of foreign affairs’ (Svenska Dagbladet, 6 September 2010). The articles also debated the factors that brought the party into parliament in the first place. Many editorials returned to the issue of public mistrust and general feelings of alienation as explanations. Others addressed a fear of Sweden becoming like Denmark, often phrased in terms of Sweden contracting the Danish ‘germ’ (Aftonbladet, 15 January 2011). Denmark is thus often used by the editorials as a warning (Expressen, 22 September 2010b). Denmark and the Danish debate are considered to be in contrast with ‘the great Swedish tolerance’: ‘It is hardly an excessive point to make that Denmark has sunk deeper in the swamp of migration politics. And it is always possible to sink even deeper’ (Aftonbladet, 15 October 2010). In other editorials the writers happily and proudly concluded that the SD influence on direct policy making was very limited. Another issue of concern was the consequences of the scandals that impeded the party during fall 2012 despite their new zero-tolerance policy towards racism (see e.g. Svenska Dagbladet, 30 November 2011). The results of these scandals were actually that the opinion polls went up. This was also a hot topic in the debate.

Social Cohesion (and Conflicting Values) and Migration Politics The articles in these categories are even more negative compared to the articles dealing strictly with parliamentary affairs and public opinion (see table 4.3). If the topics of ‘Migration Politics’ or ‘Social Cohesion and Conflicting Values´ are central in the article, the editorial nearly always has a

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very negative tone towards the SD. Even if, for instance, the articles tend to argue that integration has failed, the SD does not provide the accurate answer.6 In response to the SD’s new status as a parliamentary party, the other seven mainstream parties in Sweden, from the left to the right, have united in a show of repugnance towards the party. Sweden is polarized between a minority attracted to the SD, and a majority that dislikes the SD more than any other party. In this case, the editorials share the majority position. The political scientist Anders Sannerstedt (2015), for instance, concluded that the SD was by far the most hated party in the Swedish parliament, according to the voters. Some articles on this topic are concerned with the general societal discussion of climate (see e.g. Dagens Nyheter, 17 October 2010). In this context a few articles express a, comparatively, more balanced view towards the party, typically focusing on how the party and individual members suffer attacks from e.g. the extreme left when they arrange public meetings, manifestations and so forth (see e.g. Dagens Nyheter, 17 September 2009). Yet again, editorials from the more right-leaning newspapers (i.e. Svenska Dagbladet) suggest that the SD is rather a ‘left’-wing-oriented party, building on welfare nostalgia. On the other side, Aftonbladet continues to blame the independently liberal newspaper Dagens Nyheter for being too soft on the SD – one editorial (29 March 2011) had the following heading: ‘Dagens Nyheter paves the way for the Sweden Democrats.’ The article warns the reader of what happened in 1920s Germany, when the unwary bourgeoisie gave Hitler his parliamentary opportunity. By fall 2012 the tone towards the party grew even more negative, following the scandals with the ‘scaffolding poles’. In November the tabloid newspaper Expressen published mobile phone footage featuring the party’s economic spokesperson, Erik Almqvist, and justice policy spokesperson, Kent Ekeroth (who was behind the camera), together with a third party affiliate. Recorded in 2010, the three are seen verbally abusing the Swedish-Kurdish comedian Soran Ismail, before arming themselves with scaffolding poles from a nearby construction site and wandering the streets of Stockholm. The film shows Almqvist rejecting Ismail’s right to present himself as Swedish, despite the fact that he carries a Swedish passport. A young woman intervenes in their discussion and is later dismissed by Almqvist as a ‘little whore’ (Hellström 2012). Following publication of the footage, a huge wave of protests took place in Sweden, along which the editorial writers (and other journalists as well) wrote negative articles about the party and the incident, agreeing that the SD now (if not before) had shown its ‘true face’. The party chairman, Jimmie Åkesson, dismissed the two MPs from their positions as party spokespersons.7

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Other Topics In 2012 the SD was impeded by many scandals and the various newspapers were eager to highlight this on the editorial pages. These articles could either focus on individual members or the party as a whole. For instance, three journalists went undercover, pretending to be party members, to conduct Walraff 8 observations. Their experiences were recorded and made public on national radio (Kaliber 2009). Articles dealing with the European Union mainly focused on the parliamentary elections held in 2009 and the SD’s negative stance on these matters. Together with the Left Party, the SD is the only parliamentary party strongly opposed to Swedish membership in the union. Articles dealing with ‘law and order’ are focusing, on the one hand, on the SD’s stance on issues such as harder punishments on criminal activities, in line with its general authoritarian outlook. On the other hand, some editorials also highlight criminal activities directed at the party and/or their individual representatives. This could explain why, this topic, comparatively, generates fewer negative articles (see table 4.3). Considering the topic ‘Welfare and Economy’, the SD generates, comparatively, less attention. Even if the SD continuously has tried to broaden its appeal by incorporating issues beyond immigration and national identity into its agenda (see e.g. Sverigedemokraterna 2011; cf. Erlingsson et al. 2013), it is clear that the editorial writers continue to be less interested in the SD when regular socio-economic issues are being discussed. Taking a closer look at table 4.3, we see that the SD also tended to have a minor role in the articles related to this topic.

Topics in the Norwegian Debate In the preceding chapter table 4.4 showed an overview of the most important topics in the Norwegian corpus, and how these are divided between articles where the FrP plays a major or minor role and by tone. Parliamentary affairs and public opinion is by far the issue that most often comes up in the sample, followed by migration and social cohesion.

Parliamentary Affairs and Public Opinion The FrP appears most frequently in discussions of what we have called ‘Parliamentary Affairs and Public Opinion’. As indicated in table 4.4, in these articles the descriptions of the party tend to be more neutral (without expressing a particular tone towards the party) or balanced (express-

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ing a tone which combines negative and positive remarks about the party, or is between negative and positive). Note that this does not mean that the editorial expresses no opinions about the FrP. On the contrary, an editorial can be critical in sum, and left-leaning papers such as Dagsavisen and Dagbladet make no secret of their abhorrence of the thought of the FrP in future governments. But we still categorize this as a balanced tone when both positive and negative descriptions are used, or when the editorial rejects a policy or claim made by the FrP without using particularly negative descriptions. Some also discuss a similar thematic in the context of the Oslo city government, where the FrP actually has been a coalition partner. Many texts discuss changes in public opinion or recent opinion polls, often in relation to upcoming elections and the question of potential government coalitions. The coalition issue also means that many editorials revolve around the FrP’s relationship to other mainstream parties and these parties’ relationships with the FrP. Some of the swing parties in the centre of the political spectrum (such as the Christian Democrats and the Liberal Party) have had an ambivalent position and experienced internal conflicts on whether they are willing to enter a coalition government in partnership with the FrP. The two smaller mainstream-right parties have decided to stay out of the coalition government between the Conservative Party and the Progress Party. Such controversies have generated much media exposure. Key here is the framing of the negotiations between the FrP and the other parties as relationship issue. Many editorials choose a fairly balanced and analytical framing of the party in this context. This is, naturally, particularly true for the articles where the FrP plays a minor role. In such cases the party is mentioned briefly as the object of other parties’ discussions, its results in opinion polls are merely reported or it is simply not relevant enough to the articles’ purpose to characterize the party in one way or another. Far more noteworthy is the finding that when the FrP plays a major role, a majority of the articles portray the party in a neutral or balanced way.

Social Cohesion (and Conflicting Values) and Migration Politics The second most frequent topic is related to immigration, integration and social cohesion. Here the tone of the articles is decidedly more critical towards the FrP. Often the starting point of these editorials will be some immigrationcritical claim made by one of the party’s politicians. One example is party leader Siv Jensen’s claim about an ongoing ‘sneak Islamization’ (snikislamisering) of the country. This claim provoked controversy when it was

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first made, but the formulation would also come back to haunt her following the terror attack in 2011 and again following the election in 2013. Precisely this type of rhetoric was then used as examples in the debate on what had generated the deadly sentiments embodied by the terrorist. Another such example that editorial writers repeatedly return to is an op-ed written by Christian Tybring-Gjedde, the leader of the party’s Oslo branch and a high-profile member in the national parliament group, ‘Dream from Disneyland’ (Aftenposten, 26 August 2010), in which he and Kent Andersen (a party affiliate) claimed that the unsustainable immigration policies of the Labour Party were tearing the national community apart.

Scandals Political scandals – typically involving sex or economic fraud – are also the topic of a significant number of editorials where the FrP is mentioned. Several incidents have involved FrP politicians, but even when scandals primarily involve politicians from other parties’, the articles often reference previous scandals in the FrP.

Other Issues Finally, the FrP features in editorials that concern neither immigration nor scandals, but a range of other policy fields that are less polarized and less morally loaded than the immigration issue. Welfare and Economy feature strongly here, which is not surprising given that these are broad subjects, incorporating the core issues relating to the welfare state – income security, health, education and fiscal policies. More surprising at the onset is perhaps the prominence of the topic ‘Culture Politics’ in the Norwegian sample. One explanation for this is the fact that it is often the papers’ culture editors writing the op-eds. Another reason is the ongoing discussion in Norway during the period on the localization of the new Munch museum in Oslo. Being a city government member (coalition with the conservatives) at that time, the FrP was a major policy player in this process and received a fair share of the criticism for a long, drawn-out and embarrassing situation where agreement on the location was impossible to reach (until 2013).

Topics in the Danish Debate Table 4.5 in the previous chapter shows the main topics coded in the Danish data material, divided between articles where the DF plays, re-

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spectively, a major or minor role, along with the tone (negative, balanced/ neutral, positive) that characterizes the editorials for the various coded topics. In Denmark the main topic of editorials on the DF in the period 2009– 2012 are ‘Parliamentary Affairs + Public Opinion’ and ‘Social Cohesion (and Conflicting Values)+Migration Politics’. A closer look at the table, however, reveals that this result only reflects articles having the DF as a major actor. In fact, considering the total amount of articles, ‘Parliamentary Affairs’ is the most common topic in editorials dealing with the DF in the period under study, followed by the topic ‘Welfare and Economy’. The result should not be surprising, considering the influential role played by the DF in the ten years of support to the Liberal and Conservative government. As we will see, most of the editorials today consider the presence and function of the DF in parliament as a ‘matter of fact’ in Danish politics. Several of the editorials dealing with the DF also acknowledge the strategic and influential position this party has gained in the last decade, while also underlining that this would not have happened without the party legitimization by the Liberals and the Conservatives in 2001, when the government coalition decided to open for co-operation with the DF. This also initiated a process of normalization of the DF, in the sense that the party became an inevitable and often decisive actor to reckon with in Danish mainstream politics. It is also within this framework that we need to interpret the editorials dealing with parliamentary affairs; the majority of these were coded as having a neutral/balanced position, regardless of whether the DF plays a major or minor role in the article (see table 4.5). However, it is also important to underline that this development did not take place without criticism and negative reactions, which of course vary in terms of frequency and intensity, in the editorials examined depending on who is writing, when and what the main topic dealt with is. Indeed, if considered separately the topic ‘Welfare and Economy’ comes before ‘Social Cohesion and Conflicting Values’ (see table 4.5); although we still need to be careful when evaluating the results of the coding procedure (see table 2.5), this reveals the increasing importance gained by the economic dimension in Danish politics during the last years, and particularly from 2009, which initiated the long economic crisis. This is, of course, reflected in the Danish mainstream media and in the opinionated articles published by Danish newspapers. Recent quantitative analyses (cf. Infomedia 2013b) show, for example, that the debate on immigration and integration in the Danish press significantly diminished in quantitative terms in the period 2005–2011. This indicates that newspapers today write less about immigration, ethnic minorities and value politics

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than in the past. Mainstream editorials followed a similar pattern. It is also against the economic and welfare dimension that recent editorial writings confront the reliability, electoral robustness and parliamentary conduct of the DF, even if questions of migration politics remain the issue more often associated with the DF when the party is given a major role in the article. In this case, the tone of the editorials is often negative (see table 4.5). Law proposals, party propositions, single party members’ declarations and concrete events often represent the backdrop from which the role of the DF is discussed and elaborated.

Parliamentary Affairs and Public Opinion Compared to the SD in Sweden and to a lesser extent also the FrP in Norway, the parliamentary position of the DF and the legitimacy of the party in Danish politics are rarely questioned in editorials. In this respect, the timespan chosen is significant: in 2009, the Liberal and Conservative coalition, with the support of the DF, had already governed for one parliamentary term (2001–2005) and had been re-elected at the 2007 national election. This perhaps contributed to the way that public opinion, media, journalists and pundits addressed the style, role, and effectiveness of the DF in parliamentary debates and decision making (Hellström and Hervik 2014; Jønsson and Petersen 2010: 204–209). Within this framework, editorials often tend to shift between framing the DF as a ‘necessary partner’, a ‘tolerated guest’ or an ‘inevitable competitor’. Politiken editorials are among the most critical towards the influence achieved by the DF in Danish politics; but even here the legitimate position of the DF in parliament is not questioned per se. Rather, the elements discussed pertain to what several editors describe as the acritical and opportunist conduct of the Liberals and the Conservative Party in dealing with the DF. In an editorial titled ‘From block to block’ (Politiken, 27 March 2009; see also Politiken, 21 August 2009; Politiken, 20 June 2011), for example, the Liberal and Conservatives are harshly criticized for: having cherished a value-based partnership with the DF and disavowed all consequences deriving from the influence of the supporting partner. This is the result for a tougher and tougher and more and more destructive value debate and for the evident lack of ambitious reforms that have characterized these last years of the political work.

Again, according to Politiken (23 February 2009): ‘the Liberals and Conservatives have accommodated themselves so effectively to the alliance with the DF that they risk adopting their political positions’, but this is considered the direct and expected result of a practice where the two

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mainstream parties ‘voluntarily paid [the DF] bribes in the form of plentiful tighter rules of the immigration law’ (Politiken, 14 March 2011). The political situation is also interpreted in terms of being a structural problem, and as such inherent to the Danish parliamentary system, which ‘gives the majority in Parliament almost total power … something that the Liberals and Conservatives, together with the DF, well understood how to exploit’ (Politiken, 2 July 2009). The fact that politics has started to rely exclusively on the functioning of two opposed blocks – on the one side the Liberals, Conservatives and the DF, on the other the Social Democrats and the Socialists with the support of the Social Liberals – offered the DF the best conditions to thrive in Danish politics The enduring ‘one-side’ alliance with the DF is deemed by several of Politiken’s editorials as being politically short-sighted, damaging to society and economically irresponsible (Politiken, 17 February 2010). The responsibilities for what an editorial defines as the mainstream parties’ ‘populist pragmatism’ (Politiken, 5 October 2010) are not solely ascribed to the right wing; also left-wing parties, and particularly the Social Democrats, ‘made the worst possible choice to copy some of the DF politics’. Even if this allowed them to contain the DF electoral support, it also contributed to their increasing influence, creating a deep and permanent negative impact on Danish society (Politiken, 5 March 2010). For this reason, the results of the September 2011 election are greeted as the ‘end of an epoch’, an epoch where the political influence and power of the DF finally came to an end: ‘The DF has taken over much of Danish politics in the last decade, where its decisive parliamentary mandates have made its crazy ideas [skøre påfund] necessary to deal with. But it is over now’ (Politiken, 17 September 2011). Less critical towards the parliamentary role of the DF are the JP, BT and Ekstra Bladet editorials. Contrary to Politiken, JP editorials reject, for example, what is interpreted as the political use of ‘bloc-politics’, mainly employed by left-wing parties and media to negatively brand the DF as an ‘undesirable’, ‘unwanted’ party (JP, 3 March 2009, read also below). JP editorials acknowledged the DF for having opened up a direct, straightforward debate in Denmark on migration politics, which led to necessary stricter rules on immigration law and integration (JP, 20 November 2010; JP, 17 January 2012); they also acknowledged the party’s loyal support to the government’s liberal agenda over the years (JP, 19 September 2009). Some editorials compare what they consider the unfettered and open tone of the debate on migration – and particularly on Islam – in Denmark against what is seen as the constrained, controlled and deliberately cen-

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sured discussion on these issues in Sweden (cf. JP, 1 September 2010; JP, 24 October 2009). This is, indeed, an interesting contrast to what is written about Danish migration politics in the Swedish editorials (see above). However, JP editorials criticize what is still described as the residual ‘excesses’ and ‘originalities’ of the DF, particularly on migration politics. In the editorial unequivocally titled ‘Something too much’ (JP, 27 July 2010), a harsh critique is addressed to the DF’s strategy of demanding and expecting a ‘compensation’ at every approval of the government financial law (see also Ekstra Bladet, 16 August 2009). Some editorials suggest the threshold has been reached. We find a very similar critique, formulated the year after and again on the occasion of the new finance law approval, which is followed by the comment that ‘this agreement confirms – as usual – that the DF contributed with the decisive votes. This also means that the liberal imprint in the agreement is very weak, whereas the DF imprint is very strong’ (JP, 10 January 2010). In an earlier article, JP editors also remarked: ‘Especially in times of crisis, when the government obviously needs to focus on economic questions, it is out of place to expect it to use its precious time and energies on manifest ideological messages. … The DF must act responsibly and come up with realistic proposals, which can help Denmark out of the crisis’ (JP, 19 September 2009; see also JP, 11 January 2009). Two positions can be distinguished here: On the one side, blame is being placed on the party for not acting ‘responsibly’ in times of crisis, since nothing changed in terms of the DF’s do ut des – their ‘something for something’ strategy in exchange for party support to the financial laws. On the other side, the very nature of some of the DF’s demands on migration matters, are considered excessive, redundant and in some cases directly harmful to the national and international profile of the Danish government, as shown by the much-debated border-control issue in early summer 2011 (JP, 12 May 2011; JP, 28 May 2011; JP, 21 June 2011; JP, 6 July 2011; JP, 17 July 2011; Ekstra Bladet, 13 May 2011; Ekstra Bladet, 11 June 2011). In this sense, JP editorials also wish to see an end to the block-politics era and to the influence and power of the DF (e.g. JP, 16 September 2011; cf. also BT, 14 November 2010).

Welfare and Economy The second and most frequent topic (when considering the DF role in both ‘major’ and ‘minor’ articles) discussed in editorials deals with welfare and economic issues. This result is of course hardly surprising, considering that the timespan examined coincides with the years of the eco-

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nomic crisis and also with an intensifying political discussion about the need to implement major welfare reforms in Denmark, including the targeting of early-retirement conditions in the labour market, the reduction of the years of unemployment benefit and the slashing of students’ subsidy conditions, to mention here the most significant reforms. The opinions that the ‘economic reality has caught up with value politics’ (Politiken, 4 May 2010) and that ‘realpolitik now again has to do with the economy’ (Politiken, 10 February 2010) are shared by most of the editorials that discuss welfare and economic matters. From this perspective, the role of the DF is questioned in terms of how the party can tackle this change of times – will it survive? And how will it cope with the fact that immigration, Islam and value politics in general no longer represent a high priority on the political agenda? These are the questions frequently embedded in the articles. In this respect, the prospects of the DF are differently assessed, either by emphasizing the party’s unpreparedness, inexperience and opportunism, or its awareness, readiness and ability to respond to the changing circumstances, demonstrating the political ‘maturity’ achieved by the party in the last decade. Particularly in editorials covering the last phases of the Liberal and Conservative government in collaboration with the DF, the party is portrayed as being under considerable stress in tackling the economic agenda set by the crisis. Some editorials express direct disappointment for the party’s failure to safeguard the interest of ‘the common man’, as promised in the party programs and declarations of intents to party voters, and thus not living up to expectations (Politiken, 12 March 2009; Politiken, 16 May 2009; BT, 30 May 2010; Ekstra Bladet, 6 June 2010; Ekstra Bladet, 14 May 2011; Ekstra Bladet, 15 May 2011). The party is also portrayed as being opportunist when focusing on the party populist agenda to get results in migration politics, or in promoting the party profile as guardian of the less well-off in society, instead of supporting welfare reforms that would ‘encourage economic growth’ (cf. JP, 2 March 2009; JP, 6 August 2010; Ekstra Bladet, 3 April 2011; BT, 26 July 2010). After the 2011 elections, the positions have become less polarized, thus reflecting the DF’s loss of its political strategic positioning and influence.

Social Cohesion (and Conflicting Values) and Migration Politics When considered separately, the topics ‘Social Cohesion and Conflicting Values’ and ‘Migration Politics’ come after ‘Welfare and Economy’. However, these topics are in reality strongly correlated and it has been difficult to clearly distinguish between them when analysing and coding editorials.

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What the qualitative analysis of the material reveals, however, is that editorials often embark on discussions about these issues when triggered by law proposals, party demands, concrete events,, as for instance: the burka law proposal ( JP, 18 August 2009; Politiken, 18 August 2009; Politiken, 22 August 2009), or the party’s demand to rise the number of years-with permanent residence to attaint the right to vote (at local elections), or the contentious DF conditional requirement (2011) to reintroduce border controls to approve the finance law (cf. Ekstrabladet, 5 May 2011; Ekstrabladet, 13 May 2011) , or even a local controversy on whether or not to set up a ‘Christmas Tree’ (cf. BT, 9 November 2011) , and the like. The ‘border control affair’ is in this respect exemplary of the strategy and political influence used by the DF under the previous government, which was aimed at maximizing the party’s political achievements in the field of migration politics by operating from the advantaged position of government-support party. In the 2011 financial law agreements, the DF agreed to support the government’s curtailing of the welfare state (in this specific case regarding early-retirement conditions in the labour market) by requiring an immediate political ‘compensation’ in exchange. The ‘reward’ was in this case formulated in terms of stricter immigration rules and tightened border controls (Finansministeriet 2011). The DF considered border controls as the only preventive measure against the smuggling of drugs and illegal immigrants in the country, as well as an effective antidote against the growing levels of criminality by Eastern European bands. The government approved the measure, but it immediately and inevitably triggered a political reaction, both within the nation and internationally. The European Union, with German politicians at the forefront, countered Denmark’s decision on border controls, criticizing this decision for being illegitimate and strongly anti-European. Several editorials at the time describe this proposal and its implementation by the government as the ‘last straw’, evidence for the Liberal and Conservatives’ kidnapped agenda in the hands of the DF. JP editorials are particularly harsh on this, defining the situation as ‘grotesque’, ‘ridiculous’, ‘un-Danish’, ‘absurd’ and ‘embarrassing’, and describing the DF as a ‘nostalgic’, ‘petty-national minded’, ‘opportunist’ and ‘naïve’ party (JP, 12 May 2011; JP, 28 May 2011; JP, 21 June 2011; JP, 6 July 2011; JP, 17 July 2011); other editorials take up the same critical line, maintaining that ‘enough is enough’ and criticizing the DF for descending into mere symbolic politics (Ekstra Bladet, 13 May 2011; Ekstra Bladet, 11 June 2011). Most editorials interpreted these actions similarly, as signals that the party has not yet moved entirely away from certain radical practices and positions.

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Analysis After having introduced the main topics in the debate, we now turn to identify frames in the collected material, following the previously mentioned matrix: diagnosis, motivation to act and prognosis. Issues pertaining to Social Cohesion and Conflicting Values, in particular, seem to connote similar approaches that we in that we in chapter 3 described in terms of national myth making. We here identify and discuss contrasting frames in the public debate around issues pertaining to the art of reproducing the nation in the three Scandinavian countries; hence, the relation between the people, the state and the nation in the discussion on the editorial pages in the three Scandinavian countries.

Sweden: Diagnosis It is clear that the editorials in our sample describe the party in very negative terms. While the SD in recent years has worked to polish its image, these attempts are bluntly discredited by the editorials. The negative tone towards the party in the editorials escalated after the SD made its entry into the national parliament in September 2010. The overall message is that the SD is a racist party, even if it tries to present a decent face and ‘pretends’ to be like any other party. The question many of the editorials revolve around regards the true nature of the party. Here we see some signs of divergence between the editorial writers. Is the SD is a racist party or does it (only) exploit racist and xenophobic sentiments in certain segments of the electorate? The majority of the articles lean towards the former position. The dominant diagnostic frame in the editorials is thus that the SD is a racist party, striving to deceive voters into voting for what is in fact not a respectable party, but a ‘devil in disguise’. Here are some examples: ‘Jimmie Åkesson sounds increasingly like other politicians. But if you look a little bit closer, the Sweden Democrats are still rooted in a conception of the world where the strangers represent everything evil’ (Dagens Nyheter, 19 October 2009). In Aftonbladet (2 April 2010), the message is that ‘the racism has not been washed off’: ‘the bitterness and hatred, the will to separate between people and people, is written in SD’s DNA’ (Expressen, 13 July 2010). The heading of an editorial in Dagens Nyheter (28 November 2011) reads: ‘Behind the SD-smile, the fangs are peeping out’. When the SD convened for its annual meeting in 2011 to present a more moderate image of the party, the editorial writers were indeed very sceptical:

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A party with its roots in neo-Nazism and neo-fascism strives to broaden itself and become house trained. The participants can look in the stars after these efforts. … What makes the Sweden Democrats racists is not whether they choose to label themselves as either ‘social conservative’ or ‘nationalist’. It is their racist view on human nature – which is the problem. (Aftonbladet, 24 November 2011)

Following the previously mentioned radio show (Kaliber 2009), the message was again very clear: ‘Even if the line of argument builds on culture it has very much in common with the past days racial biology’ (Aftonbladet, 30 March 2009); or in Dagens Nyheter (31 March 2009): ‘The SD leaders now do their best to paint a picture of an honest upstart party – which has suffered from an unjust examination. Nothing could be more wrong.’ However, the scandal that generated the most (negative) commentary is the aforementioned scaffold pipes incident in fall 2012. Here is one example from Expressen, the tabloid that published the mobile footage: Everyone who has seen the mobile video from the summer 2010 knows what kind of grit there is in Erik Almqvist and Kent Ekeroth. They enjoy being hooligans in the street, they are – of course – racists, they have a disgusting view on women, they are cowardly, self-pitying, they like to put the blame on others and they lie just as unimpededly as they breathe. (19 November 2012)

Following the terrorist attacks on Utøya in July 2011, some editorial writers suggested that the SD shared the same view of the world as the perpetrator Breivik, and that the SD should therefore take on more responsibility for its rhetoric (Expressen, 26 July 2011). The risk, according to the editorials, is that the SD’s negative views on immigrants will spill over to other ‘normal’ fractions of the society: ‘The tiptoeing around of the SD has paralyzed the debate in the society. … This is obvious when nowadays also other voices than the SD claim you cannot discuss immigration or integration’ (Dagens Nyheter, 30 June 2012). The argument put forth here is that the main problem for the public debate around the SD is not the party as such and its electoral fortunes, but rather that other more credible voices in the debate now also talk about immigration in terms of profitability and warn of the dangers associated with immigration and integration in e.g. immigration-dense suburbs. The second source of disagreement in the sample concerns whether the SD always has been and is a racist party (Dagens Nyheter, 31 March 2009), or if it is by now a (more) respectable party, sharing views with larger fractions of the electorate (Svenska Dagbladet, 14 April 2009).

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Though after the scandal with the scaffold pipes in fall 2012, this alternative no longer seems viable. Svenska Dagbladet stands out from the other papers in the sample in the sense that it was not as extremely negative as the others. After the pipe scandal, however, they joined the other papers in mutual resistance towards the party: ‘No one is surprised by the filthy behaviour. The party has it in its DNA, so to speak’ (Svenska Dagbladet, 16 November 2012). Note the reference to DNA, as we have seen before, which suggests that the episode is not merely an isolated incident, but rather a determinant factor of the party’s nature. A third disagreement concerns the relation between the SD and the other parliamentary parties: is the SD uniquely extreme among the political parties or can it actually be compared to e.g. the Left Party? To remain credible, the other parties need to sharply distance themselves from the SD. One rhetorical strategy used in editorials is to perhaps indicate that the adversaries of a party in question are closely affiliated with the SD. Accordingly, an editorial in the tabloid Expressen suggests: ‘The Sweden Democrats has become a stink bomb that the right and the left throw at each other. It smells badly’ (10 October 2010; cf. Hellström and Nilsson 2010: 68). Symptomatically, proponents of the then governing mainstream-right coalition tend towards the argument that the SD is deeply welfare-chauvinistic and thus a perverted consequence of long-lasting Social Democratic governance in Sweden. On the other side, representatives from the Social Democratic opposition could instead argue the SD has authoritarian and conservative ideas, and clearly belongs to the right-wing camp (ibid.). In a sense, the general message is that you should avoid ‘sleeping with the enemy’. If mainstream parties do engage with the SD, the argument runs, the fear is that Sweden will become like Denmark. This tension shows in editorials in newspapers closely associated with either the governing (after September 2014 in opposition, though) mid-right coalition (i.e. Svenska Dagbladet) or conversely with the Social Democratic opposition, (Aftonbladet). Svenska Dagbladet, for instance, suggests: ‘The guiding lines,9 recently adopted by the SD, is a tailor-made flirt with many left-wing-oriented men’ (20 October 2009). Otherwise, some editorial writers make it clear that we should ‘stop comparing Ohly [then leader of the Left Party] with Åkesson’ (Expressen, 3 November 2009), since the two parties are entirely different from one another. The same article explains the difference: ‘The Sweden Democrats has roots in neo-Nazism and their heritage of fascist ideas is recycled in their constant instigations against immigrants in general and Muslims in particular.’ However, in an editorial in the same newspaper

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(Expressen 30 November 2010), Johannes Forssberg, focused on the idea that both parties motivate their resistance towards labour migration in similar ways. If anything, the debate around the SD has accentuated contrasting notions of what it means to be, act and think as a Swedish person today. In this sense, the criticism of the SD in the editorials points towards something larger, to what Swedish national identity means today. In an editorial in the tabloid Aftonbladet (12 June 2009), the ambition to debar the SD from influence is also a battle of Swedishness, which share deep roots: Sweden might not today be a country satisfied with itself – or satisfied with its own future. … But Sweden will never become a country that allows itself to be defined by fear. We have a history of openness and optimism that we always will defend. We shall never let the real political challenges drown in the racist background hum.

Most importantly, the editorials are convinced that the battle for Swedishness, although important, should never be allowed to be dominated by the SD. History teaches us that opinions about what constitutes a ‘real Swede’, easily, risk being abused (Expressen, 16 November 2012; Dagens Nyheter, 24 October 2009). In the continuous reproduction of the Swedish national identity, we here detect quite opposite interpretations from the SD on the one side and the editorial writers on the other. After that the SD crossed the electoral threshold to the national parliament, some editorials recognized that the European trend towards greater acceptance of anti-immigration parties, and even anti-immigration policies, has now come to Sweden as well. As a consequence, ‘we’ need to become more realistic (see e.g. Aftonbladet, 22 September 2010). The development can go in another direction, however. Many editorials are in this regard confident of the eventual decline of xenophobic attitudes in Swedish society (see e.g. Expressen, 25 May 2010). In sum, the dominant diagnostic frame in the Swedish editorials is that the SD represents a ‘devil in disguise’ who should be (or rather should have been) stopped from having any influence in parliamentary affairs. However, the SD is by now in the national parliament. Different solutions and questions of how containment should take place and by whom will be discussed next.

Sweden: Motivation to Act We have seen how the SD is framed as an intruder in the national parliament, ‘the Beast’ (Hellström and Hervik 2014) in Swedish politics. How is this ‘enemy’ to be best contained by the ‘decent’ parliamentary parties

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and the rest of Swedish society? In an editorial in Expressen (17 September 2010), Ann-Charlotte Martéus has a clear solution: ‘to align with those parts of the electorate who resist the SD “hate-culture”: Those SD-sympathizers who have made the hate into their hobby – it is logical that they vote for the Sweden Democrats. But everyone else should carefully consider whom he or she please and nurture if they give the SD their votes. Do not feed the beast’ (cf. Hellström and Hervik 2014). In this section, we detect two partly opposing tactics: (1) to bring the enemy (i.e. the SD) to light, and/or (2) respect the democratic fact that a considerable amount of the Swedish people have voted for the party and it should therefore enjoy similar rights as any of the other parliamentary parties. However, these are not typically presented as mutually excluding alternatives as many editorials argue that both strategies need to be combined. Before the national elections in 2010, editorials were frequently concerned with the growth of the party as it, according to the polls, approached the threshold to the parliament and eventually rose above it. The suggested tactic was to take an unequivocal position against the party and continue to discuss socio-economic issues, in which the SD had little to say, because: If the main conflict dissolves and there is no opposition worthy of the name, then an even larger space opens up for a party like the SD. The point of departure must therefore be that the government alternative, which wins the most votes, is also accredited with governmental power. (Expressen 24 November 2009)

Both political camps, it was suggested, should avoid playing the SD’s game and giving immigration a prominent position in the election campaign (Expressen, 17 October 2009). Referring to an interview in the tabloid Expressen (18 September 2009), one editorial (happily) noted that Åkesson had very little to say on issues not pertaining to immigration, which the interviewer deliberately stayed away from. These editorials thus suggested that mainstream politicians and mainstream media should avoid the immigration issue when confronting the SD. In the end, as we know, the SD got into parliament and gained twenty seats in the parliamentary assembly. The general framing of this in editorials was that it was shameful that Sweden now had such a party in the parliament. At the same time, as many editorials argue, it is important not to alter the ordinary rules for parliamentary work, such as decreasing the number of seats in the parliamentary committees, to minimize the SD’s influence.

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One of the rather rare circumstances when the SD is not being treated totally negatively is when the SD party representatives are being physically attacked: ‘I would not like to see the SD in Riksdagen. However, I would even less like the elections in 2010 to be settled by the use of brass knuckles’ (Expressen, 15 July 2009). The dominant message is that no matter your opinions about the SD, you should always refrain from violating rules for decent democratic conduct (Svenska Dagbladet, 15 September 2010). The democratic procedures for decision making are never to be compromised. Further, changing the rules for democratic procedures would sustain the victim position ascribed to the SD. As argued by one editorial in Svenska Dagbladet (13 April 2010): ‘If you would like to cultivate conspiracy theories, applying a demon angle on those who have suffered from a shellacking is a perfect approach.’ Politicians then are faced with the task of balancing their engagement in dialogue with the SD while at the same time resisting the temptation to collaborate with the party. The municipality of Landskrona, where the SD was in a strong position after successful local elections in 2006 but then lost votes in 2010, might be an example to follow, as one editorial in Dagens Nyheter (7 May 2011) suggests: ‘What the national politicians can learn from Landskrona is to speak directly with the citizens about their experienced problems – and less about the Sweden Democrats and how dangerous they are.’ In this context, an op-ed in Expressen (14 April 2012) holds up Gustav Fridolin, one of the two spokespersons for the Green Party, as a role model: ‘I would never cooperate with the SD, but it does not mean that I do not respect the Sweden Democrats as human beings, [Fridolin] says.’ The author, Sakine Madon, returned to the episode in a later article on the election day when Lars Ohly, in sharp contrast to Fridolin, refused to share a make-up lounge with Jimmie Åkesson (see scene 1 in the introduction of this book). Following this line of argument, various editorial writers claim that it would not be right to dispel SD members from labour unions as a result of their party affiliation. This, it was argued, would closely resemble a discrimination of opinions (see e.g. Expressen, 27 March 2012). In general, the recipe devised for containing the SD is to treat the party as a ‘normal’ party in daily parliamentary work, but also to bring the party into the light – i.e. to sharply rebut its opinions related to immigration, integration and national identity. In some editorials, however, the negative tone towards those who are accused of sleeping with the enemy is sharp:

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Are the Sweden Democrats more stupid than we could have expected? Or do they only lack a sense of humour? And has Svenska Dagbladet’s Per Gudmundsson [editorial writer] too much humour? Or is he serious about the Alliance’s need to offer these curs a ‘political meat bone’ after the next elections? (Expressen, 8 May 2009)

Throughout the period, as we can see, opinion makers are careful to note when political actors are seemingly ‘too close’ to the SD, both in terms of policy preferences and in terms of willingness to collaborate. The editorials here tend to take on the role of watchdogs, and argue that politicians should focus more on the breeding ground that enables the SD to attract dissatisfied voters, and less on the SD itself. Otherwise, as is repeatedly noted, Sweden risks becoming like Denmark: Today it is easy to keep a straight face. The Sweden Democrats has become a mobilization power for the right-wing extremists. Neither is the SD homogenous. But they are no longer a circus. They are a party. In Denmark, the Sweden Democrats’ equivalent party – the Danish People’s Party – has changed politics and the debate fundamentally. They are a part of the government’s foundation in the parliament. And Danish politics seem to be contagious. (Aftonbladet, 15 January 2011)

In sum, the framing of the SD in terms of motivation to act refers to the SD’s democratic right, as newly elected parliamentary party, to be treated with due respect; that is, to respect democracy and the common democratic heritage. This frame thus suggests that the SD voters must be respected. A second frame notes that it is important to bring ‘the enemy’ (the SD) into the light in order to reveal its murky opinions regarding immigration, integration and national identity. This frame thus says: bring the SD into the light. A third frame conversely suggests that we should avoid talking about immigration and other socio-cultural issues, since this strategy only risks attracting new voters to the SD. This frame thus suggests: to counteract the SD, you must not talk about immigration.

Sweden: Prognosis What will the party look like in the future and will it continue to grow, according to the editorials? What is the prognosis of the editorials? One frame suggests that Sweden has changed significantly since the SD joined the national parliament. Peter Wolodarski, since March 2013 the editor of Dagens Nyheter, gave voice to his worries in an editorial (6 October 2010) about the Swedish king’s speech at the opening of parliament: ‘That the king yesterday did not say anything about racism and xenopho-

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bia – something he has done several times before – was an unfortunate expression of the public climate.’ In other editorials the tone is slightly more optimistic: ‘But there are good reasons to believe that the SD, even if they make it to Riksdagen, will become a historical bracket’ (Dagens Nyheter, 3 August 2010). The general question remains: Why is it that the Sweden Democrats’ political fortunes have increased simultaneously as the Swedes, in general, are moving away from the values they represent? One possible explanation is that the resistance to fundamental and structural changes in society often comes about when the transformation already has occurred. (Dagens Nyheter, 25 May 2010)

The overall ambition in the editorials was to solve this puzzle of how the SD continues to grow in such a seemingly tolerant country: ‘A xenophobic, racist and Nazist, according to Expo,10 coloured party has impeded the Swedish legislative assembly. … That there actually is a hold for the Sweden Democrats’ values … that is the worst thing’ (Aftonbladet, 22 September 2010). Various editorials claimed that the party thrived on latent xenophobic sentiments in the population. In a chronicle, Paula Neudung, editorin-chief for the magazine Neo, says: Here is thus a growing group of Swedes who see the SD as the solution to insecurity and vulnerability. These people are wrong to trust the SD. But there is reason to be humble about the actual insecurity and alienation. The risk is otherwise that we send these people into the arms of the party that made Kent Ekeroth the spokesperson for justice policy. (Svenska Dagbladet, 1 December 2012)

Other unsigned editorials in Svenska Dagbladet adhere to the notion that the SD attracts voters from particular sectors of society who traditionally have voted for the left: Still the party’s business concept is about exploiting xeno- and immigration phobia. Considering the SD opinion poll figures, this hostility is latent in quite large groups of the constituency. It will remain like that as long as the established parties in Riksdagen do not seriously handle the criminality, the lawlessness and the marginalization, which generate new dissatisfied voters to the SD. (Svenska Dagbladet, 14 April 2009)

What we might pick up from these articles is thus that the mainstream parties are partly to be blamed for the success of the SD as they have not taken seriously the problems many ordinary Swedes feel impede their everyday lives. One obvious and simple solution is to cut down on im-

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migration. This is the solution offered by the SD. These articles do not agree with this solution, for sure, but they seemingly share a diagnosis of a Swedish society that is deeply disturbed by heavy cleavages. The argument is that the watering down of traditional welfare-state privileges and values (i.e. the People’s Home) risks attracting more dissatisfied people to the SD. These voters suggestively prefer nostalgic perceptions that it was better before and feel discomfort with changes associated with the ‘new multicultural society’. This explanation certainly hinges on what I previously discussed in terms of the ‘losers of modernization’. In relation to the general wrapping of this book, the nostalgic frame appeals to voters who prefer stable borders around the national state to embracing border-transgressing ventures associated with increased diversity. According to the reasoning, this frame is likely to grow stronger if welfare privileges continue to shrink and the ruptures in the society expand. As I earlier argued, the SD accentuates these sentiments to mobilize voters. However, these articles also suggest that the SD does not walk a fine enough line between radicalism and extremism. As many editorials are careful to note, it is not at all feasible to simply cut down on immigration. The obvious risk with this kind of explanation is that we explicitly put the blame on the ‘working-class man’, who is certainly not helped by increased stigmatization, as one editorial in Aftonbladet (30 November 2012) indicates. In connection to the aforementioned pipe scandal, it says: ‘Here the image of the working-class man as a pauper, lacking in will power, is exposed; he is a sheep driven into the embrace of Jimmie Åkesson’s brown-clad chest if others think it is stupid to call people a whore or “blatte”.’11 Indeed, after the scandals in the party ranks, the SD opinion polls have gone up: ‘The Sweden Democrats endure their worst crisis ever. Everybody hates the party. Everyone, except the voters’ (Dagens Nyheter, 30 November 2011). This apparent paradox is much debated in the editorials. In the above-mentioned article, the author infers that the voters are more offended by ‘the establishment’ than they are by the SD, even though it had recently suffered from a series of racist scandals (ibid.). The general conclusion is that the party’s hard core cannot be reached. This group is made up of people who have already made up their minds. On the other hand, it is important not to give up hope on reaching and converting the generally dissatisfied voters. As stated in an editorial in Svenska Dagbladet: The zero-tolerance against racism in the SD local undergrowth was the road to success. But the plan broke down quickly and the image of the SD is even more evident than what the party board had in mind.

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… The façade has cracked. The plan is waste paper. … The SD sympathizers are a diverse crowd. The hard core is difficult to reach. But the established parties should not give up hope on the larger crowd of the generally dissatisfied. (30 November 2012)

Thus, the prognosis of the party seems to follow recognizable patterns: The party will remain in parliament if it manages to attract the alienated voters who dislike the establishment even more than they dislike the SD. If the voters who suffer the most from the current economic crisis choose to turn to the party, this may enable the party to continue to rise in the opinion polls despite (or perhaps thanks to) all the scandals that have impeded them and being negatively framed by opinion makers. It is all a matter of trust. What the future would look like for the party is, of course, not entirely clear for the opinion makers in our study: ‘It is not for certain that the SD will lose in the next polls. It is already, in a way, stigmatizing to express support for the SD, and the media drive might even enhance the identity as an outsider among the supporters’ (Svenska Dagbladet, 18 November 2012). In sum, the dominant frames in the material related to the prognosis of the party are thus that the SD will continue to grow if the politicians neglect the soil that feeds their popularity. This in turn suggests that the SD voters are not stupid (even if the party is), and thus the SD’s presumptive voters are more fed up with the ‘elite’ than they are with the SD. It is evident that the opinion makers, provided that they express affiliation with either of the other two major Swedish camps, tend to place blame on the other side: the ‘SD is the card you least want on your hand’ (cf. Hellström and Nilsson 2010: 69; cf. Saveljeff 2011). The blame game thus ultimately concerns who is held responsible for the SD’s electoral fortunes. Per Gudmundsson was actually correct in his prophecy: the SD polls went up after the scandals. Through their exposure in the media, the party becomes more visible for prospective voters who are, presumably, tired of the established parties and the mainstream press. According to Mazzoleni (2003: 16): ‘The established news media reflect the values and views of the elites to which they themselves belong … these media may take on a “sacerdotal” attitude toward the ruling political classes and engage in active opposition to the populist menace by means of hostile news coverage.’ Accordingly, even if the media is likely to adopt populist traits in their news reporting, such as the personalization of politics and a focus on scandals, the media elite is also likely to protect the ‘status quo’. Following this interpretation, the presumptive SD voter is likely to mistrust the media- and the political societies.

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Nevertheless, the party, as this book suggests, has to tiptoe the line between radicalism and extremism in order to cross the threshold of credibility and thus access the zone of acquiescence before it can make an impact on domestic politics. The mediation of the party, given our sample of editorials, suggests that the party has certainly not (yet) succeeded. The SD’s claims on national identity, as we have seen, correspond to popular perceptions of national identity, but they have not crossed the threshold of credibility on the editorial pages in mainstream media.

Norway: Diagnosis How is the phenomenon of the Progress Party being diagnosed in the editorials? Is it a serious and detrimental condition? Or rather an ordinary mundane ailment? Or in fact, nothing pathological at all? Obviously, given the range in tone, the diagnosis varies between articles and which topics are being discussed. In some contexts the party appears (almost) as an ordinary party – a party that wins or loses at the polls, a party with hardworking and talented politicians, a party that manoeuvres to find support for its key issues and to gain positions. In other contexts it is clear that it is still not a completely ordinary party. Some editorial writers use expressions such as seg selv likt (‘like itself’), thus underlining the idiosyncratic character of the party (Dagsavisen, 7 November 2012), they stress differences in political cultures between parties (Aftenposten, 12 February 2010), they portray its voters as outsiders: ‘These are people who feel they have been politically and culturally abandoned, that they are marginalized, overlooked or given up’ (Dagbladet, 22 May 2009). The editorial writers portray the FrP as a party striving to be a serious and normal party: ‘There is little doubt that the Progress Party is now doing its best to appear as a serious collaboration partner after a possible red-green defeat at the parliamentary election’ (Aftenposten, 23 April 2012). Other parties just are normal; the FrP must undertake serious efforts to achieve it. This work can be seen in specific policy changes, such as the turn to a more moderate use of oil revenue (Dagsavisen, 16 November 2009). But our use of the term ‘relationship stuff’ above is not coincidental. A vocabulary of flirting and mating is explicitly made use of when describing the party’s strategies for establishing political alliances: ‘The Frp leader is thus making herself attractive for the Conservative leader Erna Solberg’ (Dagsavisen, 16 November 2009). Some editorials wonder if the party eventually became too successful in its efforts to be more like the Conservatives, thus explaining its relative decline in the polls later in the period (Dagsavisen, 11 May 2011). Others maintain that there are lim-

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its to how far it is willing to move politically in order to obtain positions (Dagsavisen, 24 January 2012). In sum, it is precisely these tensions and ambivalences that mark the characterizations of the party. The party itself vacillates between being responsible and wildly opportunistic. And its potential coalition parties appear as equally ambivalent. As one editorial writer describes it: For about half of the conservatives a majority coalition with FrP is a dream. Then one can for the first time ever really implement rightwing policies in our social democratic hell. For about half of the conservatives a majority coalition with FrP is a nightmare. Then one must implement policies to the right of the Conservative party, and the welfare state, as the Conservatives eventually have come to like it, may go to hell. (VG, 23 October 2010).

On the one hand, the other right-wing parties see collaboration as an opportunity to oust the red-green government from power and achieve their own political goals. On the other hand, the FrP represents political forces that they do not want to be associated with (Hagelund 2003). The tone – and thus the diagnosis – towards the party tends to be more negative when the immigration issue is on the agenda as opposed to when the government is discussed more generally. Firstly, the party – or more precisely claims made by its representatives – is characterized as being morally unacceptable, as when an op-ed. writer in Aftenposten (18 July 2009) refers to a claim made by the party’s immigration policy spokesperson as ‘respectless, indecent, immoral and unrealistic’. Secondly, the party is accused of using the immigration issue in order to attract voters. Immigration is not so much portrayed as an issue on which the FrP holds strong views and where they want to achieve societal change, it is described as an issue they are using to obtain electoral support: ‘But we can with regret note that the party this time is more busy with arming itself instead of constructively solving the difficult problems with the Norwegian integration politics’; or, ‘the purpose is anyway to pander to Norwegians’ xenophobia’ (Aftenposten, 18 July 2011). Other negatively loaded expressions which are used include ‘fishing for votes’, ‘double message’ and ‘obscure’ – all indicating a party which is strategically manoeuvring to attract the anti-immigration vote at the same time as they are cultivating a respectable image. Finally, in some articles the implications of the party’s rhetoric are described as being detrimental to society in the sense that it risks ‘[nourishing] xenophobia and racism’ (VG, 23 February 2009). However, the party itself is hardly described as being racist or xenophobic. It is immoral because it is using such sentiments strategically, not because it embodies them.

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Thus, two main diagnostic frames appear in the material. The first is one of a two-faced party: On the one hand, it is a normal party playing its part in political games and power struggles. On the other hand, it has to work for its ordinariness in a way that other parties are exempt from. The party has a dangerous side, that party management strives to contain, but which it can also strategically apply. In the other frame, this dangerous back stage of the party has moved to the front. This is the immoral, indecent party, which is strategically exploiting xenophobia and ignoring real societal problems in order to strengthen itself.

Norway: Motivation to Act In this section we look for frames that answer to the question of how the party is to be contained and by whom. This type of frame hinges on a basic problematization of the party’s very existence. In Norway the majority of editorials have little to say about how the FrP as a political party should be contained. In contrast to Sweden, the party has a long history in parliament and the fact of its parliamentary presence is no longer described as objectionable or scandalous as such. What remains a contested issue is how to deal with the party’s government ambitions. Is it at all acceptable to collaborate with the party in government? This is precisely the question that has plagued the other parties on the right – the Conservatives, the Christian Democrats and the Liberals. The relationship to the Progress Party has at times been internally controversial for all the parties, and the editorial writers hold strong opinions on this. Dagsavisen, which is very critical to the FrP (see appendix 2), warns the Christian Democrats against joining forces with the FrP, suggesting that this would threaten their moral integrity: ‘We will on our behalf be both surprised and disappointed if the Christian Democrats enter government with the Progress Party. Then the party’s slogan about “human worth in the centre will have lost its meaning”’ (Dagsavisen, 27 July 2012). VG however has taken a very different position, arguing: ‘It is petty and mean of the Christian Democrats and the Liberals to relate to the Progress Party as if it should be Hamas or Taliban’ (VG, 21 January 2009). The government frame thus exists in two contrasting versions: one where the Progress Party must be prevented from entering government, and where other parties should not contaminate themselves by enabling such a coalition government; and one instead where this moral distancing and othering of the Progress Party is irrational and unfair. One of the issues that tends to make government collaboration appear as a truly problematic endeavour – both to other parties and for media commentators – is immigration (Hagelund 2003). It is when immigration

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is on the agenda that the need to contain the FrP seems to be most explicitly pronounced. This is also in line with the results presented in the previous chapter; when the topic of concern is related to migration, the tone is comparatively more negative. The second containment frame thus concerns immigration policy and how the other parties actively need to construct better policies on immigration and integration in order to contain the FrP. This frame thus involves criticizing other parties for moving too close to the FrP on matters of immigration and integration. A number of editorials are explicitly critical towards the Labour Party and argue that the party in government12 has been more concerned with winning back the voters lost to the FrP than in developing constructive immigration policies. An op-ed writer in Dagbladet suggests that the Labour Party is copying FrP’s integration policy and thus effectively ‘whitewashing’ (10 February 2011) it – executing similar kinds of policies but without suffering from the same kind of moral tarnishing that hampers the FrP’s policy. A VG op-ed. makes a related point when arguing that Labour Party secretary Martin Kolberg should ‘forget about the FrP, and rather take a thorough and honest immigration debate in his own party’ (18 March 2009). Aftenposten also calls for greater clarity from the other right-wing parties on immigration: The conservatives and the other parties must tell the voters what integration policy should look like as an alternative to the message of intolerance that the FrP more or less directly is hammering in. One must not allow an impression to stick where only the FrP takes the challenges of integration policy seriously. If the other parties get more concerned with fighting the FrP than shaping their own policies in this demanding field, the FrP will win. The rest of Norway will not benefit by that. (25 February 2009)

When the FrP had its electoral breakthrough in Norway in 1987 there were many warnings against allowing immigration to become an issue in the election (Hagelund 2003). Current editorials frame the containment message quite differently. They call for a less FrP-focused voice on immigration and integration issues from the other parties. They can acknowledge that ‘there are many problems that might occur when two cultures meet’ (VG, 23 February 2009), but parties must construct policies to deal with this independently of the FrP. The desired containment strategy seems to be more talk of immigration, integration and other difficult matters, but in a manner where the FrP plays a less central role. Thus there is also an implicit (and unacknowledged) nod of agreement to the radical-right parties’ claim that the immigration issue must not be allowed to be swept under the carpet.

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Again, two frames have been identified. One revolves around the government issue and the relationship that other parties should form with the Progress Party. This is a contested issue where editorials in different newspapers take opposing views on whether it is commendable to reject the party’s place in a centre-right government coalition. The second frame challenges all mainstream parties to formulate responses to the genuine problems related to immigration and integration, but in a way that is not directed by the desire to win back voters lost to the FrP.

Norway: Prognosis The final type of frames we are looking for responds to the question of what makes the party attractive and how it will develop in the future. Obviously, the short-term prophecies tend to vary with fluctuations in the opinion polls. In spring 2009 the party polled extremely well, repeatedly hitting figures around 30 per cent (with the Conservative Party reaching all time depths at around 10 per cent). Four years later results were more moderate, the party seemingly having stabilized as a solid number three, well behind the Conservatives and the Labour Party. This affected the editorials’ depictions of the future success or failure of the party. Looking at the more long-term projections of the party’s development, these tend to be linked to the two-face theme discussed above. As the party is working to normalize, is it also changing? Many of the analyses presented in editorials revolve around the tensions between the party’s unique roots in popular mistrust and its (more or less successful) attempts at building itself as a normal party vying for power. Several editorials observe that the party has been through a formidable party-building exercise. There is talk about a ‘more mature approach than former FrP promises of “more to everything”’ (Aftenposten, 23 April 2012); a party that has never been ‘better trained and more unified than now’ (Aftenposten, 25 May 2009); which is ‘well prepared to enter the government offices’ (Aftenposten, 25 May 2009); a party which may even have become ‘too similar to the Conservative Party’ (Dagsavisen 11 May 2011). On the other hand, according to the editorials, the party never seems able to rid itself of its past, its popular heartland and the strong – but dangerous – sentiments on which its success is built: Here we can sense the contours of dissatisfaction – or at least impatience – that the progress of the FrP seems to have come to a stop. Under the façade of responsibility and moderation, there is a pressure cooker now letting out. It is not surprising, but has for a long time been efficiently camouflaged by the ongoing modernization of the party. From being a rather scruffy collection of loosely organized

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local protest leaders, the FrP has developed into en efficient organization with well-trained representatives. Its parliamentary group is hardworking, competent and good at maintaining a popular network. The long-term strategy of party – an alliance building towards government power – is still draining the party members’ patience. (Dagbladet, 4 August 2010)

Several editorials devote space to analysing the transition from Carl I. Hagen’s to Siv Jensen’s chairmanship of the party. Hagen has always been a controversial figure, but, looking back, many editorials acknowledge the successful way in which he transformed an erratic protest movement into a strong and sizeable political party in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2011 he attempted a political comeback as a candidate for Oslo mayor, though he failed spectacularly – not least following his failure to grasp the general public sentiment following the terror attacks in July. The tensions between Hagen and Jensen have come to epitomize the very tensions that characterize the FrP and which are at the heart of the most crucial framings of the party that are made in the editorials. These are the tensions between the old and the new FrP, between populism and responsibility, between protest movement and government contender, between the party that is indecently flirting with xenophobic sentiments and the normal party which is simply formulating policy responses to significant issues. At the time of writing the FrP has recently taken a place in a coalition government together with Høyre. Again, this image of the two-faced party – crucial in so many of the editorial texts we have analysed here – is at the heart of the public debate. For the Progress Party and its potential coalition partners it is currently essential to substantiate the image of the party as a normal one, with few affinities to radical-right parties in other European countries. Even its labelling as a right-wing Populist Party has become contested. So far, the media, as well as the FrP’s political opponents, seem far from convinced. No matter what the outcome of the party’s governmental ambitions, the two-faced framing will attach to it for years to come. To sum up, in the negotiation of national identity in Norway, the FrP is a far less controversial actor than the SD in the public debate, depending on which face it shows.

Denmark: Diagnosis The quantitative analysis on the Danish editorials highlighted that even though the DF has achieved a degree of recognition and legitimization in mainstream politics, editorial press coverage can still be critical. However, what the quantitative part of the analysis is not able to tell us is in what way the DF is framed and what the negative tone is about.

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One of the key issues outlined by mainstream editorials is, for example, whether and how the DF deals with the increasing importance gained by the economic dimension, considering what value and culture politics have always meant to the DF ‘identity’ and electoral support. The economic and welfare agenda is often portrayed as the party’s Achilles’ heel – a domain where the DF has difficulties in maintaining its promises, delivering policies and being consistent with the image upheld by the party as guarantor of the welfare state and of the economic interests of the ‘common ethnic Dane’. Besides addressing their welfare-chauvinist positions, emphasizing the economic costs of immigrants and refugees and a few accomplishments in improving the living conditions of retirees, mainstream editorials blame the DF for the lack of support for major reforms necessary for tackling rising unemployment rates and the economic downturn. Particularly, the DF is considered fastened to strategies and methods that mainly benefit the party interests, but no longer respond to the real needs of society. Criticism is not limited to the DF; several editorials hold the Liberal and Conservatives partly responsible for their being ‘voluntary hostages’ in the hands of the DF. The failure of mainstream politics to ‘put a threshold’ on the demands of the DF is also considered among the reasons for the sizeable, almost incontrollable political influence gained by the DF in the years 2001–2011. The so called bloc-politics initiated in 2001 and interpreted as rigid political ‘bloc’ coalition that opposes liberal-conservatives (the blue bloc) to liberal-socialdemocratic parties (the red bloc) offering virtually no alternative to inter-party agreements. This political process is considered to have benefitted the DF in the years the party acted as supporting partner to the Liberal and Conservative minority cabinet. Several editorials also criticise the attempts of the DF to ‘revive’ the debate on immigration and integration in times of economic crisis by means of ‘excessive’, ‘imaginative’ and ‘bottomless’ proposals on migration politics. As it was noted in the previous chapter, when the topic of concern was oriented towards migration politics in the editorials, Danish newspapers (similarly to the Swedish and Norwegian newspapers) presented a comparatively more negative view towards the party. Widespread and more general frames also strengthen the reading that although the DF has become a permanent political actor and a legitimate member of the Danish parliament that needs to be dealt with, the party still represents a political anomaly in Danish politics. This position emerges when editorials discuss, for example, the need of the government to realize major welfare reforms, which would require broader intra-party agreements, as well as when the DF proposals on migration matters are

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considered unwarranted and potentially damaging to the functions and image of the parties at government. These positions of course vary according to the period of writing and to newspapers, but if Politiken is clearly the most negative when it comes to framing the DF, other editorials do not spare the party their critique.

Denmark: Motivation to Act The question of whether the DF needs to be contained and, eventually, by what criteria and by whom, relates to some of the issues already discussed. As it is agreed that the DF is seen as a legitimate party with parliamentary representation that endorses and respects democratic and constitutional rules, the debate rather revolves upon who and how to contain the party’s political influence, to avoid situations in which the party is formally put in a position to exert virtually unlimited political pressure on the basis of a few decisive parliamentary mandates. In this sense, the motivation to act is directly related to the articulation of proposed solutions to the problem matching, the diagnoses of the suggested prognostic solutions (cf. Benford and Snow 2000). In relation to this, some editorials consider the direct involvement of the DF in government activity (literally, to ‘get into the machinery’) as a means of preventing the party from coming up with radical proposals – thus generating a self-regulative and ‘taming effect’ via the full institutionalization and mainstreaming of the party. Evidence for the efficacy of this practice is sometimes given by reference to the ‘taming’ effects, discernible in relation to the recent participation of the Socialist People’s Party in government. Other mainstream editorials advance instead the hypothesis of a ‘physiological’ and self-regulative normalization process, taking place within the DF, where time is considered the pivotal factor. The party leadership shift and a few other organizational and strategic changes are greeted in a few editorials as signals that the DF is slowly but constantly developing towards a ‘mainstream format’ (e.g. BT, 9 March 2012), even as the editorials are expressing at the same time concern for what opportunities this process can open up at the extreme fringes of right-wing politics and voting behaviour. The opposing frame is based on the opinion that the DF will not further normalize. In this case, a means of preventing the party from gaining political influence is to expose the party in what it is ‘not good at’ – namely, the economy – or to ignore it ‘by accepting it’; basically, acknowledge the party’s parliamentary legitimacy and representation, but avoid conforming to it. As expressed in one of Politiken’s editorials:

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The latest experience in Denmark suggests that the most pragmatic and most effective way to weaken [a populist party] is to quickly involve it in decisions that have to do with economic politics, which are on the agenda of most European countries. From the Danish perspective the answer is: do all what you can to weaken [it]. (11 June 2010)

On similar lines, another prognosis for the DF containment is, as mentioned before, to prevent a consolidation of bloc-politics as happened in the past. Larger inter- and intra-party agreements are considered ways to break up rigid and narrowly defined political configurations, avoiding at the same time giving too much power away to single parties outside government. This, however, postulates the ‘availability’ of other political forces which are willing to supply the required support in the case of minority cabinet formations. This role, ascribed in the past to the political ‘middle’ of Danish politics, of which the Social Liberals are today the only significant representatives, is seen as requiring a significant paradigm shift in the way politics are dealt with in today’s Denmark. In the negotiation of national identity in Denmark, the role of the DF is increasingly normalized. Criticism directed towards the party in editorials is also, albeit to a milder extent, directed at its’ coalition partners. While the focus in the public debate has shifted more towards economy and away from issues dealing explicitly with national identity and national myth making, the party is still heavily criticised for its welfare-chauvinism in the editorials.

Conclusions We have in this and the previous chapter discussed, based on both quantitative and quantitative data, how the editorials in Sweden, Denmark and Norway act as opinion makers in the mitigation of the political messages from the senders, which in our case was tantamount to the three nationalist populist parties in each country. We suggested that the tone differed towards the three parties involved in this study. More specifically, we hypothesized that the tone employed towards the SD was comparably more negative. We also hypothesized that the tone, in general, was more negative when the article topic was attributed to ‘migration politics’. Our quantitative measurements supported both assumptions. In the subsequent frame analysis in this chapter, we focused specifically on articles that were attributed to the dominant topics in the material. We chose here to focus on two dominant themes in each particular country – i.e. ‘Parliamentary Affairs’ + ‘Public Opinion’ and ‘Social Cohesion and Conflicting Values’ + ‘Migration Politics’. We thus assume that

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the editorials use a particular framing of these articles where the party was involved, based on diagnosis, motivation to act and prognosis. In the analysis, we have summarized the debate by means of identifying dominant frames in the debate. Concerning the diagnosis, the dominant frame in the Swedish case was that the SD is a devil in disguise. The message is that the SD might have tried to polish its façade – it has, for instance, launched a zero-tolerance campaign against racism within the party ranks – but underneath they are the same racist sect as they always have been, at least according to several editorials. This particular frame gained even more salience after the scandals that impeded the party in fall 2012. In Norway the diagnosis was split between two partly contrasting frames. Firstly, the FrP is seen as a two-faced party. On the one hand, they are conceived as a normal party similar to the other parties engaged in the political game. On the other hand, the party contains a more dangerous side and the party board needs to contain these elements. The second frame is that the party exploits xenophobic sentiments in the Norwegian society as a means of gaining votes. Particularly for the centre parties, these frames in 2013 contributed in making a four-party coalition agreement hard to reach, and the Christian Democrats and the Liberals opted to stay outside of the government. The Conservatives, on the other hand, presented a different frame where the FrP was considered a normal party, with little resemblance to right-wing populist parties elsewhere. The two parties have now proceeded to form a minority coalition government together. In Denmark diagnostic frames suggest how to prevent the party from having too much power. Two alternative interpretations emerge from the mainstream editorials: on the one side, some editorials suggest a maximum engagement of the DF in government activity, also by means of direct government responsibility; on the other side, the best antidote for DF influence is to accept its presence, but to expose its limits. While the first approach draws on an interpretation of increased normalization by means of further inclusion, the second hints at a limit to the normalization of the party, but at the same time does not question the idea that the DF is a political party that ‘has come to stay’ in Danish politics. Concerning motivation to act, a number of editorials in our material noted that the SD voters must be respected. The authors of these editorials were clear that democracy should never be compromised, and therefore the SD, as any other parliamentary party, enjoys the same democratic right to make its voice heard. A second frame, commonly combined with the first, is that the mainstream parties and the mainstream opinion makers must bring the SD to light. This implies a sincere com-

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mitment to resisting all claims that the SD articulates in their profile area. Most importantly, the other parties should resist any kind of collaboration with the party. A third frame, however, suggests that the immigration issue should be avoided. Even if you win the debates with the SD, they receive much attention, which in the long run affects their voting figures positively (Mazzoleni 2003). In Norway we have again been able to identify two dominant frames in the material. Firstly, several articles deal with the government question, frequently framed as a relationship issue. Different editorials held different opinions as regards to whether or not the party should be allowed to participate in a centre-right government. To remind the readers, the period of study is set to 2009–2012 and the situation, probably, looks different today when the party is in the government; future studies may test if this is the case. The second frame challenged all the mainstream parties to engage with the immigration issue without trying to steal back votes from the FrP. In Denmark the motivations to act closely correlate with prognostic framing. Editorials tend to agree on the excess of political influence attained by the DF in the years under the Liberal and Conservative government. There is agreement on the need to prevent this from happening again in the future. However, frames differ when it comes to assessing to what degree and whether the party now can be considered a mainstream party and be treated like ‘all other parties’. While some editorials suggest that the initiated mainstream process will continue into the future, operating on those residual elements of the party that still characterize it as ‘populist’, others dismiss this prospect and assert the need to create distance from the DF’s most contentious politics, underlying the fact that the DF remains inscribed in the wave of national populist and xenophobic demands that can also be registered throughout Europe. Concerning the prognosis, the voices heard in the Swedish debate were a bit more ambivalent. There was a dominant frame stressing that the overall development in the Swedish society with e.g. increased class ruptures and differences in terms of living conditions between e.g. the natives and the immigrants constitutes the feeding ground for the SD, rather than the party as such. This situation needs to (better) tackled by the establishment (and the established parties), otherwise the SD will continue to grow. The general perception is, however, that Sweden is different from e.g. Denmark, and therefore the SD shall never become such a decisive factor in Swedish politics, as compared to the role played by the DF in Danish politics. To avoid this scenario, many editorials claimed, the ‘decent’ parties should take on the responsibility of tackling the challenges in Swedish society.

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Depending on party affiliation and political colour, the various editorials had different views in terms of where to place blame for the SD’s progress in the polls. The ‘blame game’ is thus the dominant frame in the Swedish material. In these cases, commonly, the diagnosis of the problems was similar between the SD and their antagonists, whereas the solution was very different. In Norway there was some ambivalence related to the ability of the FrP to change and in the long run become a reliable partner in future government constellation. On the one hand, the party was considered as having developed into a mature party organization with well-equipped party representatives. On the other hand, the party was judged by some editorial writers as being unable to rid itself of its history as single-sighted protest movement. This tension is personified through the tensions between Siv Jensen’s chairmanship and the legacy of Carl I. Hagen. In Denmark positions are divided between those considering the party a legitimate and potential government partner, albeit still with populist elements that need to be regulated and controlled (such as their welfarechauvinism), and editorials that count the party as a legitimate parliamentary representative of segments of the Danish electorate, but with an ideology and heritage that still make it a populist anti-immigration and Euro-sceptic political force in Danish politics. We conclude that the SD acts in a far more repressive political environment, when compared to the other two parties. It is repressive in the sense that the tone used in the editorials is heavily negative. However, the negative writing about the party did not seem to hamper its success. Indeed there is no clear-cut causal relationship between opinion poll fluctuations and media representations to be detected in our material. On the contrary, the polls went up after the scandals that struck the party in fall 2012. The SD and its antagonists alike invoke strong emotions in the public debate around the SD and its politics and activities. Previously, this was discussed in terms of the double face of populism, hinting at the need to further scrutinize the nature of populism as the property of messages being sent, rather than an intrinsic property of particular senders. We can furthermore conclude that the public debate is extremely polarized. Indeed, our material, which focused on the establishment side of the debate, is certainly consensual in its negative attitudes towards the SD. But also considering e.g. the growth of the SD in opinion polls, the public debate in a broader context is seemingly polarized, between those who love to hate these parties and those who conversely share affiliation with them and often against the establishment. To cross the threshold of credibility and walk the line between radicalism and extremism right, striking a balance between reason and emotion,

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a ‘new’ party needs to address the relevant audiences to advance their politics. The SD has failed to do so in the sense that the mainstream editorials still regard the party as an unwelcome foe in the Swedish debate that needs to be debarred from influence through whichever means. The situation is different in Denmark and Norway, as the editorials in our material drift between the view that these parties have to be tolerated and the view that it is even perhaps possible to work with them. This is an empirical observation, here backed up by voluminous text material, that the editorials employ a very negative tone in Sweden, especially when compared to similar texts in Norway and Denmark. Whether this is normatively justified or not is another question. We have to await future political developments before we can analyse whether the borders of normality will increasingly converge between the three countries over time. It will be interesting to see, in ten years’ time from now or so, to what extent the framing of the SD politics and views are becoming more similar to the situation in Denmark and in Norway, or if the party will remain below the threshold of credibility in mainstream press editorials. The frame analysis has shown that issues pertaining to national identity and migration, questions that concern who we are in relation to what we are not, stir up emotions. In Sweden the discussion climate is extensively polarized and the frames identified in the editorials are strongly emotional. The contrasting notions of Swedishness bring up ideological tensions between a united media elite (who unanimously side with the political elite) against the SD. This paves the way for a specific discursive terrain, where the cultural codes are unlikely to transmute into policy changes congruent with the SD’s particular interpretations of national myths. The situation is notably different in the two other Scandinavian countries, where the distance between the editorial writers’ perceptions and those of the nationalist populist parties is comparatively much smaller; hence, the FrP and the DF act in a much more permissive political environment. However, also in these countries there is no perfect harmony between the two discursive layers of national identity construction. The frames detected in the material suggest that both the FrP and the DF have a double nature; i.e. when and if they voice concerns of national identity, and immigration in particular, that deviate too much from the mainstream, they tend to face heavy criticism. In other words, they have to communicate ‘normal’ concerns for national cohesion if they want to influence policy decisions. To remain in the zone of acquiescence, both the DF and the FrP are prevented from and heavily criticized for excessive demanding the protection of national borders, suggesting policies

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that too strongly inhibit immigration and pushing (too) strict and seemingly unfair demands on non-native born individuals in the country.

NOTES 1. This chapter was co-authored with Anniken Hagelund and Susi Meret 2. Riksdagen is the name of the national parliament in Sweden. 3. TT is an abbreviation for Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå. The newspapers in Sweden usually collect their information from this source. 4. The Alliance alludes to the four mainstream-right parties who, between 2006 and 2014, constituted the Swedish coalition government. 5. All new law proposals from the government are firstly dealt with in parliamentary committees – where the parties acknowledge seats on the basis on their election results – before the proposal is further sent to the parliamentary chamber for a final decision. 6. Compared to what has been seen in previous studies, there has been a slightly more reflective use of the term ‘integration politics’, especially after the national elections in 2010, though. Before 2010 the public debate was completely flooded with opinions that took as a starting point the failure of integration mantra, without adequately backing this up. If anything, this agreement between the SD and their antagonists helped the party attract voters who saw in the SD a political party that wanted to do something about the alleged failure of integration (Hellström and Nilsson 2010; Hellström 2010). 7. One of them also has left the national parliament and is currently living in Hungary. 8. Günter Walraff was born in 1942. His investigation methods are by now famous. In short, this journalistic method relies on investigating part of a subgroup by use of e.g. a fake identity. The radio programme is Walraff-like because the journalists went undercover to pretend they were members of the SD. This enabled them, though it is ethically debatable, to e.g. join a joint boat trip with ‘other SD-members’. 9. The guiding lines refer to the SD election programme for the 2010 national elections (Sverigedemokraterna 2010). 10. Expo is a leading anti-racist organization in Sweden. 11. ‘Blatte’ is a derogatory term in the Swedish language, referring to a person with a foreign background. This was also the term being used by the SD party representatives on the previously mentioned summer night in 2010. 12. The Norwegian labour party was in governmental position in Norway with Jens Stoltenberg as prime minister (now he is the Secretary General of Nato), between October 2005 and October 2013 and before from 2000 to 2001.

E Conclusion Similar, Yet Different

n this book I have focused on how the three nationalist populist parties in Sweden, Norway and Denmark have accentuated beliefs and stories about our nations and about us. Hypothetically, the three parties make use of popularly held sentiments about the sanctity of the nation and feelings of nostalgia (that everything was better before) and translate these into party political preferences. These parties mobilize voters who prefer stable national borders instead of more diversity. In this argumentative logic, welfare is pitted against multiculturalism. In order for the parties to gain credibility for this rhetoric with the wider public, I suggest, we need to pay attention to how their politics are being discussed and mediated in the public debate. In other words, the parties need to establish stable ethos-positions from which they can make their voices heard and listened to. The degree of credibility evolves through interaction between the senders’ self-presentation and how these claims are being communicated and thus represented by other political actors in the public debate. In a sense, the degree of credibility is ultimately assessed by the relevant audience(s) (the voters) and shows in e.g. opinion poll fluctuations. The audiences formulate their opinions on these parties based on what is said and written about the parties in the public debate. I have in this book primarily focused on the parties and their sending/communication of rhetorical claims (chapter 3), and how these claims are being mediated and encoded in mainstream press editorials (chapters 4 and 5). To be more precise, I have in this study focused on editorials in four major newspapers during four years (2009–2012) in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, respectively. The discursive formation of national identity – how the nation is being reproduced – operates at two separate layers. The first tier deals with popular notions of the state, the nation and the people within the three countries. The empirical analysis has focused both on how the three nationalist populist parties themselves (chapter 3) use national myths to

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provide a particular meaning of the formation of the state, the nation and the people, along with their role and position in public debate, here focusing on the editorial pages (chapter 4 and 5). This is the second tier. The determination of how we came to being as people in relation to what we are depicted not to be takes place everywhere and all the time. In other words, processes of identification take place on a daily basis, the outcome of which are never given. The sources of identification change according to context – how we as individuals relate to Sweden, Norway and Denmark and what Sweden means in the first place – however, these processes are based on continuity and an initial resistance to fundamental changes. An alternative solution, among others, would then be to undertake an ethnographic study, e.g. focusing on the everyday encounters of natives and alleged strangers. This is because ‘the stranger represents a visualization of the unfamiliar with which or whom we have not yet established any contact’ (Hellström 2005: 86). In this study, my immediate focus has been on the discursive construction of national communities and ‘us-andthem’ relations, with an emphasis on the three nationalist populist parties in Sweden, Denmark and Norway. In this conclusion I will first summarize my main findings and return to my basic presuppositions about rhetoric, outlined in the introduction. Secondly, I return to the explanations for the rise of the PRRs that were introduced in chapter 1. As indicated before, my study does not provide a systematic test of these explanations; nevertheless, it is helpful to return to these in order to reach a better understanding of how we can come to terms with the similarities and differences between the Scandinavian countries in relation to the three nationalist populist parties put under scrutiny here. This is also a call for further studies in this area. Thirdly, I return to the analytical concepts of nationalism and populism introduced earlier. Finally, the chapter ends with some a section with final words that encourages a shift from ‘them’ to ‘us’ in the public debate over immigration and the ever-changing societies we refer to as ‘ours’.

Dreaming Reality In this book I have investigated the close interaction between language and politics. I have discussed how the three nationalist populist parties in Sweden, Denmark and Norway are using a certain political rhetoric to enable a crossing of the threshold of credibility, walking the line between radicalism and extremism. I have also analysed how their messages are being mediated on editorial pages within the three countries. The balanc-

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ing act, I argue, requires a combination of political rhetoric that alludes both to reason and emotion and that manages to strike a balance between the three rhetorical virtues of logos, pathos and ethos. With radicalism, in relation to party political dynamics, I refer to parties that pursue rhetoric that might clash with the views of mainstream parties as well as with mainstream society, while still respecting the democratic system. Radical parties, typically, adopt an underdog position and side with ‘the people’ against the societal ‘elites’. With extremism, in this context, I refer to parties that disrespect democratic procedures and might consider violence a necessary means to obtain their goals. Radical parties can thus be, and often are, champions of democracy, while still being suspicious of certain elements in liberal democracies (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2013: 25). My basic argument is that any outside party needs to cross the ‘threshold of credibility’ in order to gain access to the ‘zone of acquiescence’, and thus to mobilize support from the moderate voters. How do we know when one party, and not the other, has crossed the threshold? The obvious answer is that we cannot tell for sure. I have in this book and elsewhere (Hellström and Nilsson 2010) argued that the ideological position of any party crystallizes in the intersection of how they present themselves and how ‘others’ respond to their self-presentation. It is above all a question of trust; a party must establish a stable ethos-position from which it can make its voice heard in the political competition for votes. I have analysed how and to what extent these parties accentuate popularly held national myths in order to bring forth a positive self-presentation – that is, to merge the second tier with the first tier of the discursive formation of national identity in these countries. This activity of augmenting popular beliefs is processual, but rooted in essentialist thinking – i.e. the view that culture is ‘out there’ and determines personal identification (Bauman 1998: 92). Culture is both changeable as a discursive construct and an eternal given at the same time. This common conflation, as I made clear earlier, cannot be reduced to the three nationalist populist parties, but needs to be taken into account for any deeper understanding of the social relations in modern societies. I have discussed national myths – not as lies, but as more or less dominant stories about the nation – in terms of a particular political opportunity structure to be utilized by parties that thrive on these emotions. To appeal to national memories, in terms of both the myth of national exclusiveness and the myth of the common people, offers a clear delimitation of which people are actually being referred to – i.e. ‘our people’. My basic conclusion is that the SD, as well as the DF, used the political opportunity structure of national myths to attempt to cross the threshold of credibility.

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At the same time, the FrP does not appeal to national myths, at least not in their party programmes, and certainly not to the same extent as the other two parties. Do these findings have any bearing on whether we can still classify the FrP as a ‘nationalist populist’ party (see further Jungar and Ravik Jupskås 2014)? Certainly, the party does not use national myths to wrap its politics. At the same time, however, it is clear that their politics are oriented towards defending the native Norwegian common people against foreign elements in the Norwegian society (Fremskrittspartiets Bærekraftutvalg 2013). Mudde’s categorization of parties belonging to the PRR family suggests that they share a common affiliation with nativism, authoritarianism and populism. Taking these three labels into account, it can be summarized that they apply to all three parties in this study. The parties are nativists in the sense that they prioritize the native population over foreign elements. The preservation of the universal welfare state, they claim, demands a restrictive policy on immigration and an active integration policy that pushes ‘them’ to become more like ‘us’. A basic solidarity between the natives is needed to maintain the universal welfare state, the argument runs. Welfare is pit against multiculturalism. A common solidarity between the natives, it is argued, is needed; otherwise the future of ‘our’ welfare is in peril. These three parties also all share a right-wing – some would say ‘authoritarian’ – view on issues pertaining to law and order (they all want stronger punishment for criminals) and so forth. However, more studies are still needed that dig deeper into e.g. gender politics to further test these claims. Finally, they are all ‘populist’ in the sense that they side with ‘the common man’ against various societal elites. Returning to my definition of nationalist populist parties in the beginning of this book, they are parties that, more or less frequently, pursue politics and rhetoric around the populist divide between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’ centred on the nation – or rather the nation-state – as an exclusive category of reference. As I argued before, nationalism refers to a discursive formation, claims of community cohesion centred on the ‘the nation’ as a common frame of reference. Nationalism is, in my study, a particular way of thinking. National identities are negotiated and being made, rather than existing as essentialist givens. I have argued that populism is the property of the messages being sent, rather than assigned to an essential attribute of the sender as such. To clarify this, populism is in this sense a mood of argumentation and provides a particular way of appealing to ‘the people’ (against ‘the elite’), rather than a defining attribute of particular political actors who typically

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sit outside the mainstream, but are seemingly not deviant enough to be considered ‘extremists’. In this respect, all three parties are nationalist populist. They claim to represent ‘the common man’ against (excessive) immigration, offering an alternative to those who are worried about the development towards more diversity. At the same time, comparatively speaking it is clear that the FrP does not – at least not at all to the same extent – use myths of the nation to pursue their political agenda. In this regard, my findings do not completely solve the labelling dilemma in regards to the FrP. In a comparative perspective, the historical legacy of the FrP is heavily anti-statist and clearly right-wing oriented in terms of the economy. Paul Taggart (2000: 76) argues that ‘populism, in general, takes on aspects of the environment in which it finds itself’. My basic conclusion is that any analysis interested in populist appeals to the people also needs to consider the various elites that these appeals are directed against – i.e. who these elites are and what they represent. In the Scandinavian countries the Social Democratic Party has held a prominent position and the development of the Scandinavian welfare model is shared and appreciated by many people. As Taggart thereby continues, in the welfare-rich Scandinavian countries the populist parties are likely to rally against e.g. high taxes and state intervention in the economy. As a contrast, in countries such as Belgium, Italy and Switzerland, with dense regional divisions and ethnic tensions, the populist resistance is more likely to emphasize regional independence. In other countries, such as France and Germany, immigrants risk becoming scapegoats and framed by the general public as the direct cause of relative economic deprivation and cultural alienation. To continue Taggart’s argument, in Greece the resistance to immigration risks becoming more closely associated with extremist activities and extremist ideologies, as the country has suffered greatly from the current economic crisis. This is suggestively also the case with the rise of the Golden Dawn in Greece. Taggart (ibid.) is certainly correct that fuller in-depth analyses of the political environment are needed. Nevertheless, it can be seen in this study that there are vast differences in terms of the ideological positioning and historical legacy of the three nationalist populist parties acting in three socio-economically similar Scandinavian countries when it comes to both their roles and influence in domestic politics. It can be deduced from this study that the nationalist populist parties increasingly lean towards welfare-chauvinism (and against multiculturalism) and not only against e.g. state intervention in the economy, as suggested by Taggart some fifteen years ago.

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The emotional investment is yet obvious in all three cases. The common message among them is that it was ‘better before’. This nostalgic frame is combined with other themes that are distinct for each party, yet they unite in a joint resistance against multiculturalism, Islam and a generous immigration policy in general. The relation between welfare and multiculturalism taps into the basic structure of the state, the nation and the people in the Scandinavian countries. The challenges of ethnic diversity thus invite a renegotiation of the national identity in these countries. Whereas the editorials in Sweden strongly oppose the SD and the views associated with the party, the situation is much more nuanced in both Norway and, in particular, Denmark. In chapters 4 and 5 we have shown this to be the case both quantitatively (chapter 4) and qualitatively (chapter 5). There is a considerable difference between how the parties and their messages are being mediated by the editorials in mainstream press in the three countries. To some extent, this could be explained by references to historical legacy and parliamentary experiences, but there are other explanations as well. The borders of normality (e.g. what is ‘normal’ talk on immigration and immigrants and what is acceptable to say) shift, and sometimes quickly. The borders, for instance, changed very rapidly in Denmark between 1998 and 2001. In 1998 the DF was not considered ‘house trained’ (stuerent) enough to be seriously considered by mainstream political actors, but the situation has since changed. After the terrorist attacks in New York and the elections held in Denmark soon after, the DF was made the supporting cast of the new mainstream-right government. Similarly, the tone towards the FrP was indeed very negative in Norway some twenty years ago (Hagelund 2003). From this it follows that the zone of acquiescence is dynamic, and not fixed and eternal. In the book I have suggested a continuum between repressive and permissive political environments in relation to the parties in the political competition for votes. My conclusion is that the political environment is, by far, more repressive in Sweden than it is in Denmark and Norway in relation to the SD, the DF and the FrP, respectively. This all suggests a very polarized discussion climate in Sweden. It is not only that the SD holds the wrong opinions; they are also – to a large extent – seen as ‘evil’ types. As the example above indicates, this of course can change. If we listen to SD party leader Jimmie Åkesson (2013: 283) himself, the Swedish Prime Minister at the time Fredrik Reinfeldt shows passionate hatred for the SD. While confronting the SD he neglects his otherwise statesman-like appearance, according to Åkesson. All the while, the SD continues to grow in terms of voter support. Does this mean that editorial writers in Sweden are wrong and not open to what the people in Sweden

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think? Not necessarily. This is not a normative statement. A more repressive environment does not automatically suggest less-nuanced journalism. One basic inference is that we should not talk about one public debate, but pay attention to the existence of multiple publics. In order to come to terms with a highly polarized and emotionally driven political language around the SD and their profile, we need to pay closer attention to sources of media outside the mainstream that diagnose and frame the party differently. It is impossible, otherwise, to understand why, for instance, after the so-called scaffold pipe scandal there were very strong reactions in Sweden – mainstream press editorials were particularly negative – while at the same time the SD opinion polls went up. If anything, there is currently a strong incongruence in Swedish public debate between the growing elite and popular resistance towards the party and their performance in the opinion polls. In short, there is no direct and causal link between media representations and public opinion.

Returning to the Explanations In this book I have not systematically studied fluctuations in terms of the demand side. I have not presented any new empirical evidence as to what extent the ‘losers of modernity’, in terms of either economic or cultural capital, are more likely than the average voter to turn to the nationalist populist parties. My study of political communication does not bring any further clarification on this issue, even if the language being used by the three parties certainly endeavours to appeal to groups who are potentially astray and potentially lagging behind, either economically and/or culturally. I have not tested the accuracy of the theses on ethnic competition, the halo effect or levels of political dissatisfaction. This is an area where other studies are also needed to systematically test these claims. My study has mainly focused on the supply side of electoral competition, emphasizing the role of political opportunity structures. While the first part of my analysis suggested a new kind of a potentially useful political opportunity structure for ‘new’ political contesters – i.e. national myths – the second part of the analysis highlighted the role of the media and how mainstream actors mediated the claims being addressed by the three parties. The analysis thus follows the layered discursive approach, between popularly held notions of national identity (the first tier) and the roles and positions of the three nationalist parties in relation to this (the second tier).

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Indeed, in the midst of the economic crisis there is also an intense debate about so-called socio-cultural issues, up to the extent that we cannot easily separate the two cleavage structures from each other. Whereas these issues gain comparatively less salience in the Norwegian case, it is easy to recognize in the Swedish case that the People’s Home metaphor is used by the SD to both yield cultural conformism (that is, holding a conservative position on so-called socio-cultural issues concerning e.g. gender politics, immigration and crime politics) and reduce socio-economic cleavages in the society. In Denmark the DF promotes the Danish nation and the welfare state in its’ political rhetoric (different from the FrP), but has fewer ambitions to restore the Social Democratic past, as compared to the SD. To understand these differences, my findings suggest, further research needs to consider not only to the distinct historical legacy of these parties, but also the general domestic socio-political context in which they operate – how e.g. the Social Democratic parties have used national myths in their electoral manifestoes to gain votes. Taking a closer look at the editorials in each country, the debate around these parties is primarily centred on topics referring to social cohesion and conflicting values (Sweden), parliamentary affairs (Norway) and both (Denmark). Despite these differences, it is obvious that these parties attract less attention in the area of welfare and economy, at least as ‘major’ actors (see further chapter 4). In recent years the three parties have all made considerable inroads in domestic politics. In Norway, despite its loss in voter support the FrP has succeed in its ambition to take a seat in the national government together with Høyre. In Denmark, according to recent polls, the DF is by now larger than the Social Democrats, who are currently in office. In Sweden the SD continues to grow (see also this book’s prologue and epilogue). Has there then been a socio-cultural shift in these countries? Probably not. At least not in Norway and Sweden. If there has been in Denmark, empirical studies show that issues pertaining to e.g. immigration and ethnic minorities attract considerably less attention today than they did only a decade ago (Infomedia 2013b; see also chapter 5). Yet to deal with the question of how well-established liberal democracies respond to challenges of ethnic diversity, it is important to recognize different attitudes and party political preferences to the politics of recognition. The socio-political context has grown to broaden its appeals in these countries (as anywhere across Europe), but under the signs of economic crisis it is rather the combination of economy and culture that determines the voters’ party political preferences (Kitschelt 2012). By way of conclusion, the question of economy versus culture is not an either/or question, but rather a both/and relation, as my analysis also suggests.

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This basic insight is therefore needed to understand why e.g. the DF continues to prosper in the opinion polls in Denmark – i.e. how the party successfully mobilizes voters who feel both threatened by economic cuts and frustrated with the ‘annoying differences’ to paraphrase the anthropologist Peter Hervik (2011) in Danish society. As the analysis in chapters 4 and 5 reveals, media interest in the DF has weakened after the 2011 national elections, when the DF ended up in opposition to the current Social Democratic government. At the same time, the party has attracted more voter support. And in the 2014 elections to the European Parliament, the party was the largest party in Denmark. The distance between the mainstream parties and the FrP and DF in both Norway and Denmark is comparatively much smaller than in Sweden with the SD. The FrP and the DF are no longer seen as all that controversial. They are seemingly normalized and tamed in domestic politics. At the same time, the mainstream parties adopt to and sometimes accept policy suggestions addressed by the DF and the FrP. This is not the case with Sweden – at least not on the national level.1 The SD is potentially in a favourable position in the sense that it can tip the scales in favour of either political bloc, provided that they manage to push forward their demands. While both the FrP and the DF are much closer to having a direct influence on domestic politics, the political environment is much more repressive towards the SD in Sweden. It is, for instance, hard to imagine any other party in Swedish parliament willing to enter into a government coalition with the SD. These results are based on an analysis of a limited fraction of the totality of voices in the public debate – i.e. the editorials. According to this material there is a cordon sanitaire against the SD, uniting all ‘the good guys’ against the SD, similar to the situation in Belgium with the mainstream pit against the Vlaams Blok. This is not to suggest that Swedish debate is always hostile to the SD or that the party should be met with silence. Conversely, according to a majority of the editorials, SD voters must be respected by mainstream elites and their views need to be accommodated by mainstream parties. Their voters articulate concerns for ‘real’ problems of e.g. alienation and crime rates among foreign-born individuals. Even if the party as such is not depicted as credible, their voters’ voices need to be heard and listened to. The convergence in political space is indeed very strong in Swedish politics; neither the mainstream right nor the mainstream left are willing to approach the SD and adjust to their politics. If anything, the impact of the SD in Swedish politics is not in terms of policy adjustment, but rather in the creation of a greater rift between those who love to hate the party and others who are increasingly tempted to vote for a party that clearly

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opposes the political and cultural elites in the society (Hellström 2013). The repressive political environment is thus not necessarily a sign of negativism, but one of polarization. This situation can, certainly, trigger more voters to vote for a radical alternative in Swedish politics, against ‘the elites’; a party that channels their demands, seemingly unanswered by other parties, for more restrictive immigration policies. In sum, the eruption of the DF in Danish politics could perhaps partly be explained by the high salience of socio-cultural issues, as compared to Sweden (Green-Pedersen 2008).2 The situation of mutual dependency (between the SD and their antagonists) and the high degree of convergence in political space can help explain the progress of the SD in Sweden. In Norway the explanations given by e.g. Taggart (2000) are probably more correct – i.e. the FrP continues to mobilize voters along a clear anti-statist message ans on the center-periphery cleavage, something we previously discussed in relation to popular notions of national identity in Norway. The convergence in political space in Sweden does not explain why the SD has enjoyed comparatively less voter support (at least before the 2014 national elections) or why e.g. the DF continues to grow in the Danish opinion polls in the aftermath of the economic crisis and as socio-cultural issues grow seemingly less important than socio-economic issues in Danish politics today. Recently in Denmark, Pia Kjærsgaard stepped down as DF party chairperson and was replaced by the seemingly less charismatic figure of Kristian Thulesen Dahl. Still, opinion figures for the DF have risen. And as was previously indicated, in the elections to the European Parliament on 25 May 2014, the party became the biggest in Denmark. Apparently, there is an available niche for parties in Scandinavia who champion, at least, more restrictive politics on immigration and integration, compared to the mainstream, as a means of combating current socio-economic ruptures. It is not merely about ‘protest’ (Van der Brug et al. 2000). There is a demand in the population in all three cases. But in order to enjoy a real impact on domestic politics, my analysis suggests, the parties need to cross the threshold of credibility to gain access to the zone of acquiescence. Both the FrP and the DF are already there, while the SD is not. By way of illustration, in his biography Jimmie Åkesson (2013), or his ghostwriter, explains that a so-called charismatic leader is less likely to succeed in Sweden. For once, he finds the term ‘charismatic’ ambiguous. ‘Charisma’ lies in the eyes of the beholder, he suggests (ibid.: 103). Perhaps, the preceding leader of the left party, Lars Ohly (see further scene 1 in the introduction), is by some seen as a charismatic figure. Åkesson, however, does not at all appreciate him and finds his appearance rather unpleasant. In Åkesson’s view, Ohly is not at all charismatic.

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Åkesson further suggests that neither Obama nor Berlusconi would likely appeal to the Swedish voter. Their styles do not fit the particular Swedish culture, he says. Referring to Pia Kjærsgaard, Åkesson suggests that her style is adjusted to Danish political culture and she would be less likely to appeal to the Swedish electorate. He adds, however, that she probably would have adjusted her rhetoric to the Swedish political culture, if necessary. Nevertheless, each country shares a particular political culture. To some extent, he is correct in this observation, even if I do not share his perspective on cultural differences as unbridgeable. Nevertheless, general remarks about e.g. the need for a ‘charismatic leader’ show different features in different political environments. To cross the threshold of credibility, a charismatic leader might fit the bill in some countries, whereas in others they might not. And it also matters whether it is a female or a male charismatic leader.3 Returning to the basic structure of national identity formation in the Scandinavian countries, it is rather the collective of farmers – and later the workers – than spectacular political leaders that are praised for pushing socio-political development forward. In his book on the populist logic, Ernesto Laclau (2005) returned to Sigmund Freud to help understand the relationship between the leader and the led – i.e. the love of the leader. What unites people in a common affiliation with a party is a common source of primary identification, Laclau says, quoting Freud: ‘A primary group of this kind is a number of individuals who have put one and the same object in the place of their ego ideal and have consequently identified themselves with one another in their ego’ (ibid.: 56). From this follows identification between, in our case, party members who unite in a common love of their leader (the father). What is striking in the Swedish case is that the role of the (charismatic) leader is rather a dead Social Democratic leader of the past (Per-Albin Hansson), who Åkesson (2013: 11–13) actually ‘lets’ write a fictive foreword to his recently published biography, approximately seventy years after Hansson had died. The literature suggests that the populist leaders are themselves ‘news-makers’, which highlights the crucial interplay between the media market and populism (Mazzoleni 2003: 6). What is striking in the case of the SD is that party representatives occasionally attract media attention through their distressing behaviour, but this is seldom the case for the leader himself. Indeed, emotional and existential aspects of political communication are important features of the party’s positioning in the Swedish media market. And the charismatic leader is around, but he turns out to be a long-dead Social Democrat from the past. Turning back to recent times, my basic conclusion on this matter is that in all three cases the love of the leader is being reinterpreted by the parties as a common affection for ‘the common man’, the native decent

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worker who is opposed to the ‘immigrant other’. The mainstream political ‘elite’ have, in turn, betrayed the natives. It is the love of the mythical figure of the common man and his or her common sense that drive these parties forward, rather than an unambiguous faith in a charismatic leader, as is possibly the case in the Netherlands. The literature on the so-called populist radical right parties features many explanations for their varying electoral fortunes without paying due attention to the domestic political environment in which the parties operate. At the very least, as my example on the charismatic leader indicates, these explanations need to be revisited and adjusted for the current context before being further used in comparative studies. I have suggested a deeper exploration of the socio-political context in which these parties operate. This includes the views and perspectives addressed by the mainstream political actors in each country, and also the mainstream press. In the Scandinavian countries I have come across similarities in regard to the parties’ development in relation to the general socio-political development in each country, from the basic structure of the five-party model towards a multi-dimensional party space with many parties competing for the votes on many more issues, compared to only a few decades ago. For once, the issues of welfare and culture are not easily separable, as compared to when the Progress Parties in Denmark and Norway arrived on the scene in the early 1970s as a reaction to state capitalism and what they considered to be a Social Democratic hegemony.

Welfare-Chauvinism and the Common Man Today all the three parties argue for a drastic cut in immigration. Economically and culturally, the Scandinavian countries are not able to maintain and preserve their welfare states. Both the FrP (Fremskrittspartiet 2013) and the SD (Sverigedemokraterna 2011) look to Denmark as a role model. As a consequence, the FrP demands much more restrictive national immigration and asylum policies more in line with those of Denmark, and definitely in contrast to the two smaller bourgeoisie parties in Norway, Venstre and Kristelig Folkeparti, who recently decided against joining a governmental coalition with Høyre and the FrP. The attitudes of the voters of the largest party in the newly elected Norwegian government, Høyre, are seemingly more ambivalent. According to a recent report (Fremskrittspartiets Bærekraftutvalg 2013), Høyre’s voters are roughly in tune with the FrP in the areas of immigration and integration. The reduction in asylum is depicted as necessary for facilitating the successful integration – or perhaps rather assimilation – of new citizens in the national community. We can expect that the Norwegian govern-

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ment with the FrP will take similar measures as the Danish government when it comes to family reunification (a variety of the so-called 24-years rule) and citizenship acquisition.4 The emphasis on ‘Norwegian culture’ is not dominant in the FrP party programmes, as was noted earlier (see chapter 3 in this book), but when it comes to establishing culturally sustainable policies on immigration and integration, it remains clear that ‘new’ Norwegians need to be pushed harder to adapt to Norwegian culture. In short, welfare is pit against multiculturalism. The universal welfare states, according to these parties, risk collapsing when confronted with challenges of ethnic diversity; therefore the levels of immigration need to be kept at a minimum. ‘Real refugees’ (who deserve ‘our’ help and ‘our’ immediate assistance, preferably in their heath) are pit against welfareabusing foreigners and their descendants, those accused of taking undue advantage of the system. ‘Decent’ native workers are pit against the crime-prone immigrants who threaten ‘our’ welfare. Immigrants are foremost, in their rhetoric, depicted as a financial burden and not, for instance, ‘real’ refugees desperately seeking asylum in Europe. The rhetoric is deeply welfare-chauvinist (cf. Norocel 2013). And above all, it is rhetoric that endeavours to appeal to ‘the common man’, the moderate voter. As put by Peter Skaarup (2013), the DF’s chairman in the parliamentary assembly, at the party’s annual meeting in September 2013: In recent years there has been much discussion of a culture clash [‘kulturkamp’] and the ‘Danish values’. I think this debate has often been too abstract and too academic. In reality I prefer to talk about ‘the struggle for common sense’ or ‘the struggle for common decency’. It should pay off to be a decent citizen and take responsibility for one’s own actions. It should pay off to endure training and feed oneself by means of honest work – for everyone, both the Danes and the foreigners. These are not extreme opinions! It is sound politics at the centre!

The three nationalist populist parties ask for decency and plead for ‘common sense’. Their views, according to themselves, are not extreme but ‘normal’. In the terminology of this book we can view this in terms of credibility; in order to attract votes, you need to reside safely within the zone of acquiescence. Society changes. All the time. There are no homogenous societies. There will always be people who feel lost among current developments and wish to return to the past. What this study shows is that the reactions towards recent demographic changes might transmute into party political preferences even in countries that are comparatively less affected by

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the current financial crisis. The three nationalist populist parties examined here share many similarities in terms of suggesting a more restrictive path towards immigration and a tougher stance on integration, of protecting the nation’s ‘own decent folks’ against the indecent ‘other’, the ‘welfare abusers’. The parties are thus similar, yet different. They share distinctively different historical legacies and they certainly play different roles in domestic politics today. Demographic challenges, in terms of having more heterogeneity than in the past, might trigger individual voters to reconsider their choice of party. All three parties take advantage of this opportunity. This is about a struggle of what constitutes these sentiments in the first place. It is a struggle of the people, of what ‘the common man’ really wants and thinks. Of course we can’t know this for sure, but we do know that ‘the common man’ is a site for struggle. This ‘war of definitions’ has grown to become rampant in Sweden. While it is true the Sweden Democrats scored well in the recent European Parliament elections (9.7 per cent), at the same time a new party, Feministiskt Initiativ (Feminist Initiative), gained one mandate in the parliamentary assembly and the Green Party experienced great success to become the second largest party in the elections after the Social Democrats. In particular, Feministiskt Initiativ has mobilized voters from the bottom up, and apart from equality between the sexes and queer and minority rights, they pursue a clear anti-racist agenda, much like the Green Party; the archenemy in Swedish politics is represented by the SD. There is indeed strong polarization in Swedish politics between those who passionately hate the Sweden Democrats and those who support the party. In spring 2014 ‘the common man’ generally turned its back to Åkesson when he visited their cities; they would not allow him to enter their places of employment, alternatively chose not to show up to meet him, neither at his rallies nor at their work places. We know that the political and media ‘elite’ are extensively negative towards the SD, but it is difficult for the party to breed its underground position in Swedish politics when, horizontally, common people turn their backs on its leader. The silent mass protests against the SD in Sweden illustrates an extensively polarized discussion climate, which from a strictly rational perspective provides the SD with increased levels of media exposure and in the long run, potentially, more votes. But at the same time, these activities stir up emotions in the public debate and remind us of that democratic politics is not merely about administration, but also about efforts to mobilize resistance and offer redemption. I have previously discussed populism as a form of democratic protest (Abbott 2007); that ‘the common man’ now participates in mass mobilizations against the party shows

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the two-faced nature of populism and the role of populism in democratic societies. We can perhaps address the relation between the SD and their antagonists in the public debate as a situation of mutual dependency, of both love and hate. Indeed, the SD thrives on emotions in their political rhetoric, but their antagonists also play on similar strings in their resistance to the party (Hellström and Kiiskinen 2013; Hellström 2010; cf. Hellström 2006: chapter 7). Both the ‘nationalists’ and their antagonists display contrasting notions of what constitutes the Swedish nation today. Showing how this is done cannot only be accomplished with references to logos, but has to incorporate a focus also on ethos and pathos. When Front National became the largest party in the European Parliament elections in France, its leader Marine Le Pen actually demanded a re-election of the national parliament as, she claimed, the election results clearly show that it is not representative of the French people. In the same elections, the Danish People’s Party was the largest party in Denmark, Jobbik in Hungary received seats in the assembly and so did the openly Nazist parties, the Golden Dawn in Greece and the Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) in Germany. The populist and seemingly less extremist United Kingdom Independent Party (UKIP) became the largest party in Britain. The fear of the progress of these parties is often justified, but there is also another salient trend towards increased polarization, especially around issues pertaining to migration and national identity. There are fissures in public opinion between those who champion more multiculturalism and embrace diversity and those parts of the electorate who resist such claims; these basically come down to how the redistributive goals of the Nordic welfare states might square with the ideals of multiculturalism (Kivisto and Wahlbeck 2013b: 1). What my analysis suggests is that it is important to recognize the differences between national contexts in socio-economically similar states, such as those studied here. Without a change in cultural codes of discursive national identity formations, policy changes rarely occur. In Denmark and Norway the basic structure of national identity formation conveys a much stronger anti-statist element, as compared to Sweden where the bond between the state and the individual is much tighter. By way of illustration, when the SD makes references to the People’s Home this is not to address concerns for an anti-statist vision of the Swedish nation; conversely it is about restoring the Swedish state to accommodate a stronger community feeling between the nationals and to breed popular solidarity against excessive diversity. The reproduction of the nation in Scandinavia is open to change, but these changes must have continuity to result in concrete policy effects.

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To sum up, while in Denmark and Norway the DF and the FrP are increasingly normalized in domestic politics, the SD in Sweden is not. The public debate that concerns the SD is a source of identification – either you are with them or against them. This has boosted the continuous negotiations in Sweden around national identity – the quest for a proper balance between the two discursive layers of the nation, the state and the people. The polarized debate climate creates a site of struggle, of what ‘the common man’ really is and wants in relation to welfare and/or multiculturalism. It is thus not only about the basic (populist) distinction between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’, but deals horizontally with what constitutes the common man in this equation and thus the future of national identity formation in Sweden. What is central here is that ‘the people’, according to popular notions of national identity formation in all three countries, refers to the collective of, before, the farmers and later the workers that built up the nation. The struggle for Swedishness in Sweden at present revolves around the category of ‘the common man’ and how he or she taps into a proper understanding of the nation and the state. This is a highly emotional debate, as it concerns who we are in relation to who we are not.

Returning to the Analytical Concepts I suggested that the labels ‘populism’ and ‘nationalism’ might be applicable in our case as particular communication strategies. In a seminal article Michael Freeden (1998) refers to nationalism as a thin ideology. It needs to blend in with other adjacent ideologies in order to constitute a fully fledged ideology in its own right. Ben Stanley (2008) ten years later suggests that populism is best studied as a thin ideology as well. By way of conclusion based on my own findings, the study of ideology is but one analytical approach, though (see further Hellström 2013). The analyst can also focus on the style, the way of doing politics, or it can view populism (or nationalism for that sake) as a particular (political) logic of mobilizing voter demands. I have in this book suggested that populism is, ultimately, a property of the message being sent rather than a defining characteristic of the sender as such, or at least less so. Populism concerns appeals to the people and can be both threatening and vitalizing for representative democracies, as suggested by e.g. Mudde and Kaltwasser (2013: 19). This question has to be open for empirical contestation, devoid of normative predispositions. Populist appeals to ‘the people’, as I suggested before, are clearly based on the emotional potential of doing politics beyond mere opinion

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aggregation or deliberation by rational actors. It is important here to keep in mind (as has been shown particularly in chapter 5) that populism has, at the very least, two faces. In order to come to terms with the forms of doing politics and the ambitions of these parties to establish stable ethos-positions in the public debate, there is a growing need to bring closer attention to the political rhetoric, not only as used by the parties themselves, but also in how it is being framed by prominent actors (such as editorial writers) in mainstream print media. The difference between ‘real politics’ and ‘populism’ is seemingly exaggerated in both academia and the public debate. As put by Laclau (2005: 16): ‘The whole exercise seems to aim, on the contrary, at separating what is rational and conceptually apprehensible in political action from its dichotomic opposite: a populism conceived as irrational and indefinable.’ Similarly, nationalism is here seen as discursive construct, a certain communication act aimed at strengthening the bond between residents and the national community. This can be accomplished with references to national origin, but it can also be done by appealing to e.g. ‘civic’ virtues; by heralding a certain national way of thinking in opposition to ‘their’ (‘the immigrants’) backwardness in terms of cultural refinement. The message is that immigration poses a threat to the nation, both economically and culturally. In order for these claims to have an effect on the dominant discourse on national identity and immigration and on related policies, the sender must construct stable ethos-positions from which they can make their voices heard in the public zone of acquiescence. Crossing the electoral threshold does not causally imply that the threshold of credibility has been crossed as well. The three nationalist populist parties urge for a return to the society in which our parents and we grew up. This is a nostalgic dream that can perhaps easily be rebutted, as Gerd Bauman (ibid.: 20) suggests: ‘One is not simply born to act or feel as one does.’ But it is yet a dream. Potentially, this imaginary spurs people’s imagination and fantasies. It generates both sympathy and dismay for what we want and for who we think we are in relation to what we are depicted not to be.

Final Words Before we can come anywhere near a valid conclusion of what the people want, of who the people are, we should start by asking the same questions of ourselves. We can start with memories, stories about ourselves and what society looked like when we grew up. This is to attach emotion and sentiment

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to the story of our lives. Everything is not reason, even if we frequently rationalize our behaviour in the past to make sense of and categorize our experiences in the present. It happens every day. This book has focused on the intersection between politics and language; between reason and emotion. I think we need to believe in stories and invest the time to seriously explore how society reproduces itself through storytelling. These stories are not innocent speech acts. They are not arbitrarily made and innocently reproduced. Ultimately, they inform us of who we are as people. What we can learn from this is to focus on the storytelling dimension of politics, what in this book I have discussed in terms of emotion (in relation to reason), populism (in relation to democracy), the distinction between the politics of faith and the politics of scepticism and national myth making in relation to policy development. The way out of the tragedy of technocracy is not to stop dreaming, it is to dream more. It is to engage with the politics of storytelling and the politics of dreaming. Stories can be based on more or less scrupulous rumours and dreams can be nightmares and/or backward. But stories can also be progressive and dreams share that potential. Neither stories nor dreams are rooted in destiny, but are open for contestation and political action. This might be frightening, but this approach also permits change. Dreams are ambiguous, therefore also dynamic and open to interpretation.

NOTES 1. In this study I have specifically focused on the language adopted by the editorials, but also current research directed at actual policies in this area confirms that Sweden and Denmark, with Norway somewhere in between, stand on opposite sides in relation to immigration and integration (Brochmann and Hagelund 2012). 2. In Denmark after 2011, when the mainstream-right government coalition who had run the country since 2001 with the DF as its loyal supporter was kicked out of office, there have been very few policy changes but rather discursive changes in relation to immigration, integration and national identity (Lægaard 2013). 3. See further Meret 2015 for a comprehensive account of Pia Kjærsgaard’s leadership style. 4. Similarly, for the SD, the reductions in immigration are seen as a necessary means to restore the national society and re-create a sense of community that is necessary for the maintenance of the universal welfare state and to obtain a decent standard of living for natives.

E EPI LOGUE

hen you write a book on contemporary events things change rapidly and your book risks being outdated, already before it has been published. To partly solve this problem I would like to use this epilogue to update the reader with recent events. In Norway, the FrP has together with Hoyre as previously mentioned formed a government coalition in Norway, in 2013. Whereas the party, obviously, has been successful in its´ office seeking ambitions the party has lost at the polls. The party has lost one fifth of its’ voters and has gradually lost party members (Ravik Jupskås forthcoming). The party straddles on the ten percent border on the elections polls. Having one foot in and one foot out of the government, both acting responsibly, e. g. open to compromises in some policy areas and yet continue with its´ radical rhetoric on other occasions, is a delicate balancing act (Albertazzi and McDonnell 2005). So far the Norwegian voters have not been convinced. The reverse is the case with the Sweden Democrats. In the national elections the party gained 12, 9 per cent of the votes and became the third largest party. By far. After the elections, the party has continued its’ positive trend and attracts, according to several polls in September 2015, approximately 20 per cent in voter support. At the same time the party is seemingly less likely than ever before to directly affect domestic politics. The party almost caused a re-election as they voted for the opposition’s (the four mainstream parties who, since the national elections in September 2014 no longer were in a government position) budget proposal on 2 December 2014. The party proclaimed that it intended to vote against any government, which continues with a naïve support for a generous asylum policy with the support of the Green Party. Given this, it was impossible for the government to govern. The re-election was abandoned in the last minute, though. On 27 December 2014 all the other parties, excluding the Left Party announced jointly the so-called December agreement.1 In short this compromise product says that the opposition promises not to vote for their own budget proposals in the parliament, thereby enabling the

W

EPILOGUE

187

government to implement its´ budget without risking the SD to cause a re-election. This compromise upsets, in particular, the mainstream-right voters; leaving the opposition role to the SD, the arguments go. In June 2015 there were national elections held in Denmark. The Social Democratic party with Helle Thorning-Schmidt as its leader became the largest party. Yet Lars Lökke Rasmussen from the party Venstre took over as prime minister, leading a minority government in the country. The big winner of this election was, however, Danish People´s Party with its’ leader Kristian Thulesen Dahl. The DPP gained 21, 1 per cent of the votes. The DPP is not in the government, but it now restores its´ position as supporting party for the government (a position it also held between 2001 and 2011). In the Danish Parliament, the party has more seats than ever before. What can be concluded from the recent development in Scandinavian politics is that neither allowing the challenger (the nationalist populist party) influence (as in Denmark), nor conversely adopting a cordon sainitaire strategy (as in Sweden) offers a guarantee for avoiding the nationalist populist party to gain electoral fortunes. In Norway, we learn that populist parties in the government risk losing votes (as also the Finnish case recently showed). It is seemingly not easy to attracting anti-establishment votes, when you actually are the establishment. The war in Syria has caused a refugee crisis with many people on the move. Increasingly many people are eager to offer assistance to refugees fleeing from the war in Syria over the Mediterranean sea, open their homes to newly arrived refugees, distributing clothes and food to the asylum seekers and are emotionally affected by the current media reporting. In short, the war in Syria has become part of our immediate surroundings; thus our reality, which we cannot hide away from. As a consequence, more people give their support to a generous asylum policy, according to recent polls in September 2015, in Sweden. The fear of rising xenophobia is larger than the fear of the foreigner. All across Europe, in fact, the EU countries are struggling to agree on a joint solution to solve the refugee crisis, typically with Germany and Hungary on opposite poles of the debate. Countries disagree with countries. People disagree with people. In a recent TV-debate (Debatt 2015), politicians and commentators from Sweden and Denmark debated this situation. The difference between the countries was larger than between debaters on each side, with the possible exception of the representative from the Sweden Democrats. At the same time, the difference between the people in these two countries is not necessarily vast. Moving back to the prologue of this book, my interest derives from a desire of mine not to unanimously condemn the parties in the Scandina-

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EPILOGUE

vian countries that mobilize voters who would like to decrease immigration to the country and are skeptical or hostile against various integration measures, but to increasingly understand the logic behind voting for such a party. Why is that the SD in Sweden continues to be debarred, while the situation is reverse in Norway and in Denmark? In Sweden, SD continues to be hampered by scandals. For instance the youth department has recently been discharged from the mother party, the SD party leader was on sick leave due to exhaustion and elected SD representatives in local assemblies continue to stretch the party´s policy on zero-tolerance towards racism or leave their chairs in municipal assemblies empty. At the same time the election polls continue to go up for the party. The question is why this is so. One way of proceeding with this task would be to exemplify with an ordinary larger meeting in a public institution or in a private enterprise. While the employers might frame changes as necessary and dismiss any criticism as signs of backwardness, this might be interpreted both patronizing and alienating, by the employees on the floor. By way of analogy, the distance between the employer and the employee is perhaps also the case with the basic dichotomy between the people and the elite in populist mobilization. Whereas the majority is increasingly open for changes and more diversity there is a significant minority not willing to joining in the majority path. These voices and worries are obviously not sufficiently listened to and acknowledged by the mainstream parties. It is not about sharing the diagnosis of the society, for instance pretend that the integration of new immigrants has not worked or criminality has gone up. This is wrong. In order to challenge the cleavage between the voted and the voters, you could always begin with listening. I have concluded in my analysis that there is a strong vertical resistance to these parties, especially towards the SD in Sweden. There is also a strong horizontal opposition of claims of shutting the borders. Not everyone, even the common man, is equally comfortable with having an anti-immigration party representing his or her views. One can conclude that both the SD and the DF have managed well to establish a niche in the electoral market; to offer a supply to meet the demands in the electorate for a more restrictive immigration policy. Listening to the political scientists Karl Loxbo (2015) and Andrej Kokkonen (2015), the SD is likely to continue on this upward trend. The current refugee catastrophy puts the immigration issue higher up on the political agenda, which, potentially, enable short-term electoral fortunes for the parties under scrutiny in this study. In the long run, it is hard to say. It depends on e. g. if the parameters alter in the electorate

EPILOGUE

189

(e.g. the size of the niche for the challenging party) and on organizational stability. What we can say for sure is that the issue of the reproduction of national identities continues to be essential; how previously more homogenous national states deal with diversity is a larger issue than the parties in the electoral market. The relationship between representations of ‘the other’ and poll fluctuations is complex and does not provide an easy solution. Despite “real events”, it is about how our reality is being represented and with which words we use to emphasize aspects of what we see. How reality is framed is the parameters we embark from when we formulate our opinions. In this equation modern media constitutes the moral framework (Silverstone 2007; Edenborg forthcoming); framed versions of reality, which we use as sources of information in which “the other” appears in our face, as was discussed previously in this book. Feelings of empathy and an intrinsic willingness persist and might be triggered by contemporary events in Sweden, in Denmark and in Norway, though. Even if differences in media-representation and domestic politics prevail, the people in these three countries are not that different from one- another. The overall question remains. How is it that you can continue being “good”, narcissistically speaking everyone would like to belong to the “good” side, and still vote for an anti-immigration party? The solution is that we would like to help the refugees there, but not in our backyard.

NOTES 1. When this was written the December compromise agreement was abandoned (9 October 2015). Following the increased amount of asylum seekers coming to Sweden, recent proposals from both the mainstream right and the mainstream left parties suggest different ways of obstructing to many refugees from coming to Sweden. Also in mainstream press editorials the difference in attitudes towards the SD between the newspapers is possibly much wider these days compared to the period put into scrutiny in this book. What will happen next only future can tell.

E APPENDI X 1

Coding Instructions Variables Newspaper. No comments. Length. Short articles are articles that include one to five paragraphs. Medium/large articles are articles that are six paragraphs or longer. Year, Month, Day. No comments. Genre. Editorials are unsigned articles on the editorial page. Op-eds are signed editorials. In some cases, articles are signed with initials and not full names (e.g. in Aftonbladet). These articles are coded as op-eds. On the editorial pages, journalists/writers are sometimes invited to write editorials. If the authors are employed by the newspaper to write the articles, these are coded as op-eds. Chronicles are articles written by invited independent writers, those not employed by the newspapers who yet communicate their opinions on the editorial pages. In other words, journalists might be employed by the newspapers to write chronicles. In these cases, the articles were coded as op-eds (e.g. Sakine Medon in Aftonbladet). In other cases, the articles were written by independent writers, working e.g. at think tanks. In these cases, the articles were coded as chronicles (e.g. Roland Poirier Martinsson in Svenska Dagbladet, 21 May 2012). Different newspapers share different policies on this.1 Role. The value major concerns articles in which the party (e.g. the SD in Sweden) plays a major role. The value minor concerns articles that share a different primary focus (e.g., another party); in such articles e.g. the SD is one of but many actors discussed. The role is minor (rather than irrelevant) if the party is attributed to the role of e.g. causing other actors to behave and act in a certain way. The value irrelevant concerns articles that mention the party without assigning it a particular role. Here follows some illustrations from the coding for the SD:

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191

Major. http://www.dn.se/ledare/signerat/gar-det-bra-med-saffran.2 Minor. http://www.svd.se/opinion/ledarsidan/taktikernas-triumf-gynnarextremism_7718694.svd. This article is about the zeitgeist. The SD is said to have capitalized on this. The article is not about the party as such, however the party is mentioned and is assigned to certain attributes. Irrelevant. http://www.aftonbladet.se/ledare/article14091989.ab. The SD is mentioned in one sentence, however the party does not play any relevant role in the article. In major articles the tone attributed to the party should always be coded. In minor articles, sometimes it is possible to also assess a certain tone towards the party. In some case, however, the box can be left empty if there is no particular tone expressed towards the party. In the Danish case, the coders decided to open up for the possibility of separating between neutral (no tone) and balanced (a tone which is neither positive nor negative [or both]). In irrelevant articles, the tone is never coded. Tone. Positive articles concern articles that use positive words when talking about the party. Neutral/balanced articles concern articles that use neutral terminology and where both positive and negative attributes are assigned to the party (or if the general tone in the article is balanced). If there are no such attributes assigned to the party, the box can be left empty (see above for the Danish case, however). Important to note is that a balanced view does not necessarily mean a more decent or honest article, as compared to e.g. the negative articles. The value balanced is thus not here understood as normative value. In technical terms, we have made a distinction between balanced and neutral articles. The former points to articles that describe the party in both positive and negative terms, or in between. The latter refers to articles that do not, clearly enough, convey a particular tone towards the party. In these cases we have left the box for the variable tone empty. Neutral articles do not feature a particular tone towards the party. Negative articles usually use negative words (such as ‘racist’ or ‘xenophobic’) when talking about the party. These could also be articles that deal with the party as a threat to the parliamentary work of the other parties, or more generally to the community at large. Again, some examples from the SD coding: Positive. There are no examples in the Swedish case. Neutral/balanced. http://www.expressen.se/ledare/expessens-ledare-hotmot-oss-alla/. Negative. http://www.dn.se/ledare/signerat/vissa-veckor-ar-sardeles-braveckor-for-sverige.

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Topic. The articles can be assigned to three topics. There is no hierarchy between the topics, as it gets increasingly difficult to ensure reliability if a hierarchy is introduced. Social Cohesion and Conflicting Values. These articles might concern the overall ‘Zeitgeist’ in the society (e.g., difference between the 1950s and today; ‘right-wing winds’; ‘xenophobic tendencies in the society’; perceptions of national identity, e.g. what it means to be Swedish today and what constitutes Swedish democracy). They might concern the discussion of climate in the parliament or elsewhere. Obviously, articles in this category might tap into general notions and discussions of what constitutes (or ought to develop into) national identity. See for example: http://www.dn.se/ledare/signerat/samtal-botar-hat. Terror and Violence. These articles concern e.g. Breivik or suicide bombings. The ‘and violence’ was later added to include articles that deal with violence and violent attacks on e.g. politicians, committed by (or directed at) various extremist groupings in the society. See for example: http://www.dn.se/ledare/signerat/samtal-botar-hat. Public Opinion. These articles concern e.g. poll fluctuations. They can also be about survey results showing that e.g. the Swedes have become more or less generous in relation to immigrants. See for example: http:// www.svd.se/opinion/ledarsidan/hot-mot-politiker-kan-inte-ursaktas_ 7744408.svd. Parliamentary Affairs. These articles concern e.g. the everyday parliamentary activities of the parliamentary parties. They concern the different coalition agreements and discussions between the parties. See for example: http://www.svd.se/opinion/ledarsidan/hot-mot-politiker-kaninte-ursaktas_7744408.svd. Scandals. These articles concern individuals (party members) who have committed crimes and/or acts. These scandals can also spill over to the party as such. See for example: http://www.dn.se/ledare/signerat/ jarnroren-krossade-nybygget. Welfare and Economy. These articles deal with the welfare state and socio-economic issues such as ‘taxes’ or the distinction between welfare (e.g. the school and various privatization measures) and the economy (e.g. fiscal policy or the financial crisis). See for example: http://www .aftonbladet.se/ledare/fredagmed/matsengstrom/article11974795.ab. Life-style issues and Family. These articles concern life-style issues attributed to the families. They could be about gender relations, abortion, religion or gay marriage. See for example: http://www.svd.se/opinion/ ledarsidan/klyftan-ar-mer-an-en-social-konstruktion_3179867.svd.

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EU/European Integration. These articles concern concrete policy areas which are attributed to the European Union, such as the Euro. They could also be about the European Parliament elections that took place in 2009 or the more general issue of European integration. See for example: http://www.dn.se/ledare/signerat/riksdagen-farlig-rora-i-eu-namnden. Culture Politics. These articles concern the policy area of culture politics. They could also be about the discussion on e.g. Lars Vilks, which associates closely with the aforementioned topic Social Cohesion and Conflicting Values. See for example: http://www.dn.se/ledare/signerat/ vilks-gods-av-motstandet. Law and Order. These articles deal with the judicial system as such or individual criminal activities committed by natives or the immigrants. See for example: http://www.expressen.se/ledare/domaren-ar-rasist/. Foreign Affairs. These articles concern e.g. the national attitudes towards e.g. consequences of the cuts in Utrikes Departementet [Ministry of Foreign Affairs] or the Swedish policy towards Syria or Israel. See for example: http://www.expressen.se/ledare/fuskaren/. Environment. These articles deal with e.g. nuclear plants or the car industry. See for example: http://www.aftonbladet.se/ledare/article125 15108.ab. Infrastructure. These articles deal with e.g. the building of new roads or collective forms of transportation in and between cities. See for example: http://www.dn.se/ledare/signerat/jarnvagsunderhall-populismi-stallet-for-analys. Migration Politics. These articles deal with both immigration and integration politics. See for example: http://www.dn.se/ledare/signerat/ jarnvagsunderhall-populism-i-stallet-for-analys. Internet. These articles deal with issues related to the internet and various related policies/attitudes. See for example: http://www.dn.se/ledare/ huvudledare/historiskt-sa-reinfeldt. Test Coders Niklas Orrenius, journalist at Dagens Nyheter (he has before also worked at Sydvsvenskan and Expressen). He is the author of at least three books related to the SD. Alex Bengtsson, deputy managing director at the anti-racist organization Expo. He works on anti-racist activities and popular education on a daily basis. He has written several articles and books related to the SD. Henrik Emilsson, Ph.D. student in Migration, Urbanization and Societal Change (MUSA). Previously, he worked for the Swedish Integration Board

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and at the ‘Ministry for Integration and Gender Equality’. In addition, he is well acquainted with the Swedish public debate on integration and migration. Jenny Kiiskinen, at the time post-doc researcher at the Malmö Institute for Studies of Migration, Diversity and Welfare (MIM). She is currently involved with a research project on hate crimes and xenophobia. Her doctoral thesis focused on the SD, with a particular emphasis on parliamentary affairs and everyday political work at the local level in Sweden. Björn Fryklund, professor emeritus in international migration and ethnic relations (IMER) and in sociology, Malmö University. He has published several books on Nordic populism and has worked extensively in this field since the late 1970s.

NOTES 1. In the Danish case the praxis between the editorials and op-eds is perhaps particularly notable. The broadsheet Jyllands Posten ( JP) has a permanent editorial panel and does have individually written editorials. JP articles have thus been only coded as editorials. The newspaper Politiken refers each time to the author’s initials, but the newspaper employs all writers. Politiken’s articles are only coded as op-eds. This is the same for the articles collected for the tabloid BT. Ekstra Bladet makes use of authored editorials on Sundays and these are signed by the chief editor. 2. Examples are here given only for the Swedish case. The pragmatic reason for this is that this is where we began.

E APPENDI X 2 Mean Tone towards the Party by newspaper, 2009—2012.

Table A2.1. Mean tone by newspaper, where the party has a major role, 2009–2012.

Number of articles

SWEDEN

137

Dagens Nyheter Svenska Dagbladet Aftonbladet Expressen

44

NORWAY

313

Dagsavisen

83

11 27 55

Aftenposten 59 Dagbladet

93

VG

78

DENMARK

134

Politiken

23

Mean Value, Tone, 2009–2012 (Standard Deviation)

2009 Mean Value, Tone (N. Standard Deviation)

2010 Mean Value, Tone (N. Standard Deviation)

2011 Mean Value, Tone (N. Standard Deviation)

2012 Mean Value, Tone (N. Standard Deviation)

1.09 (0.294) 1.05 (0.211) 1.45 (0.522) 1 1.11 (0.315) 1.48 (0.572) 1.30 (0.512) 1.68 (0. 6) 1.44 (0.527) 1.55 (0.617) 1.71 (0.573) 1.52 (0.511)

1.07 (27. 0.267) 1 (10. )

1.14 (42. 0.354) 1.07 (14. 0.267) 2 (3. )

1.11 (27. 0.32) 1.13 (8. 0.354) 1 (1. )

1.05 (41. 0.218) 1 (12. )

1.33 (3. 0.577) 1 (3. ) 1.09 (11. 0.302) 1.50 (82. 0.572) 1.25 (24. 0.442) 1.64 (14. 0.633) 1.33 (24. 0.482) 1. 90 (20. 0.553) 1.91 (32. 0.588) 1.67 (3. 0.577)

1 (7. ) 1.11 (18. 0.323) 1.45 (69. 0.590) 1.60 (15. 0.737) 1.46 (13. 0.660) 1.35 (20. 0.489) 1.43 (21. 0.598) 1.5 (50. 0.544) 1.17 (6. 0.408)

1.25 (4. 0.5) 1 (7. ) 1 (10. ) 1.18 (11. 1.07 (15. 0.405) 0.258) 1.47 (116. 1.50 (46. (0.556) (0.548) 1.21 (29. 1.27 (15. 0.412) 0.458) 1.74 (23. 1.89 (9. 0.541) 0.601) 1.53 (32. 1.53 (17. 0.567) 0.514) 1.44 (32. 1.40 (5. 0.619) 0.548) 1.71 (42. 2.1 (10. 0.508) 0.568) 1.64 (11. 1.67 (3. 0.505) 0.577)

196

JyllandsPosten BT

APPENDIX 2

14 61

Ekstrabladet 36

1.79 (0.802) 1.9 (0.507) 1.47 (0.506 )

2 (3. 1) 2 (18. 0.594) 1.75 (8. 0.463)

1.33 (3. 0.577) 1.78 (23. 0.518) 1.28 (18. 0.461)

1.5 (6. 0.548) 1.94 (16. 0.442) 1.56 (9. 0.527)

3 (2.) 2 (4. ) 2 (1. )

Table A2.2. Mean tone by newspaper, where the party has a minor role, 2009–2012.

Number of articles

SWEDEN

211

Dagens Nyheter Svenska Dagbladet Aftonbladet Expressen

58

NORWAY

1010

Dagsavisen

240

18 57 78

Aftenposten 226 Dagbladet

319

VG

225

DENMARK

466

Politiken

129

JyllandsPosten BT

82 160

Ekstrabladet 95

2009 Mean Mean Value, Value Tone (N. (Tone), Standard 2009–2012 Deviation)

2010 Mean Value, Tone (N. Standard Deviation)

2011 Mean Value, Tone (N. Standard Deviation)

2012 Mean Value, Tone (N. Standard Deviation)

1.15 (0.360) 1.19 (0.395) 1.28 (0.461) 1 1.21 (0.406) 1.82 (0.797) 1.74 (0.503) 1.86 (0.465) 1.81 (1.230) 1.86 (0.466) 1.93 (0.321) 1.87 (0.383) 1.95 (0.348) 1.99 (0.25) 1.91 (0.294)

1.11 (79. 0.320) 1.24 (21. 0.436) 1.13 (8. 0.354) 1 (18. ) 1.09 (32. 0.296) 1.81 (238. 0.513) 1.82 (57. 0.601) 1.92 (53. 0.432) 1.69 (81. 0.516) 1.87 (47. 0.448) 1.91 (138. 0.339) 1.83 (41. 0.442) 1.96 (25. 0.351) 1.93 (46. 0.250) 1.92 (26. 0.272)

1.13 (63. 0.336) 1.04 (23. 0.209) 1.50 (4. 0.577) 1 (17.) 1.26 (19. 0.452) 1.86 (268. 1.333) 1.71 (65. 0.491) 1.91 (57. 0.510) 2.02 (81. 2.291) 1.75 (65. 0.560) 1.95 (128. 0.329) 1.85 (26. 0.368) 1.96 (23. 0.367) 2.04 (54. 0.272) 1.88 (25. 0.332)

1.29 (38. 0.460) 1.38 (8. 0.518) 2 (1. )

1.13 (31. 0.341) 1.33 (6. 0.516) 1.20 (5. 0.447) 1 (6. ) 1.07 (14. 0.267) 1.78 (278. 0.454) 1.75 (63. 0.439) 1.79 (67. 0.445) 1.68 (78. 0.470) 1.93 (70. 0.428) 1.94 (161. 0.289) 1.90 (49. 0.368) 1.95 (22. 0.213) 1.98 (51. 0.244) 1.92 (39. 0.270)

1 (16.) 1.54 (13. 0.519) 1.81 (226. 0.453) 1.67 (55. 0.474) 1.84 (49. 0.472) 1.85 (79. 0.455) 1.91 (43. 0.366) 1.92 (39. 0.354) 1.92 (13. 0.277) 1.92 (12. 0.515) 2 (9. ) 1.80 (5. 0.448)

197

APPENDIX 2

Table A2.3. Mean tone by newspaper, where the party has a major or minor role, 2009–2012.

Number of articles

SWEDEN

348

Dagens Nyheter Svenska Dagbladet Aftonbladet Expressen

102

NORWAY

1323

Dagsavisen

323

29 84 133

Aftenposten 285 Dagbladet

412

VG

303

DENMARK

600

Politiken

152

JyllandsPosten BT

96 221

Ekstrabladet 131

2009 Mean Value, Mean Value Tone (N. (Tone), Standard 2009–2012 Deviation)

2010 Mean Value, Tone (N. Standard Deviation)

2011 Mean Value, Tone (N. Standard Deviation)

2012 Mean Value, Tone (N. Standard Deviation)

1.13 (0.336) 1.13 (0.335) 1.34 (0.484) 1 1.17 (0.373) 1.74 (0.764) 1.63 (0.539) 1.82 (0.501) 1.73 (1.120) 1.78 (0.526) 1.88 (0.402) 1.82 (0.422) 1.93 (0.441) 1.96 (0.342) 1.79 (0.412)

1.12 (121. 0.331) 1.17 (35. 0.382) 1.36 (11. 0.505) 1 (25. ) 1.1 (50. 0.303) 1.73 (307. 0.556) 1.78 (72. 0.633) 1.83 (66. 0.514) 1.62 (101. 0.526) 1.74 (68. 0.536) 1.80 (188. 0.441) 1. 74 (47. 0.488) 1.89 (28. 0.416) 1.88 (69. 0.365) 1.66 (44. 0.479)

1.12 (90. 0.329) 1.06 (31. 0.25) 1.4 (5. 0.548) 1 (24. ) 1.23 (30. 0.43) 1.74 (384. 1.170) 1.55 (94. 0.521) 1.86 (80. 0.522) 1.88 (113. 1.972) 1.65 (97. 0.596) 1.89 (170. 0.393) 1.78 (37. 0.417) 1.86 (29. 0.441) 2.01 (70. 0.318) 1.79 (34. 0.410)

1.16 (79. 0.373) 1.15 (20. 0.366) 1.4 (5. 0.548) 1 (26.) 1.29 (28. 0.46) 1.76 (272. 0.484) 1.59 (70. 0.496) 1.84 (58. 0.489) 1.79 (96. 0.479) 1.85 (48. 0.412) 1.96 (49. 0.406) 1.88 (16. 0.342) 2.07 (14. 0.616) 2 (13. )

1.1 (58. 0.307) 1.13 (16. 0.342) 1.25 (8. 0.463) 1 (9. ) 1.08 (25. 0.277) 1.72 (360. 0.497) 1.61 (87. 0.491) 1.77 (81. 0.481) 1.60 (102. 0.493) 1.92 (90. 0.455) 1.93 (193. 0.354) 1.88 (52. 0.379) 1.96 (25. 0.351) 1.99 (69. 0.364) 1.89 (47. 0.312)

1.83 (6. 0.408)

E APPENDI X 3 Topics in the Newspapers

Table A3.1. Topics in the editorials in the four Swedish newspapers (N=838). Dagens Nyheter (major/ minor)

Svenska Dagbladet (major/ minor)

Aftonbladet (major/ minor)

Expressen (major/ minor)

268 (106/162)

62 (34/28)

14 (5/9)

76 (24/52)

116 (43/73)

36 (10/26)

7 (0/7)

3 (1/2)

10 (1/9)

16 (8/8)

77 (23/54) 155 (25/130) 26 (22/4) 117 (22/95) 12 (3/9)

26 (8/18) 74 (11/63)

16 (3/13) 22 (1/21)

16 (5/11) 19 (2/17)

19 (7/12) 40 (11/29)

8 (7/1) 30 (6/24)

3 (3/0) 14 (1/13)

5 (5/0) 30 (5/25)

10 (7/3) 43 (10/33)

1 (0/1)

0

4 (1/3)

7 (2/5)

29 (4/25)

11 (1/10)

5 (0/5)

5 (2/3)

8 (1/7)

4 (1/3) 28 (9/19) 11 (0/11) 3 (0/3) 1 (0/1) 64 (12/52)

2 (0/2) 10 (3/7) 3 (0/3) 2 (0/2) 0 25 (7/18)

0 2 (1/1) 1 (0/1) 0 0 8 (0/8)

0 3 (1/2) 3 (0/3) 1 (0/1) 1 (0/1) 17 (2/15)

2 (1/1) 13 (4/9) 4 (0/4) 0 0 14 (3/11)

7 (2/5) 838 (239/599)

3 (1/2) 264 (78/186)

2 (0/2) 90 (15/75)

2 (1/1) 192 (49/143)

0 292 (97/195))

Total (major/ minor)

Social Cohesion and Conflicting Values Terror and Violence Public Opinion Parliamentary Affairs Scandals Welfare and Economy Life-Style Issues and Family EU/European Integration Culture Politics Law and Order Foreign Affairs Environment Infrastructure Migration Politics Internet Total

199

APPENDIX 3

Table A3.2. Topics in the editorials in the four Norwegian newspapers (N=1458). Total (major/ minor)

Social Cohesion 89 (32/57) and Conflicting Values Terror and 68 (15/53) Violence Public Opinion 133 (29/104) Parliamentary 478 Affairs (129/349) Scandals 50 (36/14) Welfare and 164 Economy (28/136) Life-Style Issues 33 (8/25) and Family EU/European 12 (0/12) Integration Culture Politics 107 (28/79) Law and Order 47 (10/37) Foreign Affairs 53 (6/47) Environment 70 (5/65) Infrastructure 22 (1/21) Migration 108 Politics (31/77) Internet 24 (2/22) Total 1458 (360/1098)

Aftenposten (major/ minor)

Dagbladet (major/ minor)

VG (major/ minor)

Dagsavisen (major/ minor)

17 (6/11)

28 (11/17)

16 (6/10)

28 (9/19)

14 (4/10)

18 (3/15)

20 (6/14)

16 (2/14)

24 (1/23)

42 (9/33)

23 (8/15)

44 (11/33)

122 (35/87) 12 (9/3) 39 (0/39)

127 (34/93) 12 (6/6) 56 (9/47)

112 (27/85) 14 (11/3) 29 (6/23)

117 (33/84) 12 (10/2) 40 (13/27)

6 (0/6)

13 (6/7)

7 (1/6)

7 (1/6)

4 (0/4)

2 (0/2)

3 (0/3)

3 (0/3)

30 (5/25)

29 (9/20)

29 (9/20)

19 (5/14)

11 (3/8) 14 (2/12) 14 (1/13) 3 (1/2) 22 (5/17)

14 (2/12) 15 (2/13) 26 (1/25) 7 (0/7) 48 (12/36)

14 (3/11) 9 (1/8) 13 (2/11) 11 (0/11) 15 (5/10)

8 (2/6) 15 (1/14) 17 (1/16) 1 (0/1) 23 (9/14)

8 (1/7) 340 (73/267)

3 (1/2) 440 (105/335)

6 (0/6) 321 (85/236)

7 (0/7) 357 (97/260)

200

APPENDIX 3

Table A3.3. Topics in the editorials in the four Danish newspapers (N=828).

Social Cohesion and Conflicting Values Terror and Violence Public Opinion Parliamentary Affairs Scandals Welfare and Economy Life-Style Issues and Family EU/European Integration Culture Politics Law and Order Foreign affairs Environment Infrastructure Migration Politics Internet Total

TOTAL (major/ minor)

BT (major/ minor)

Ekstrabladet Politiken (major/ (major/ minor) minor)

JyllandsPosten (major/ minor)

139 (45/94)

43 (21/22)

28 (12/16)

42 (8/34)

26 (4/22)

20 (2/18)

4 (1/3)

1 (0/1)

8 (1/7)

7 (0/7)

23 (5/18) 229 (54/175) 13 (2/11) 156 (30/126) 10 (1/9)

18 (5/13) 1 (0/1) 114 (32/82) 50 (11/39)

2 (0/2) 40 (6/34)

2 (0/2) 25 (5/20)

10 (2/8) 49 (12/37)

1 (0/1) 30 (7/23)

2 (0/2) 50 (10/40)

0 37 (1/26)

7 (1/6)

1 (0/1)

2 (0/2)

–

42 (16/26)

19 (7/12)

4 (2/2)

11 (2/9)

8 (5/3)

18 (4/14) 54 (15/39) 13 (1/12) 9 (1/8) 5 (0/5) 97 (35/62)

5 (0/5) 22 (7/15) 5 (0/5) 2 (0/2) 1 (0/1) 35 (15/20)

6 (3/3) 12 (3/9) 2 (1/1) 2 (1/1) 1 (0/1) 21 (10/11)

6 (1/5) 10 (0/10) 4 (0/4) 2 (0/2) 1 (0/1) 28 (8/20)

1 (0/1) 10 (5/5) 2 (0/2) 3 (0/3) 2 (0/2) 13 (2/11)

0 828 (211/617)

0 334 (103/231)

0 160 (50/110)

0 208 (36/172)

0 126 (22/104)

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E INDEX

Aftenposten, 1, 115–17, 137, 154–55, 157–58, 195–97, 199 Aftonbladet, 90, 93, 115–17, 132–34, 144–47, 150–52, 190–93, 195, 197 anti-tax, 43, 99 Art, David, 4, 19–20, 40, 91–92, 118 on the continuum of the political environment 19–20, 118 on party activists 91–92 on the SD 40, 91 assimilation, 40, 179, 204, 218 asylum seeker, 12, 101, 187 attitudes, 3, 6, 12, 24, 37, 52, 68, 79–80, 83n5, 115, 118, 127, 147, 153, 165, 175, 179, 189n1, 193, 202, 210 towards the parties, 79, 115, 118, 127, 165, 179 audience, 3–5, 7, 57, 69–72, 80, 112, 114, 166–67 authoritarian, 14, 15, 33, 37, 39, 41–44, 49, 52, 54n7, 135, 146, 171 authoritarianism, 14, 171 Bale, Tim, 50–51, 53 on mainstream reactions, 50–51 on Social Democracy, 53 Barthes, Roland (see also myth), 62–63, 82n3 Berman, Sheri, 31, 35 on Social Democracy (see also Social Democracy), 31, 35 on the People’s Home (see also People´s Home metaphor), 31

Betz, Hans-Georg, 15, 41, 46, 53, 95 on extremism, 15 on losers of modernity, 46 on the welfare state, 95 on working class voters, 41, 53 Billig, Michael, 20–21, 29n21 on banal nationalism, 29n21 blame game, 153, 165 block-politics, 141 border, 17, 25, 56, 89, 105, 113, 141, 143, 152, 166, 169, 173, 186, 188 border control, 141, 143 borders of normality, 17, 25, 56, 113, 166, 173 Bornschier, Simon, 41, 44, 47–51, 55n7 on economy as deficient explanation, 41, 47–49, 51, 55n7 on the people versus the elite, 44 on supply (see also supply side), 48 Bottici, Chiara, 62–63 Branting, Hjalmar, 31, 35, 86 Breivik, Anders Behring, 123, 145, 192 BT, 115–17, 119, 140–43, 161, 194n1, 196–97, 200 Canovan, Margaret, 21, 27n9, 29n17, 59–60, 66–67 on democracy (see also democracy), 60

220

INDEX

on myth (see also myth), 59, 66–67 on Michael Oakeshott (see also politics of faith, politics of scepticism), 60 on populism, 21, 29n17, 60 on the people, 27n9, 59, 67 centre–periphery cleavage, 88, 103, 109 charismatic leader, 14, 177–79, 213 Christian, 44, 54n4, 98, 100, 105, 107, 111n12, 136, 156, 163 Christian Democrat, 54n4, 111n12, 136, 156, 163 citizenship, 28n15, 49, 88, 103, 180 civic, 13, 65–66, 107, 184 and ethnic (see also ethnic), 65–66 civilization, 29n18, 49, 100, 102, 105, 108 claim (noon), 3–7, 9–10, 13, 16–17, 19–22, 24–25, 28n14, 29n22, 32, 51, 56–58, 60–63, 66–71, 86, 91–93, 98–99, 102, 104, 106, 109, 113, 120, 130, 132, 136, 145, 149, 151, 154–55, 157, 164, 168, 171, 174, 182, 184, 188 nationalist claims (see also national), 21–22 political claims, 3, 9, 62, 70, 98, 113 rhetorical claims (see also rhetoric), 3, 12, 32, 68–69, 168 class, 14, 31, 41, 46–47, 49, 52–53, 54n6, 62, 64, 84–85, 88–89, 107–9, 110n4, 152–153, 164 class cleavages, 14, 46–47, 54n6, 164 class struggle, 31, 64, 88 working-class, 41, 49, 52–53, 54n6, 107–8, 152 code, xiii, 3, 17, 57, 70, 72–73, 75–79, 81, 83n8, 83n9, 98, 113,

116, 120, 124–25, 129n2, 129n2, 129n3, 129n4, 137–38, 166, 168, 182, 190–94, 194n1 coding scheme, 75, 113, 129n2 cultural code (see also culture), 3, 17, 57, 70, 72, 81, 98, 166, 182 individual (test) coder, xiii, 76–79, 83n8, 116, 124, 193–94 common man, 25–26, 64, 90–92, 99, 142, 171–72, 178–83, 188 communication strategy, 21, 66–68 communism, 99, 106 comparison, xii, 4, 19, 26n2, 38, 44, 57, 60, 73, 102, 110 conservatism, 84, 91–92 social conservatism, 91–92 containment, 147, 157, 162 convergence, 3, 46, 50, 109, 128, 176–77 issue convergence, 109 cordon sanitaire, 19–20, 51, 91, 176 counter-public, 4, 122 credibility, x–xi, 2–3, 5–11, 18–20, 22–23, 25, 29n19, 45–46, 51–53, 56–57, 63–65, 69–70, 73–74, 81, 90–92, 99, 109, 113, 129n11, 154, 165–66, 169–70, 177–78, 180, 184 threshold of credibility, xi, 3, 5, 8–9, 11, 19–20, 25, 29n20, 46, 52, 56, 64, 74, 81, 90–92, 113, 129n11, 154, 165–66, 169–70, 177–78, 184 crime, 97, 103, 175–76, 180 culture, 10–11, 16, 29n18, 44, 49, 52, 59, 82n2, 93–94, 96, 100, 102, 104–8, 137, 145, 148, 154, 157, 160, 170, 175, 178–80, 166, 193 (see also socio-cultural, multiculturalism) cultural conformism, 90–95, 108, 110, 175 cultural elite (see also elite), x, 3, 5–6, 25, 58, 66–67, 93, 95, 97, 106, 177

INDEX

cultural code, 3, 17, 57, 70, 72, 81, 98, 182 cultural diversity, 100 cultural heritage, 100, 102, 105–6 (see also historical legacy) culture politics, 108, 137, 160, 193 cultural radical, 105 Danish culture, 104–7, 178, 180 foreign culture, 102, 105 Norwegian culture, 100, 102, 180 Swedish culture, 93–94, 96, 108–9, 166, 178 Dagbladet, 115–17, 119, 136, 154, 157, 159, 196–97, 199 Dagens Nyheter, 115–16, 131–34, 144–45, 147, 149–52, 193, 195–98 Dagsavisen, 115–17, 127, 136, 154–56, 158, 195–97, 199 Dansk Folkeparti (DF), 2–6, 6–7, 11, 19, 24–25, 28n12, 32, 39, 43–44, 51, 55n9, 73–74, 79, 90, 104–8, 114, 117, 119–22, 125–27, 129n4, 130, 137–43, 159–64, 166, 170, 173, 175–77, 183, 185nn2–3 historical legacy, 37, 42–45, 104–10, 114, 172–73, 175 immigration (see also immigration), 4, 6, 43–44, 105–7, 109, 140, 164–66, 188 integration, 106, 138, 140, 160, 185n2 organization, 43, 55n9, 161, 177 position in domestic politics and mainstream reactions, 2, 6, 11, 19, 25, 28n12, 42–44, 51, 73–74, 79, 104–8, 114, 119– 22, 126–27, 129n4, 159–167, 176 Danish People’s Party (see also Dansk Folkeparti), 2, 27n12, 53, 69, 104–5, 112, 150, 182 Danish Progress Party, 42–44, 104

221

decent worker (see also common people), 97, 103, 110 demand side (see also supply side), 4, 25, 34, 46–48, 52–53, 174 Demker, Marie, 32–33, 36, 52, 68, 82n5 on party family, 32–33, 36 on anti-immigration attitudes, 52, 68, 82n5 democracy, 16, 22, 35, 43, 51, 58–62, 84–86, 88, 92, 102, 133, 150, 163, 170, 185, 192 democratic politics 13, 60–61, 181 democratic protest, 61, 181 (see also populism) and liberalism (see also liberalism), 13–14 and populism (see also populism), 22, 51, 59–62, 185 representative democracy, 16, 58 Swedish democracy, 192 demos, 10, 13, 67, 86, 95 and ethnos, 67, 86, 95 Denmark, xi, xin1, 2, 6–7, 16, 19–20, 23–26, 26n2, 27n12, 28, 28n12, 32–33, 36–38, 40, 42–45, 51–52, 55n14, 69, 74, 79, 87–90, 104–110, 114–17, 119–21, 123–25, 127–28, 129n5, 133, 137–43, 146, 150, 159–66, 168–69, 173, 175–77, 179, 182–83, 185nn1–2, 187–89, 195–97, 200 Dansk Folkeparti (see also Dansk Folkeparti), 2, 7, 27–28n12, 28, 42–45, 69, 74, 79, 104–110, 114–15, 117, 119–21, 123–25, 127–28, 129n5, 133, 138, 141–43, 159–66, 168–69, 173, 175–77, 182–83, 185n2, 187 domestic politics (see also domestic politics), xin1, 32–33, 51–52, 79, 104–110, 120–21, 127–128, 129n5, 133, 138,

222

INDEX

143, 161–63, 165–66, 168, 173, 175–77, 182–83, 185nn 1–2, 187 history, 32, 36–38, 87–90, 104–110, 175, 183 immigration (see also immigration), 6, 52, 105–7, 127, 138, 140, 142–43, 160, 164–65–66, 185n1 public debate (see also mainstream), 6, 107, 128, 137–140, 142, 161–63, 166, 168, 173, 175, 187 descriptive statistics, 25, 74, 80, 127 devil in disguise, 144, 147, 163 diagnosis, 81–82, 130, 144, 159–61, 163, 165, 188 Denmark, 159–161 Norway, 154–56 Sweden, 144–47, 165 Dijk, van Teun, 17, 18, 112 denial of racism, 18 negative other (re)presentation, 18 positive self presentation, 17 discourse, 11–2, 16–7, 24, 27, 43, 45, 67, 72–3, 98, 112, 184 discourse analysis, 24 discursive, 5, 13, 16–17, 21, 24–25, 34, 37, 45, 56, 89–90, 97, 101, 108, 166, 168–71, 174, 182–84, 185n2 elite discourse, 17, 72 first discursive layer (see also layered discursive approach), 24, 34, 65 national identity (see also national identity), 16, 45, 68, 108, 166, 168, 184 political discourse, 67 public discourse, 112 second discursive layer (see also layered discursive approach), 25, 57

diversity, 2–3, 5, 12–13, 28nn13–14, 32, 37, 40, 42, 55n10, 56–57, 87, 94, 100, 152, 168, 172–73, 175, 180, 182, 188–89 cultural diversity, 42, 100 ethnic diversity (see also ethnic), 2, 5, 12, 28n14, 37, 55n10, 173, 175, 180 domestic politics, xi, 3, 5, 8, 34, 42, 44, 52, 56–7, 70, 74, 81, 106, 114, 154, 172, 175–77, 181, 183, 186, 189 dream, 3, 27n10, 64, 98, 137, 155, 169, 184–85 dreampolitik, 64, 98 editorial, xi, 3, 9, 17, 19–20, 24–25, 45–46, 56–57, 61, 69–75, 77–81, 98, 112–20, 122–24, 127–28, 129n4, 130–35, 137–52, 154–66, 168–69, 173–76, 184, 185n1, 190, 194n1, 198–200 editorial writer, 17, 20, 45, 56–57, 61, 70–74, 112–14, 137, 144–47, 149–50, 154–56, 165–66, 173, 184 economy, 12, 15, 32–33, 44, 46, 49, 52, 54nn6–7, 75, 79, 109, 111, 125–26, 128, 135, 137–38, 141–42, 161–62, 172, 175, 192, 198–200 economy and culture, 175 economic crisis, 12, 88, 138, 153, 160, 172, 175, 177 welfare and economy (see also topic), 75, 79, 125–26, 128, 135, 137–38, 141–42, 175, 192, 198–200 Ekstra Bladet, 115–17, 135, 140–43, 194n1 election, x–xi, 1–2, 6–8, 11, 11nn11–12, 33, 38–43, 54n4, 55n9, 55nn13–14, 60, 91, 96, 98–99, 103–4, 114, 119–20, 122–24, 128, 129n5, 131–32, 135–37, 139–40,

INDEX

154, 157, 167nn5–6, 167n9, 173, 176–77, 181–82, 186–88, 193 1973 national elections, 7, 33, 40, 42 electoral fortune, xi, 3, 7, 11, 15–16, 23, 33–34, 37, 42, 45, 48, 50–53, 69, 85, 108, 128, 145, 153, 179, 187–88, electoral threshold, xi, 1, 3, 7, 38, 40, 46, 51, 81, 132, 147, 184 electorate, xi, 3, 41, 43, 48–50, 52, 55n9, 56, 58, 63, 92, 95, 104, 114, 144–45, 148, 165, 178, 182, 188 elite, x–xi, 3, 5–6, 8, 10, 14, 16–17, 21–22, 25, 27n9, 39, 44, 54n1, 57– 59, 66–68, 70–72, 81, 91–93, 95, 97–99, 102, 105–6, 109, 112–13, 117, 128, 153, 166, 170–72, 174, 176–77, 179, 181, 183, 188 cultural elite (see also culture), x, 3, 5–6, 25, 44, 58, 66–67, 93, 95, 97, 106, 177 media elite, 71, 81, 112–13, 153, 166, 181 political elite, 3, 5–6, 25, 44, 58, 66–67, 81, 95, 97, 105–6, 113, 166, 177, 179, 181 populism, 21–22, 59, 67–68, 183, 188 Ellinas, Antonis A., 7, 14, 33, 49, 51, 63, 81 on socio-cultural shift (see also socio-cultural), 33, 49, 51 on the media (see also media), 51, 81 on the nationalist card, 16, 63 emotion, x, 9–10, 27n7, 27n10, 29n19, 56, 61, 64, 73, 85, 87, 89, 98, 111n9, 114, 132, 165–66, 170, 173–74, 178, 181–85, 187 and reason (see also reason), 9, 27n7, 61, 64, 85, 165, 170, 185 Engelbrektsson, Engelbrekt, 86

223

Erlander, Tage, 40, 92 establishment, 6–7, 14, 19, 23, 38, 44, 47, 51, 67, 93, 152–53, 164–65, 187 anti-establishment, 7, 14, 23, 44, 47, 51, 187 ethnic, 2, 5, 10, 12–13, 15, 28n14, 37, 47, 55n10, 82n2, 91–92, 100–1, 106, 110n6, 138, 160, 172–75, 180 and civic (see also civic), 65–66 ethnic competition, 47, 174 ethos, 3, 5, 8–10, 16, 27n10, 56, 70, 92, 113, 168, 170, 182, 184 ethos-position, 3, 5, 9–10, 16, 56, 113,168, 170, 184 EU, 33, 42, 75, 125–26, 49, 135, 143, 187, 193, 198–200 Europe, 1, 8, 11–12, 14–16, 19, 28, 28n12, 28n16, 32–35, 39, 43–45, 48–50, 54n7, 55n14, 63, 68, 86, 89, 92, 95, 111n12, 132, 143, 147, 159, 162, 164, 175–76, 180–82, 187 Expressen, 115–18, 131, 133–34, 144–50, 191, 193, 195–98 extremism, 9, 18, 29n18, 92, 118, 131, 152, 154, 165, 169–70 extremist voter, 74 and radicalism (see also radicalism), 9, 29n18, 92, 152, 154, 165, 169–70 fear, x, 19, 35–36, 47, 59, 95, 98, 101, 105, 133, 146–47, 182, 187 Finland, 16, 23, 28n12, 33 True Finns (see also True Finns), 23, 28n12 frame, 7, 18, 20, 25–26, 33, 45, 47, 49, 61, 65, 70–74, 80–82, 106, 112– 13, 117, 122, 128, 129n13, 130, 144, 147, 150, 152–53, 156–59, 161–66, 171–74, 184, 188–89 diagnostic frame (see also diagnosis), 144, 147, 156, 163 dominant frame, 147, 156, 163–65

224

INDEX

frame analysis, 26, 73–74, 80–82, 117, 162, 166 nostalgic frame, 152, 173 France, 15, 51, 55n14, 95, 172, 182 and Germany, 51, 172 and Marine Le Pen, 95, 182 freedom of religion, 15, 105 freedom of speech, 107 Fremskrittspartiet (FrP), 2–3, 6–7, 11, 19, 25, 28n16, 32, 39–42, 44, 73–74, 79, 99–104, 108–9, 111n11, 114, 117, 119–25, 127–28, 129n10, 130–32, 135–37, 154–59, 163–66, 170, 172, 175–77, 171–72, 179–80, 183, 186 historical legacy, 39–42, 44, 99–104, 172 immigration (see also immigration), 99–102, 109, 136–37, 155–58, 166 integration, 101–3, 136, 155, 157–58, 179–80 organization, 41, 99, 159 position in domestic politics and mainstream reactions, 2–3, 6, 11, 19, 25, 41, 44, 103–4, 108–9, 111n11, 114, 120–25, 127–28, 130–31, 135–37, 154–59, 163–66, 175–77, 183, 186 Front National, 41, 182 Fryklund, Björn, 23, 26n2, 32, 38, 41, 99 on populism in Denmark, 32 on populism in Finland, 23 on populism in Norway, 41, 99 on populism in Sweden, 38 gender, 18, 24, 33, 47, 54n6, 66–67, 98, 104, 107, 171, 175 gender equality, 18, 66, 104 Germany (see also France), 34, 51, 53, 53n1, 88–89, 134, 172, 182, 187

Glistrup, Mogens, 40, 42 government, 2, 6, 23, 27n12, 31–32, 34–36, 41–44, 54n5, 55n14, 59–60, 85, 87, 94, 96, 98–99, 104, 106, 108, 114, 119–20, 122, 124, 128, 131–32, 136–38, 140–43, 148, 150, 155–65, 167nn4–5, 167n12, 173, 175–76, 179–80, 185n2, 186–87 Denmark (see also Denmark), 2, 32, 42–44, 104, 106, 119–20, 122, 138, 140–43, 150, 160–61, 163–64, 173, 176, 180, 185n2, 187 Norway (see also Norway), 2, 6, 27n12, 41, 87, 96, 99, 104, 106, 114, 119, 124, 128, 136– 37, 155–59, 163–65, 167n12, 175, 179, 186–87 Social Democratic Government (see also Social Democracy), 31–32, 35–36, 42–43, 85, 94, 96, 99, 108, 167n12, 176 Sweden (see also Sweden), 31–32, 34, 54n5, 85, 87, 94, 96, 98, 108, 132, 148, 176, 186 Grundtvig, Nikolaj Frederik Severin, 89, 110n4 Hagelund, Anniken, xiii, 26, 36–37, 41–42, 74, 79, 100, 115, 129n1, 155–57, 167n1, 173 on the FrP, 41–42, 79, 100, 155–57, 173 on immigration policy, 36–37, 115, 185n1 Hagen, Carl Ivar, 41, 103, 159, 165 halo-effect 47, 174 Hansson, Per-Albin, 84, 86, 90, 111, 178 heartland (see also Taggart, Paul), 66–67, 92, 96, 158 Høyre, 1–2, 159, 175, 179 historical legacy, 6, 37–45, 68, 91, 109, 114, 118, 172, 175

INDEX

identity, 2–3, 5, 9, 12–14, 16–21, 23–25, 27n7, 32, 34, 45, 47, 49–51, 53, 54n6, 56–57, 59, 61–63, 65, 68, 70–71, 81–82, 85–88, 90–91, 93, 96–98, 109, 111n9, 112–14, 117, 122, 124, 128, 130, 135, 147, 149–50, 153–54, 159–60, 162, 166, 167n8, 168, 170, 173–74, 177–78, 182–84, 185n3, 192 identify yourself, 59, 122 national identity (see also national), 3, 5, 9, 12–14, 16–18, 20–21, 23, 25, 32, 34, 45, 47, 49–51, 53, 56–57, 61, 63, 65, 68, 70–71, 81–82, 85–88, 90–91, 93, 96–98, 109, 112–14, 117, 124, 128, 130, 135, 147, 149–50, 154, 159, 162, 166, 168, 170, 173–74, 177–78, 182–84, 185n3, 192 ideology, 9, 12, 14–15, 24, 28n15, 35, 47–48, 60, 62, 86, 92, 106, 165, 183 ideological position, 9, 18, 20, 22, 32, 45, 57, 109, 170, 172 thin ideology, 14–15, 183 immigration, xi, 3–4, 6, 11–12, 14–15, 18–19, 23–24, 28n13, 29n18, 33– 34, 36–39, 41–44, 46, 48, 50–53, 54n6, 61, 63, 67–70, 79, 81, 82n5, 91–93, 96–97, 99–102, 104–7, 109, 114–15, 127–28, 131–32, 135–38, 140, 142–43, 145, 147–52, 155–58, 160, 164–67, 169, 171–73, 175, 177, 179–81, 184, 185n1, 185n4, 188–89, 193 anti-immigration, 14–15, 39, 43–44, 48, 52, 67–68, 104, 114, 132, 147–48, 155, 165, 188–89 immigration issue, xi, 14–15, 33, 36, 41–43, 46, 51–52, 54n6, 63, 100, 106, 131, 137, 148, 150, 155, 157, 164, 175, 188

225

immigration politics, xi, 19, 24, 28n13, 39, 44, 70, 79, 82n5, 91–92, 96, 99, 101, 104, 114, 127, 140, 143, 155, 157, 171, 173, 177, 179–80, 188 migration politics (see also topic), 19, 52, 75, 79, 96, 115, 123, 125–27, 133–34, 136, 138–43, 160, 162, 193, 198–200 Integration, 11, 24n3, 36–37, 40, 44, 53, 61, 70, 91, 96, 101–3, 106, 136, 138, 140, 145 149–50, 155, 157–58, 160, 167n6, 171, 177, 179–81, 185nn1–2, 188, 193 integration policy, 24n3, 70, 91, 96, 103, 140, 157, 171 Islam, 2, 101, 105–7, 136, 140, 142, 173 Jensen, Siv, 1, 136, 159, 165 Jyllands-Posten, 116–17, 143, 194n1, 196–97, 200 Kitschelt, Herbert, 8–9, 15, 33, 35, 38, 41–42, 50, 54n7, 175 electoral competition, 8–9, 33, 38, 42, 50, 52–53 the winning formula, 15, 39, 41, 54n7 Kjærsgaard, Pia, 43, 104, 177–78, 185n3 Lange, Anders, 40–41, 99 layered discursive approach, 5, 16–17, 37, 45, 56–57, 89, 174 liberalism (see also party), xi, 2, 13– 15, 18, 28–29n16, 36–39, 41–44, 52, 54n5 54n7, 55n8, 55nn12–13, 86–87, 99–101, 104, 109, 114, 116–17, 119–20, 132, 134, 136, 138–43, 156, 160, 162–64, 170, 175 liberal democracy, 2, 14–15, 55n12, 86, 170, 175 liberal values, 18, 37, 55n13

226

INDEX

neo-liberal, 15, 28–29n16, 39, 43–44, 55n8, 104 Lippmann, Walter, 65, 72 logos, 10, 27n8, 170, 182 mainstream, xi, 1–4, 6–8, 11, 15, 18–19, 25, 29n19, 32, 35–36, 40, 42–46, 48, 50–52–53, 59, 61, 63, 70, 74, 79, 81–82, 87, 91–92, 104, 110n5, 112–14, 116–17, 120, 122, 127–28, 129n4, 130, 134, 136, 138–40, 146, 148, 151, 153–54, 158–61, 163–64, 166, 167n4, 168, 170, 173–74, 176–77, 179, 184, 185n2, 186–88, 189n1 mainstream editorial, 3, 112–113, 120, 122, 130, 139, 160–61, 163, 166, 168, 173–74, 189n1 mainstream elite (see also elite), 176, 179 mainstream party (see also party), xi, 1–3, 7–8, 18, 35–36, 40, 45, 48, 50–52, 79, 91, 129n4, 130, 134, 136, 140, 146, 151, 158, 163–64, 167n4, 170, 172–73, 176, 186, 188 mainstream press (see also media), xi, 81, 114, 153, 173, 179 media, x–xi, 4, 6, 18, 25, 46, 51, 53, 70–72, 74, 80–81, 98, 112–13, 117, 119, 122, 127–28, 136, 138–40, 148, 153–54, 156, 159, 165–66, 174, 176, 178, 181, 184, 187, 189 mainstream media, 6, 46, 53, 70, 74, 112, 114, 117, 122, 127–28, 138, 148, 154, 184 media elite (see also elite), 71, 113–14, 128, 153, 181 social media, 114 Meret, Susi, 55n9, 74, 129n1, 167n1, 185n3 Danish electorate, 55n9 leadership style, 185n3

metaphor, 27n9, 31, 82n4, 84–87, 90–99, 108, 110–111n6, 175 People’s Home metaphor (see also People’s Home), 31, 65, 82n4, 84–87, 90–99, 108, 110–111n6, 175 motivation to act (see also frame), 82, 130, 144, 147–50, 156–58, 161–63 Denmark, 161–62 Norway, 156–58 Sweden, 147–50 Mudde, Cas, 14–15, 22, 29–30n16, 55n8, 59, 171, 183 economy (see also economy), 44 populism (see also populism), 22, 59, 183 terminology (see also PRR), 14–15, 29–30n16, 55n8, 171 multiculturalism, 5, 11, 12–13, 20–21, 28n14, 40, 52, 57, 94, 96, 105, 130, 168, 171–73, 180, 182–83 and welfare, 5, 12–13, 20–21, 28n14, 52, 57, 105, 130, 168, 171–72, 180, 182–83 multiple publics, 4, 174 myth (see also national), 17–18, 25, 27n10, 45–46, 53, 56–59, 61–69, 80–81, 84–86, 88–90, 95–97, 99, 101–102, 104–10, 110n3, 111n6, 112, 144, 162, 166, 168, 170–72, 174–75, 185 myth making, 17, 45, 58, 61–65, 84, 104, 107, 110, 110n3, 144, 162, 185 national myth (see also national), 17–18, 25, 45–46, 53, 57–59, 62–66, 68–69, 80–81, 85, 89– 90, 97, 99, 102, 104, 107–10, 110n3, 111n6, 112, 144, 162, 166, 168, 170–71, 174–85 national, x, 1–9, 11–26, 26n2, 27–28nn11–12, 28n14, 28n16, 29nn20–21, 25, 26n2, 28n14,

INDEX

29n21, 30n22, 31–47, 49–50, 52– 53, 53n1, 54nn3–4, 54n6, 54nn12– 13, 56–59, 61–71, 73, 80–82, 82n2, 84–110, 110n3, 111n6, 111n9, 112–13, 115–19, 121, 124, 127–28, 129n5, 130–32, 135, 137, 139, 141, 143–45, 147–50, 152, 154, 159, 162, 164, 166, 167n2, 167n6, 167n9, 168–85,185n2, 185n4, 186–187, 189, 192–93 national elections, x, 1–2, 6–8, 11, 27–28nn11–12, 33, 38–43, 54n4, 54n13, 91, 98–99, 119, 128, 129n5, 131, 139, 148, 167n6, 167n9, 176–77, 186–87 national exclusiveness, 25, 65– 66, 86, 89–90, 93–96, 100–6, 108, 170 nationalist populist party, 2–5, 7–9, 11–21, 23–25, 26n2, 28n14, 30n22, 37, 44–46, 52, 56–59, 61, 63–65, 68–71, 73, 81, 85, 98, 108–10, 112–13, 118, 121, 127, 130, 166, 168–72, 174, 180–81, 184, 187 national people (see also people), 25, 49, 57, 59, 65, 67, 84 national state (see also state), 2, 12–14, 152, 189 reproducing the nation, 5, 17, 20–21, 26, 28n14, 45, 56, 70, 82, 98, 107, 109, 144, 182 nationalism (see also nationalist populist party), 5, 14–23, 29n21, 66, 92, 169, 171, 183–84 nazism (national socialism), 31, 35, 54n3, 99, 106, 145–46 New Democracy, 38–39, 131 niche, 8, 11, 25, 26n5, 33, 45, 49, 52, 54n7, 68, 104, 108, 116, 177, 188–89 Nordic, 16, 23, 32, 34–35, 37–38, 107, 182

227

Nordic state (see also state), 16, 34–35, 37–38, 107, 182 Norway, 16, 19–20, 23–26, 27–28n12, 31–33, 34–38, 40–42, 44, 74, 79, 87–89, 101, 107–10, 111n9, 114– 17, 119–21, 124–25, 127, 129n5, 131, 137, 139, 154–59, 167n12, 168–69, 175–77, 179, 182–83, 185n1, 186–89, 195–97, 199 domestic politics, 33, 40–42, 79, 99–104, 107–110, 114–115, 120–21, 124, 127–28, 129n5, 139, 162–66, 167n12, 168, 173, 175, 177, 179, 182–83, 185n1, 186–88 Fremskrittspartiet (see also Fremskrittspartiet), 27–28n12, 40–42, 44, 79, 99–104, 107– 110, 114–15, 119–21, 125, 127–128, 131, 137, 139, 154– 59, 162–66, 168–69, 173, 175, 177, 179, 182–83, 186, 188 history, 31–32, 34–38, 87–89, 99– 104, 107–110, 111n9, 179, 183 immigration (see also immigration), 41–43, 127–28, 155–58, 166, 185n1 public debate (see also mainstream), 107, 131, 137, 154–59, 162–66, 168, 173, 175 Norwegian Labour Party, 87, 103, 137, 157–58, 167n12 nostalgia (nostalgic), 86, 98, 134, 143, 152, 168, 173, 184 (negative) other (re)presentation (see also (positive) self-presentation), 18–19, 61, 70 parliamentary affairs (see also topic) party, x–xi, 1–9, 11, 14, 16–20, 22–25, 26n5, 28n12, 28–29nn17–18, 31– 33, 35– 51, 53, 53n1, 54–55nn3–8, 55nn12–14, 59–61, 65–66, 68–69,

228

INDEX

72–74, 77–82, 82n4, 83n9, 84–85, 87, 90–93, 96–108, 111n7, 111n10, 112–15, 118–24, 128, 129nn3–4, 129n11, 131–39, 141–46, 148–66, 167n6, 167nn11–12, 168, 170–82, 186–93, 195–200 anti-immigration party (see also immigration), 68, 189 conservative party (see also conservatism), 2, 6, 40, 87, 136, 139, 155, 158 flash-party, 39, 51, 55n14 Green Party, 33, 38, 49, 55n12, 149, 154–55, 181, 186 Left Party, 133, 135, 146, 177, 186 liberal party (see also liberalism), xi, 36, 38, 43, 54n5, 87, 100–101, 136, 138–43, 156, 160, 162–64 mainstream party (see also mainstream), 35, 129n4, 164 Norwegian labour party, 87, 103, 137, 157–58, 167n12 Social Democratic Party (see also Social Democracy), 31–32, 35, 40, 43, 84–85, 87–88, 98, 172, 187 party documents, 17, 39–40, 65, 69, 85, 90–92, 94, 97, 99–102, 104–6, 111n7, 142, 171, 180 party structure, 5, 14, 24, 28n16, 32–33, 35–38, 46, 51, 54nn6– 7, 55n12, 59–60, 179 passion (pathos), 9–10, 13, 61, 173, 181 peasant, 86–89 odalbonden, 86 people (see also national), xi, 14–17, 21–22, 24–25, 27n7, 27n9, 27n12, 29n18, 29n22, 31, 34, 39–46, 49, 53, 54nn2–3, 54n6, 57–59, 61, 63–72, 80, 84–99, 101, 103–10, 110n3, 110–111n6, 111nn10–11,

112, 114, 122–23, 128, 144, 148, 150–52, 154, 159–62, 169–73, 178, 181–84, 187–88 appeals to (see also populism), 22, 58, 68, 93–95, 97–99, 101–4, 106–10, 169, 172, 178, 181–83, 188 common people, 66–69, 87, 93, 96–97, 103–4, 106–10, 170–71, 181 Danish People´s Party (see also DF), xi, 27n12, 42–44, 53, 69, 104–7, 112, 150, 159–62, 182, 187 and elite (see also elite), 16, 21– 22, 27n9, 58–59, 67, 93, 95, 97–99, 109, 111n11, 170–72, 183, 188 our people, 22, 67, 95, 170 people’s home (see also metaphor), 31, 40, 65, 67–68, 84–87, 89–99, 107–8, 110– 111n6, 152, 175, 182 political environment, 19–20, 44–46, 73–74, 79, 91, 110, 114, 118, 120, 127, 129n11, 165–66, 172–73, 176–79 permissive political environment, 19–20, 45–46, 73–74, 79, 110, 114, 118, 166, 173 repressive political environment, 19–20, 45–46, 73–74, 79, 91, 118, 120, 127, 129n11, 165, 173, 176–77 political opportunity structure (see also national myth), 25, 45–46, 48, 53, 64, 90, 170 politics of faith (see also populism), 60–62, 185 politics of scepticism, 60, 185 Politiken, 116–17, 139–40, 142–43, 161–62, 194n1, 195–97, 200 Populism (see also appeals to the people, people and elite,

INDEX

democracy), 5, 11, 14–16, 20–23, 29nn17–18, 30n22, 51, 58–62, 68, 71, 98, 159, 165, 169, 171–72, 178, 181–84, 185n3 double face, 61, 98, 165 media, 51, 71, 178 and nationalism (see also nationalism), 5, 20–23, 169, 171, 183 nationalist populist parties (see also populist radical right parties), 14–16 30n22, 68 Nordic populism (see also Nordic), 23 political theory, 21–22, 59–62, 172, 181–85 populism as ideology (see also ideology), 14–15, 22, 24, 60, 165, 183–84 populism as logic, 11, 22, 60, 178, 183–84 populism as style, 22, 178, 183–84, 185n3 populist radical right parties (PRR) (see also populism), 14–15, 28n16, 33, 45–51, 53, 55n14, 66–68, 70, 82, 95, 107, 109–10, 169, 171 pragmatism, 60, 140 and redemption, 60 Prime Minister, 2, 35, 40, 43, 86, 92, 103–4, 167n12, 173, 187 Social Democratic (see also Social Democracy), 35, 40, 86, 92, 103, 167n12 Danish Progress Party, 27n12, 42–44, 53, 104 Norwegian Progress Party (see also Fremskrittspartiet), xi, 1–2, 27n12, 38, 40–42, 99–100, 102–3, 112, 131, 136, 154, 156, 158–59 polarization, xi, 5, 29n19, 42, 49, 74, 100, 114, 122, 128, 134, 137, 142, 165–66, 173–74, 177, 181– 183

229

prognosis (see also frame), 81–82, 130, 144, 150–54, 158–59, 162–64 Denmark, 162, 164 Norway, 158–59, 164 Sweden, 150–54, 164 public opinion (see also topic), 3, 7, 11–12, 16, 24, 64, 69, 72, 75, 79, 81, 125–26, 130–31–33, 135–36, 138–41, 174, 182, 192, 198–200 Denmark, 16, 126, 139–41, 200 Norway, 16, 126, 135–36, 138–41, 199 Sweden, 16, 126, 131–33, 198 racism, xi, 17–20, 25, 29n18, 42, 44, 92, 100, 118, 133, 144, 150, 152, 155, 163, 188 radical, 6, 8–9, 11, 15, 19, 28n18, 31, 40, 42, 48, 52–53, 55n7, 57, 59, 61, 85, 90, 92 –93, 105–7, 109, 110n2, 111n12, 143, 152, 154, 157, 159, 161, 165, 169–70, 177, 179, 186 radicalize (see also mainstream), 11, 25, 57, 61, 85, 90, 93, 106 radicalism (see also extremism), 9, 15, 28n18, 92, 110n2, 152, 154, 165, 169–70 radical right, 14, 19–20, 48, 52–53, 55n7, 107, 111n12, 157, 159, 179 Rasmussen, Anders Fogh, 43, 104 realpolitik (see also dreampolitik), 64, 98, 142 reason (see also emotion), 9–10, 27, 61, 64, 85, 165, 170, 185 reliability, 25, 76–80, 116–17, 139, 192 representation, x, 18, 27n9, 39, 61, 63, 70, 89, 91, 93, 113, 128, 161, 165, 174, 189 reputational shield, 44, 118 rhetoric, xi, 3–4, 6, 10–11, 15–16, 20–24, 29n22, 32, 34, 38, 45, 55n13, 57–58, 61–64, 68–69, 71,

230

INDEX

86, 90, 93, 95, 98–99, 103–4, 106, 108–9, 112, 129n13, 132, 137, 145–46, 155, 168–71, 175, 178, 180, 182, 184, 186 Rydgren, Jens, 8, 14, 19, 38, 45–48, 51 cordon sanitaire (see also cordon sanitaire), 19, 51 demand meets supply, 8, 45, 47–48 ethno-nationalism (see also nationalism), 14 Sweden (see also Sweden), 38 scaffold pipe, 145–46, 152, 174 Scandinavia, x–xi, 2–4, 8, 12–13, 17, 20, 26, 26n2, 27n11, 28n14, 32, 34–37, 43–44, 49, 52, 54n3, 56–57, 62–64, 67–68, 70, 82, 86, 107, 109–10, 127, 144, 166, 169, 172–73, 177–79, 182, 187 (positive) self-presentation (see also (negative) other (re)presentation), 16–18, 20–22 Silverstone, Roger, 71–72, 112, 189 social cohesion, 3, 21, 29n20, 63, 66, 70, 75, 79, 88, 93–94, 123–28, 131, 133–38, 142–44, 162, 175, 192–3, 198–200 Social Cohesion and Conflicting Values (see also topic), 70, 75, 79, 123–26, 128, 131, 133–34, 136–38, 142–44, 162, 175, 192–93, 198–200 Social Democracy, xi, 12, 24, 31–32, 35–37, 40, 42–46, 48–50, 53, 54n5, 55n9, 62–63, 67–68, 84–90, 92, 94– 100, 102–4, 106–8, 110, 111n12, 116–17, 120, 132, 140, 146, 155, 172, 175–76, 178–79, 181, 187 Denmark (see also Denmark), 36, 42–46, 55n9, 104, 106, 117, 120, 140, 175–76, 179, 187

Norway (see also Norway), 32, 35, 40, 42, 87–89, 100, 102–3, 108, 155, 179 Sweden (see also Sweden), xi, 31–32, 35, 40, 54n5, 84–87, 90, 92, 94–99, 107–8, 117, 132, 146, 178, 181 socio-cultural (see also socioeconomic), 14, 24, 33, 39, 44–45, 49–52, 54n7, 55nn12–13, 67, 95, 128, 150, 175, 177 socio-cultural shift, 24, 33, 49–50, 175 socio-economic (see also sociocultural), 15, 33, 38, 44–45, 48–51, 54n6, 67, 95, 109, 135, 148, 172, 175, 177, 182, 192 state (see also welfare state), x, 2–5, 12–17, 21, 24, 28n12, 28nn14–15, 31–38, 40–44, 48–49, 52, 54n2, 55n8, 62, 64–67, 70, 82n2, 84–93, 95–97, 99–109, 111n10, 128, 137, 143–44, 152, 155, 160, 168–69, 171–73, 175, 179–80, 182–83, 185n4, 189, 192 against the state, 42, 55n8, 57, 89–90, 99–102, 107, 172, 179 state capitalism, 99, 10, 179 struggle of meaning, 5, 17, 26, 27n9, 57, 73 supply side (see also demand side), 4, 8, 34, 45, 48–53, 174 Svenska Dagbladet, 115–16, 118, 133–34, 145–46, 149–53, 190, 195–198 Sweden, x–xi, 1–3, 5–7, 11, 16, 19–20, 23–25, 28n12, 31–38, 53n1, 54n3, 68, 71, 79, 82n5, 84–99, 102, 104, 107–9, 110– 111nn5–6, 112, 114–15, 117–18, 120–22, 125, 127–28, 129n5, 131–34, 139, 141, 144–54, 156, 164, 166, 167nn2–3, 167n10,

231

INDEX

168–69, 173–77, 181–83, 185n1, 186–88, 195–98 domestic politics, x, 1, 7, 16, 19, 28n12, 32, 40, 71, 92, 104, 128, 129n5, 132–33, 139, 146, 148, 164, 167n2, 181, 186, 188 history, x, 31–32, 34–38, 40, 53n1, 54n3, 85–90, 94–95, 147 immigration (see also immigration), 34, 36–37, 40, 68, 82n5, 91–93, 96–97, 109, 114, 127–28, 147–52, 166, 175, 185n1 public debate (see also mainstream), xi, 1, 5–6, 19–20, 79, 114–15, 122, 131, 133–34, 141, 144–54, 166, 173–75, 181 Sweden Democrats (see also Sweden Democrats), x–xi, 1, 3, 5–7, 19–20, 28n12, 39–40, 79, 84, 90–99, 102, 104, 107–9, 112, 114–15, 117–18, 120, 122, 125, 127–28, 131–34, 144–54, 164, 166, 173–77, 181–83, 186–88 Sweden Democrats (SD), x–xi, 1–3, 5–8, 15, 19, 25, 27–28nn11–12, 29n19, 32, 39–42, 44, 47, 51, 54n6, 65, 68, 73–74, 76, 79, 84–85, 87, 90–100, 102–4, 107–9, 110–111n6, 111n13, 114, 117–18, 120, 122, 125, 127–28, 130–35, 144–54, 159, 162–67, 167n6, 167nn8–9, 167n11, 170, 173–79, 181–83, 185n4, 187–88, 189n1, 190–91 historical legacy, x, 5, 39–42, 44, 91–92, 118, 128, 144–45, 151 immigration, xi, 7, 38–39, 54n6, 79, 91–93, 96–97, 109, 131–32, 135, 147–52, 166, 175, 185n4, 188

integration, 40, 44, 91, 96, 145, 149–50, 167n6 organization, 177–78 position in domestic politics and mainstream reactions, 1–3, 5–6, 8, 19, 28, 39, 44, 51, 54n6, 68, 73–74, 87, 91–92, 104, 108, 114, 120, 122, 127–28, 130–35, 144–54, 159, 162–67, 167n6, 173–74, 176–78, 181–83, 187–88 Taggart, Paul, 21, 29n18, 33, 58, 172, 177 on terminology, 29n18 populist parties as chameleonic, 58, 172, 177 tone, 6, 25, 73–79, 81, 83n9, 87, 113– 15, 117, 120–25, 127–28, 129nn3– 4, 130–32, 134–36, 138–40, 144, 149, 151, 154–55, 157, 159, 162, 165–66, 173, 191, 195–97 topic, 25, 70, 73–76, 78–80, 83n9, 100, 113–15, 121–28, 131, 134–38, 141–142, 144, 154, 157, 160, 162, 175, 192–93, 198–200 True Finns, 23, 28n12 Trägårdh, Lars, 31, 85–86, 92 Social Democracy (see also Social Democracy), 31, 85–86 statist-individualism, 85 value politics (see also socio-cultural), 138, 142 Venstre, 2, 32, 43, 179, 187 VG, 115, 117, 155–57, 195–97 Wæver, Ole, 5, 16–17, 23–24, 56 layered discursive approach (see also layered discursive approach), 5, 16–17, 56 welfare (see also economy and welfare, multiculturalism and

232 welfare, topic), xi, 5, 12–13, 15, 20–21, 24, 28n14, 31–33, 37, 41– 45, 48, 52, 54n2, 55n8, 57, 68, 75, 84–89, 92–93, 95–98, 100–10, 119, 122, 125–26, 128, 130, 134–35, 137–39, 141–43, 146, 152, 155, 160, 162, 165, 168, 171–73, 175, 179–83, 185n4, 192, 198–200 welfare chauvinism, 15, 43–44, 98, 110, 146, 162, 165, 172, 179–183 welfare state (see also state), 5, 12, 15, 24, 32, 37, 41–43, 48, 54n2, 55n8, 84–85, 87–88, 92–93, 95–97, 100–5, 107–9,

INDEX

137, 143, 152, 155, 160, 171, 175, 179, 182, 185n4, 192 xenophobia (xenophobic), 12, 41, 44, 47, 90, 129n3, 131–32, 144, 147, 151, 155–56, 159, 163–64, 187, 191–92 zone of acquiescence, 3, 7–11, 18, 25, 56, 59, 61, 64–65, 81, 112–13, 154, 166, 170, 173, 177, 180, 184 Åkesson, Jimmie, 1–2, 82n4, 90, 92–93, 98, 134, 144, 146, 148–49, 152, 173, 177–78, 181