Bernhard Forchtner

University of Leicester | LE · School of Media, Communication and Sociology

Global environmental issues can give rise to globally shared, progressive narratives. Others, such as regressive far-right actors, have obstructed such responses by reproducing exclusionary narratives. However, while substantial work on such far-right obstruction exists, comprehensive case studies on pro-environment/pro-climate far-right actors are...

Earth is on a catastrophic trajectory towards severe ecological destruction, and yet, there is little sign of halting the rise of global greenhouse gas emissions or stopping the extraction of fossil fuels. Against this background, in this article we re-engage with a recently proposed typology supposed to cover three modes through which effective cl...

While criticism of growth by a diverse but overall left-leaning degrowth spectrum has become increasingly prominent, less is known about degrowth stances by far-right actors. While the far right is regularly viewed as ‘productivist’ and tied to fossil fuels, we point to a more complex relationship, taking the German New Right eco-magazine Die Kehre...

Loss and damage from climate change have risen to a prominent position on the international agenda. At COP27 in 2022, the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) ratified a decision to establish a loss and damage fund to compensate low- and middle-income countries that are suffering negative impacts...

The article offers a normatively-informed theorization of people-making as a (blocked) collective learning process. More specifically, people-making, namely the mobilization of individuals into a collective actor, draws symbolic boundaries around the sovereign, thereby contributing to the imagination of ‘the people’ in more inclusionary or exclusio...

This chapter concludes 'Climate Obstruction. How Denial, Delay and Inaction are Heating the Planet' and summarises our main findings. Drawing on our conceptualisation of primary, secondary and tertiary climate obstruction as a three-layered, intertwined activity, we discuss the way denial, delay and inaction have limited our possibility to counter...

After decades of lobbying and disinformation campaigns, it is not surprising that climate change denial and opposition to climate mitigation exist among the public. However, people are not just passive receivers of information. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of climate obstruction requires knowledge of why individuals interpret climate me...

This chapter discusses how the contemporary far right, both political parties and non-party actors, engages with the issue of climate obstruction. After providing a definition of “the far right” and why this political spectrum needs to be considered too when trying to understand denial and delay today, the chapter discusses primary obstruction by v...

This chapter outlines the history of climate science and the different responses that this science, as well as the actors invoking this science, have met up until the late 1980s. It specifically focuses on the rise of the environment as a global political problem in the 1960s and 1970s and the countermovement of anti-environmentalism. It argues tha...

This chapter provides an overview of the historical legacies of vested interests for climate poli6tics since the late 1980s. We retrace both the funding and lobbying against the science proving climate change, and the proposed alternative policies, looking especially at the establishment of the climate change denial machine in the early 1990s. Orga...

In 'Climate Obstruction: How Denial, Delay and Inaction are Heating the Planet', Kristoffer Ekberg, Bernhard Forchtner, Martin Hultman and Kirsti Jylhä bring together crucial insights from environmental history, sociology, media and communication studies and psychology to help us understand why we are failing to take necessary measures to avert the...

The incessant climate and environmental crisis paired with the mainstreaming of the far right have, once again, brought ecofascism and far-right ecologism under the public spotlight. Departing from the ideological tenets established in the 19th and the early 20th century, this ideological amalgamation continues to inform far-right agendas worldwide...

Amid the existing scientific consensus regarding anthropogenic climate change (ACC), research on political ideologies and climate change indicates varying degrees of scepticism amongst conservatives and, especially, the far right, the latter ranging from the anti-liberal radical right to the anti-democratic extreme right. We contribute to this emer...

This article illuminates the far-right populist Alternative for Germany's (AfD) performances of delegitmisation vis-à-vis EUrope and legitmisation of itself/the nation by articulating two paradigmatic, transnational crises: climate change and COVID-19. It asks: ‘how does the far-right AfD perform these two crises to legitimise itself and delegitimi...

Autonomy and independence have become crucial elements of end-of-life decision making. Opinions on the latter are, however, strongly contested in public discourses. This contribution analyses arguments in favour of and against a Dutch civil society initiative which promotes the extension of the legislation on euthanasia. The authors investigate Dut...

Given that narratives are everywhere, this special issue aims to contribute to the field of Critical Discourse Studies (CDS, also known as Critical Discourse Analysis) by (a) considering the concept of narrative and showcasing some of its uses in CDS, (b) arguing for its prominent consideration within conceptual architectures in CDS, and (c) illust...

Narratives are everywhere. We tell narratives about ourselves and we make the world meaningful through storytelling. We position others through the narratives we tell and are positioned by stories told about us. And yet, while narratives have, of course, been analysed in critical discourse studies (CDS), including in one of its most popular approac...

In recent years two crises have populated the imagination of publics: environmental crises, ranging from, for example, water and air pollution to climate change, and the crisis of liberal democracy, illustrated by the rise of far‐right actors across Europe, the United States and beyond. While these environmental and political crises have been analy...

In this article, Forchtner investigates the construction of an ‘ideal’, extreme-right, ecologically sensitive subject. A concern for the natural environment is in no way new to the extreme right, and has long been part of its ideological make-up. In particular, claims that the laws of nature are applicable to the social world and that a community i...

The circumcision debate in Germany in 2012 is an exemplary case for symbolic struggles over national boundaries. The debate became a site for the negotiation of traditions practiced by religious minorities. We ask, first, how the clinical gaze constitutes Muslim and Jewish others. Second, we investigate how ‘writing around’ the debate’s center, bod...

Risks associated with the far-right are nowhere more apparent than in Germany, with its 20th century history – and although far-right actors have been present since the birth of the Federal Republic of Germany, threats originating from it have become especially pronounced more recently. On the one hand, while neo-Nazis have long played a violent ro...

Societies change; and sociology has, since its inception, described and evaluated these changes. This article proposes a revised theory of collective learning processes, a conceptual framework which addresses ways in which people make sense of and cope with change. Drawing on Habermas’ classic proposal, but shifting the focus from argumentation tow...

Memory Goes On: Past, Legitimacy and Identity in the Making - Jeffrey K. Olick The Sins of the Fathers, Germany, Memory, Method (Chicago, IL, The University of Chicago Press, 2016) - Volume 59 Issue 3 - Bernhard Forchtner

This article explores climate-change communication by the German far right – spanning a continuum which ranges from anti-liberal democracy radical-right populists, to the extreme right and to anti-democratic neo-Nazis – and asks: how do these actors articulate the phenomenon of climate change? In responding to this question, we conduct a discourse...

Revolutionary fascists and (nominally) democratic radical-right actors have long told apocalyptic stories of national decline, of the ever-growing threat of the demise of the nation through decadence and cultural/ethnic “pollution.” These stories, however, do rarely end with catastrophe, but ultimately promise the nation’s rebirth, like a phoenix f...

Over recent years, the German extreme right has undergone significant changes, including the appropriation of symbols, styles, and action repertoires of contemporary (youth) cultures, sometimes even taken from the far left. In this article, we investigate extreme right visual communication through Facebook, focusing on claims to truth and authentic...

Food consumption has always been a deeply symbolic, identity-related issue. But contrary to the intuitive assumption that links meat-free diets to peace-loving, left-leaning actors and ideologies, this article illustrates how a group of (German) neo-Nazis, Balaclava Küche (Balaclava Kitchen), appropriates vegan diet in its YouTube cooking videos. A...

Identitäten basieren auf Geschichten, mit denen sich individuelle und kollektive Akteure beschreiben, abgrenzen und ihre Umwelt wahrnehmen. Geschichten ziehen Grenzen – und jede Berührung mit Anderem provoziert das Erzählen solcher Geschichten. Über Europa werden viele Geschichten erzählt, verwirrend viele Geschichten – von friedlicher Vereinigung...

The fourth rhetoric of learning conceptualised by Forchtner is the rhetoric of judge-penitence. This rhetoric thematises our past wrongdoing as being successfully ‘worked through’ while they, today, have not learnt the lesson and commit wrongdoing. The subject of such a plot grammar is a condescending teacher who, instead of also questioning her- o...

The first rhetoric of learning conceptualised by Forchtner is the rhetoric of judging. Here, the identification of their past wrongdoing is coupled with a claim that lessons from this past are ignored by others who do wrong in the present. The subject which emerges from such a plot, an incorruptible judge, is not guilty of wrongdoing; it is a fully...

The third rhetoric of learning conceptualised by Forchtner is the rhetoric of penitence. This rhetoric draws on our past wrongdoing, which is supposed to prevent our wrongdoing in the present. He describes the subject which arises out of this narrative as a penitent sinner who remembers our wrongdoing which, while not preventing stability as such,...

Forchtner starts by emphasising the significance of claims to know the lessons from the past in our current memory landscape. Arguing that such claims do not only differ in their content, he contends that there is a need for developing a taxonomy of such claims. The latter consists of both past wrongdoing from which one is supposed to learn (whethe...

Forchtner moves from describing claims to know the lessons from the past towards considering their evaluation and normative aspects. Instead of discussing how claims to know position subjects, this chapter thus turns to the notion of learning from the past. What would a notion of learning in line with narrative theory look like? How could it be lin...

Forchtner provides an account of narrativity and its relevance for analysing claims to know the lessons from the past, arguing that the narrative form prevents any intuitive understanding of learning from the past. That is, there are no objective lessons as the past is only present through selectively arranged events. This discussion is followed by...

Bernhard Forchtner analyses the discourse on environmental crises by the British National Party. While both environmental crises, as well as the rise of the farright, have been extensively discussed, academic and public debates have seldom asked how the environment is appropriated by contemporary far-right actors, for example, through nostalgically...

The idea that “the past” could provide guidance in the present is a popular topos in public debates. Being interested in how this topos of historia magistra vitae can be utilized in discourses, representations and their consequences, this article asks how claims to know ‘the lessons’ from the past, for having learnt, give meaning to contemporary ac...

This article emphasises the need to devote more attention to concepts and theories in critical discourse studies (CDS). We are particularly eager to emphasise that CDS theory of the second decade of 2000s – often known as the post-crisis era or as the period of ‘late neoliberalism’ – faces a number of challenges that are both real world (social) an...

As societies have become increasingly differentiated and discourses have turned increasingly heterogeneous, field theory and critical discourse studies (CDS) have become ever more popular in the social sciences. Responding to this development, we propose a synthesis of Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory and theories of collective learning inspired by J...

The second rhetoric of learning conceptualised by Forchtner is the rhetoric of failing. The latter opens up the possibility for reflexivity. It is characterised by focusing on our (potential) wrongdoing in the present, though there is still some solid ground as the lessons are drawn from their past wrongdoing. The subject which emerges out of such...

In his concluding remarks, Forchtner summarises the four rhetorics of learning (the rhetorics of judging, failing, penitence and judge-penitence) before reflecting on two subsequent questions: Is it really useful that this model favours form over content? and How can we theoretically connect, on the one hand, strong bonds and coherent subjects able...

‘This book opens up new horizons in the sociological study of memory. It is not only a theoretical adventure, trying to push a critical approach to memory studies, going beyond Habermas, but also an empirical study full of insights into the workings and transformations of the collective memories we live with and the claims to know the lessons from...

Dominant self-complacent national narratives (not only) in Turkey have long silenced past wrongdoings. Among these, the massacre of thousands of Kurds in Dersim during the 1930s, being part of the wider suppression of the Kurdish minority until the present day, is a particularly significant example. However, against the background of an almost glob...

This article inquires into how contemporary populist radical right parties relate to environmental issues of countryside and climate protection, by analyzing relevant discourses of the British National Party (BNP) and the Danish People's Party (DPP). It does so by looking at party materials along three dimensions: the aesthetic, the symbolic, and t...

Successive attempts to unify Europe have been characterized by unprece dented levels of violence – ranging, for example, from the wars of religion in the 17th century to struggles for territorial and racial unification since the 18th century. It is therefore not surprising that a peace-narrative, i.e. a narrative of nonviolent unification, has been...

Over recent decades, public admissions of our past wrongdoing have become increasingly widespread. Usually, these practices are viewed as facilitating more inclusive modes of assimilating collective memories into collective identities. However, this article argues that such admissions can enable claims for having learnt the lessons which ultimately...

The victory of a Christian coalition over Ottoman forces besieging Vienna in 1683 marked the beginning of the end of the Ottoman presence in Central and Eastern Europe and the simultaneous rise of the Habsburg Empire in this region. Memories of these events still circulate in present-day Vienna and provide an emotional reservoir for anti-Turkish se...

CDS is a multifarious field constantly developing different methodological frameworks for analysing dynamically evolving aspects of language in a broad range of socio-political and institutional contexts. This volume is a cutting edge, interdisciplinary account of these theoretical and empirical developments. It presents an up-to-date survey of Cri...

By analysing the discourses and performances of and within the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) since the millennium, 2000, this chapter highlights the role of ‘mediatization’ in the dynamics of right-wing populist political campaigns and their leading narratives and strategies. These are analysed in the context of recent FPÖ politics and campaigning,...

Critical discourse analysis (CDA, nowadays also referred to as critical discourse studies) investigates naturally occurring written and spoken language beyond the sentence level, as well as other forms of meaning making, such as visuals and sounds, seeing them as irreducible elements in the (re)production of society. However, critical discourse ana...

In this article, we compare the Austrian TV-movie Der Bockerer (1981) and the Danish TV-series Matador (1978-1981), illustrating how these fictional constructions of the past (re)produce the respective nations' collective memories about National Socialism during World War Two. In both cases, cinematic fiction enables the national community to dista...

The 1990s and 2000s saw a memory and remembrance boom at both the national and supra-/transnational level. Crucially, many of these emerging memory frames were not simply about a glorious and heroic past, as in, for example, traditional nationalist narratives. Rather, groups started to narrate their symbolic boundaries in a more inclusive way by ad...

At the core of critical discourse analysis lies its emancipatory agenda: arguing for social equality and against discrimination. In the case of the discourse-historical approach (DHA), this stance has been theoretically justified mainly through references to Habermas’ language-philosophy. At the same time, the analysis of actually occurring argumen...

This article analyzes multilingual practices in interactions inside European Union (EU) institutions. On the basis of our fieldwork conducted in EU organizational spaces throughout 2009, we explore different types of communication in order to illustrate how Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and officials at the European Commission practice...

Critical discourse analysis (CDA) stands on the shoulder of giants – different giants – in order to answer how its critique, its ethico-moral stance, is theoretically grounded and justified. Concerning this question, this article explores the role of the Frankfurt School in the discourse–historical approach (DHA). Although references to the Frankfu...

During the last decade, the phenomenon of publicly confessing past wrong- doings by official representatives of their groups has become an increasingly relevant element in official relations between communities. Such forgiving ceremonies act as cultural practices through which the audience - the victims, the asking community and the global public -...