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- Önnerfors, Andreas, 1971
(författare)
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Manichaean Manipulation – Europe between Apocalypse and Redemption in the Imaginary of the New Right
- 2019
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- An eternal fight between Good and Evil fuels the imaginaries of the European Radical Right (ERR) in a psychology of continuous panic-mongering. Is Europe the bulwark and pinnacle of Western civilization, the safe haven of Christianity, tradition and family values or has it turned into a dystopian oppressive dictatorship of ‘globalist’ Eurocracy? The imminent end of European civilization as we know it has received many names in the ERR such as the ‘breaking point’ in UKIP-rhetoric, ‘systemkollaps’ in Swedish (the ‘breakdown of the system’) or ‘Asylflut’ in German (the ‘refugee deluge’ – a biblical trope of scourge).
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- Önnerfors, Andreas, 1971
(författare)
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Hijacking Human Rights in the Swedish Radical Right
- 2019
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Ingår i: Fair Observer. ; :2019-05-16
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This trend is complex and contradictory to capture, since it operates under the false flag of cloaking the intended attack on democracy and a society ruled by law within the language of the universal values of human rights. Thus, human rights are capitalized against their intended ends. The author(s) of the charges against unspecified perpetrators of “genocide” in the Swedish state administration, media and political establishment made, for instance, use of two specific legal foundations of the Global Human Rights Regime (GHRR): the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the 2005 global commitment that state sovereignty also entails a responsibility to protect, enshrined in Articles 138 and 139 of the World Summit Outcome Document.
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- Önnerfors, Andreas, 1971
(författare)
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Conference Report – The Global Rise of Nativism and Illiberalism: A Conversation on the Contemporary Political Pathology
- 2019
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Ingår i: The Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR). Reports.
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- After a few words of welcome by CHI director Martha Umphrey, organizer and discussant Andreas Önnerfors, Associate Professor in Intellectual History at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, presented an opening statement locating the global rise of nativism and illiberalism in the retrotopian surge (Bauman, 2017) we currently witness across the planet. As explained for fully in my previous blog post here, this nostalgia of primordial security is mobilized in a populist politics of passion and leads to the resurfacing of nativist beliefs, finding comfort in the native in-group and in endorsement of increasingly authoritarian styles of politics. Freedom is traded off against security. The divorce of political power from territory and the dissolution of the previously coercive territorial (welfare) state opens up an atomization of power. What we instead find is a diffuse plethora of placeless Leviathans who take it upon themselves to address the supposed evils of our times. ‘Hobbes’ lapdog’, an artwork produced for the event by Tea Jahrehorn and inspired by the famous title page of Leviathan (1651) (above), portrays a disenfranchised and frustrated young man rising above the globe and wearing a red baseball cap, believing in the blessings of authoritarian violence and the fire and fury of ideology. His bomber jacket displays prevalent buzz words and symbols of the radical right. It is easy to imagine him being an ‘Incel’ and the typical target audience of Jordan B Petersons self-help book 12 Rules for Life (2018), as there is ample evidence that the global retrotopian surge we witness today is guided by a global crisis of masculinity, “a driving force behind radical and radiant visions [in radicalized and extremist imaginaries] of pure patriarchy restored as a male manifestation of unalterable divine or organic order” (Önnerfors/Steiner, 2018: 34). But if the destabilization of traditional masculinity is to be regarded as one factor, what are the other factors? Do we witness a globalization of uncertainty? Are there even common denominators on a global scale? Can we apply our tools and categories of analysis to phenomena across a wide range of political contexts, from the US to the European New Right to Russia and India?
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- Önnerfors, Andreas, 1971
(författare)
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Does ‘Retrotopia’ Explain the Rise of the Radical Right?
- 2019
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Ingår i: Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right. ; :2019-01-04
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- To paraphrase Freud, ‘Immigration to Europe and its discontents’ would represent a fitting title for a much-needed study in the contemporary political climate, with the potential to outline a political psychology, even what one might call a political pathology, of Europe and the Europeans today. Parochialism, xenophobia and ‘welfare nostalgia’ now prevail, and have led to increasing support for right-wing populist parties across the continent. Part of its recent political pathology is an irrational longing for ‘the past as the future’, or ‘retrotopia’, in the words of Zygmunt Bauman (1925-2017), also the title of his last, posthumously published book. Propelled by a dismantling of the previously solid and predictable modern welfare state, placed in the maelstrom of liquid modern neo-liberal self-realization in a state of unpredictable risk and the decoupling of power and politics due to globalization, Bauman argues in Retrotopia (2017) that larger and larger segments of Western electorates, or more ambiguously ‘the people’, share a sense of being left behind, abandoned, ignored (not ‘listened to’) and made redundant. This demise is blamed on internal traditional political elites, the ‘mainstream media’ and foreign foes, narratives frequently saturated with elaborate theories of conspiracy and high treason. Furthermore, people flock to tribal mentalities, encapsulating societal discourse within mutually exclusive and mutually hostile filter bubbles and echo chambers. To this toxic mix are added a dramatic privatization of violence, stimulating copycat behavior and an almost insurmountable and increasing cleavage between rich and poor. The only way out is to restore a civilized order of the discourse. Humanity faces an existential situation of choice: either joining hands or common graves.
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- Önnerfors, Andreas, 1971
(författare)
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’Spöknippet’: the chilling continuities of fascist imagination in the Swedish Radical Right
- 2019
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Ingår i: Centre for the Analysis of the Radical Right.
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The use of the term ‘fascism’ or ‘neo-fascism’ in the context of the Swedish radical right and its parliamentary arm, the Sweden Democrats (SD), is extremely contested. Following the general elections of 2014, PM Stefan Löfven characterized the party in an op ed in Dagens Nyheter 6 December 2014 a s “a neo-fascist one-issue party respecting neither people´s differences nor Sweden’s democratic institutions.” What followed was a hectic period where (some of them self-declared) experts on ‘fascism’ entered the debate either arguing for or most commonly against the choice of terminology applied by the Swedish political leadership. Swedish intellectuals and academics engaged in an occasionally bizarre competition in defining ‘fascism’ and ‘neo-fascism’ and, closely linked to this general question, who supposedly owned the appropriate privilege of interpretation.
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- Önnerfors, Andreas, 1971
(författare)
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The Germany Synagogue Terrorist’s Manifesto Highlights Threat Of Neo-Nazism
- 2019
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Ingår i: Rantt Media. ; :2019-10-18
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Annan publikation (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The anti-Semitic terrorist attack on Yom Kippur in Halle an der Saale in the German state of Sachsen-Anhalt (former part of the GDR) tragically reminds us of that the womb of virulent enemy images and conspiracy theories is far from sterile. To the contrary, anti-Semitic imagination in contemporary Germany fuels radicalization into violent and lethal extremism, which in the case of Halle has left two people dead and a number of people heavily injured. The terrorist attack against the synagogue in Halle developed along a storyline with ingredients that are sadly already well-established features of radical right copycat behavior around the globe: a white radicalized man in his twenties, live-streaming his actions on the Internet, posting a manifesto in which he develops his worldview attempts to storm a house of prayer with the aim to kill as many people in the purported enemy group as possible.
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