7. Ekström, Krzyżanowski, Johnson

Critical Discourse Studies
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Saying ‘Criminality’, meaning ‘immigration’?

Proxy discourses and public implicatures in the
normalisation of the politics of exclusion
Hugo Ekström, Michał Krzyżanowski & David Johnson
To cite this article: Hugo Ekström, Michał Krzyżanowski & David Johnson (02 Dec 2023):
Saying ‘Criminality’, meaning ‘immigration’? Proxy discourses and public implicatures
in the normalisation of the politics of exclusion, Critical Discourse Studies, DOI:
10.1080/17405904.2023.2282506
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CRITICAL DISCOURSE STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2023.2282506
Saying ‘Criminality’, meaning ‘immigration’? Proxy discourses

and public implicatures in the normalisation of the politics of
exclusion
Hugo Ekström, Michał Krzyżanowski and David Johnson
Department of Informatics and Media, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This article explores political discourse in the context of an online- Received 22 July 2022
mediated 2021 rapprochement between Swedish ‘mainstream’ and Accepted 8 November 2023
far-right parties paving the way for their eventual 2022 electoral
KEYWORDS
success and later joint government coalition. The article analyses Proxy discourse; public
specifically how the above political accord on the Swedish right – implicature; far-right;
often seen as breaking the long-term cordon sanitaire around normalisation; critical
Sweden’s far right – would be legitimised via discourses that carried discourse analysis
significant elaboration and deepening of the ‘criminality’ and
‘immigration’ connection later recontextualised into the broader
Swedish public discourse and public imagination. Using social media
analytics and qualitative, critical discourse analysis, we explore in
depth a ‘discursive shift’ wherein the focus on criminality would
become a key ‘proxy discourse’, i.e., a public-wide implicature, which,
while referring to and debating a potentially genuine social issue
would be strategically instrumentalised to effectively pre-legitimise
‘moral panics’ around immigration and cultural diversity. The analysis
highlights that the emergence as well as the later recontextualisation
of the ‘proxy discourse’ in question – implicitly suggesting that
criminality, immigration, and cultural diversity are ‘somehow’
inherently connected – not only supported the political
mainstreaming of the Swedish far-right’s anti-immigration stance but
also normalised the wider tenets of illiberal, nativist ‘politics of exclusion’.
1. Introduction
The year of 2022 will probably be remembered internationally as one of the most tumul
tuous in European post-war history to date, and so also in the usually calm Swedish
national political context. That year, namely, Sweden saw a complete paradigm change
in many of the aspects of its, often internationally acclaimed, progressive social but
also international and defence policy. Following several decades of military neutrality –
coupled with pronounced humanitarian activity – Sweden eventually decided to join
CONTACT Michał Krzyżanowski michal.krzyzanowski@im.uu.se

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correc
tion (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2024.2302787)
© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly
cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s)
or with their consent.
2 H. EKSTRÖM ET AL.
NATO military alliance in May 2022 in the face of, in particular, the ongoing Russian inva
sion of Ukraine happening in close vicinity of the Swedish territory. However, despite its
huge significance, the declaration of joining NATO will probably still not be remembered
as the main – and definitely not as the only – historically unprecedented occurrence in
Swedish 2022 politics, especially if looking at the latter from a national-political point
of view. Indeed, the fact that will probably remain the most notable would be, that,
after years of its rather limited albeit more or less steadily growing presence in
Swedish politics and the public sphere, 2022 saw the Swedish far-right being propelled
to levels of public and electoral support that were unprecedented in Sweden and
indeed even wider Europe. This became particularly evident when, following the national
parliamentary election in September 2022, the far-right Sweden Democrats (Sverigede
mokraterna, SD),1 a strongly anti-immigration far-right party became the second largest
in the Swedish parliament (Riksdag) with 20.54% support.2 As it eventually turned out,
a new Swedish minority coalition government was formed in October 2022 by three main
stream right-wing parties in close collaboration with SD. However, despite the party yield
ing formal support whilst gaining control over key parliamentary committees, SD would
neither partake in any ministries nor receive any actual ministerial posts.
There are, to be sure, many aspects of political as well as social and economic dynamics
that would have to be put behind, on the one hand, the gradual end of Sweden’s once
widely disputed ‘exceptionalism’ as far as the lack of wider presence and involvement
of the far-right in the public life, and, on the other, the eventual rise of its political and
public significance culminating in 2022 (see Krzyżanowski, 2018a; Odmalm & Rydgren,
2019; Rydgren 2022; Rydgren & van der Meiden, 2019). However, as this paper attempts
to show, one of the main reasons to be considered here is certainly a very skilful main
streaming of the wider nativist agenda and ideology of the Swedish far-right. This
process was, as is shown here, significantly built on, as well as furthered by, political
and ideological eagerness of the wider so-called ‘mainstream’ Swedish right to
embrace the far-right agenda.
Indeed, as this paper argues, one of the key tenets of far-right ideology that have been
strongly mainstreamed in Sweden in the last few years – eventually adding significant fuel
to the far-right’s recent electoral success – is, in particular, the anti-immigration, and mul
ticulturalism-critical stance. Having gradually been growing in various types of Swedish
media already since the early 2010s i.e. when the far-right re-entered Swedish parliament
(see Bolin et al., 2015), the above frames have indeed escalated in recent years, and
especially so during and in the aftermath of the critical period of 2015–2016 highpoint
of the so-called ‘Refugee Crisis’ in Europe (Demker, 2019, 2021; Ekman & Krzyżanowski,
2021; Krzyżanowski et al., 2018). The above, coupled with the ongoing activity of the
Swedish anti-immigration online uncivil society (Krzyżanowski & Ledin, 2017), eventually
led to the significant ‘spill over’ moment with issues related to immigration and multicul
turalism becoming a key focus of Swedish political discourses and agendas. These,
however, became widespread not only on the far-right fringe of Swedish politics but
also across the wider political spectrum with mainstream parties alike becoming ever
more ‘tough talking’ with regard to immigration and cultural diversity (Krzyżanowski,
2018a).
However, as this paper elaborates, the wider negativised focus on immigration and
diversity in the Swedish public sphere brought about, and progressively solidified, by
CRITICAL DISCOURSE STUDIES 3
the far-right has been in many ways not only temporally accompanied but also deepened
and widened by the arrival of a related public discourse, specifically one on criminality.
The latter, especially since ca. 2018 onwards, erupted in Swedish politics and the media
(Ekman & Krzyżanowski, 2021) and indeed beyond (Andersson et al., 2021; Milani,
2020) and became a dominating discourse in, in particular, the run up to the 2022 elec
tions filled with criminality-related securitising arguments and debates. This eventually
found a clear reflection in the post-election policy declaration of the 2022 new Swedish
government formed by the right-wing parties with the support of the far-right SD.3
That declaration of future goals and actions was, namely, dominated by the large
number of recontextualisations of securitising language including when describing
crime and criminals and, in a very similar vein, immigration.
It is indeed this connection that the current paper seeks to analyse and, insofar as poss
ible, deconstruct, including in terms of its function in wider normalisationof the far-right
anti-immigration and nativist agenda. Our argument is that the strategic coupling of the
general focus on criminality as a social problem with implicit – albeit indeed ongoing and
by now persistent – suggestion that criminality and immigration are ‘somehow’ deeply con
nected (see below) – has been at the core of recent debates in Sweden. It is that particular
connection between criminality and ‘otherness’ (widely defined) and their effective, dis
cursive-practical normalisation that have been, we argue, at the core of many recent
public discourses – including in media and politics – eventually allowing for an even
deeper, and wider, mainstreaming of the far-right’s, anti-immigration-cum-securitisation
agenda in the Swedish context.
As we explore and elaborate below, criminality has recently become in Sweden what
we define as a ‘proxy discourse’ i.e. a discourse focusing on a potentially legitimate and
genuine, vital social topic or issue (in our case, criminality and/or wider challenges to
law & order in Sweden) which is, however, strategically coupled with, and hence effec
tively yielding legitimacy to, a set of other and in most cases exclusionary as well as nati
vist ideas and views. Thereby, ‘nativist’ refers to the discourse, actions as well as policies
that promote the interests of ‘natives’ (however imaginary and elusive such category is)
over the interests of an unspecified ‘other’ – in most cases embodied by immigrants
and immigration – whose exclusion is thus also effectively normalised and ‘pre-legiti
mized’ (Krzyżanowski, 2014). It is also operationalised by means of the tools (such as,
e.g. the aforementioned securitisation actions etc.) deployed allegedly to tackle the
main, or ‘proxy’, social problem in question yet while de-facto also targeting issues that
are strategically viewed as related (in our case cultural diversity).
Our analysis below looks specifically at the online discourse in general, and
Swedish ‘official’ party-political profiles on Facebook (FB) in particular. We focus on
the FB presence of the three key parties that, by now, have become the central
players in the 2022ff Swedish government, i.e. The Moderate Party (Moderaterna,
M), the Christian Democrats (Kristdemokraterna, KD) and the far-right Sweden Demo
crats (Sverigedemokraterna, SD). However, our focus is not on the tumultuous year of
2022 which saw the electoral victory of the coalition above but, specifically, on an
earlier period, in late 2021, when the key moment of open, ideological rapproche
ment between M, KD and SD took place by way of alignment of their discourses
and policy ideas performed on, and communicated via, social media, and most
exponentially Facebook.
We analyse FB discourse using a two-tier model of critical discourse analysis of social

media (Krzyżanowski, 2018b) which allows relating interactive and discursive aspects of
examination. In doing so, we want to point empirically to the close interdependence of
two simultaneous processes. On the one hand, we look into political-ideological pro
cesses of mainstreaming of the radical right and its ideologies, while on the other we
also cover opportunistic radicalisation of the political mainstream including the reliance
of this process on a deeper logic of normalisation of exclusion via discourses which not
only argue for the securitisation but also criminalisation of immigration. Indeed, as we
argue, the emergence of the major, carrier ‘proxy discourses’ that pre-legitimise exclu
sionary views by attaching them to debates about vital social problems and issues
points to the fact that, as such, mainstreaming of the far-right builds on long-term nor
malisation processes and, indeed, multiple ‘discursive shifts’ (Krzyżanowski, 2018c,
2020a, 2020b and below). These occur over time whilst making anti-immigration
views and attitudes acceptable as well as legitimate elements of public imagination
and political action.
2. Normalisation, mainstreaming and the strategic role of ‘Proxy’

discourses
Given its focus, this study is positioned theoretically and conceptually at the intersection
of two recently growing trends of research looking into, on the one hand, the specifically
political process of the ideological ‘mainstreaming’ of the far-right (Mondon & Winter,
2020; Odmalm, 2017; Odmalm & Hepburn, 2017; Richards, 2017; Rydgren & van der
Meiden, 2019), and, on the other hand, on the deeper and social-wide dynamics of ‘nor
malization’ of exclusion as a token of far-right politics and its ever more widespread ‘illib
eral’ pervasiveness in the social domain (Kallis, 2021; Krzyżanowski, 2018a, 2018c, 2020a,
2020b; Krzyżanowski et al., 2021, 2022; Laruelle, 2020; Mudde, 2019; Sengul, 2019; Wodak,
2015) especially at times of various real and alleged ‘crises’ (Krzyżanowska & Krzyżanowski,
2018; Krzyżanowski et al., 2018; Krzyżanowski et al., 2023).
The second half of the 2010s has meant a new stage in the process of mainstreaming
of radical right populist (RRP) ideas eventually resulting in the fact that, today, the political
debate in most of the Western world is dominated by sociocultural issues and identity
politics, in particular in relation to immigration (Mudde, 2019). These issues have recently
been mobilised by different actors whose goal has been to bring to the mainstream those
ideas which, at least previously, would be reserved to the catalogue of far and radical right
and would be largely considered as uncivil, politically-incorrect or as overall directed
against the catalogue of values of liberal democracy (Krzyżanowski & Krzyżanowska,
2022; Moffitt, 2021). Accordingly, it has been shown that far-right parties can impact
whether they and their ideas are perceived as mainstream, including by the way they
behave and present themselves. This might be a way of broadening the political
appeal and maximising voter support as well as a strategy to appear as possible and
serious coalition partners to mainstream parties (Moffitt, 2021, p. 9). As Cammaerts
(2018, p. 8) argues, many far-right parties have focused their strategies, notably in the
media, to increase their respectability by making them sound and look ever more reason
able and legitimate. At the same time, however the far-right would often chose to retain
its ‘original’ anti-establishment profile to attract voters sympathising with the more
radical views (Akkerman, 2016, p. 278; Moffitt, 2021, p. 9) who still are a vital part of the far-
right’s electorate.
In order to be perceived as mainstream, the far-right parties largely depend on other
actors (Mondon & Winter, 2020, p. 112), and in most cases ‘mainstream’ parties, to poten
tially legitimise far-right agenda via common actions or even coalitions (Moffitt, 2021).
This is at the core of the process of ‘mainstreaming’ of the far-right that, simultaneously,
often entails mainstream parties becoming more radical and moving to the right,
especially ‘on the back’ of adopting tough stance on standard far-right policy foci like
immigration, integration, and law and order. Still, at the same time, despite spreading
its image as acceptable, the far-right does not become any more ‘mainstream’ in the
process and instead remains the standard bearer of radical political and social ideas
and views. This is what Mudde (2019) refers to as radicalisation of the mainstream
parties or ‘the incorporation of populist notions into the political mainstream’ (Curran,
2004, p. 38).
Looking, on the other hand, into the logic of normalisation which emerges as a wider
process that underpins and to large extent precedes as well as follows the aforemen
tioned politico-ideological mainstreaming, scholars like Krzyżanowski (2020a, p. 508)
have argued that anti-immigration opinions and views are not only expressed livelier
and more widely than ever within the public domain but that also the resulting, persistent
anti-diversity opinions become increasingly seen as acceptable. This builds on a recur
rence of discourses wherein immigrants are often framed as a ‘threat’ or ‘danger’ to
(however imaginary) native ‘people’ and ‘society’ and/or viewed as a ‘cost’ and an ‘econ
omic burden’ (Buonfino, 2004). Further, there are also evident patterns of politicisation
and mediatisation of immigration (Krzyżanowski et al., 2018) thatpave the way for an
‘obvious radicalisation of immigration-related voices and views and a perpetuation as
well as eventual normalization of often discriminatory views in the public domain’ (Krzy
żanowski, 2020b, p. 508).
In such a view, normalisation tends to be seen as part of a multistep process of stra
tegic discursive shifts (Krzyżanowski, 2018c, 2020b). Such discourses, especially those
characterised by calls to discrimination, are enacted, perpetuated, and eventually normal
ised in line with pronounced far-right strategies. Consequently, this creates path depen
dencies for the even deeper practices of not only rhetorical/discursive but also physical or
systemic exclusion. The analysis of discursive shifts hence makes it possible to identify
how and when public and political discourses transform and become politicised and med
iatised (Krzyżanowski, 2018c, p. 79) and how, down the line, they pre-legitimise the ever-
stronger expressions of discrimination and exclusion.
To some extent irrespective of the context in which these processes occur, discursive
shifts also rely strongly upon construction of various imaginaries (see Jessop, 2012; Krzy
żanowski, 2019; Taylor, 1993) wherein the often deeply untrue and unrealistic visions
and ideas of the ‘imagined’ other can eventually be mobilised – and effectively perpe
tuated – as stable elements of public discourses pre-legitimising the wider politics of
exclusion. Crucially, imaginaries central to normalised discourses of exclusion combine
elements of the real and the unreal and promulgate more or less objective facts and
processes identifiable in the social reality with imagined visions of how society was,
allegedly, functioning in the past or how it apparently could/should be functioning in
the future.
A particular inspiration for the understanding of the above process as the core element
of discursive shift logic – which we view as underlying for the emergence of ‘proxy dis
course’ we explore below – derives from the work of Graham (2019) who focussed on nor
malised – and in particular negativised – utopias of the social and the political as central to
the dynamics of contemporary public discourse. Graham argued that enactment and
recontextualisation of negative visions of society – such as, e.g. finding itself in constant
’danger’ or ’decline’ – has been central in institutionalising a process whereby social
control can be effectively pre-legitimised via a number of prohibitive measures or ‘thou
shalt nots (…) expressed in legislation, literature, news or multimodal texts of any kind
at all’ (2019, p. 3).
Hence, as Graham showed, traditional combination of the real and the unreal, typical
for the construction and legitimation of wider utopian visions (see also Levitas, 2011,
2013), is often operationalised within normalising practice not in order to find construc
tive ways forward for the wider social development and/or improvement of social
relations. It is, instead, a powerful tool in institutionalising power of selected political
actors – in our case both mainstream and far-right ones – whose aim is to thus govern
society by way of ‘moral panics’ (Cohen, 1972/2011; Krzyżanowski, 2020b) and as if ‘logi
cally’ related measures to securitise and control enforced via diverse ‘public pedagogies’
(Graham & Dugmore, 2022) that effectively perpetuate normalisation of exclusion.
Incorporating the above is hence vital for our perception of the focal proxy discourses
as profoundly reliant on both negative vision of the (imagined) ‘other’ – seen as one
‘outside’ and ‘within’ the community – as well as on the simultaneous profoundly nega
tive perception of the developments in the wider society and social reality. We argue
that, through proxy discourses, namely, the strategy is to introduce a discursive shift
which not only emphasises but also exaggerates social problems – in our case below:
criminality – yet does so not in order to find ways of addressing such problems but
to stigmatise the other as both explicitly and implicitly responsible for the negative
developments in the wider society. All of this relies on wider utopias of the social
that promulgate ‘retrotopia’ (Bauman, 2018) that implies the once ‘positive’ state of
society – which should thus become good ‘again’ – with the vision of its negative
present and future which can only be, as is assumed, avoided through control of the
‘other’ who allegedly is the reason for the current, and potentially also future, negative
state of affairs.
3. Sweden’s right, politics of immigration and the issue of criminality

3.1. Swedish ‘Mainstream’ and far-right
Swedish right-wing parties spent most of the twentieth century in the shadow of the
Social Democrats (S), i.e. the country’s major mainstream left-wing party. Having been
for decades in power, the Social Democrats also laid foundations for most of the
Swedish post-war policies including those related to immigration, refugees and
humanitarianism (Krzyżanowski, 2018a). The mainstream right-wing, for its part, has at
the same time been rather dispersed and since the late twentieth century effectively con
sisted of four political parties: M and KD mentioned above, the Centre Party (C), and the
Liberal Party (L). Of these, M has usually been the dominant one and often also the second
largest party in the Swedish parliament. The right-wing parties have since the 1990s
formed coalition governments for altogether three terms: in 1991–1994, 2006–2010,
and 2010–2014.
The key contemporary Swedish far-right party, the SD, was founded in 1988 and origi
nated in different far- and radical-right groups (Widfeldt, 2008, p. 267). From the very
beginning, it was a solitary party with an outspoken anti-immigration and pro-nationalist
stance (Salo & Rydgren, 2021, p. 38). For decades, SD was viewed as illegitimate by most
voters and mainstream parties (Rydgren & van der Meiden, 2019, p. 450). However, in
2005, a new party leader, the then 26-year-old Jimmie Åkesson, was appointed with a
goal to speed up the modernisation of SD and of the party’s ideology. Since then, at
least nominally, SD attempted to move away from its radical roots with the ambition
to fill a nationalist ideological niche under the banner of Swedish ‘Folkhemmet’, or ‘the
peoples home’, a concept originally established by S in the late 1920s and still carrying
a significant mobilising force in Swedish politics (Widfeldt, 2008).
In the 2010 election, SD had its electoral breakthrough and entered Swedish parlia
ment. Nevertheless, its political influence was still heavily limited as all mainstream
parties joined a cordon sanitaire around the SD (Widfeldt, 2015; Rydgren & van der
Meiden, 2019). While SD went on to advocate repatriation of immigrants and remained
opposed to multiculturalism, PR-attempts were also made to simultaneously soften the
party’s image. Probably as a result of that duality, SD significantly increased its share of
votes in the elections in 2014 and 2018, with especially the latter electoral success
often ascribed to the increased politicisation of the immigration driven by SD within
and outside parliament on the back of the 2015 ‘Refugee Crisis’ (Rydgren & van der
Meiden, 2019).
As SD’s share of votes has progressively increased, so has also the interest in approach
ing SD and its policies among the other mainstream right-wing parties. Hence, especially
M and KD, and eventually also the Liberal party (Liberalerna, L), gradually adopted more
benevolent attitudes towards SD. However, the rapprochement between M, KD, and SD
became evident only during the fall of 2021: at first via a debate article on gang crimi
nality in Sweden published by the three parties in the daily Dagens Nyheter in October
2021, and secondly, via a joint budget proposal in November 2021. Partially as a result
of by then well advanced mainstreaming of the SD agenda, the party reached 20,54%
of votes in the 2022 national elections thus becoming Sweden’s second-largest
parliamentary party. Despite the fact that M and KD suffered a decline of support at
the election, together with L and under the ‘backseat’ support of SD they could still
form a minority right-wing coalition government.
3.2. The politicisation of immigration and of its (Implicit) connection to

criminality in Sweden
From the 1980s onwards and up until the 2015 ‘Refugee Crisis’, Sweden was one of the
main asylum recipients in Europe (see Krzyżanowski, 2018a; Krzyżanowski et al., 2018)
while also long remaining a country where immigration was not strongly politicised con
trary to many other Western and Northern European countries (Widfeldt, 2015; Berg &
Oscarsson, 2015). Additionally, except for one term during the 1990s, there was for
long no RRP party in the Swedish parliament. While there are different explanations for
this, it appears that, on the one hand, there was a consensus among the political parties in
the parliament that Sweden’s refugee policy should be characterised by humanity and
generosity (Andersson & Bendz, 2015), while, on the other hand, Swedish politics was
long overwhelmingly structured around socioeconomic issues with sociocultural ones
remaining of a much lesser public concern (Rydgren & van der Meiden, 2019). Contrary
to many other countries, Swedish voters were also late to abandon the traditional political
distinctions on the left-right scale - which traditionally created space for the far-right else
where - and continued identifying with parties that traditionally represented their inter
ests (e.g. S for the working class, etc.; see Rydgren, 2002).
It is, therefore, only with SD’s parliamentary access in 2010 that the immigration issue
was also moved onto the wider, general political agenda. However, this still happened
when all mainstream parties continued to advocate a humanitarian and open approach
to immigration, a trend which de facto changed only in the aftermath of the 2015
‘Refugee Crisis’. At that time, namely, the political debate clearly began to increasingly
revolve around sociocultural issues related to immigration, with, furthermore, parallels
extensively drawn between migration and the rise of criminality. In the following years,
this discussion would become even wider via many institutional analyses and reports
about growing levels of criminality in the country (Svedin, 2021) eagerly picked up by
the national as well as international far-right actors. These often alluded to ‘lawlessness’
now being widespread in Sweden as a result of immigration – with, e.g. one significant
example coming from the former US President Donald Trump who back in 2017 stated
that: ‘Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never
thought possible’ (BBC, 2017).
The image of Sweden as ‘lawless’ soon also became reinforced in the general, national-
political debate and contributed to making immigration, criminality, and especially organ
ised or ‘gang’ crime, into the most important and alarming issues for Swedish voters in the
election of 2018 (Martinsson & Andersson, 2021). This new sociocultural dimension in
Swedish politics also caused a split between the traditional right-wing coalition parties
since M suggested stricter regulations for immigration while, e.g., the Centre party (Cen
terpartiet, C) opposed those (Aylott & Bolin, 2019, p. 1506).
In the years that followed, crime, and especially shootings ascribed to criminal gangs
attracted even further attention in Sweden. This came along with the arguments that
lethal violence with firearms has increased in Sweden since 2013 while at the same
time decreasing in most other European countries (BRÅ, 2021a). The increased instances
of shootings have often been connected to ‘gang’ criminality and put into wider context
of state failure including, prominently, as far as immigration and integration policies
(Svedin, 2021, p. 590). The attention on the shootings increased after shooting of a 12-
year-old girl in a Stockholm suburb in August 2020 and intensified even further as of
2021, mainly due to a number of incidents. The above resulted in many calls for the situ
ation to be ‘finally’ handled (Andersson et al., 2021, p. 334) with the debate, however,
ongoingly drawing on implicatures that there exists a connection between immigration
(or at least immigrant-populated areas) and criminality. For example, Sweden’s Deputy
National Police Commissioner claimed in an interview on national public radio that ca.
forty clan-based networks had established themselves in Sweden for the purpose of com
mitting crimes (Sveriges Radio, 2020). On the other hand, an official report about differ
ences in levels of criminality between people with domestic and foreign backgrounds
was presented (BRÅ, 2021b) effectively claiming that migrants were overrepresented in
criminal activities (Svedin, 2021).
Interestingly, most of the above arguments eventually often proved to be to at least
some extent incorrect or emerged as a rather slanted and non-nuanced way of reading
Swedish statistics on criminality if/when connected to immigration. Indeed, even the
aforementioned 2021 official report claimed that, there has been a decrease in the pro
portion of people suspected of crime within all groups of the entire Swedish population
(BRÅ, 2021b, p. 10; see also Adamsson, 2020) including among those with an immigrant
background. At the same time, several other authoritative studies (see, especially, Sar
necki, 2021) pointed that, despite frequent suggestions about a potential correlation,
neither violent and serious nor even petty crime has increased in the aftermath of the
2015 ‘Refugee Crisis’ i.e. the period when the number of foreign-born population has sig
nificantly increased in Sweden. Nevertheless, with the connection of criminality and immi
gration effectively already well established in the wider public domain and persisting in
the public discourse, the 2022 election also eventually revolved around these issues.
And, with M, KD, and SD apparently remaining traditionally among the most trusted
parties regarding law and order, those parties unsurprisingly emphasised the alleged cen
trality of the issue of ‘gang’ criminality and called for stricter punishments for ‘gang’ crim
inals in addition to other securitising law and order measures. Equally, they at the same
time often made election ‘promises’ concerning much stricter limits concerning immigra
tion and asylum.
4. Analysis
4.1. Analytical framework
This study draws methodologically on the wider Critical Discourses Studies – and specifi
cally on the CDS’ Discourse Historical Approach, or DHA (Krzyżanowski, 2010; Reisigl, 2017;
Wodak, 2001) widely deployed to the analysis of political and media discourses in connec
tion with the far-right and its public-wide influence (see in particular Krzyżanowski &
Wodak, 2009; Wodak, 2015). The DHA is mobilised here within a framework geared specifi
cally towards analysis of social and online media (see Krzyżanowski, 2018c), which, orig
inally developed in the context of Twitter-oriented analysis, is reapplied here to the
analysis of FB data.
The above, social-media-centred and DHA-based framework connects two areas of
analysis. On the one hand, there is the interactive analysis (see 4.3.) which – more
widely helping underpin our examination of the mainstreaming of far-right discourse
among the other parties – reveals patterns and tendencies in communicative interactions
that occurred within and via FB posts. This analysis depicts the level of interactive reliance
on various actors, their agenda-setting role in the wider interactions and diversity of
sources. On the other hand, connecting to the first area of the analysis, the framework
followed here also looks more specifically into the discourse patterns and dynamics (see
4.4.) which are followed via the usual ‘levels’ of critical discourse analysis in DHA (see Krzy
żanowski, 2010) wherein an entry level analysis of discourse topics is performed prior to
exploring the discourse’s in-depth features mainly from the point of view of the deeper
structures of argumentation and related discursive strategies.
Whereas the focus on (a) interactivity analysis allows pointing to the mainstreaming as
it happens and is additionally performed in the communicative domain (specifically on
official social media) – including by means of recontextualisation of posts and their con
tents across the three parties in question, the related (b) discourse-centred analysis allows
exploring the qualitative features along the logic of the focal ‘proxy’ discourse and its
strategic construction as well as its role as evidence of the deeper/wider process of
normalisation of exclusion (Krzyżanowski, 2020a, 2020b). Analysing the former and the
latter helps both exploring the key features and dynamics of the discourses forming
the explored discursive shifts as well as allow pointing to how the proxy discourses –
specifically geared towards criminality – and the wider normalised discourses of exclu
sion are formed and reinforced at both thematic (entry) and argumentative (in-depth)
level.
4.2. Empirical data

The empirical data analysed in this study stems from posts published on M’s, KD’s, and
SD’s official Facebook pages between 3 October and 1 December 2021. This period is
of particular interest for this study since M and KD actively collaborated with SD for the
first time during this period. The collaboration specifically oscillated around three
events, i.e.: (a) Publication of a common debate article in nationwide daily Dagens
Nyheter on 10 October 2021; (b) A common cross-party SD, M, and KD budget proposal
presented on 16 November 2021 (Wikén and Knutson, 2021); and (c) The passing of
the above budget proposal through parliament on 24 November 2021.
All posts from the official Facebook pages of M, KD, and SD published between 3
October and December were collected manually by the researchers. Posts that did not
contain thematically relevant information were not included in the data. Additionally,
the data did not include any published live posts, mainly as it was the direct and concise
communication on Facebook that was the focus of the analysis. The analysis of the posts
took place on the original Swedish language versions, and only selected examples
below were translated into English (all translations below are hence ours). Images were
not part of the analysis due to limitations of space, and were analysed only whenever
they included significant textual elements.
The result of the data collection was 155 posts for M, 92 for KD, and 303 for SD. While
the entire corpus above was put under the interactive analysis, in order to prepare the
sample for the qualitative analysis a down-sampling strategy was applied while limiting
the posts eventually put under examination to those containing topics and arguments
usually associated with far-right discourse on immigration and wider social issues (see
especially Reisigl & Wodak, 2001). This allowed far-reaching disambiguation of some
parts of the corpus and excluding posts which, while qualified via keyword sampling,
often concerned topics that were not of relevance here such as, e.g. electricity prices,
benefits of nuclear power, statements about political parties from beyond the right-
wing, and results of opinion polls. In the end, the sample which underwent the dis
course-oriented analysis consisted of 85 posts by M, 44 by KD, and 183 by SD – which
also emphasised the SD’s traditionally very strong focus on FB communication; see
Larsson, 2018, 20224).
Figure 1. Time distribution of number of FB posts published per day by M, KD, and SD between 3
October 3 and 1 December 2021. (M = continuous/bold line, KD = dashed, SD = dotted).
Looking into the time-based distribution of posts over the chosen period, it is possible
to reveal certain peaks in the publishing of posts connected to the three events of particu
lar interest for this study. This is most obvious regarding SD (Figure 1).
4.3. Interactive analysis

Our interactive analysis seems to confirm the above data which showed that, of the
three parties in focus of our analysis, it was the SD that remained the most active
in general as well as in terms of initiating interactions or exchange of ideas in particu
lar. It was also, accordingly, the SD that retained the agenda-setting role that effec
tively enabled mainstreaming of its ideas and views in FB interactions with other
right-wing parties and by way of their eventual picking up on proposals and views
furthered by SD.
As is presented in Table 1, FB posts of SD differed significantly from those of M and KD.
First, almost every third of SD’s posts was shared from/by party representatives, and
almost half of those were shared by the party leader. This indicated that the posts of
SD to a significant degree consisted of personalised messages, or at least such that stra
tegically were supposed to appear as such. This was seen as, indeed, a typical feature of
populist discourses online (see, e.g. Forchtner et al., 2013) which usually follow the pattern
whereby a specific ‘polyphony’ is created by way of parallel communication: the official
one ‘by the party’ and the somewhat informal one ‘by the leader’ (though with both of
these in most cases being run by party officials/employees and only appearing to be of
different type/character/source etc.).
Table 1. Summary of Interactive features (images, native videos, shared posts, external links) of FB
posts by M, KD, and SD in the period of investigation.
M KD SD
Shared posts 5% 1% 27%
Posts with external links 1% 20% 40%
Notes: All shared posts are not shared Facebook posts. In the cases of M and KD, screenshots from party representatives’
Twitter accounts that have been published on the parties’ official Facebook page are counted as shared posts. This is
also the case with a few of SD’s shared posts.
Secondly, links to external websites and chiefly news sites were far more present in
SD’s than in other parties’ posts.5 By linking to different sources of news, SD was,
however, not only extensively commenting on issues/events but also laying out its
own perspective on current events and news – thus to large extent also solidifying its
opinion-making and agenda-setting role.6 Therein, the SD very often put its policy in
the wider context while effectively legitimising and pre-legitimising the party’s proposals
as if ‘responding’ to wider news and ideas circulated in the public sphere (for example,
growing anxiety with criminality, etc.).
Accordingly, apart from political sources, SD’s posts also linked to established
mainstream media sources like Swedish public TV or Radio (SVT, Sveriges Radio), national
dailies (e.g. Dagens Nyheter, Expressen), but also to the hyperpartisan (Rae, 2021)or uncivil
society media (Krzyżanowski & Ledin, 2017; Krzyżanowski et al, 2021), like e.g. Samtiden.
The most linked site, however, was still Riks channel on Youtube which has been devel
oped as SD’s own hyperpartisan tool for spreading ‘opinions’ and ‘news’ while also effec
tively entering interactions with established media outlets.
Figure 2. Plot for FB-based Interactions of KD with M and SD in October–December 2021.

Figure 3. Plot for FB-based Interactions of M with KD and SD in October–December 2021.
Looking, on the other hand, at the cross-party interactions online, the analysis below
uses ‘Circos plots’ (Krzywinski et al. 2010) covering our period of investigation (Oct-Dec
2021). Exploring development over time, and looking into how/which of the parties
retained a leading voice based on their posts and their interactivity scores (in particular
in mentioning of the other parties; see Figures 2–5),7 our analysis mainly focusses on
explicit mentions of both specific parties and their leaders. Therein, each line in the
figures represents one post that mentions another party or that party’s leader, and
ends with an arrow indicating the party that is mentioned. The position of the start of
each line represents the sequence of the Facebook posts arranged clockwise from the
first to the last Facebook post in the time period. The length of each circle segment rep
resents the total number of Facebook posts by each party during the time period. Each
tick marks 10 Facebook posts.
As a result of our interactivity analysis, we can see in the plots that SD posts comprise of
the largest proportion (55%) of the total number of Facebook posts during the period 1
October 2021–31 December 2021 (SD = 303, KD + M = 247), followed by M (28%) and KD
Figure 4. Plot for FB-based Interactions of SD with KD and M in October–December 2021.
(17%). Focusing at first on KD (Figure 2), one can see that KDs posts relatively frequently
referred to the other two parties mentioning both parties together, specifically from
post 56 (16 November) to post 88 (1 December). However, while KD was still relatively
eager to mention the other two parties, seems the strategy by M (Figure 3) was signifi
cantly different as it, effectively, was very rarely mentioning the other two parties
directly in their Facebook page posts. This, however, would be typical given the then
already emerging synergy between M and SD and that in some matters M preferred
to remain mute while SD took a stand for, implicitly, both parties (see, e.g. those
parties’ corresponding behaviour during the later televised pre-election debates in
August/September 2022). Finally, focusing on the SD (Figures 4 and 5), one can
observe that there seem to be more direct mentions of other parties, in particular of
M, across SD’s Facebook page posts. Notably, there is a closely packed series of posts
over just 2 days that mention both M and KD together between posts 192 (16 Novem
ber) and 205 (17 November).
Figure 5. Combined plot for FB-based Interactions of/between KD, M and SD in October-December
2021.
4.4. Entry-level & in-depth (Critical) discourse analysis

The entry-level analysis of the collected data focused on the identification of topics con
necting criminality to immigration issues in RRP discourse, which, using abductive analy
sis, eventually were identified in the studied texts. Given that the topics were extensively
interconnected, some of them have been considered as sub-topics though under assump
tion that in several cases even greater thematic complexity would have occurred between
various themes in the studied material.
In any case, as the outline of the topics shows, the topics reveal the enactment of anti-
immigration discourse and the use of arguments in the texts well-known from far-right
discourse. As seen in the table, all of the topics were furthered by the SD, but the most
were also present within the texts of M and KD. Common to the three parties was,
equally, that they established a connection between immigration and criminality,
especially ‘gang’ criminality as such (Table 2).
Table 2. Key topics and sub-topics related to the alleged connection

between immigration and criminality in M, KD, and SD Facebook posts.
Topics and Sub-Topics Party
1. Immigrants and foreigners as criminals. M. KD, SD
1a. ‘Clans’ targeting the welfare system to finance organised crime. M, SD
1b. Increased reports of honour violence. SD
1c. IS-members returning to Sweden from Syria. M, SD
2. ‘Gang’ criminality as the major challenge of the Swedish society. M, KD, SD
2a. ‘Gang’ criminality as a consequence of immigration. M, KD, SD
2b. The need for investments to maintain law and order. M, KD, SD
2c. The need for stricter prison penalties and expulsions. M, KD, SD
In order to show how the above thematic connections were qualitatively established
and furthered, the in-depth analysis below focuses on the key argumentative structures
deployed within realisation of the topics above, wherein we point especially to a
number of key topoi and other discursive strategies (Krzyżanowski, 2010; Reisigl &
Wodak, 2001) used to structure and support the argumentation. The analysis focuses in
particular on the discourse strand embedded by Topic 1 within which immigration and
crime as such were initially connected, and hence wherein the ‘proxy’ focus was also
established, before strategically, continuing discussions on those topics in isolation, i.e.
while deepening them yet also while retaining implicit connection between the two
focal processes/issues. In order to depict that tendency too, we also chose to highlight,
insofar as possible, the in-depth level of realisations of Topic 2 (‘gang’ criminality) while
showing how, despite focussing explicitly on criminality, it still retained many implicit
cross-references to, and critical stance towards, the wider semantic fields of immigration,
diversity and the like- indeed remaining a case of ‘borderline discourse’ (Krzyżanowski &
Ledin, 2017) i.e. avoiding explicitness and retaining a quasi-politically-correct stance.
Exploring the topics and sub-topics above that were central to the establishment –
and solidification – of the ‘proxy discourse’ in our focus, one observes the recurrence
of the number of more or less classic argumentation frames – or topoi – usually
deployed in anti-immigration discourse of the far-right (thus also emphasising the
wider, normalised character of argumentation). Among the key topoi there were, in par
ticular: (a) Topos of threat – Arguing that migrants pose a physical as well as otherwise
understood threat to Swedish society (Reisigl & Wodak, 2001; Ekman & Krzyżanowski,
2021); (b) Topos of criminality – a variation of the classic topos of law and order
(Reisigl & Wodak, 2001) which focuses explicitly on making a connection between immi
gration and criminality and on representing immigrants as involved in criminal activities,
(c) Topos of securitisation – again a variant of the classic law & order framing (above)
though with explicit arguments in favour of ‘securitising actions’ including investments
in more police, increased police salaries, stricter prison punishments, expulsions, stricter
border surveillance, etc..
Starting with the arguments constructed on the basis of Topic 1 (Immigrants and
Foreigners as Criminals), it appears that the argumentation in the collected texts was
related to different types of crime and has either been framed within the topos of crimi
nality or the wider topoi of threat or of law and order. However, these topoi were closely
overlapping, which is why arguments would be occasionally framed by all three argu
ments. In the collected texts, SD emerged as the one most explicitly connecting
immigration to criminality, both regarding foreigners in general, and immigrants in

Sweden in particular:
Honour violence is an imported problem.
Over 4,500 honor crimes reported in two years.
(SD, 2021, November 1)
Knife attack on a train in Germany – perpetrator with Arab background arrested.
‘IS woman makes slave girl thirsty to death in the sun in Iraq.’ It is these murderers the gov
ernment flies to Sweden. The terrorist’s citizenship must be cut.
(SD, 2021, October 27)
The examples above were all expressions of discursive strategy of ‘functionalisation’

(Van Leeuwen, 2008) as they are associating foreigners and immigrants with various
crimes as a specific form of activity. In all three cases, however, there were links in
the posts to ‘news’ media, with two of those, though, specifically the hyperpartisan
media of the SD (the newspaper Samtiden and the Youtube channel Riks). U sing
these allowed SD to highlight connections between crime and immigration without
expressing it ‘themselves’ and while claiming that the statements rely on ‘facts’, or
reports/descriptions thereof, from external sources. This could also be considered a
strategy of ‘disclaimer’ or ‘denial of racism’ (van Dijk, 1991, 1997) or of a related
‘blame avoidance’ (Hansson, 2015), employed by SD to not to be accused of racism
or xenophobia while still expressing their statements. It is obvious, though, that the
linked news is also carefully selected and commented to spread the perception that
immigrants are largely responsible for various types of crime. It is an example of ‘con
structing scapegoats and enemies – ‘others’ – which are to blame for our current woes
– by frequently tapping into traditional collective stereotypes and images of the
enemy’. (Wodak, 2015, p. 4).
Additionally, the two latter texts are also expressions of what Krzyżanowski and Ledin
(2017) define as borderline discourses. In all probability, SD would not, in the first case,
push that topic, and in the second case, use such an expression at all in speeches in
different and especially more formal contexts (e.g. in parliament) whereas it does so
online, i.e. at the borderline between the private and the public expression and within
the usual site of production of civil/uncivil borderline. In this context, it is also telling
that the ‘news’ that is quoted and linked to is presented not only online but in particular
by SD’s hyperpartisan media largely responsible for the enactment and the diffusion of
borderline discourses and exclusionary views.
Similarly, texts in the posts related to ‘gang’ criminality include an increasing number
of references to shootings in Sweden wherein immigrants are highlighted as responsible
or at least complicit. This framing is, however, deepened by associating the shootings
with, e.g. certain vulnerable areas which in most cases are chiefly known for their
migrant populations. Similarly, however vague, the act of connecting of ‘gang’ criminality
with unrelated ‘gangster rap’ (‘relating unrelated phenomena’ as a strategy; see Reisigl &
Wodak, 2001) serves largely the same purpose: it implies that both criminal and cultural
activities in question are in/directly connected to first or second-generation immigrant

youth.
Since 2018, 17 young men have been shot dead in Järva.8
(M, 2021, October 27)
Every second year, the police release a list of areas in the country where criminals have a
strong impact on the local community. These are areas in which the majority society is not
sufficiently present.
(Andersson et al., 2021, October 14)
We want to commission BRÅ9 to investigate the impact gangster rap has on crime and vice
versa. Does it generate recruitment for criminal networks?
Such strategies as the above allow establishing a connection between ‘gang’ crime and
immigration. They pre-legitimise M, KD, and SD calls to stop this ‘criminality’ while de
facto also constructing the (implied) role of migrants as multidimensionally active in
the process. These suggestions are partly leading to various ‘parallel’ conclusions –
indeed typical for the proxy discourse – about, inter alia, reduction of the number of immi
grants in Sweden by ‘strengthened border protection’ (SD, 2021, November 17) on the
one hand, and more expulsions of ‘gang’ criminals (M, 2021, October 10) on the other.
The dynamics above – realising several topoi including topos of securitisation as an appar
ent ‘solution’ – derives from standard discursive elements of typical construction of ‘moral
panics (Cohen, 1972/2011; Krzyżanowski, 2020a) whereby exaggerated mood of insecur
ity is formed in the public discourse, and a group of persons is defined as (vaguely)
responsible for the said threat. Such threat and moral panic can – and often would –
often be furthered and substantiated as is the case, when, e.g. M refers in its posts to
‘gang’ members as ‘Sweden’s domestic terrorists’ (M, 2021, October 22).
Another group of immigrants that is turned into an explicit scapegoat of both M and
SD discourse are the widely used, yet never unspecified, ‘clans’. In several of the posts,
hence, M and SD are also connecting clans to the new (immigrant) arrivals, while also
amplifying statements with cross-references to welfare abuse/fraud and organised crime.
Recently, it was revealed that a clan has defrauded taxpayers of SEK 40 million. Every year,
about SEK 20 billion are cheated away from welfare – money that is taken from welfare to
finance organized crime.
(M, 2021, November 12)
It is obvious that organized crime in recent years has targeted the welfare system as a kind of
basic income. Welfare crime is increasingly characterized by clan-related and organized
crime. The government has failed to take control of crime, which has affected, for
example, people who really need to take part in welfare.
This argumentation is, as previously, articulating the topos of threat, and doing so in two
ways. On the one hand, the ‘clans’ are identified (personalised, though still in an aggre
gated/unspecified form; Van Leeuwen, 2008) as a threat to the Swedish welfare system.
On the other hand, the ‘clans’ are also viewed as financing organised crime, which in turn
is interpreted as a threat to the wider security of the country. Additionally, the texts are
also examples of what can be defined as calculated ambivalence (Wodak, 2015) or concep
tual flipsiding (Krzyżanowski & Krzyżanowska, 2022, in press; see also Krzyżanowski, 2016)
that allows for the construction of ‘humanistic’ or ‘patriotic’ arguments in a way that
expresses concern for native citizens while de facto creating a ‘flip-sided’ exclusionary
argument against migrants and other (usually unspecified) ‘them’ rooted in the need
to ‘protect’ the native population (Krzyżanowski, 2018a; Ekman & Krzyżanowski, 2021).
Hence, M’s and SD’s statements regarding the ‘clans’ are designed to be seen as an
expression of care for the Swedish ‘taxpayers’ (M, 2021, November 12) as the ‘people
who really need to take part in welfare’ (SD, 2021, November 11).
On the other hand, arguments and strategies encompassed by Topic 2, related to
‘gang’ criminality (Gängkriminalitet10) and deepening representations of its threatening
character, emerged in the analysed discourse among the key frames that in/directly struc
tured representations of diversity and multiculturalism and their mid- and long-term
socio-political implications. Those issues remained in the centre of focus of M, KD, and
SD including in their joint proposals as both those parties’ common debate article in
Dagens Nyheter in October, 2021 (Forsell et al., 2021) as well as the common budget pro
posal in November, 2021 largely pertained to how the ‘gang’ criminality should be cur
tailed and controlled (M, 2021, November 16; KD, 2021, November 16; SD, 2021,
November 16a).
This is what an ordinary day in Sweden looks like nowadays:
13.30: Man killed after stabbing and explosion in Bagarmossen.
16.10: Bomb threat against a building in Ljungby.
21.23: Shooting at an apartment in Haninge.
01.15: 34-year-old father of small children shot to death in a terraced house area in Linköping.
05.45: Man injured after explosion in a garden in Eskilstuna.
(M, 2021, October 6)
Are you frustrated and maybe like me worried about the situation in Sweden? Maybe you’re
even scared? In no other country is firearm violence at such levels as here in Sweden and city
after city is put into fear. Sweden needs a change.
(KD, 2021, October 28)
This Monday, German Bild, the country’s most-read newspaper, published an article about
Sweden in which our country is labelled ‘Europe’s most dangerous’ and tells that murder stat
istics are declining throughout Europe – while at the same time increasing in Sweden. Bild is
appalled how a role-model country now has turned into a ‘nightmare’.
‘Gang’ criminality, as a form of unspecified ‘them’, was supported by argumentation

based on the topos of criminality and topos of law and order but, strikingly frequently,
also on the topos of threat. Facts in the texts above are constructed by way of claiming
that shootings and lethal violence with firearms have increased in Sweden and that inno
cent citizens as well as policemen have been killed or hurt (Bengtsson & Samuelsson,
2020; Thambert et al., 2021; TT, 2021; Svensson, 2021). This, however, remains an overex
aggerated element of the discourse as those are other ‘gang’ members – and far less fre
quently ‘regular’ members of the population or of the police – which are most commonly
affected by, or become victims of, the criminal activities . Hence, not diminishing the
severity of gang criminality, it appears that the theme is used to amplify the threat and
scare logic via generalising claims of entire Swedish society being ’threatened’
or affected by shootings and other ’gang-criminal’ activities.
Crucially, the argumentation about ‘gang’ crime framed within the topos of threat was
furthered by M and SD when highlighting Sweden as the most dangerous country in
Europe. This is an example of intertextuality linking to an article in the German magazine
‘Bild’ in October, 2021 making similar claims (Raagard, 2021). Interestingly, despite Bild’s
known status as tabloid newspaper (Media Bias / Fact Check, 2022), SD referred to it as
‘Germany’s largest newspaper’ (SD, 2021, October 27) while M, on the other hand, did
not even refer the Bild’s status as a source and directly recontextualised its ideas that,
because of the high level of criminality, Sweden has ‘been singled out as the most danger
ous country in Europe’. (M, 2021, November 10).
By founding their arguments on the topos of threat, M, KD, and SD made the increased
firearm violence between criminal ‘gangs’ appear as a threat to all Swedish citizens and
the safety in the country. M and KD also, apparently, purposefully emphasised the emer
gency-like status of the situation to, effectively, pre-legitimise their own rapprochement
with SD and the breaking of the wider, long-standing cordon sanitaire around the far-right
party. M and KD expressed this in an almost identical way:
Now it’s enough. The government has failed to stop criminal gangs. […] We want to put the
political play aside and really do what it takes to turn the tide for real.
(M, 2021, October 10)
‘Putting the political game aside’ in this context should be understood as the pre-legiti
matory statement assuming that, since ‘gang’ crime situation became so critical, M and KD
now make themselves available to cooperate with all parties to manage the situation. This
was pre-legitimised by arguments that ‘soon it will be too late’ characteristic for right-
wing populist actors’ efforts to take advantage of various crises (Albertazzi and McDon
nell, 2008, p. 5).
5. Conclusions
The analysis above has aimed to reveal how diverse themes and arguments related to
immigration, immigrants, and criminality have been deployed as well as connected in
the political and discursive rapprochement between Swedish right-wing parties M and
KD with their far-right counterpart SD in late 2021. As the analysis shows, discourses
describing and legitimising the said rapprochement relied on the construction of the
mood of ‘crisis’ around immigration by connecting ‘dangers’ related to criminality with
immigration as well as wider multiculturalism and diversity. This is a process which has
long been spotted among scholars (e.g. Albertazzi & McDonnell, 2008; Krzyżanowski,
2018a, 2018c, 2019; Krzyżanowski & Krzyżanowska, 2022; Moffitt, 2016; Wodak, 2015;)
arguing that taking advantage of crises, real or constructed, is frequent if not outright
central in far-right politics and discourse. In both the former and the latter, construction
of (in most cases negative) imaginaries and even utopias of the ‘other’ (Graham &
Dugmore, 2022; Krzyżanowski et al., 2023) remains central for the pre-legitimation as
well as the ensuing normalisation of anti-immigration and/or nativist opinions. They
derive from pedagogy of negativity which, apparently, becomes indispensable part of
the mainstreamed and normalised far-right anti-immigration scare (Graham, 2019; Krzyża
nowski, 2020a).
As the analysis above reveals, the main strategy that emerged from the discourses
entangled within the political reproachment between Swedish far- and mainstream-
right has been the one resulting in establishment of a proxy discourse on criminality
which, while using social concerns around criminality , used related anxieties to construct
the wider scare of immigration while thus enabling criticism of – as well as atmosphere
of hostility towards – migrants and immigration on the one hand, and issues of multicul
turalism and diversity on the other. As indicated above, the establishment of the proxy
discourse in question took place within a wider, multi-step strategy. The latter, only
initially connected immigration and criminality in an explicit way, and eventually separ
ated the issues while furthering – and, as is known further recontextualising – argumen
tation around different ‘components’ of the general claim. This allowed maintaining
central the wider ‘public implicature’, that, as such, criminality and immigration are
somehow‘ connected and, per se, all might/would, or already do, constitute a threat to
contemporary Swedish society.
Our analysis explicates what Ekman and Krzyżanowski (2021), Wodak (2015) and others
have highlighted i.e. that criminality becomes one of the central foci of contemporary
right-wing populist discourse. The latter often aims to simplify the wider social, political
and economic ontology of social anxieties and problems – including criminality – by
arguing that the roots of criminal and anti-social behaviour can – and according to the
far- and often mainstream right indeed should – be connected to immigration and
migrants as such (see also Pelinka, 2013). However, as our analysis shows, this discourse
now acquires a new set of dynamics wherein criminality is not only connected/related to
immigration in the somewhat usually vague and generalised way, but, as has been shown,
it becomes an overarching proxy frame for the general (mis)perception of cultural diversity
even when the latter, or immigration for that matter, are not even anymore mentioned or
made explicit.
As has been highlighted, the three focal parties in our analysis have deployed strat
egies as well as rhetorical and linguistic toolswell-known from far-right discourse, a
trend that was clearly supported by the far-right SD’s dominating and agenda-setting
as well as, effectively, ‘normalising’ voice and the one ‘mainstreaming’ the far-right
agenda. This, as was also indicated at the outset of the analysis, constitutes evidence
that, during the rapprochements between far and the ‘mainstream’ parties such as the
ones highlighted here, those are the radical-right, highly-negativised perceptions of immi
gration that effectively gain ground and become significantly mainstreamed and normal
ised. Obviously, and not unexpectedly, the far-right emerges from this connection as the
political actor that gains the most: while remaining the most explicit in anti-immigration
stance, it also becomes the agent behind the wider ‘discursive shift’ (Krzyżanowski, 2018a,
2018c, 2020b) that sees the general change and de-facto radicalisation of views as well as
solidifying new exclusionary discursive proxies and public implicatures that are closely
related.
Notes
1. According to SD’s own party program, it defines itself as a social conservative party with a
nationalist basic view (Sverigedemokraterna, 2019). However, in view of existent scholarship
(see Krzyżanowski, 2018a; Mudde, 2019; Mudde & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2017; Rydgren, 2002,
2007, 2010, 2017; Wodak, 2015; Wodak & Krzyżanowski, 2017; Rydgren & van der Meiden,
2019; Ravik Jupskås, 2021), we refer to it as a far-right party.
2. With 20,54% of votes, the SD received 73 mandates in the 349-seat Swedish Riksdag. Source:
Swedish Election Agency (Valmyndigheten, 2021). https://www.val.se/servicelankar/
otherlanguages/englishengelska/electionresults/electionresults2022.4.14c1f613181ed0043d
5583f.html, last accessed 24/10/2022.
3. See https://www.government.se/speeches/2022/10/statement-of-government-policy, last
accessed: 2023-02-20.
4. SD is by far the most dominant of all Swedish political parties on Facebook. Its number of
followers stands at 333,000, while M has 120,000 followers and KD has 43,000 followers (Feb
ruary 2022).
5. Most of the external links in KD’s posts, as shown in Table 1, are linking to interviews with the
party leader in various types of media and are not used to comment on current news and
events as in the case of SD.
6. M uses a similar strategy where screenshots of headlines from news media are used as images
in certain posts, but this strategy it is not as consistent and elaborate as in the case of SD.
7. The mentioning of other parties statistics have been established based on looking for refer
ences to party names or their abbreviations (i.e. ‘Moderaterna’, ‘M’, etc.), but also for refer
ences to e.g. first- and surnames of party leaders (e.g. ‘Ebba’ and ‘Busch’ for the KD leader,
etc.). Case was ignored in the search.
8. Järva is a traditional name used for a wider area spanning several districts in the northwest of
Stockholm (Solna municipality). .
9. The Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention
10. The presence of the often derogatory compound nouns in the public discourse is ascribed to
the impact of the far and radical right uncivil society online – also called hyperpartisan media
– which for several years now have been using extensively such concepts while negatively
describing immigration in a strongly predicated way (e.g. mass-immigration – or massin
vandring – rather than just immigration or invandring; asylbråk – or asylum brawl rather
than asylum, etc; see Krzyżanowski & Ledin, 2017).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
Research presented in this article was funded by Swedish Research Council (Vetenskåpsradet) grant
‘Immigration and the Normalization of Racism: Discursive Shifts in Swedish Politics and Media 2010–22’
(PI Michał Krzyżanowski, Uppsala University, grant number 2019-03354).
Notes on contributors
Hugo Ekström specialises in critical discourse analysis of how mediated communication fosters
mainstreaming of the far-right. He received his MA in Digital Media and Society from Uppsala
University, Sweden, where he has also been Research Assistant in at Department of Informatics and
Media since 2022. Since 2023 he is also a PhD Candidate in Media and Communications at the Uni
versity of Gothenburg, Sweden. Info: https://www.gu.se/om-universitetet/hitta-person/hugoekstrom
Michał Krzyżanowski is one of the leading international experts in critical discourse research of nor
malization of the politics of exclusion and anti-immigration rhetoric in the context of far-right, illi
beralism and neoliberalism. He holds a Chair in Media and Communications at Uppsala University,
Sweden, where he is also Deputy Head & Associate Head (Research) at Department/School of Infor
matics & Media as well as Director of Research at Uppsala University Centre for Multidisciplinary
Studies on Racism (CEMFOR). Info: https://www.katalog.uu.se/empinfo/?id = N20-1042
David Johnson specialises in social media analytics, data mining methods, and data infrastructures
in social and life sciences research. He is an Associate Professor (Docent) of Information Systems at
Department/School of Informatics & Media, Uppsala University, Sweden. Info: https://www.katalo
g.uu.se/empinfo/?id = N18-1553.
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Critical Discourse Studies

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/rcds20

Saying ‘Criminality’, meaning ‘immigration’?

Hugo Ekström, Michał Krzyżanowski & David Johnson

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17405904.2023.2282506

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Saying ‘Criminality’, meaning ‘immigration’? Proxy discourses

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

CONTACT Michał Krzyżanowski michal.krzyzanowski@im.uu.se

We analyse FB discourse using a two-tier model of critical discourse analysis of social

2. Normalisation, mainstreaming and the strategic role of ‘Proxy’

3. Sweden’s right, politics of immigration and the issue of criminality

3.2. The politicisation of immigration and of its (Implicit) connection to

4.2. Empirical data

4.3. Interactive analysis

Figure 2. Plot for FB-based Interactions of KD with M and SD in October–December 2021.

Figure 3. Plot for FB-based Interactions of M with KD and SD in October–December 2021.

Figure 4. Plot for FB-based Interactions of SD with KD and M in October–December 2021.

4.4. Entry-level & in-depth (Critical) discourse analysis

Table 2. Key topics and sub-topics related to the alleged connection

immigration to criminality, both regarding foreigners in general, and immigrants in

Over 4,500 honor crimes reported in two years.

(SD, 2021, November 1)

Knife attack on a train in Germany – perpetrator with Arab background arrested.

(SD, 2021, November 6)

(SD, 2021, October 27)

The examples above were all expressions of discursive strategy of ‘functionalisation’

activities in question are in/directly connected to first or second-generation immigrant

(M, 2021, October 27)

(Andersson et al., 2021, October 14)

(SD, 2021, October 29)

(M, 2021, November 12)

(SD, 2021, November 11)

13.30: Man killed after stabbing and explosion in Bagarmossen.

16.10: Bomb threat against a building in Ljungby.

21.23: Shooting at an apartment in Haninge.

05.45: Man injured after explosion in a garden in Eskilstuna.

(M, 2021, October 6)

(KD, 2021, October 28)

(SD, 2021, October 27)

‘Gang’ criminality, as a form of unspecified ‘them’, was supported by argumentation

(M, 2021, October 10)

Curran, G. (2004). Mainstreaming populist discourse: The race-conscious legacy of neo-populist

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