The aim of this study is to describe the characteristics of right-wing populist parties in Europe. The three parties included in the study are the Swedish Democrats (SD), the British National Party (BNP) and the National Front (NF) in France. The study includes a definition of right-wing populism based on previous research and from that an ideal type of a right-wing populist party has been created. The material used in the study to verify how well the parties were consistent to the ideal type and what similarities and differences the parties in the study have are the parties’ political programs and policies. The conclusion of the results is that the parties fit the ideal type even if they differ in a few certain aspects. The BNP is the party most similar to the ideal type, followed by the NF and then the SD.

The Sweden Democrats uses a term to describe a situation where “swedes” are being discriminated against by other ethnic groups and where the elite is promoting this. The term “svenskfientlighet” can be translated as “swedofobia” and in this thesis a speech by the party leader Jimmie Åkesson held during the election campaign that solely was dedicated to this term is being analyzed with the help of tools developed by the scholar Ruth Wodak. Ruth Wodak has previously analyzed the rhetoric by other European right-wing-populist parties like FPÖ in Austria and has asked for other researchers to analyze the speech used by right-wing-populist and extremist parties to get a better understanding for just how these parties construct their different enemies. This thesis show how the Sweden Democrats use a term that has been founded by more extreme parties, groups that they themselves claim they do not have much in common with. The rhetoric has though developed in a populist direction where the party members or even leaders put themselves in a position as victims of a widely spread hostility directed towards them, on the sole basis that they stand up for what is Swedish.

In the early Cold War decades, the Citizens’ Councils of America (CCA) became the flagship conservative right-wing social movement organization (SMO). As part of its organizational activities, it engaged in a highly sophisticated propaganda effort to mobilize pro-segregationist opinion, merging traditional racist arguments with modern Cold War geopolitics to characterize civil rights activism and federal civil rights reforms as an effort to bring about a tyrannical, Soviet-inspired, dictatorship. Through a content discourse analysis, this research aims to contribute to understanding what factors determine how SMO’s deploy propaganda rhetoric. The main hypothesis is that geopolitical factors, defined here as specific geographic contexts in which sociopolitical issues are situated and from which propaganda rhetoric is deployed, are influential determinants. Since SMO rhetoric reflects its larger ideological orientation, SMO ideology is also influenced by geopolitical factors. For comparative analysis, propaganda literature from the Ku Klux Klan, as well as elite segregationist rhetoric from the same period is included. Relying on frame theory all rhetoric is quantitatively analyzed centering on the question of what factors drive SMO frame messaging. To contribute to frame theory a concept is proposed called frame constellation, which is a web of SMO frame rhetoric and symbolism that functions as an overlapping, intersecting and interrelated system of ideas which revolve around a central intellectual logic for collective action.

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This thesis examines and explains how the three Scandinavian populist radical right parties, the Sweden Democrats, the Danish People’s Party and the Progress Party approaches the climate issue in their latest manifesto, and how it has changed over a period of ten years. By means of a content analysis and categorisations of climate scepticism, climate omission and climate measures, this thesis finds explicit evidence of climate scepticism in the Progress Party whereas there is no such evidence for the Sweden Democrats and the Danish People’s Party completely omits the issue. On the other hand, there is evidence of measures to fight climate change in the Progress Party, and the same goes for the Sweden Democrats. However, the only relevant difference when comparing the manifestos over a ten-year period is a decreased usage of statement connected to both climate scepticism and climate action in the Progress Party’s manifestos.

Studiens syfte är att förstå hur nyhetskonsumenter med olika nivå av institutionaliserat kulturellt kapital uppfattar innehållet i traditionella medier, högerpolitiska alternativmedier och högerextrema alternativmedier för att se hur dessatolkningar kan ge upphov till annorlunda sätt att se på en och samma företeelse med skilda vinklingar. Tidigare studier inom fältet har fokuserat på vilka typer av medier nyhetskonsumenter med olika bakgrund konsumerar men inte så mycket på hur innehållet uppfattas. Det är något som denna studie bringar klarhet kring. Studien är en kvalitativ intervjustudie där sex nyhetskonsumenter med olika bakgrund, beroende på utbildning och yrke, fått läsa och svara på frågor om tre olika nyhetsartiklar som behandlar samma händelse, attacken mot Notre-Damekatedralen i Nice den 29 oktober 2020. Intervjuerna har sedan analyserats utifrån encoding/decoding-perspektivet och ett klassteoretiskt perspektiv. Resultatet visar att den allmänna uppfattningen av artiklarna är relativt likartad respondenterna emellan. Resultatet visar även att varken traditionella medier eller alternativa medier uppfattas som objektiva eller trovärdiga. Det klassteoretiska resultatet visar att respondenter med ett högre kulturellt kapital applicerar ett mer kritiskt förhållningssätt genom att i större utsträckning applicera sina egna åsikter på de iakttagelser som görs. / The purpose of this study is to understand how news consumers with different levels of institutionalized cultural capital perceive traditional and right-wing alternative media in order to see how these interpretations may give rise to different ways to view the same phenomenon with different angles. Previous studies within the same field have focused on what types of media news consumers with different backgrounds consume, but not so much how the content is perceived. How the content is perceived is something this study brings clarity to. This is a qualitative interview study where six news consumers with different backgrounds, depending on education and occupation, are asked to read and answer some questions regarding three different news articles. These articles cover the same story, which is the attack against the Notre-Dame cathedral in Nice on October 29th in 2020. The interviews have been analysed through the encoding/decoding-perspective, as well as class theory perspective.   The result showcases that the general perception of the articles is relatively similar between the different respondents. The result also shows that neither the traditional nor the alternative media is perceived as objective or trustworthy. Furthermore, the result from a class theory perspective also shows how respondents with a higher cultural capital applies a more critical approach by applying their own opinions to a greater extent on the observations that are made.

The issue of unaccompanied migrant children (UAM) in the European Union is one of the most acknowledged and one of the most under researched topics. Close to 100,000 minors arrived in Europe in 2015 alone, without parents or guardians. And more than 10,000 disappeared shortly after. These children have been and continue to be under high risk of human trafficking, child labour, sexual and physical abuse, and exploitation of some other kinds. It has been 6 years since the initial crisis, but the statistics are not getting better. Tendency remains as close to 19,000 UAMs have perished in the past 3 years, which accounts to 17 disappearances a day. Despite the European Union's commitment to protect the rights of UAMs, the conditions of these children are dire. In some member states the situation is so much poorer, that basic human rights are violated. This raises the following questions: Q1: Why does the EU struggle to adopt common policies on unaccompanied migrant children? Q2: How does the EU contribute to the disappearance of UAMs? Qualitative and quantitative data, as well as large amount of primary and secondary sources help navigate through the problem of UAMs. Content analysis of European media contributes to the illustration of perceptions towards migration and unaccompanied children. Social...

This is a case study aiming to clarify the potentially outdated focus on the populist features in modern populist parties. By analyzing the right-wing populist party of Fidesz and the left-wing populist party of Syriza the aim is to clarify whether populism as a feature is descriptive enough to illustrate these parties, regardless their ideological stance, or whether ideology should be taken more into account than it tends to do today. To do this, the policies of each party are mapped to distinguish populist similarities, despite their ideological disparity and their differences. The analysis is delimited by the three pillars of civil society: Freedom of Associations, Freedom of Peaceful Assemblies and Freedom of Expression, referred to as the three pillars of civil society. The study shows that the descriptiveness of Fidesz as a right-wing populist party is conformed. However, the policies of Syriza demonstrate a variation of partially right-wing and left-wing populism, but also tendencies of no populism at all in their foreign policies. The descriptiveness of contemporary left-wing populist parties in the case of Syriza is thereby questionable.

The term 'populist radical right parties' often occurs in media, among experts or as a frequently discussed topic. The topic related to a rise of such of political parties in Europe is parallelly linked to the context of growing number of immigrants. The aim of this work is to clarify reasons of the origin and long-term success of two populist radical right parties. The work analyzes and consequently compares the existence of the Swedish Democrats and the Norwegian Progress Party. Even though Sweden and Norway share several historical and cultural features, situation around selected political parties is apparently different. Norway's Progress Party succeeded in an election of 1973 already. Nowadays it can be listed among Norwegian strongest political parties. On the other hand, the populist radical right party, Swedish Democrats, entered the political scene in 2002 only. The starting point of the time research frame for this thesis is defined as the breakthrough of the Progress Party in 1973 with Anders Lange in lead. The core of the thesis is based on the concept of supply and demand according to which independent variables are categorized. The main purpose of the work is to determine the key factor, which leads to the success of selected political parties and analyze their development.

Cette thèse examine, depuis une perspective durkheimienne, le conflit politique en Allemagne sur le multiculturalisme, l’immigration, et l’identité nationale. L’analyse se fait dans la période entre le début de la crise des réfugiés en 2015 et l’élection fédérale allemande de septembre 2017. J’identifie quatre idéaux moraux, soit des visions idéales de la communauté allemande qui motivent les acteurs politique : l’idéal des Autonomen qui rejettent tout forme de pouvoir et de domination, l’idéal du Verfassungspatriotismus (le patriotisme constitutionnel) de la SPD (et une partie de la CDU), l’idéal de la nation (ethno)culturelle de la plupart de l’AfD (et la CSU et la WerteUnion), et l’idéal de la nation biologique de l’extrême droite. Au cœur de chaque idéal est un objet sacré qui sert d’autorité morale qui légitimant des prescriptions morales et qui amène à une série de vérités morales et de jugements moraux, la totalité duquel Émile Durkheim identifie comme un fait moral. Pour les Autonomen et les adhérents du Verfassungspatriotismus, l’objet sacré est l’individu conçu à travers le concept de la dignité humaine. Pour les autres, l’objet sacré est la nation allemande, conçue en termes (ethno)culturels ou en termes biologiques. Cette thèse argumente que ces idéaux moraux sont intrinsèquement profanatoires, dans le sens que les prescriptions morales d’un objet sacré (la dignité humaine) violent directement l’objet sacré de l’autre (la nation), et vice-versa. Ces idéaux sont tous en concurrence pour le pouvoir et l’influence, avec comme but d’avoir accès au pouvoir étatique allemand. Le résultat est un conflit politique qui traduit essentiellement un conflit moral. Ces conflits ont lieu dans le domaine légal, au sein des partis politique, et à travers la violence politique. Ces conflits touchent un nombre de sujets clés comme la liberté d’expression, le multiculturalisme, et l’extrémisme politique. La présente thèse cherche à comprendre ces conflits à travers le prisme du concept durkheimien du fait moral, et développe une sociologie du conflit moral durkheimien. Cette thèse s’inspire également de la théorie de conflit de Randall Collins, qui s’inspire elle aussi de l’œuvre de Durkheim. / This dissertation examines, from a Durkheimian perspective, political conflict in Germany around the issues of multiculturalism, immigration, and national identity within the context of the Refugee Crisis beginning in 2015 and ending roughly with the German Federal Election in September 2017. It identifies four moral ideals, or ideal visions of the German community, that motivated political actors during this period: the Autonomen ideal that rejects all forms of power and domination; the ideal of Verfassungspatriotismus (Constitutional Patriotism) of the SPD (and parts of the CDU); the ideal of the cultural or ethnocultural nation of much of the AfD (and the CSU and WerteUnion); and the ideal of the biological nation on the far-right. At the heart of each moral ideal is a sacred object that serves as a moral authority that legitimates certain moral prescriptions, and leads to a set of moral truths and moral judgments, the totality of which Émile Durkheim identifies as a moral fact. For the Autonomen and adherents of Verfassungspatriotismus the sacred object is the individual understood through the concept of human dignity. For others the sacred object is the German nation, understood either in an (ethno)cultural sense or a biological sense. As the dissertation argues, these different moral ideals are inherently profanatory to each other, such that the moral prescriptions inspired by one sacred object (human dignity) directly violate the sacred object of the other (the nation), and vice-versa. These ideals all compete with each other for power and influence within the German political sphere as a means to gain access to (or to dismantle) state power. The result is political conflict that takes place essentially within a moral framework. These conflicts occur in the legal domain, in battles over party leadership and membership, and through political violence; they touch on a number of key issues such as free speech, multiculturalism, and political extremism. This dissertation seeks to understand these conflicts through the prism of Durkheim’s concept of the moral fact and to develop a Durkheimian sociology of moral conflict. In this analysis, the dissertation draws on Randall Collins’ conflict theory, which Durkheim’s work also largely inspires.