The Politics of Fear - now amongst so called progessives as well?

One of my favourite authors within the social sciences is Ruth Wodak, who has made extensive contributions both to political philosophy and to methodological frameworks for analyzing discourse. Over the past week, I have been thinking a lot about Wodak’s concept of “the politics of fear.” Basically, this concept means that right-wing groups often construct migrants and their political allies as a threat to the majority society. This, in turn, creates a political climate in which polarization increases and people act irrationally out of fear.

In Sweden, we have elections to decide how the Swedish Church should be run. Even though the church has been separated from the state for the past 26 years, these elections often involve the same parties as the parliamentary elections, complemented by a few specifically church-based parties. These elections are frequently controversial, since right-wing parties have often tried to mobilize in them. Because relatively few people vote, it is easier for these parties to gain disproportionate influence over church politics—even though many church members might disagree with them but are too indifferent to cast their vote.

When I visited a church a few days ago, I came across campaign material from a right-wing party called the Sweden Democrats. Their pamphlet essentially opened with the statement that Malmö is a divided city and that the party stood for a “traditional church” and “traditional church values.” Here it became rather clear that the party was attempting to invoke fear among potential voters, presenting a return to tradition as the only possible way forward.

Other parties, often on the liberal or leftist spectrum, have, however, employed a similar strategy. They frequently argue that the church is under attack from neo-conservatives and nationalists who seek to turn it into a tool for their political agendas. While this might be true, it can still be seen as another way of instilling fear in voters—though from the opposite direction.

What I personally fear is that this focus on emphasizing the negative aspects of one’s opponents often distracts voters from the real issues. For instance, the Sweden Democrats did not state clearly what they actually wanted for the church, apart from claiming that it should be “a place beyond politics and political pride.” But if they are sincere about returning to “traditional church values,” this would also imply a stance against abortion, female priests, and the inclusion of LGBTQ persons. On the other hand, the progressive parties do not always highlight that they actively defend precisely these issues. The risk of this polarization is, therefore, that we become so focused on fear that we lose sight of the substantive questions at hand.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Contemporary Sexual Politics: Efforts to Silence Sexuality in Politics

Image
Following up on last week’s post, we can ask ourselves where questions of sexuality are being challenged in politics. From a contemporary perspective, I would argue that we are currently witnessing global attempts—particularly from conservative actors—to banish issues of sexuality from public discourse. In Foucauldian theory, we can speak of several forms of the exercise of power. Foucault uses the concept of biopower to analyze social views on sex, capitalism, and power. One of the central aspects of biopower is that it often operates through the individual, who is expected to internalize social norms rather than be externally forced to accept them. Yet, in the case of sexuality, we have over the past decades witnessed rather forceful attempts to silence it, thereby making people unaware of important aspects of their own sexuality. In such cases, the effort seems to lie in banishing "unwanted" expressions from public discourse, thereby limiting the individual’s scope for a...
Read more

The old bucket and me - Hinke Bergegrens philosophical works

Image
(the title of this entry is a play with words, since the name "Hinke" carries resemblance to the word hink in swedish which means bucket).  For the past months I have been working on a project on Swedish politician Henrik "Hinke" Bergegren, who is often forgotten in contemporary history writing. Bergegren was born in an upperclass family in Stockholm in the year of 1861 and early in his life came into contact with rising workers movement. Within the movement he soon gained prominence and was a key person in forming the social democratic party, which would shape Sweden upuntil this day. In the scholarship on Bergegren a key concern have been the framing of him as a political terrorist, where he on the party's congress spoke openly about using violence as a mean to achieve the workers goals. In 1908 he was excluded permantly from the social-democratic party, which often have been described as a result of his agitation for violence. However, historian Åsa Linderbor...
Read more

Book review of sorts: A history of childhood by Colin Heywood

Image
One of the many perks with being a university teacher is that you get to read alot of various scientific literature. This semester I have been assigned to teach course about the history of childhood, which actually aligns rather well with my research interests on the history of families and migrant children. However, teaching also requires to read through the course literature and in this case a key-book was Colin Heywood's "a history of childhood".  As a standalone book it works rather well as an introduction to both the history of childhood and, in a wider sense, social constructionism. What I however have struggled with when incoorporating it to teaching is these three aspects: a) The structure which is divided thematically rather than chronologically  b) The books overestimation of the social; whilst also underestimating human evolution c) The approach where the past is presented as a one-way route to an enlighted, contemporary Europe or western world  Starting with m...
Read more