The purpose of this essay is to see if the Swedish nationalist party”Sverigedemokraterna” use religion rhetorically in their paper SD-Kuriren, and if so,then how? The method used to examine this is called rhetorical analysis. Furthermore, thetheory to explore how religion is used rhetorical is Said's Orientalism. The results show that religion is used rhetorically in the articles. Islam is explainedfrom our point of view in the west, and not their own. Islam becomes a religion that is faraway from what the Swedish culture is like, and also a religion that is violent andirrational compared to the Swedish culture, but also other religions, such as Judaism.Also, religion is used rhetorically to show that Islam is the opposite in relation toChristianity and Judaism.

To what extent can electoral engineering mitigate deadly intra-state conflict? This paper investigates the impact of electoral engineering on nationalist party behavior in highly-fragmented states. As nationalist parties have been instrumental in escalating inter-group tensions to large-scale hostilities, frameworks for conflict resolution frequently incorporate institutional mechanisms as a means of altering the incentives for conflict exploitation or for inter-group cooperation. Specifically, the paper investigates proportional representation (PR) and preferential systems. To test the impact of these systems, the study observes party engagement in cooperative or conflictual behavior during legislative campaigns in the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Republika Srpska, and Croatia over several election cycles. Data from the Bosnian cases largely support expectations that PR presents incentives for nationalist parties to “play the ethnic card” and exacerbate communal conflict. In contrast, the Croatian case provides a degree of support for the prediction that preferential voting structures encourage cooperation and thus conflict dampening.

The main purpose of this thesis is to explore the oscillation between different identities and nationalist discourses during Hafez Al Assad era in Syria. Syrian Arab Republic has been facing with an identity crisis ever since its independence due to several dynamics. Throughout the decades, there emerged several different self-images of Syrians. The major clash subsists between loyalty to Arabness and Syrianness. In order to find out the perceptions of politically relevant elites concerning this clash and the roots of identity crisis, a fieldwork was conducted during the spring 2006 in Damascus. An exploration of the nationalist ideologies &ndash / Arab nationalism, Greater Syrian nationalism, Pan-Islamic nationalism and liberal nationalism &ndash / during the Hafez Al Assad&rsquo / s era in Syria gives us the clues of the identity crisis. Moreover, the insights of Syrian politically relevant intellectuals exemplify and explain the current debate on the identity crisis in Syria.

The main aim of this thesis is to examine the history of Sanjak of Alexandretta in the Turkish nationalist historiography. In this respect, it is important to comprehend how this region as a territory was tried to present as a homeland with ethnic-nationalist connotations and idioms through the discipline of history by Kemalist nationalists in the late of 1930s. Thus, in order to pay attention to the process of annexation of the region into Turkey requires focusing on how and by whom this nationalist history was written in order to gain different perspective. In general, the history of region has been considered on the basis of Turkish-Arab animosity. According to this approach, the history of region is the narration of encountering of these nationalist movements. On the other hand, the question of how this history was shaped by Turkish Kemalist nationalists and to interrogate the impact of the self-determination principle and mandate system on this nationalist history through which myths was created and the historical events were distorted in the process of integration of the region are also vital. Besides, while considering this local history, giving priority to the local narratives can open the path to investigate this nationalist history critically and understand the period of annexation from the view of ordinary people.

A feminist content analysis of writings and speeches of two main political figures of the Islamic government of Iran, Khomeini and Ahmadinejad, demonstrates the centrality of discourses around gender in their use of anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist and nationalist narratives. Essentialist beliefs about gender and the symbolic meaning of gender as social order and the "natural law of the universe" are the notions embedded in Khoemini and Ahmadinejad's narratives to suggest that changes in traditional gender relations are a threat to the order of the society. This study of dominance also reveals how the dominant culture produced by the Islamic state grasps on to the cultural elements of hegemonic discourse to bond coercion with legitimacy. Creating moral panics around changes in traditional gender relations and traditional definitions of femininity and masculinity is the main character of political speeches around women's issues and women's rights of these two figures. According to these narratives, femininity and gender "ideals" such as chastity, devotional motherhood, and women's role in maintaining the basis of the structure of the family are pivotal to the protection of the nation, its independence and its future.

This paper is a discourse analysis of four Swedish upper secondary school curriculums and more specifically the part of them that deal with the subject history. With a span stretching from 1965 to 2011 the study aims to show how the curriculums in the subject history relate to certain discourses such as diversity and nationalist education and how this may be perceived through a perspective of Biesta’s version of democracy. The paper evolves around the identification and reflection concerning these disucourses and how the curriculums show focus around national-ism, the separation of cultures and geographical locations. The study has then lead to the con-clusion that even though history as a subject has evolved and the curriculums in Sweden have gone through several large changes based on development of didactics and pedagogy the subject is still connected to the idea of a nationalist historiography and this creates problems for the idea of diversity.

This study aims to look at the discourse and development of Turkish Nationalism. This is done through focusing on four well known thinkers of Turkish Nationalism. In this dissertation, works, actions, discourse and legacies of Mehmet Ziya Gokalp, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Huseyin Nihal Atsiz and Alparslan Turkes are looked at using textual analysis and an ethno-symbolist approach. Through this work the family relation between these thinkers and the boundaries of Turkish Nationalism can be understood. Ziya Gokalp, as the 'father' of the Ideological Turkish Nationalism, has laid the foundation for nationalists after him and his ideas have been instrumental in the setting up of the Republic of Turkey. Gokalp by setting up the three ideals; "To be more Turk, to be more Islamic and to be more modern" has set the tone for the rest of the century for Turkish Nationalism. Kemal Ataturk was the founder of Modern Turkey and was also a nationalist, as a result he implemented many policies that were highly nationalistic. His legacy continues to live on but can be interpreted differently by different people. Nihal Atsiz affected Turkish Nationalism in a very different manner. Instead of having a long term ideological effect he gave 'soul' to nationalism through his literary work and his rich usage of imagery. After him, Alparslan Turkes' struggle in a tumultuous time in Turkey and Turkish Nationalism as a competing ideology in Turkish politics is viewed. This work also takes a look at mainstream political currents in Turkey and nationalists' relations with them and the critique of Turkish Nationalism and Turkish Nationalists, and from the findings of this research, it can be speculated that there are three mainstream political movements, contrary to widely believed two. This can be best personified by the three pashas of the Turkish Independence War; Ismet Inonu, Kazim Karabekir and Fevzi Cakmak. The findings of this research shows that there is a family relation between the four thinkers and despite that there have been some slight differences the discourse and the activities of Turkish Nationalism has stayed on one course.

Secessionist movements have been found historically on both sides of the political spectrum, and sometimes have tried to remain apolitical completely, but because of the rise of partisan politics, secessionism has inevitably become politicized. Variations in Western European secessionism can be noticed, and as such, explanations put forward may be deemed insufficient, or incomplete. In my thesis I tested the hypothesis that secessionism varied on the political spectrum because it has been consolidated against ideological Others (in Scotland against Thatcher’s Conservatives between 1974 and 1990). I tested this methodologically through process tracing and theoretically by looking at the consolidation of the Scottish National Party through reactive nationalism. Specifically I analyzed the nationalist discourse used to justify ideological positioning in the 1970s and 1980s in propaganda materials and archival documents, and if and how this ideological choice was reflected or interpreted in newspapers (for opinions on how this consolidation was perceived by the electorate).

Taiwan’s February 28 Incident happened in 1947 as a set of popular protests against the postwar policies of the Nationalist Party, and it then sparked militant actions and political struggles of Taiwanese but ended with military suppression and political persecution by the Nanjing government. The Nationalist Party first defined the Incident as a rebellion by pro-Japanese forces and communist saboteurs. As the enemy of the Nationalist Party in China’s Civil War (1946-1949), the Chinese Communist Party initially interpreted the Incident as a Taiwanese fight for political autonomy in the party’s wartime propaganda, and then reinterpreted the event as an anti-Nationalist uprising under its own leadership. After the rapprochement of Mao’s China with the United States in the 1970s, both parties successively started economic or political reform and revised their respective policies toward the February 28 Incident. Moreover, the Democratic Progressive Party rose as a pro-independence force in Taiwan in the mid-1980s, and its stress on the Taiwanese pursuit of autonomy in the Incident coincided with the initial interpretation of the Chinese Communist Party. These partisan views and their related policy changes deeply influenced historical research on the Incident. This study re-examines both the history and the historical accuracy of these partisan discourses and the relevant scholarship on the Incident, and further proposes to understand this historic event in the long-term context of Taiwanese resistance and political struggles. / Graduate

In times of crisis people tend to gather around a leader – the so called “rally’round the flag effect”. The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic seems to be no exception. Studies of Denmark and Sweden show that a “rally’round the flag”-effect occurred in both countries during the spring of 2020. Because the two countries used different strategies to combat the virus at the time, the cause of the quickly increased support for the national leaders is unclear. This essay examines one possible contributory reason: nationalist rhetoric. By analyzing Danish and Swedish national leaders’ framing of the pandemic, using banal nationalism to highlight the prosaic and implied aspects of nationalism, I show that nationalist rhetoric is present, both in the definition of the problem and as the proposed solutions. In both cases an emphasis on the typical national qualities is shown. In conclusion, the findings in this essay point to the fact that further studies in this yet to be fully explored field of studies are of interest, especially from a perspective of democracy.