Publications
Publication details [#62672]
Doerr, Nicole. 2017. Bridging language barriers, bonding against immigrants: A visual case study of transnational network publics created by far-right activists in Europe. Discourse & Society 28 (1) : 3–23.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Keywords
Place, Publisher
SAGE Publications
Journal WWW
Annotation
This paper explores how far-right activists employ cartoon images mocking immigrants to construct a shared ethno-nationalist bond of solidarity across multilingual and transnational networks and publics. Centering on right-wing activists as political entrepreneurs, it examines the visual and discursive translation of nationalist symbols and cartoons within distinct national political contexts and across linguistic and cultural boundaries. Combining the discourse historical approach (DHA) with multimodal analysis, the paper traces the cross-cultural translation and sharing of an anti-immigrant poster produced by the Swiss People’s Party (SVP), a right-wing political party in Switzerland, in its controversial ‘black sheep’ campaign. Second, it displays how far-right sympathizers in Italy and Germany, inspired by the SVP, generated their own ‘black sheep’ cartoons in which they imagine a racist bond of transnational solidarity via the use of images portraying immigrants as Europe’s other. This paper adds to the study of transnational network publics by displaying the pertinence of non-verbal and visual translation strategies employed by radical right-wing political entrepreneurs to forge stronger alliances cross-nationally and cross-linguistically.