Victims of Nasty Rhetoric in Swedish Climate Politics

Hate speech with racist, religious and misogynist motives is well-known, but hate speech and related crimes have increased also in climate politics over the past five years. It is used by right-wing and far-right populist political leaders to polarise climate politics, mobilising ingroup followers, and denigrating and delegitimising outgroup advocates of strong climate policy criticising a radical deterioration of climate policy as climate deniers gain powers. Crime victim discourse is gaining greater prominence in political and public debates since it can affect rationales for punishment, equality before the law, and other legal safeguards. This paper add knowledge to such debates by exploring and theorising, with Swedish climate politics as a case, how nasty rhetoric is perceived by the victims among climate scientists, climate journalists and climate activists and what it does to them, emotionally and behaviourally. Based on qualitative analysis of secondary data from written and audio-visual media, combined with interviews with victims, it is found that climate scientists and climate journalists are victimised as persons for what they do professionally. They report fear of being followed, insecurity and angst, making them withdraw from public debate, change research subject or change job. In comparison, climate activists are victimised twice for their political opinions and actions, first as a group by hate speech, then personally by state repression for alleged criminal acts. Contrary to previous research on hate crime victims, climate activists desensitise the content of hate speech and rather get scared and angry from the message effect of hate speech by top politicians, legitimising collective hate speech and inciting hate crime. However, secondary victimisation makes some activists react with fear of crime and choose to revert to more friendly actions. But core group activists react with anger and plan new actions. In all, the results show the importance of analysing crime victim discourses to avoid lumping victims together in public and policy debates on how to curb hate speech and hate crime, as well as to handle victims.