This study investigates how the Swedish far-right alternative media's criticize the Swedish mainstream media and discusses the contemporary phenomenon of “deplatforming”. Deplatforming refers to when a user or uploaded content is banned from a social media platform. The study investigates linguistic features of these questions, through the method of corpus linguistics and the software AntConc. Altogether, 72515 tokens from four Swedish online far-right alternative media are analyzed, showing that the far-right alternative media criticize the mainstream media in a highly politicized way, posing a binary antagonist relationship where power is a central theme. Regarding deplatforming, the study shows how the Swedish far-right alternative media focus on deplatforming especially when it regards far-right activists or politicians, and then have a jeering attitude towards the given reasons for the seclusion. The study also includes a theoretical discussion, wherein the chosen Swedish far-right alternative media showed an overestimation of the power and influence of the mainstream media (as theoreticized by Nick Couldy, 2014). Likewise, the scrutinized data showed signs of relational anti-systemness (as theoreticized by Kristoffer Holt, 2018).

The aim of this graduate thesis is to analyze if and how the extra-parliamentary subject Akce D.O.S.T. influence the society and if the subject can be described as radical right-wing populist. Case Mudd's concept of the populist radical right was applied in the Citizen Association Akce D.O.S.T. to answer to these questions. On the basis of the Piero Ignazi' s theory silent counterrevolution follows the evaluation if the current conditions for the growth of the extreme and radical right-wing parties and similar subjects are favourable in the Czech Republic and if their growth could be expected. Attention is also focused on whether the economic conditions that have an impact on voters, influence their support for right-wing parties.

Islamophobia and New Populism in Contemporary Western Europe: France and the Netherlands Bc. Martina Kočařová The Master thesis Islamophobia and New Populism in Contemporary Western Europe: France and the Netherlands explores current transformations of populism in contemporary Western Europe. The main objectives of the thesis are following: First, to verify a hypothesis implying that islamophobia has become a new feature of the contemporary populism, which has been consequently changing in terms of its content. Thus, it can hardly be classified as another form of the 'far right' politics. In this context, one may observe its shift towards the centre of the political party system. Second, based on the above outlined assumption, we aim to study whether the populist parties can be considered 'populist' in spite of the new features they have recently adopted. The theoretical framework of our research refers to Paul Taggart's conceptualisation of populism applying it on the cases of the French National Front under the lead of Marine Le Pen and the Dutch Party for Freedom and his leader Geert Wilders.

Petros Markaris's detective novel addresses the economic crisis, highlighting the economic, political and social crisis rather than the crime cases. In the first part of my master's thesis, the detective novel is addressed in the wider context of the greek contemporary literature and the development of the genre is briefly described. Thereafter, an analysis of the content of the trilogy regarding the crisis and the description of the main topics, such as unemployment, migration and far-right wing is carried out. In the next chapters, the common characteristics of all the novels are described. Furthermore, a research was conducted regarding the translations into German, Spanish and Italian to find out why Petros Markaris gained popularity abroad.

Le caractère participatif et interactif du Web social contribue à la transformation du militantisme féministe avec l’émergence du blogging et des médias sociaux. Les féministes occupent les espaces numériques pour explorer leur identité et leur conception du féminisme(s), socialiser, organiser leurs luttes ou rendre saillantes leurs revendications transformatrices. Néanmoins, l’exposition de soi en tant que féministe dans le Web social n’est pas sans risque. Cette thèse cherche à comprendre les conséquences des cyberviolences sur les trajectoires individuelles de militant·e·s féministes en France et au Québec. Dans les deux cas d’étude, les cyberviolences sont utilisées comme des armes politiques contre les féministes, qui représentent des cibles de premier choix. Dans un contexte de polarisation du débat public et de la montée des rhétoriques antiféministes en ligne, cette forme de violence produit des conséquences multiples sur le plan biographique et militant tout comme sur les usages des féministes du Web social. Les cyberviolences s’inscrivent dans un dispositif d’insécurité en ligne, qui rend les espaces numériques particulièrement hostiles et violents pour les militant·e·s féministes, augmentant ainsi les coûts du militantisme féministe. Conceptualisant l’engagement féministe tout comme les (cyber)violences à travers un continuum en ligne et hors-ligne, j’utilise une approche multimodale qui me permet de contextualiser les phénomènes en ligne par rapport à ceux hors-ligne. Les matériaux de cette enquête reposent sur une ethnographie en ligne des plateformes numériques Facebook, Twitter, Instagram et YouTube ainsi que la réalisation de 50 entretiens semi-dirigés avec des féministes à Paris (N26) et Montréal (24). Les entretiens sont construits de manière hybride entre des récits de vie et des entretiens sur traces. Sur le plan théorique, mon enquête mobilise les outils de la sociologie des mouvements sociaux à travers l’approche processuelle de l’engagement pour analyser les trajectoires des militant·e·s ainsi que ceux de la sociologie des usages des dispositifs sociotechniques pour appréhender les pratiques numériques des féministes. En marge de ces théorisations, j’intègre une conceptualisation relationnelle de l’espace qui me permet non seulement de lier ces deux approches théoriques distinctes, mais aussi d’opérer mon analyse comparative entre les espaces militants de la France et du Québec. Mes résultats de recherche montrent de quelle manière les acteurs antiféministes se saisissent des opportunités technologiques pour élargir leur répertoire et leurs stratégies d’action. La littérature identifie quatre stratégies qui sont utilisées par les contre-mouvements : recruter, créer des dommages, démobiliser et neutraliser. Je propose d’intégrer la stratégie de l’épuisement à ce répertoire d’action des contre-mouvements. Si les stratégies d’action déjà étudiées sont d’ordre organisationnel en attaquant les mouvements féministes, celle que je propose est plutôt individualisée en ciblant explicitement les militant·e·s féministes à titre personnel. Cette stratégie se dévoile à travers différentes tactiques comme celle du trolling, des raids numériques et de la cybersurveillance. Ces différentes tactiques représentent des formes de répression indirecte de l’engagement féministe dans un contexte de fort backlash antiféministe dans les univers en ligne et hors-ligne. Mon analyse comparative montre que l’identité des acteurs antiféministes les plus impliqués dans la (re)production des cyberviolences n’est pas la même selon les cas : la manosphère versus la fachosphère. Cela s’explique par les différences contextuelles et structurelles entre les cas et l’état des lieux de l’antiféminisme sur le terrain. Enfin, mes résultats montrent un cadrage différent des cyberviolences selon les cas d’étude. En France, les cyberviolences sont davantage problématisées comme un problème public autour de la notion de cyberharcèlement, alors qu’au Québec il est davantage question de prévention de la violence et de l’extrémisme violent au vu des conséquences mémorielles des attentats de l’École Polytechnique, de la Grande Mosquée de Québec et de l’attaque à la voiture-bélier revendiquée par un militant Incel à Toronto. Ce cadrage différencié explique notamment une intervention plus soutenue des autorités politiques en France pour sanctionner les différentes formes de cyberviolences comme les raids numériques. / The participatory and interactive nature of the social Web contributes to transforming feminist activism through the emergence of blogging and social media. Feminists occupy digital spaces to explore their identity and their conception of feminism, to socialize, to organize their struggles or to highlight their transformative claims. Nevertheless, exposing oneself as a feminist on the social web is not without risk. This thesis seeks to understand the consequences of online violence on the individual trajectories of feminist activists in France and Quebec. Both case studies use cyberviolence as a political weapon against feminists, who represent prime targets. In a polarized context of public debate and the rise of anti-feminist rhetoric online, this type of violence produces multiple consequences on biographical and activist levels and on feminists' uses of the social Web. Cyberviolence is part of a system of online insecurity, making digital spaces hostile and violent for feminist activists, thus increasing the costs of feminist activism. Conceptualizing feminist engagement and (cyber)violence across an online and offline continuum, my multimodal approach allows me to contextualize online versus offline phenomena. The data is from an online ethnography of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube and 50 semi-directed interviews with feminists in Paris (N26) and Montreal (24). The interviews are built in a hybrid way between the lifetime storytelling method and the trace interviewing technique. On the theoretical level, my study mobilizes the tools of the sociology of social movements through the process approach of engagement to analyze activist trajectories and the sociology of the sociotechnical devices usages to apprehend feminist digital practices. On the sidelines of these theorizations, I use a relational conceptualization of space which allows me not only to link these two distinct theoretical approaches but also to carry out my comparative analysis between the activist spaces of France and Quebec. My results show how antifeminist actors seize technological opportunities to expand their repertoire and their strategies of action. The literature identifies four strategies that are used by counter-movements: recruit, damage, demobilize and neutralize. I propose to integrate the strategy of exhaustion into this repertoire of action. If the action strategies already studied are organizational in attacking feminist movements, this one is rather individualized by explicitly targeting feminist activists as persons. This strategy is revealed through various tactics such as trolling, digital raids and cyber surveillance. In the context of a strong anti-feminist backlash in the online and offline worlds, these different tactics are forms of indirect repression of feminist activism. My comparative analysis shows that the identity of antifeminist actors most involved in the (re)production of cyberviolence is not the same depending on the case: the manosphere versus the far-right networks. This is explained by the contextual and structural differences between the cases and the state of play of antifeminism on the ground. Finally, my results show a different framing of cyberviolence between France and Quebec. For the French case, cyberviolence is more problematized as a public problem around the notion of cyberbullying, while in Quebec it is more a question of preventing violence and violent extremism given the memorial consequences of the attacks on Polytechnique, the Grande Mosquée de Québec and the car-ramming attack claimed by an Incel activist in Toronto. This differentiated framing explains a more sustained intervention by the political authorities in France to sanction the different forms of cyberviolence such as digital raids.

The thesis topic is the cooperation between the Czech and German far-right. The author focuses on the cooperation of Czech and German extreme-right parties from 1989 to 2019. The thesis aims not only to describe the contacts of the respective parties but also to explore the logic of the relations between the Czech and German extreme right. Adopting the theoretical framework of the Discursive theory of Essex school, the author proceeds to a detailed analysis of the discourses of Czech extreme-right parties about Germans and Germany; she traces back the transformations of the original anti-German discourses and the origins of these changes. Against the background of these processes, she explores the transformations of the "conditions of possibility" that make Czech-German cooperation "conceivable" for both Czech and German extreme-right parties. The author explores the changes in the discursive conditions that allow Czech-German friendship to be "rationalised" and justified despite the contradictory positions on the issues of the Czech-German past. The author analyses the anti-German discourse of the SPR-RSČ in the 1990s and examines the circumstances of the SPR-RSČ's alleged contacts with the German Die Republikaner. Further parts of the thesis are devoted to the relations between Dělnická strana...

Studien “Harmlös - eller inte?”  undersöker memes skapade av den högerextrema organisationen Nordiska motståndsrörelsen (NMR) för att se hur de framställer etablissemanget i  kopplat till covid-19. Studien undersöker även hur dessa memes är konstruerade. Memes är ett framgångsrikt digitalt verktyg som används på internet. Deras största kännetecken är ironi och humor. På senare tid har memes även börjat användas som opinionsverktyg då de levererar budskap snabbt och effektivt. Högerextrema organisationer i synnerhet använder memes särskilt flitigt för att nå ut och locka nya följare. Teorier som använts för att uppnå studiens syfte är representationsteorin, ideologier samt teorin om intertextualitet. Analysen har genomförts på 13 memes i bild- och textform genom en kritisk diskursanalys baserad på en anpassad version av Carvalhos (2008) modell för diskursanalys. Analysstegen som används är layout & struktur, objekt & aktörer, språk, grammatik och retorik samt ideologiska ståndpunkter. Resultatet visar att Nordiska Motståndsrörelsen i sina memes anpassar nyheter som rör coronapandemin till att passa sin fiendebild. NMR framställer etablissemanget som något främmande och opålitligt i samband med Covid-19. NMR använder humor, ironi och satir för att kritisera makthavarna. Dessutom finns starka kopplingar till högerextrema idéer, bland annat antisemitism, homofobi samt våld- och dödshot. / The study "Harmless - or not?" examines memes created by Swedish far-right organization The Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR) to see how they portray the establishment in connection with covid-19. The study also examines how these memes are constructed. Memes are a successful digital tool used on the internet. Their biggest characteristics are irony and humor. Recently, memes have also started to see use as tools of opinion-making, as users can derive meaning from them quickly and efficiently. Right-wing extremist organizations in particular use memes particularly extensively to reach out and attract new followers. Theories used to achieve the purpose of the study are ideology, the theory of representation and the theory of intertextuality. The analysis has been carried out on 13 memes in image and text form through a critical discourse analysis based on an adapted version of Carvalho's (2008) model for  discourse analysis. The analysis steps used are layout & structure, objects & actors, language, grammar and rhetoric as well as ideological positions. The result shows that the Nordic Resistance Movement in its memes adapts news related to the corona pandemic to fit its image of the enemy. NMR portrays the establishment as something alien and hostile in connection with Covid-19. NMR uses humor, irony and satire to criticize those in power. In addition, there are strong links to right-wing extremist ideas, including anti-Semitism, homophobia and threats of violence and death.

The purpose of this thesis aimed at trying to find out why the Sweden Democrats have increased their support, to become the second largest party in the Swedish parliament, while, the Danish People’s Party, has lost the majority of their support after being the second largest party in the Danish parliament to almost falling out a few years later. Is it possible for the Sweden Democrats to share the same fate? To find this out, we’ve decided to conduct this study using a qualitative comparative method, with a Most Similar System Design. The analysis mainly consists of two concepts to explain this phenomenon which are “Cordon Sanitaire” and “Normalization”.  The results of the analysis show that in Denmark, the Danish People’s Party’s views and policies on migration, have gotten normalized across the political spectrum. As such, they can no longer argue that they are anti-establishment, but instead, they have become a part of the establishment themselves. In Sweden, the Sweden Democrats have been kept out of power, with a “cordon sanitaire”, and thus their view and policies have not gotten normalized and adopted by other parties, and therefore they have continued to grow. An interesting aspect of this is that recently, the Sweden Democrats have gotten normalized and they are now a support party for a right-wing government, which we argue might lead to a similar situation as in Denmark, meaning that the Sweden Democrats might lose support in the future.

Seit der Covid-19-Pandemie lässt sich die Entstehung einer neuen, zahlenmäßig starken, radikal rechten Protestbewegung beobachten. Aus diesem bundesweiten Trend stach Sachsen als Hotspot der Mobilisierungen hinsichtlich Quantität und Radikalität heraus. Der vorliegende Sammelband versucht zum einen, Erklärungsansätze hierfür aufzuzeigen, und hat zum anderen das Ziel, der Erforschung der sächsischen Corona-Proteste und ihrem Hauptakteur, der regionalistisch ausgerichteten, radikal rechten Partei Freie Sachsen, eine Vielzahl weiterer Facetten hinzuzufügen. Die einzelnen Beiträge fokussieren dabei unterschiedliche Aspekte der Mobilisierungen und sollen zum Verständnis der sächsischen Spezifika innerhalb der Corona-Proteste beitragen. Dieser Band versammelt dabei diverse sozialwissenschaftliche Theorie- und Fachtraditionen, die jeweils aus einer spezifischen Perspektive das untersuchte Phänomen beleuchten, um in der Gesamtschau eine Vielzahl neuer Erkenntnisse zu gewinnen. Die Beiträge machen dabei deutlich, dass es sich bei den sächsischen Akteur:innen der Corona-Proteste allgemein und den Freien Sachsen besonders um ernstzunehmende Gegner:innen demokratischer Gesellschaftsordnungen handelt, die in konkreten raumzeitlichen Kontexten entstanden sind und nur aus diesen heraus zu verstehen sind. Damit leisten sie einen wichtigen Beitrag zur theoretisch und empirisch fundierten Analyse radikal rechter Akteur:innen in Sachsen.:1. Freie Sachsen. Eine Einleitung: Böhme/Krell, S. 6 2. Kollektive Sächsische Identität: Kantzenbach, S. 27 3. Sachsen First: Krell, S. 62 4. Zwang zur Freiheit: Böhme, S. 90 5. Vom Vigilantismus zum Rechtsterrorismus: Roth, S. 118 6. Brückenschlag nach rechts außen: Herpertz, S. 148 7. Bautzner Verhältnisse: Bernstein, S. 176 8. Die Stillen Proteste entlang der B96: Schemm, S. 209 9. Die Querfront und der Faschismus: Voigt, S. 236 10. Konservative Politikstrategien in Zeiten autoritärer Zuspitzung: Knauthe, S. 257 11. Immer mitten in die Presse rein: Köhler, S. 285 12. Topoi in der Esoterik: Baumgertel, S. 310 13. Architekturen contra Erinnerung: Thümmler, S. 338 / Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the emergence of a new, numerically strong, radical right-wing protest movement can be observed. The German federal state of Saxony has stood out from this nationwide trend as a hotspot of mobilization in terms of quantity and radicalism. On the one hand, this anthology attempts to provide explanations for this and, on the other, aims to add a number of other facets to the research into the Saxon coronavirus protests and their main protagonist, the regionalist, radical right-wing party Freie Sachsen. The individual contributions focus on different aspects of the mobilizations and are intended to contribute to an understanding of the Saxon specifics within the corona protests. This volume brings together various social science traditions, each of which sheds light on the phenomenon under investigation from a specific perspective in order to gain a multitude of new insights in the overall view. The contributions make it clear that the Saxon actors of the Corona protests in general and the Freie Sachsen in particular are serious opponents of democratic social orders that emerged in specific spatio-temporal contexts and can only be understood from these contexts. They thus make an important contribution to the theoretically and empirically sound analysis of radical right-wing actors in Saxony.:1. Freie Sachsen. Eine Einleitung: Böhme/Krell, S. 6 2. Kollektive Sächsische Identität: Kantzenbach, S. 27 3. Sachsen First: Krell, S. 62 4. Zwang zur Freiheit: Böhme, S. 90 5. Vom Vigilantismus zum Rechtsterrorismus: Roth, S. 118 6. Brückenschlag nach rechts außen: Herpertz, S. 148 7. Bautzner Verhältnisse: Bernstein, S. 176 8. Die Stillen Proteste entlang der B96: Schemm, S. 209 9. Die Querfront und der Faschismus: Voigt, S. 236 10. Konservative Politikstrategien in Zeiten autoritärer Zuspitzung: Knauthe, S. 257 11. Immer mitten in die Presse rein: Köhler, S. 285 12. Topoi in der Esoterik: Baumgertel, S. 310 13. Architekturen contra Erinnerung: Thümmler, S. 338

As social media becomes an integral part of our daily lives, and groups seek to utilize this medium to facilitate activism, understanding the nature of these communications and the impact of the content on the individual user becomes a valid area of interest. When one then considers that extremist and terrorist groups have found social media to be an inexpensive and effective means for communication, radicalization, recruitment and member mobilization, the need for this understanding becomes critical. This research seeks to provide just such an understanding in its examination of Far-Right English Defence League and their use of Facebook during a period of increased activism and online growth. Important elements of this work include an understanding of the legal and ethical issues surrounding the collection of online content, particularly in extremist environments; the role of traditional media in their coverage of the group and whether the comments of the members reflect the group's mission statement of the characterization of traditional media; the ability to enhance data segregation and analysis through the development and use of specialized software; and most importantly the findings from the data analysis. Contained within these findings is an understanding of the intricacies of online participation in extremist social media. These include insights into overall traffic generation, the use of links within communications and their impact on the member traffic, and how the group narrative put forth by the administrator is reflected in the dialogue of the users. The most important finding was an understanding of individual user participation within the group and how, even with such an inexpensive and pervasive media outlet, activist groups still struggle to overcome the problem of participation. That this knowledge can be applied in a meaningful way in counter extremist and counter terrorism efforts was an interesting and satisfying development.