Homonationalism on the Defensive: News Media Responses to Nationalist Anti-LGBTQ Attacks in Sweden

Abstract

Examining how gender and sexuality norms are expressed through nationalist ideology, this article argues that homonationalist hegemony is being reinforced through media representations of nationalist social movements attacking LGBTQ people, events, and symbols. The argument builds on a critical discourse analysis of 320 newspaper articles published between 2016 and 2020. The discourses in the material manifest how the neo-Nazi groups the Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) and Nordic Youth (NY), as well as the nationalist party Sweden Democrats (SD), have respectively been represented as threats to Swedish national unity in media due to their anti-LGBTQ attacks or statements. The analysis concludes that nationalism is reproduced through struggles over its symbolic expressions, especially through changing articulations of who belongs to the nation and who constitutes its “Others”. The symbolism of gendered and sexual norms is crucial to these struggles, as the evolvements of homonationalist discourse highlights the struggle to define national unity.