This dissertation explores how the far-right social movement in Nordic countries mobilizes emotion in place and to what ends. Focusing on Sweden and Denmark, I argue that these affective landscapes of the far right movement are mobilized strategically to delineate ethnoracial insiders and outsiders, racialize spaces, and sustain activist participation. Through ethnographic observations, interviews, and visual analysis, I provide a unique analysis of the localized practices of racial nativist ideologies. The affective landscape studied in this dissertation spans "the body"—framed as under threat from others, “badlands”—racialized urban areas linked to crime and immigration, "homelands"—the nostalgic, rural spaces purportedly untouched by multiculturalism, and “safe spaces"—where activists foster expressions of white national identity they believe to be denigrated. 

Through four articles I offer a novel understanding of how far-right movements mobilize politicized places. Article I shows how Danish far right activists embody nativism through confrontational protests in diverse neighborhoods, using footage of counterprotestors to portray racialized others as threats to national purity. Article II highlights how Swedish activists frame multicultural urban areas as signs of state failure, employing fears of the “badlands” of the nation to justify interventions into these neighborhoods and demonstrate the decline of the Swedish homeland. Article III begins to look more closely within the movement, theorizing how far-right activists negotiate the stigma of their position and the shame which typically follows from that stigma. I find that the far right activists repurpose narratives of stigmatization within movement “safe spaces”, fostering an alternative normative order through the affective practices of truth, love, and humor. Article 4 studies how rural “homelands” become imagined as sanctuaries for white national identities, based on observations of an attempted white separatist community.

Given the embeddedness of racializing nativism in liberal democracies today, this dissertation makes critical contributions to understanding how our emotional relationships to places become strategically mobilized to exclude. Ultimately, this dissertation offers insights into how emotion in place becomes framed by and sustains far-right mobilizations. This research demonstrates that far right movements in Nordic countries emotionally signify specific places, leveraging these affective landscapes to legitimize exclusionary agendas.