Racist violence and criminal behaviour in Sweden: Myths and reality

Lööw, Heléne

doi:10.1080/09546559508427287

Cited by 13 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…In the 1991 parliamentary election, the rightwing populist party Ny Demokrati (in English, 'New Democracy'), received 7% of the votes, only to drop out for good in 1994. However, around that time, militant activism peaked (Bjørgo, 1997;Lööw, 1995); refugee centres were attacked and set on fire, and individuals perceived to belong to ethnic and sexual minorities, or the political opposition were physically assaulted, sometimes killed.…”

Section: Background -The Far Right and Right-wing Violent Hate Crimesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamics of violent and dehumanizing rhetoric in far-right social media

Wahlström

Törnberg

Ekbrand

2020

New Media & Society

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This article sheds light on mechanisms by which online social interactions contribute to instigating far-right political violence. It presents an analysis of how violence against ethnic and religious minorities is motivated and legitimized in social media, as well as the situational conditions for such violent rhetoric. Online violent rhetoric in a Swedish public far-right social media discussion group was studied using a combination of machine-learning tools and qualitative analysis. The analysis shows that violent rhetoric primarily occurs in the context of narratives about criminals and crimes with (imagined) immigrant perpetrators and often particularly vulnerable victims, linked to a social problem definition of a corrupt and failing state as well as the alleged need to deport immigrants. The use of dehumanizing and infrahumanizing expressions both legitimizes political violence and spurs negative emotions that may increase motivation for violent action.

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Section: Background -The Far Right and Right-wing Violent Hate Crimesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamics of violent and dehumanizing rhetoric in far-right social media

Wahlström

Törnberg

Ekbrand

2020

New Media & Society

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“…In an analysis of attacks against refugee hostels and asylum seekers in Sweden in the early 1990s, Lööw 17 noted that relatively few of the perpetrators appeared to have been members of racist or extreme nationalist organizations. Instead, a large proportion seemed to have been loosely organized individuals from the local community.…”

Section: Previous Research On Radical Right Political Violencementioning

confidence: 99%

Social Media Mechanisms for Right-Wing Political Violence in the 21st Century: Discursive Opportunities, Group Dynamics, and Co-Ordination

Wahlström

Törnberg

2019

Terrorism and Political Violence

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This article maps mechanisms by which online social media activities may contribute to right-wing political violence. High-impact studies on the wave of right-wing and racist violence in the 1990s and early 2000s established that mass media discourse on immigrants and previous violent incidents had a significant influence on the prevalence of radical right violence. This link was captured by Koopmans's and Olzak's notion of discursive opportunities. However, this was before the dominance of online social networks and social media, which changed the media landscape radically. We argue for broadening and refining the operationalization of the concept of discursive opportunities in social movement studies as well as including in our theoretical models new mechanisms brought about by the new online media. In relation to radical right and anti-immigrant mobilizations in Sweden in the 2010s, we elaborate and exemplify three mechanisms through which activities on social media may affect the incidence of violence: a) having an increasingly coproduced discursive opportunity structure, b) making inter-group dynamics in movement groups and networks trans-local, and c) sharing (rare) practical information and coordinating activities.

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“…This is an authoritarian and exclusionary political party with cultural and ethnic nationalism at its core, with a background in the neo-Nazi organization "Keep Sweden Swedish" (Bevara Sverige Svenskt, BSS). Similar to other populist, authoritarian, and ethnonationalist right-wing parties, the Sweden Democrats is based on a fear to lose ones' cultural or ethnic identity (Lööw 1995;Rydgren 2018).…”

Section: Constructing Dangerous Othersmentioning

confidence: 99%