Whitewashing white Power: a Rhetorical Political Analysis of the parliamentary ambition of the Nordic Resistance Movement in Sweden

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since 2018 the largest National Socialist organization in the Nordic countries, The Nordic Resistance Movement, has been taking part in national and local elections in Sweden. Although the organization has no real political influence, it consistently feeds individuals and groups against immigration with racist and antisemitic propaganda or so-called ‘evidence’ of a Jewish conspiracy. In this article, the organization’s political manifesto and a series of speeches given at three public demonstrations are subjected to a rhetorical political analysis demonstrating how leading figures of the organization attempt to persuade and motivate new and existing members. The analysis provides insight into a rhetoric that articulates established social concerns in public discourse to legitimate a National Socialist ideology. As opposed to most far-right parties in Europe and certainly in the Nordic, the organization has not abandoned traditional antisemitism in favour of anti-Islamism. The NMR, in turn, uses the fact that they do not hide their racism to provide credibility as the only authentic nationalist actor in Sweden. The findings should be relevant for anyone working on understanding and preventing such parties from gaining support and potentially mainstreaming antisemitism in a time when extreme nationalism is growing all over the world.