Writing from the Body to Understand Nasty Rhetoric: Hate, Threats and Violence in Swedish Climate Politics

In this paper I dig deep down along the slope of what touches me deeply – a democratic decline in climate politics with increasing use of hateful and threatening rhetoric – nasty rhetoric. I follow the course of critical researchers in management and organization studies, striving to move away from traditional, horizontal norms of academic writing that elision the author from the text, to-wards a more vertical writing incorporating the voice of the author. Embodying and resonating with my own emotional experiences of far-right hate and threat campaigns, I qualitatively analyze written, spoken and visual material from newspapers, magazines, blogs, podcasts, photos, vid-eos, television, radio and social media, to understand the nature of nasty rhetoric in Swedish climate politics, and the implications thereof for democracy. A far-right populist nativist party is currently holding tangible powers, dictating the ambitions, content and process of Swedish cli-mate politics. In less than two years, Swedish climate politics have turned into an antidemocratic divisive politics portraying climate science as “a point of view”, female climate journalists as “moron hags” that should be “fired” and “raped”, and the climate justice movement as “terror-ists” and “a threat to Swedish democracy” that should be “sent to prison” and “executed”. Nasty rhetoric is used not only by anonymous trolls in social media, but openly by the prime minister, cabinet ministers and parliamentarians. Their use of nasty rhetoric aims to silence the opponents to the current paradigm shift in Swedish climate policy, breaching democratic norms such as le-gitimacy, accountability and justice, but also to mobilize followers and expand they hate and threats. The opposition is also using nasty rhetoric, but of a less aggressive nature, to reveal far-right populist climate policy and politicians as a naked emperor. Nasty rhetoric is a powerful tactic to mobilize more offenders, while leaving its targets with fear and anxiety and a need for disappearance from public debate. Many targets resign or stay silent, negatively affecting plu-ralistic debates and the scrutiny of power in democracies. I chose to break the silence and write differently to increase our knowledge of the phenomenon of nasty rhetoric.