Till Örebro universitet

This study examines how ideas about nature and gender are affectively communicated in Nordic radical nationalism. It focuses on the strategic role of ‘positive’ affect in ecofascist visual discourse and how gendered representations structure and channel these affective processes. Three research questions guide the study: How does visual communication construct masculinity and femininity through positive affect? What work does gendered positive affect perform as a communication strategy? And how does positive affect contribute to normalizing far-right ecologism through gendered visual communication?

The thesis employs multimodal critical discourse analysis across three sub-studies, drawing on images, captions and texts collected from Telegram and Nordic radical nationalist digital archives between 2020 and 2025. A fourth sub-study consists of a systematic literature review. The first article analyses cuteness in ecofascist propaganda, finding that it disarms viewers by framing extremism as emotionally inviting, recruiting adherents through soft emotional appeals rather than overt aggression. The second identifies the ‘contemplative man’ trope, which constructs far-right masculinity as rooted in serenity and connection to the land, framing racial exclusion as a moral duty. The third examines the ‘wheat girl’ figure, showing how aestheticized femininity makes radical nationalism appear natural and desirable, framing ethnic exclusion as a biological necessity tied to fertility and tradition. The fourth article reviews existing scholarship in order to contextualize these visual tactics within broader patterns of far-right ecologism. It confirms that gender serves as a fundamental mechanism for mobilization and ideological justification.

Together, the studies demonstrate that positive affect functions simultaneously as a communication strategy and a tool for subjectification. Gendered imagery bypasses rational critique by framing exclusionary politics as beautiful, organic and emotionally fulfilling. This process recruits by making ideology emotionally appealing, subjectifies by offering gendered templates for identification and normalizes violence by embedding it within familiar frameworks of care and protection. Contemporary far-right discourse has updated fascist gender ideology for modern audiences, producing an aestheticized, softer version that is more difficult to identify as political. It is therefore essential that counter-radicalization strategies and digital literacy programmes that seek to look beyond explicit hate speech understand these mechanisms in order to engage critically with the aesthetics and emotional templates through which extremist ideologies travel and take root.