The Nature of Nationalism: Populist Radical Right Parties on Countryside and Climate

Abstract

This article inquires into how contemporary populist radical right parties relate to environmental issues of countryside and climate protection, by analyzing relevant discourses of the British National Party (BNP) and the Danish People's Party (DPP). It does so by looking at party materials along three dimensions: the aesthetic, the symbolic, and the material. The article discusses to what extent the parties' political stances on environmental issues are conditioned by deeper structures of nationalist ideology and the understandings of nature embedded therein. It illustrates a fundamental difference between the way nationalist actors engage in, on the one hand, the protection of nature as national countryside and landscape, epitomizing the nation's beauty, harmony and purity over which the people are sovereign. On the other hand, they deny or cast doubt on environmental risks located at a transnational level, such as those that relate to climate. The article argues that this apparent inconsistency is rooted in the ideological tenets of nationalism as the transnational undermines the nationalist ideal of sovereignty.

Right-wing populism and the climate change agenda: exploring the linkages

“…There is also evidence that nationalist values matter. For example, Forchtner and Kølvraa (2015) show that British and Danish RWP parties symbolically frame the climate agenda as a threat to national sovereignty. Gemenis et al (2012) also find the common use of nationalism and hostility to the EU as frames for treatment of climate change amongst the 13 RWP parties in Europe that they surveyed.…”

Climate change and the far right

“…Moving from such overviews to detailed analyses of arguments, Forchtner and Kølvraa () investigated manifestos and other party materials of the British National Party and the Danish People's Party. Combining quantitative and qualitative elements, their analysis confirmed these parties' climate‐change skepticism (for further confirmation, see Turner‐Graham, in press, whose investigation covered, among others, the British National Party, and Widfeldt & Brandenburg, , p. 578 who noted in passing that the British National Party wants to repeal the Climate Change Act).…”

“…Combining quantitative and qualitative elements, their analysis confirmed these parties' climate‐change skepticism (for further confirmation, see Turner‐Graham, in press, whose investigation covered, among others, the British National Party, and Widfeldt & Brandenburg, , p. 578 who noted in passing that the British National Party wants to repeal the Climate Change Act). Forchtner and Kølvraa () argued that the climate, due to its abstract nature, is not easily aesthetically comprehensible and affirmed (in comparison to the countryside), although climate change is highly relevant for the drawing of symbolic boundaries ( us vs. them ) and made meaningful in the context of the nation's self‐sufficiency. Indeed, concerns are continuously voiced over national sovereignty and independence as being threatened by global climate‐change policies.…”

Being Skeptical? Exploring Far-Right Climate-Change Communication in Germany

“…Whilst these political and environmental crises have been analyzed extensively on their own, this article contributes to the analysis of their intersection, enquiring into communication about global climate change by particularistic far-right actors. Indeed, research on climate change has addressed the role of the liberal-left and conservative ideology (identifying conservative stances as rather skeptical), but the far right's views on climate change have not been scrutinized to a similar extent (but see Forchtner & Kølvraa, 2015;Gemenis et al, 2012;Lockwood, 2018;Voss, 2014). This is despite the fact that both the re-emergence of these actors, ranging from anti-liberal democracy radical-right populists to extreme-right actors and antidemocratic neo-Nazis/fascists, and climate change are products of the rise of a world risk society (Beck, 1998): while climate change is a paradigmatic, unintended consequence of previous modernization, the contemporary success of the far right is, at least partly, a result of moving from first to second modernity, with its increased levels of uncertainty and the destabilization of identities.…”

“…Instead of investigating parties (Forchtner & Kølvraa, 2015;Gemenis et al, 2012;Voss, 2014), we focus on non-party actors which, in contrast to so-called far-right 'populist' parties acting more or less in the mainstream of their respective public spheres, can articulate their ideology in a fairly unconstrained manner. We do so by looking at a corpus compiled from German magazines and a blog (2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014), a sample which includes sources characterized by varying degrees of ideological rigor.…”