In 2017, the far right populist, transnational movement “Generation Identity” (GI) embarked on an activist “mission” in the Mediterranean Sea to stop non-European migrants from reaching the European continent. This paper presents a study of how GI was able to do so, analysing the empowering network of support that evolved during the movement’s “Defend Europe” campaign. Its relevance arises from the globally growing assertiveness of populist actors, cooperating and shaping international politics together. However, studies on party politics and international interactions prevail in research on global populism -this paper is the first one to raise the question of how far right populist social movements interact in transnational networks. Applying a resource mobilization approach and drawing on transnational advocacy theory, I attempt to answer this question with a single case study on the German GI-branch’s networking activities during the Defend Europe campaign. The relational data collected shows that far right populists, too, engage in transnational advocacy efforts, and it appears that their populism does not visibly determine how their networks function. Rather, GI’s activism in “defensive mode” seems decisive for the movement’s transnational networking practices, limiting its possibilities to gain in political and societal influence.

Why are social democratic parties losing voters to right-wing populist parties? For decades, social democratic parties across Europe have been in decline. Much of this decline can be attributed to voters leaving in favor of right-wing populist parties. Despite extensive research on the growing support for these parties, researchers are yet to agree on even the most fundamental causes. In Sweden this phenomenon is seen in the voter flow from the Social Democrats to the Sweden Democrats. In this study, Sheri Berman's theory of social democratic success factors is used to explain the decline of the Social Democrats in favor of the Sweden Democrats, by conducting interviews with Sweden Democrat politicians who used to be Social Democrats. Results suggest that respondents' decisions to leave the Social Democrats were preceded by prolonged disappointment with the Social Democrats' political direction. According to respondents, the Social Democrats have lost focus on social unity within the Swedish population, down-prioritized social democratic politics and ideology in favor of political power and become an elite party lacking representatives that workers can identify with. Interestingly, respondents' decisions to leave the Social Democrats are not attributed to any essential shift in their personal values, but to the social democratic party abandoning social democracy. Migration, while mentioned by some respondents, is tied to welfare and economic politics as well as a lost sense of community. While social democracy used to be the only ideology combining communitarianism, the primacy of politics and democratic ideals, results indicate that these earlier social democratic traits now constitute success factors for today's right-wing populist parties.

Genom tillämpningen av en textorienterad kritisk diskursanalys av Sverigedemokraternas framställning av “folkhemmet” och “folkhemsidealet” i partiets valmanifest inför riksdagsvalen 2010-2022, analyserades partiets appropriering av, den tidigare socialistiskt betingade, folkhemsdiskursen. Den empiriska undersökningen tar avstamp ur Per Albin Hanssons “Folkhemstalet”, från en remissdebatt i riksdagen år 1928. Det är från detta tal den här uppsatsen härleder folkhemsdiskursens normativa värden. Något som arbetet betraktar som korrelerande de värden som går att återfinna i den svenska välfärdsmodellen. Uppsatsen behandlar skiljelinjer av inklusion och exklusion i den folkbild som innefattas i Sverigedemokraternas diskursiva framställning av “folkhemmet” och “folkhemsidealet”. Uppsatsen belyser, i denna mening, hur approprieringen av det diskursiva “folkhemmet” och “folkhemsidealet” etnifierar den svenska folkbilden. Folkhemsdiskursen fylls, genom Sverigedemokraternas tillämpning av denna retoriska framställning, med partiets ideologiskt bundna normativa grundvärden, något som innebär ett moraliserande kring “folkets” kulturella och produktiva uppfyllelse av det svenska medborgarskapet. Den ideologiska framställningen i den Sverigedemokratiska approprieringen av folkhemsdiskursen betraktas generera diskursiva exkluderingsprocesser som i detta arbete liknas till yttringar av klassantagonism. Denna klasspolitiska närvaro som uttolkas uppstå i den diskursiva framställningen av “folkhemmet” och “folkhemsidealet” förklaras uppkomma genom Sverigedemokraternas omreformativa ambitioner, detta med intentionen att “återställa” den svenska välfärdsstatens funktion. Sverigedemokraternas appropriering av folkhemsdiskursen kan i linje med dessa ambitioner uttolkas genomsyras av en välfärdschauvinism som premierar en partikularism och förkastar den socialistiska universalismen, som återfinns som diskursivt centraliserat i det traditionella folkhemsidealet.  Det svenska “folkhemmet” och “folkhemsidealet” reserveras i den Sverigedemokratiska framställningen, diskursivt, till de samhällsgrupper som accepteras in i och uppvaktar “svenskhetsnormen” genom assimilation och välfärdsproduktivitet.

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The Farmers’ Alliance in Western North Carolina receives only cursory analysis in studies concerned with the late nineteenth-century agrarian reform movement in the state. Historians have uniformly labeled the mountain region as inconsequential on the twin basis of geographic isolation and Republicanism. Their analyses have concluded that the Alliance did not matter to Western North Carolinians and that the mountains did not matter to the state Alliance. These assumptions are incorrect. An in-depth examination of the Alliance’s role in WNC demonstrates that the order most certainly mattered to these mountaineers, and their leaders, such as Senator Zebulon Vance, exerted considerable influence upon state and national agrarian reform agendas. Moreover, Western North Carolina agricultural conditions directly impacted farmer’s receptiveness to the Alliance and later Populist movements. This manuscript demonstrates the evolution of the Farmers’ Alliance in WNC using research collected from numerous documents, newspapers, census records, and secondary sources.

Prior research demonstrates that multiple dimensions of religiosity significantly predict punitive attitudes and militarism. This study highlights the importance of believing in a masculine God, an aspect of religiosity with a robust and consistent relationship to punitiveness and militarism, but which has previously been unexamined. After accounting for multiple aspects of religiosity highlighted by previous research—such as frequency of religious practice, religious tradition, fundamentalist identity and beliefs, and other dimensions of God image including love, anger, judgment, and engagement—believing that God is a “He” consistently and strongly increases support for harsh social policies targeting intra-societal enemies (criminals), as well as general militarism and campaigns targeting extra-societal enemies (e.g. “terrorists”). These results highlight the importance of theorizing and measuring gendered dimensions of belief in God, as well as the importance of fine-grained considerations of religion in studies of penal populism and militarism.

This paper has used a netnographic data collection and content analysis to analyze a thread on climate change on the Swedish debate forum Flashback Forum. Using theories on different forms of confirmation bias, mis- and disinformation, propaganda, and different kinds of climate debaters. The paper aimed to find out what kind of climate debaters where identified, what arguments were used, what sources they used and if there is any possibility to identify confirmation bias. Results showed that there were different kinds of climate debaters and in this paper two more groups have been identified. There is also a low use of sources, and they are of poor quality. There is also evidence of confirmation bias in the source material, mainly in the of the kind described as trench ware fare dynamics.

This thesis examines the unique set of circumstances which led to the rapid rise of a supposed right-wing populist party in Sweden. The Sverigedemokraterna (Sweden Democrats) are not the first nationalist party to enter the Swedish parliament, but are the first to survive multiple parliamentary elections and are currently the third largest party in parliament. This thesis argues the Sverigedemokraterna do not constitute a political party, but remain a populist movement within Swedish politics, are not right-wing but rather a lagom-inspired hybrid, and the stabilizing effects of the culture of lagom prevents the permanence of extremism in Swedish politics. The increase in immigrants from predominantly Muslim states due to the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war stoke the anti-Islamic rhetoric of this nationalist group, but did not cause their rapid ascent and neither did the entry of Sweden into the European Economic Community. The Sverigedemokraterna are a single-point culmination of a century of nationalist and fascist groups splitting and merging within Sweden, but as other groups continue to appear the SD cannot be the only culmination. / Master of Arts

There is an increasing global anti-rights movement—the child of marriage of the right-wing populist and anti-gender movements—that affects the rights of not only women and LGBTQIs but also refugees, asylum seekers, and various minorities. Although this research only focuses on the event of Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, it provides valuable perspective to understand and prevent the further spread of anti-gender and right-wing populist tactics and rhetoric. Despite the limitations, by offering and adapting various concepts such as political diffusion, absence in the media, and exiting treaties, the research revealed meaningful connections and insight while attempting to identify the possible effects of the event. While the influence and role of the Polish and Hungarian governments and other opposition actors on the right-wing populist and anti-gender movements between 2021 and March 2023 are exposed, the possible impacts of encouragement and an increase in anti-rights tendencies are presented. In this way, this research contributes to the literature by offering a current assessment and developments regarding the anti-rights movement in Eastern Europe while filling the gap within by considering the approach of political diffusion and the withdrawal's resonance in the movement.

The Quran burnings in Sweden have made international headlines and have taken its place as one of the most controversial happenings of the year 2023. Due to this, the phenomena have made its way into the political arena of Sweden, being widely discussed by the main political actors of the country. This study aims to analyze Magdalena Andersson (Social Democrats) and Jimmie Åkesson’s (Sweden Democrats) communication regarding the matter with the key objective to analyze the usage of Populism as well as Blame and responsibility when the two actors speak about the Quran crisis. The thesis main method will be a rhetorical analysis. The study found that both Andersson and Åkessons communication regarding the Quran burnings contains populistic traits. Andersson uses more blame in her communication and Åkesson more accountability. Åkesson does unlike Andersson not construct the Quran burnings themselves as a crisis, but rather the sequence of events the phenomena consequently started as such. Due to the results in how blame is communicated, recommended suggestions of further studies could be analyzing if the Swedish political communication has become more hostile by doing a comparative analysis on the present and previous years of political actors communicating.