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Did the Fascists Get You?

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Did the Fascists Get You? Bachelor’s thesis Did the fascists get you? The New Right’s influence on right-wing populism Author: Jonathan Madeland Supervisor: Dino Viscovi Examiner: Gergei Farkas Term: VT20 Subject: Sociology Level: Bachelor Course code: 2SO31E Abstract: An experimental survey (N = 415) is used to evaluate fascist qualifications within party preference groups, regarding susceptibility to a neofascist communication style and gravitation toward fascist ideas. Testing the notion by fascism expert Roger Griffin, that the influence of the neofascist intellectual movement the New Right (la Nouvelle Droite) is successfully shaping the 21st century wave of right-wing populism, it is hypothesized that sympathizers of the Swedish right-wing populism equivalent (the Sweden Democrats) are more susceptible to a neofascist communication style and more preconditioned to agree with covertly fascist ideas (as based on the writings of the Nouvelle Droite). The results strongly support this hypothesis, although the potential for generalizability beyond the collected sample is limited. Using a causal networks approach, the failure to falsify the hypothesis is however considered a small but valid observation that bolsters its probability. The study contributes to the current research by further strengthening the bridge between the fields of populism and fascism. Key words: fascism, survey experiment, causal networks, New Right, Nouvelle Droite, right- wing populism, the Sweden Democrats Thank you! I would like to thank the members of the Kantian Dinner Party for critiquing this text. Valuable feedback has also been given by my fellow sociology students: Elin Gunnarsson, Olivia Jakobsson, Hanna Nir and Julia Yunusova. I will also, contradicting all the conventions because I don’t care about them right now, thank my supervisor Dino Viscovi for having enough confidence in me to let me try several unusual approaches. I would especially like to thank everyone who has participated in the study, a considerable amount of whom via the facebook group “Växjö”. You are by far the most helpful town-based facebook group; the stockholmare and the göteborgare only contributed with about five cases total (although I am of course incredibly grateful for those!). I am very sorry that I deceived you regarding the true purpose of the study. Unfortunately, it is a necessity in experimental effect studies that participants are unaware of what is being tested. I hope that you will nevertheless find the study interesting. It is my sincere hope that no one will feel accused of being “a fascist” by the results or conclusions in the study. This is far from the point. It is only that I measure the susceptibility to a neofascist communication style and the presence of certain ideas that would make actual neofascists regard themselves successful in their online propagating. I in no way make any conclusions regarding the political intentions of the participants. I hope that what will be communicated in the study is a demonstration that neofascist propaganda has an observable, very real effect, and that fascist conceptions seem to be concentrated in groups that are especially susceptible to neofascist propaganda; that it is not an accusation of fascism but a heads up regarding an empirically potent threat of far-right manipulation that is ongoing in our current world. Jonathan Madeland Table of contents 1 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Expanding the field of populism .................................................................................................. 1 1.2 Why study fascism? ...................................................................................................................... 2 1.3 An experimental approach ............................................................................................................ 4 1.4 Purpose statement ......................................................................................................................... 6 2 A deductive excursion ......................................................................................................................... 7 2.1 Defining fascism ........................................................................................................................... 7 2.2 A neofascist communication style .............................................................................................. 10 2.3 Exploring causal networks ......................................................................................................... 11 3 Methods and materials ....................................................................................................................... 15 3.1 Forging a fascist-o-meter ............................................................................................................ 15 3.1.1 Susceptibility to a neofascist communication style ............................................................. 15 3.1.2 Gravitation toward fascist ideas .......................................................................................... 16 3.1.3 Party preferences ................................................................................................................. 18 3.2 Notes on validity ........................................................................................................................ 18 3.3 A theoretical generalization ........................................................................................................ 19 3.4 Collected materials ..................................................................................................................... 20 3.5 Ethical considerations ................................................................................................................. 21 4 Results ............................................................................................................................................... 23 4.1 Susceptibility: Variation A vs Variation B ................................................................................. 23 4.2 Gravitation toward fascist ideas ................................................................................................. 25 5 Discussion and conclusions ............................................................................................................... 27 5.1 Exploring causal networks (post experiment) ............................................................................ 27 5.2 So what? ..................................................................................................................................... 29 References ............................................................................................................................................. 31 Appendix A – Complete references in literature map ........................................................................... 35 Appendix B – Crime descriptions ......................................................................................................... 40 Appendix C – Screenshots of facebook comments ............................................................................... 43 1 Introduction 1.1 Expanding the field of populism A salient political trend during the last decades is the global rise of populism (Elgenius & Rydgren 2017; Hameleers & Schmuck 2017; Sheets et al 2016). According to Roodujin (2019), research on populism has since the election of Donald Trump and the Brexit referendum become an entire industry of its own. Even so, a major gap in this research field is that populism remains rather detached from adjacent fields. Also, being consensually defined as “a set of ideas that concerns the antagonistic relationship between the corrupt elite and the virtuous people” (ibid, pp. 365-6), populism as a concept can be applied on a wide range of phenomena. Because of this, Roodujin continues, there is a risk that important distinctions between populist movements might get overlooked. For example, we can immediately and meaningfully differentiate between “left-wing” and “right-wing” populists – the former basing their societal critique on the concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, the latter on the impact of immigration (see also Caiani 2019); i.e. different demographics voicing different concerns but having in common that they are against the status quo. Failing to make this distinction, researchers have in the past wrongfully claimed that nativist conceptions and a lack of education make people susceptible to “populism” – when a well-educated non-nativist might as well be a populist (but not of the same kind). The general increase of populism worldwide suggests that there is more than one single cause or issue at hand; the current state of the world itself seems to be fertile ground for populist movements. There are many theories to why this is. One supporting reason, according to Mudde (2004), could be the ‘demystification of the political office’ which means that citizens in post- industrial societies more so than before consider themselves to have a good understanding of what politicians do – and think that they can do it better. This belief undermines the legal authority (in a Weberian sense) of politicians and instead opens the door for charismatic leadership (ibid). Many researchers point to a lack of trust rooted in the material implications of global
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