Far-right world ordering from the margins: Ethno-ecological degrowth and the nation in the Swiss Democrats’ discourse about the natural environment

<p dir="ltr">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 less common. To illuminate such far-right imagination of (un)desirable patterned relationships at a worldwide level (world ordering), we offer a multimodal longitudinal analysis of articulations of environmental issues by the radical-right party Swiss Democrats between 2000 and 2022. The significance of our contribution lies in reconstructing far-right world ordering, which positions this actor as an uncorrupted outsider and, more specifically, proposes pro-environment/pro-climate, growth-critical stances coupled with xenophobia (what we conceptualize as “ethno-ecological degrowth”). Furthermore, by combining narrative theory and Habermas-inspired theory of collective learning, we reconstruct the (distortion of) the party's communication over time to aid a reconsideration of the analytical toolkit for the analysis of world ordering.</p>