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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.

This article is about one of the most violent and visible form anti-LGBTQI activism in Sweden, conducted by Neo-Nazis. Through a critical discourse analysis of 189 texts published in Swedish newspapers and Neo-Nazi alternative media, it argues that contemporary Swedish Neo-Nazi anti-LGBTQI activism draws upon and constructs transnational heteroactivist discourses. They claim to “protect the nuclear family” to deflate accusations of homophobia while gaining substantial visibility through news media covering their actions. The findings demonstrate the three ways Neo-Nazi texts use heteroactivist strategies. First, the texts argue that LGBTQI rights and feminism are societally harmful. Second, through intertextuality they refer to both local and international alternative media as the basis for their arguments. Third, they rationalise homophobic hatred. This paper contributes to discussions of heteroactivism, revealing the need to grapple with the ways it is intertwined with race and nationalism. Empirically, the analysis also highlights the significance of anti-LGBTQI activism in contemporary white power and extreme-right movements. The inclusion of news media texts that frame and represent heteroactivist strategies reveals that, despite their rationalising efforts, Neo-Nazi anti-LGBTQI activism is represented as homophobic and hateful in news and debate articles describing them. Additionally, news media representations of Neo-Nazi heteroactivist discourse present a nationalist contradiction, with authors re-constructing narratives of Sweden as a “LGBT friendly nation”, bringing to light complex relations between heteroactivism, homophobia, racism, and nationalism.

Homonationalism and nationalist anti-LGBTQ politics and activism are two geographical and historical processes which contradict each other, as the latter frequently targets the former (and vice versa). We see this contradiction in the global far-right attacks on LGBTQ people, rights, and spaces through discourse, politics, and violence, including in nation-states frequently thought of as progressively pushing LGBTQ rights forward through national legislation and shifting values among the population from homophobic to “LGBTQ friendly” (i.e. homonationalism). While this contradiction may be thought of as indicating flaws in linearly progressing democracies (a so-called “backlash” to LGBTQ rights), this thesis instead examines if and how these polar movements are unified through the struggle over the role of sexuality in nationalism. It does so by examining how nationalist anti-LGBTQ politics and activism have contributed to an evolving homonationalist discourse in Sweden. Drawing upon qualitative analyses of neo-Nazi and far-right anti-LGBTQ attacks and oppositions to LGBTQ spaces between 2016 and 2020, and responses to them, the thesis analyses the ways in which state hegemony and nationalist myths about an LGBTQ-inclusive Swedish state are re-articulated in different responses to anti-LGBTQ nationalism. The thesis consists of two parts: the first is a theoretical introduction to sexuality as constructed through nationalism, which also provides an outline of the thesis’ methodology. The second part consists of five research articles which together analyse events of nationalist sexual politics in Sweden and their connections to homonationalist discourse. The two first articles examine the economic and political contexts for Swedish homonationalism and nationalist anti-LGBTQ politics and activism. The third, fourth, and fifth articles analyse concrete nationalist anti-LGBTQ political and activist events and how they have affected and been shaped by (homo)nationalist di

I have used Massey’s (1995) concept of Geographical Imaginations together with Ahmed’s (2006) Queer Phenomenology to research the different meanings attached to Pride festivals in Stockholm and Gothenburg. In this thesis, Pride is defined as a contested place, which is held in places. To research perceptions of Pride and its hosting cities, I have interviewed people with experiences from the Pride festivals and city council employees involved with them. I have also analysed communication and marketing material related to Pride and LGBTQ tourism in Stockholm and Gothenburg. The interviews and the published material showed that Pride as a place sometimes queers parts of the city space by changing them temporarily, making LGBTQ performances more visible. Meanwhile, the articulations of Pride made by city officials, employees and tourist marketing materials showed how LGBTQ rights were understood as dependent on space and time, where both the cities and Sweden were conceptualised as “ahead” in time compared to other places, defining human rights as a Swedish national trait and a tourist commodity.