The Chosen Few A comparative study of The Prophet’s Ummah and The Nordic Resistance Movement’s language and visual communication. Emelie Maria Brun and Jenny Wikshåland Skouen Master thesis in Criminology Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law 22nd May 2018 ii iii iv The Chosen Few A comparative study of The Prophet’s Ummah and The Nordic Resistance Movement’s language and visual communication. v Disclaimer © Emelie Maria Brun and Jenny Wikshåland Skouen 2018 The Chosen Few: A comparative study of The Prophet’s Ummah and The Nordic Resistance Movement’s language and visual communication. vi To the memory of Jenny’s father, Ståle Wikshåland 30.06.1953 - 18.01.2017 vii viii ABSTRACT Title: The Chosen Few: A comparative study of The Prophet’s Ummah and The Nordic Resistance Movement’s language and visual communication. Authors: Emelie Maria Brun and Jenny Wikshåland Skouen Supervisor: Sveinung Sandberg Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law Faculty of Law University of Oslo Spring 2018 This study explores the applicability of a combination of social movement theory, narrative criminology and subcultural perspectives to the extremist organisations The Prophet’s Ummah and The Nordic Resistance Movement. These groups differ from the mainstream Scandinavian society in how they both support, and even encourage, violence as a legitimate political means. The aim is to explore how their world view and the stories they tell are reflected through subcultural traits, and how their appearance and ideologies are intertwined and reliant on each other in order to constitute a defined group identity. We aim to identify, analyse and compare each group’s political or religious beliefs. Further, we will discuss how these are reflected through subcultural style, and how the combination of linguistics and subcultural traits communicates their world view. Lastly, we wish to establish the importance of studying extremist propaganda through a combination of different theoretical approaches. The study is divided into three parts; the first analysing each group’s beliefs through collective action frames and exploring the master narratives applied in their propaganda. The second, examining the underlying meaning of the subcultural traits and the significance of how the subcultural homology also communicate transhistorical tales. The third part is a discussion of the four master narratives The Prophet’s Ummah and The Nordic Resistance Movement have in common, and how these narratives could be applied to other extremist groups as well. These are; partaking in a war against a foreign invasion, fighting against a twofold enemy, being the chosen few soldiers saving their people, as well as their ultimate goal of establishing a new utopian state. Through a comparative analysis we highlight how – even though the content of the tales differs – both the narrative framework and the communicated message are still strikingly similar, suggesting that these particular stories might have a broader appeal than the extremist consensus in which they exist. In spite of how both The Prophet’s Ummah and The ix Nordic Resistance Movement arguably have a marginal reach within the mainstream, their affiliation with international extremist environments could indicate that these stories also resonate with a broader transnational milieu. We would argue that these particular stories reveal elements of the sublime underlying doxa of extremist world views and provide insight into the hegemonic consensus within each subcultural sphere. x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, our biggest thank you goes to our supervisor Sveinung Sandberg. You have been our rock throughout this process. Thank you for providing us with your brilliant insights and challenging us all the way, for laughing politely at our bad jokes, and for being brutally honest when we handed you drafts that were a chaotic mess. This thesis would have been nothing without you. Thank you to Maria Hegland for spell checking and teaching us basic grammar that none of us have been capable of learning during our five years in academia. Without you, there would have been a misplaced semicolon and hyphen in every sentence. Thank you to our fellow students at Domus Nova, especially to Maria and June, who continued to speak to us and let us feel part of it all, even when we both decided to get a puppy (to make the writing process even more nerve wrecking), and as a consequence never showed up at University again. Lastly, we would also be so bold as to thank each other. We went from not knowing each other very well, to basically sharing one brain through this past one and a half years. Despite warnings and horror stories of collaborative projects gone wrong, we have not had one fight, not even a tiny, snarky comment. Instead we have become the closest friends who, to Emelie’s boyfriend Jostein’s dismay, spend all their spare time together. This past year has been a roller coaster, but luckily we both live by the motto ‘get a grip!’, even when life happens repeatedly, and without exception right before a deadline. Cheers to us! May 2018, Oslo Emelie Maria Brun Jenny Wikshåland Skouen xi TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................. 1 1.2 Background and presentation of research subjects .......................................................................... 2 1.2.1 The Prophet’s Ummah................................................................................................................ 2 1.2.2 The Nordic Resistance Movement .............................................................................................. 4 1.3 Research Aim and Research Question ............................................................................................. 6 1.4 Terms and Definitions ..................................................................................................................... 7 1.5 Thesis Composition......................................................................................................................... 8 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS .................................................................................................... 10 2.1 Language Analysis ........................................................................................................................ 10 2.2 Framing Theory ........................................................................................................................... 11 2.2.1 Collective Action Frames ......................................................................................................... 12 2.2.2 Extremism and social movement theory .................................................................................... 13 2.3 Narrative Criminology .................................................................................................................. 14 2.3.1 Narrative genres and neutralisation ........................................................................................... 15 2.3.2 Narrative types ......................................................................................................................... 17 2.3.3 Extremist Narratives................................................................................................................. 18 2.4 Subculture Theory........................................................................................................................ 20 2.4.1 Chicago School ........................................................................................................................ 20 2.4.2 Birmingham School ................................................................................................................. 22 2.4.3 Extremism and subculture theory .............................................................................................. 25 2.5 The theoretical synthesis ............................................................................................................... 27 3. METHODOLOGY .............................................................................................................................. 29 3.1 Dataset ......................................................................................................................................... 29 3.2 Data collection ............................................................................................................................. 30 3.2.1 The Nordic Resistance Movement ............................................................................................ 31 3.2.2 The Prophet’s Ummah.............................................................................................................. 32 3.3 Qualitative Research.................................................................................................................... 34 3.3.1 Document analysis ................................................................................................................... 35 3.3.2 Comparative analysis ............................................................................................................... 36 3.4 Analytical procedure .................................................................................................................... 37 3.5 Limitations ................................................................................................................................... 38