Nature, Knowledge, and Protest

Melanie Arndt: Tschernobylkinder. Die transnationale Geschichte einer nuklearen Ka- tastrophe, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020, 499 pp., ISBN: 978-3-525- 35208-3. Nils Güttler: Alles über das Fliegen. Eine politische Wissensgeschichte des Frankfurter Flughafens, Vienna: Turia & Kant, 2020, 123 pp., ISBN: 978-3-85132-981-0. Katrin Jordan: Ausgestrahlt. Die mediale Debatte um „Tschernobyl“ in der Bundesrepu- blik und in Frankreich 1986/87, Göttingen: Wallstein, 2018, 424 pp., ISBN: 978-3- 8353-3304-8. Stephen Milder: Greening Democracy. The Anti-Nuclear Movement and Political Envi- ronmentalism in West Germany and Beyond, 1968–1983, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 2017, 280 pp., ISBN: 978-1-107-13510-9. Christian Möller: Umwelt und Herrschaft in der DDR. Politik, Protest und die Gren- zen der Partizipation in der Diktatur, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020, 396 pp., ISBN: 978-3-525-31096-0. Martin Spenger: Green Beat. Gary Snyder und die moderne amerikanische Umweltbe- wegung, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020, 239 pp., ISBN: 978-3-525- 31098-4.

A Bridge with Three Pillars

The paper reflects on the externalisation of violence in media discourses about migra- tion in Germany. I discuss in how far news media build discursive bridges to masculist and far-right groups. To this end, I draw on some of the findings of my research proj- ect ‘Genderism’ in Media Debate. Thematic cycles from 2006 to 2016. Soldierly mascu- linity is seen as hegemonic in the far right. By means of an alleged crisis of masculinity and victimisation of men, this is linked to masculist concepts. The far right as well as masculists accuse women, especially feminists, of being to blame for the effeminacy of men. This crisis of masculinity is considered a problem, to which soldierly masculinity is offered as a solution. The findings of the mentioned genderism-project show that news media discuss the crisis of masculinity, as well as the blaming of feminists. Yet, they do not take up far-right concepts directly. Masculist views can be regarded as the central pillar of a discursive bridge between news media and far-right concepts of mas- culinity. I argue that the notion of a discursive bridge only works with masculist views as intermediary between news media and the far right. Thus, masculism is a crucial ideology to link far-right views regarding discourses in society.

Anti-Immigration Propaganda in the Northern League and the Freedom Party of Austria

Over the past two decades, populist-radical parties of Western Europe arguably re- vised their propaganda towards the rejection of Muslim migrants with gender-sen- sitive arguments. Among these parties, the Northern League (LN) and the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) achieved their electoral breakthrough thanks to their anti-mi- gration campaigns, which, inter alia, aligned peculiar gender perspectives with long- term attitudes towards ethnicity, welfare and Islam. Drawing on the LN’s and FPÖ’s election programmes, visuals and leader statements from the early 2000s, the present article discusses the common assumptions regarding the populist radical right’s dis- cursive changes towards anti-Islamism. The paper argues that the two parties in the mentioned period forged their propaganda against the rejection of Muslim migrants in religious and gender-sensitive terms, but their ethnic and class-oriented exclusions equally remained. The documents in question also revealed that these parties recent- ly softened their attitudes towards migrant caregivers to preserve traditional gender images in Austria and Italy. The LN’s and FPÖ’s long-term preoccupations with Ital- ian and Austrian women’s roles in worklife, family and reproduction are likely to bring about changes in the conceptions of female migrants in the care sector. The question still remains whether the parties began to tolerate Muslim female workers, since their propaganda, in contrast to the literature, did not suggest the acknowledgement of Muslims in any of the labour fields.

Gender, Populism and Anti-Immigrations

In current struggles over cultural hegemony, conservative and right-wing populist dis- course is marked by an omni-presence of topics related to gender and sexuality. This article examines the ways in which diverse actors of what will be called the ‘right-wing populist complex’ use gender in order to catapult a variety of arguments into the public sphere with particular focus on actors in the Americas and Germany. Suggest- ing a first set of Right-Wing Populist Patterns of Gendering1, the article pursues the question how seemingly emancipatory arguments function in right-wing discourse, especially in performing a modernisation paradigm, while simultaneously, and in of- ten paradoxical ways, promoting a program of re-traditionalisation. Therefore, often, gender arguments—like the sexual freedom of ‘autochtonous’ women—are used to justify anti-immigration and racist politics. One’s own society can thus be depicted as supposedly already fully emancipated in contrast to the alleged ‘backward’ social order of immigrants. Through this ethno-sexist twist, the article argues that gender provides right-wing populist discourse a useful tool for affectively bridging seemingly paradoxical arguments and transferring diverse social hierarchies shaped by late neo- liberalism onto the gender hierarchy of a society. Since gender as a discursive element is foundational for right-wing discourse, an analytical, systematic and intersectional gender lens—or a critical gender theory—is crucial in right-wing populism research in order to grasp patterns of gendering and their entanglements with racialisation and racist structures.

Past Intensities

This obituary commemorates the life and work of the nationally and internationally renowned German historian Alf Lüdtke, who is best known for his concept of the everyday history and who, in the 1970s and 1980s, together with other colleagues, began to develop historically questions inspired by concepts of anthropology. With his studies he made very important contributions to the history of policing, violence, fascism in Germany and governance in general. In this context he began very early to highlight the importance of symbols and emotions and the role of ordinary women and men in historical processes and dynamics of the 19th and 20th centuries. Alf Lüdtke

Framing in a Multicultural Social Movement

This article analyses the sustainability movement that opposed the construction of the Las Cruces hydroelectric project in the San Pedro River watershed in Nayarit, Mexico. It focuses on the movement’s theoretical framework and general orientation in order to show how the various and distinct frameworks that emerged throughout the evolution of the movement were selected, adjusted and creatively reworked within the movement. This allowed these frameworks to adapt to changing local social, cultural, and environ- mental conditions through a process that also enriched them and imbued them with new meanings through contact with the perspectives of coastal agricultural and fishing communities, as well as with indigenous Naayeri communities in the mountains.

Performances of Populist Radical Right and Political Masculinities

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the study of populism, with increas- ing scholarly attention to the discursive, stylistic and performative aspects of different populisms. This study discusses the “discursive and stylistic turn”1 in populism studies and highlights the centrality of performances of masculinities to the populist reper- toire. Upon this framework, we explore the ways in which masculinities play out in shaping the discursive, stylistic and performative repertoires of European populist rad- ical right (PRR). The conceptualisation of political masculinities is used as an analyti- cal lens that helps us see the gendered structure of discourses and performances in two dissimilar cases of PRR leaders, namely Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary and Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV) of the Netherlands. We employ a comparative perspective so as to identify how performances of masculinity work in radical right populisms of dissimilar historical trajectories in terms of the loca- tion of gender in culture. We focus on Orbán’s and Wilders’ narrations of themselves; of their understanding of ‘the people’ whom they claim to represent; and of their relation with ‘the people’. A re-reading of the use of narratives, metaphors, gestures, emotions through an analysis of the two leaders’ interviews, speeches, texts and media performances reveal their masculinist ‘brave bad boy’ performances, the ways they draw boundaries between ‘outsiders and insiders’, and the ways in which they claim to embody the people, and to be ‘men of the people’.

Beyond Egalitarianism

Despite all the political and ideological pronouncements, there were also various forms of social inequality in the ‘real existing socialism’ of the GDR (German Democratic Republic). These have been extensively studied at the latest since the construction of the Berlin Wall. Since these years, there has been an intensified preoccupation with socially deviant living conditions, which have been documented statistically. How- ever, these figures raised questions about the limits of socialist communisation and the realisation of the ideologically articulated goal of bringing about a convergence of the ‘classes and strata’. Therefore, the goal was to synchronize these figures with the state’s self-image, which in turn revealed numerous contradictions. Based on a deconstruction of contemporary statistical measurement procedures as well as studies and the resulting interpretations of social inequality, the article first proposes a phase classification of this approach to social differentiation. In a further step, the resulting intended and unintended effects are illuminated.