‘Executed in Front of Your Children’: Writing from the Body to Understand Victims of Nasty Politics

1. Something is Rotten in the Kingdom of Sweden

Studying the agency of policy entrepreneurs in the radical transformation of Swedish climate policy and governance, I found that the current pseudo-liberal and conservative government, supported or rather dictated by a populist radical right party, systematically use hate speech and related crimes targeting those that advocate strong climate policy (von Malmborg, 2024). It is not only a tactic of the anonymous and climate change denying populist radical right extremist movement, but also of leading politicians, including the prime minister (PM), to use insults, accusations, intimidation and incitement to delegitimise and dehumanise who they claim to be left-liberal political opponents, climate activists, climate scientists, climate journalists and civil servants working with climate change in a polarised culture war on climate politics (cf. Hultman et al., 2019; Buzogány & Mohamad-Klotzbach, 2022; Marquardt et al., 2022; Cunningham et al., 2024; von Malmborg, 2026a, 2026b). The Sweden Democrats (SD), a populist ethno-nationalistic party rooted in neo-fascism (Rydgren & van der Meiden, 2019; Vahter & Jakobson, 2023), is currently the second largest party in the Swedish parliament (Riksdag) and supports the government under the condition that SD can dictate and veto policy in six areas to undergo a rapid paradigm shift: climate and energy, criminality, economic growth and household economy, education, migration and integration, and public health (Tidö Parties, 2022). Out of these, crime policy, migration policy and climate policy are deemed the most important (Rothstein, 2023). Climate policy was purposefully included in the agreement to open a window of opportunity for SD to dictate and veto the government’s policies. The aim is to demount Swedish climate policy, which has previously been considered one of the most ambitious globally and Sweden being considered an international frontrunner (Matti et al., 2021; Widerberg et al., 2024; Ergon, 2026). What happens is part of the populist radical right’s culture war (Hunter, 1991) and an ongoing process of autocratisation in Sweden and other Western European nations (Gustavsson, 2024; Silander, 2024; V-Dem Institute, 2024, 2026), also evident in the US under President Donald J. Trump (Vargiu et al., 2024). Critical research on the relationship between the populist radical right, neoliberal capitalism and evangelical Christianity indicates that climate policy is a priority for the populist radical right for apocalyptic reasons. Since climate change appears to bring Earth and humanity into a global ecological, economic, social and human poly-crisis in the near future, if no action is taken now, the populist radical right refuses to take climate action and denounce climate science, climate justice activists and ambitious climate policy as conscious acts to frenetically accelerate the messianic prophecy of a second coming of Christ and the Rapture (Klein & Taylor, 2026; von Malmborg, 2026c).

Hate speech and hate crime with racist, religious and misogynist motives is well-known (see e.g. Yılmaz, 2012; Lutz, 2019; Peters, 2020; Hagerlid, 2021; Olivas Osuna, 2021; Atak, 2022; Weeks & Allen, 2023; Askanius et al., 2024; Svatoňová & Doerr, 2024; Ilse & Hagerlid, 2025). For instance, members of the Jewish diaspora, the Muslim community and the LGBTQ+ communities in EU countries are victimised by online hate speech on an almost daily basis (Berecz & Devinat, 2017). Such nasty politics with a nasty rhetoric (Zeitzoff, 2023) is a rather new phenomenon in climate politics (von Malmborg, 2026). Most research on radical right populism and climate change has focused on (i) climate change denialism (Edvardsson Björnberg et al., 2017; Vihma et al., 2021; Vowles & Hultman, 2021a; Ekberg & Pressfeldt, 2022), (ii) polarised policy framing (Knight& Greenberg, 2011; Eubanks, 2015; Sharman & Howarth, 2017; Bsumek et al. 2019; Nordensvärd & Ketola, 2022; Pandey, 2024; Coffé et al., 2026; Van Matre et al., 2026), and (ii) links between climate change denial and antifeminism targeting female activists and journalists, who are targeted more often and harder (Agius et al., 2021; Andersson, 2021; Vowles & Hultman, 2021b; White, 2022; Arce-García et al., 2023; Björkenfeldt & Gustafsson, 2023; Schulz-Tomančok & Woschnagg, 2024). In comparison, little is known about the use and nature of nasty rhetoric, i.e. systematic hate speech and hate crime as political strategy and tactics, in radically changing climate policy and politics.

The intersection of four worrying themes that touch me deeply as a social scientist studying climate politics and democracy, as a social activist citizen, and as a father made me want to understand the nature of nasty politics and nasty rhetoric more in-depth:

• accelerating climate change and the climate emergency;
• democracy and the ongoing autocratisation of Sweden;
• the identification of systematic and strategic use of nasty rhetoric to deteriorate Swedish climate policy; and
• my personal experiences of being a victim to hate speech and hate crime.

Why and how is nasty rhetoric used? Why and how are victims harmed? Why and how is society and democracy harmed?

1.1. Use of Nasty Rhetoric

As reported and analysed elsewhere (von Malmborg, 2026), populist radical right and conservative politicians in the Swedish government and the Riksdag portray green politicians as “strawmen” that should be “killed”. They accuse climate science of being “just an opinion” and climate scientists of being “propagandists” that should meet “death squads at university”. They argue that the climate justice movement consists of “saboteurs” and “terrorists”, constituting “a threat to Swedish climate governance and Swedish democracy” and thus must be “sent to prison indefinitely” or “executed”. In addition, they say that female climate journalists are a “left pack” and “moron hags” that “will be raped”. By dehumanising their alleged ‘enemies’, they aim to silence their enemies, squeeze the civic space and make climate policy less ambitious or eventually scrap it. A leading Swedish newspaper has consequently described Swedish climate politics as “a musty rant with accusations of betrayal, sin and devil pacts”1 (cf. Hornung et al., 2025).

Analysing nasty rhetoric from the perspectives of perpetrators, I have described nasty rhetoric as a double-edged sword to those who initiate its use, often leading populist politicians (von Malmborg, 2026). They aim at silencing opponents in the outgroup, but also at mobilising ingroup followers to expand hate speech and related crimes. Research in political psychology indicates that, compared to mainstream politicians, populist politicians score higher on Dark Triad personality traits, i.e. Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy (Visser et al., 2017; Nai & Maier, 2018, 2024; Nai & Martínez i Coma, 2019), and that they are more inclined to engage nasty rhetoric. To the mobilised followers, the secondary perpetrators, nasty rhetoric is a weird kind of sport (cf. Walther & Rice, 2025). They join in expanding hate and threats, often in social media, due to a combination of ideological reasons (Dellagiacoma et al., 2024), psychopathological factors like Dark Triad traits (Blais et al., 2021; Nai et al., 2023; Isom & Hubbard, 2025), neurobiological factors (Dunbar, 2022), and social gratification, including as entertainment and for having fun (Walther, 2025). In common, they show empathetic disabilities. When used by the PM and other cabinet ministers and people with leading positions in the Riksdag, nasty rhetoric becomes normalised and collectivised (cf. Peters, 2020; Krzyżanowski et al., 2023). Bilewicz and Soral (2020) argue that through basic psychological dynamics, societies become more accepting of derogatory language and less accepting of religious, ethnic, sexual and political minorities groups.

1.2. Harms of Nasty Rhetoric

To understand the nature of nasty politics and nasty rhetoric, the victims’ perspectives are important. Crime victim discourse is gaining greater prominence in political and public debates in areas such as racist, religious and misogynist hate speech and hate crime since it can affect traditional legal principles such as rationales for punishment, equality before the law, and other legal safeguards (Tham et al., 2011; Hagerlid, 2021; Atak, 2022; Glad et al., 2024). Analysing crime victim discourse in the field of climate politics, i.e. the harms on victims, I found that climate activists are victimised twice, first from insults, accusations, intimidations and incitement, second from physical, economic and legal violence by state repression with harassment by police officers, prosecution for allegedly more and more severe criminal acts (von Malmborg, 2026). Sometimes, they are arrested and detained and convicted to fines or imprisonment. But this does not silence all activists. Some continue their acts of civil disobedience, invoking populist radical right politicians to criminalise climate activism. In contrast, climate scientists and climate journalists are victimised from hate speech and hate crime, often intimidations and incitement of physical violence and even murder. Many climate activists desensitise and are not deterred, rather radicalised in the eyes of the government. To cope with fear of violence and being chased, leading to anxiety and depression, scientists and journalists change job or withdraw from the public debate (von Malmborg, 2026). A culture of silence is spreading.

1.3. Embodying Emotions to Understand of Nasty Rhetoric

Politics, including climate politics, is emotional (Beattie et al., 2019; Shah, 2024). This is not a new phenomenon. It is long since known that emotions are important for shaping beliefs, values and political behaviour in policy processes (Barnes, 2008; Ahmed, 2014; Durnová, 2018; Fullerton et al., 2023; Gabehart et al., 2024). The witnessing of climate change events like more frequent and extreme rains, storms, floodings, landslides, heatwaves, droughts and wildfires, and their negative impacts on people, societies and economies all over the world make a lot of people emotionally affected (Brosch, 2021; Howe, 2021; Schneider et al., 2021). Climate politics can thus be based on emotions. At the same time, climate politics with nasty rhetoric is shaped to invoke emotions. Nasty politics includes techniques of surveillance, control, and manipulation to govern peoples’ emotions through cultural and institutional processes.

Most studies of harms of nasty rhetoric and hate speech, including my own, follow traditional norms of academic writing with rather stultifying formats resulting in dry and soulless presentations of political hate speech and hate crimes (see Vergani et al., 2024, for a review of the research). Victims, emotionally harmed and changing behaviour to cope with the harms, are represented as dots, lines and digits in graphs and tables (cf. Tham et al., 2011; Hagerlid, 2021). These traditional norms have been increasingly criticised for being “restrictive, inhibit the development of knowledge and excise much of what it is to be human from our learning, teaching and research” (Gilmore et al., 2019; p. 3).

Adding more human perspectives to the understanding of nasty politics and rhetoric, this paper digs deeper along the slope of what touches me deeply and lets victims talk with their own words and stories (cf. Glad et al., 2024). Nasty rhetoric aims at evocating feelings and emotionally hurting its targets, making people afraid (Chang, 2019; Olson, 2020). It aims at demonising and dehumanising people, eroding their human dignity (Seglow, 2016; Cassese, 2021; Wahlström et al., 2021), making them change behaviour, silence and disappear from the political conversation. Loosening myself from the binds of traditional academic writing that elision the author from the text (Gilmore et al., 2019), I write this paper differently, from the body, to engage emotionaland behavioural responses of different victims, including my own. The aim is to explore victims of nasty rhetoric in a way that affectively engages and absorbs the readers so that learning about nasty rhetoric and how it hurts its victims happens almost unknowingly through emotions (cf. Parker, 2014; Shotter & Tsoukas, 2014; Kociatkiewicz & Kostera, 2016; Page, 2017; Beavan, 2019). Serving a “living dish” (Dubois, 2025, p. 1), I hope that readers could feel, or at least imagine, the pain, fear, angst and anger that comes with being harmed by nasty rhetoric—being dehumanised, loosing human dignity and equality.

The paper is outlined as follows. Section two presents the theory of nasty politics and nasty rhetoric with links to emotional governance, while section three reflects theoretically on the role of emotions in science and styles of academic writing that could enhance the understanding of nasty rhetoric. I also outline the method and material used, including my choice of writing style. Then, section four embodies in-depth the emotions and vulnerabilities of myself and two climate justice activists severely harmed by nasty rhetoric due to their activism; Marie lost her job, and Pontus is the first climate activist in Sweden to serve time in prison. Section five let experiences of the three of us resonate with emotional and behavioural responses of other victims and with the academic literature. Section six reflects on the testimonies, analyses and interprets the nature of nasty rhetoric – suggesting it appears to victims as a swarm of instants, leading to contradictory feelings that in turn lead to behaviours that metaphorically can be seen as a traffic cone to either hide in and be silent, or to use as a megaphone to backfire on perpetrators of nasty rhetoric. Finally, section seven discusses what social science and politics can learn from writing differently.

2. Emotional Governance with Nasty Rhetoric

Populist politics is very much about emotional governance through storytelling (Polletta et al., 2011) where the “core populist narrative about good people reclaiming power from corrupt elites is rooted in evocative stories drawing on mythical pasts, crisis-driven presents, and utopian futures” (Taş, 2022, p. 128). As explained by Hunter (1991), the populist struggle to achieve cultural hegemony and legitimacy requires that there is an alleged ‘enemy’ to resist. The moral conflicts between opposing ideologies and parties in a culture war are so large that arguments based on facts and logic will not convince the opposition and many voters. This makes radical right populists, rejecting ideological pluralism, deliberately and systematically attempt to discredit and silence the opposition through pernicious polarisation of ‘friends’ vs. ‘enemies’ – We vs. Them, ingroup vs. outgroup (Hunter, 1991; Mudde, 2017). A central tactic in silencing people in the outgroup is to emotionally delegitimise and dehumanise those people and groups who the radical right populists consider not to fit into society by using nasty rhetoric.

2.1. Emotional Governance

Political sentiments are often emotional and affective, determined by viscerally experienced sentiments and a physically imagined sense of rightness or wrongness. Political persuaders, particularly populists, use language or images to affect emotions, perceptions of knowledge, belief, value, and action (Shah, 2024). This aligns with notions of charismatic leadership and persuasion that stress pathos and ethos as more important in rhetoric than logos (Weber, 1921; Olson, 2020). Populist rhetoric operates in a world where it is not required for “every statement be logically defensible” (McBath & Fisher, 1969, p. 17).

Emotions are central in the structural and affective changes that underlie populist mobilisation and the polarisation of everyday insecurities in general (Kinnvall & Svensson, 2022). Such emotional governance (cf. Foucault, 1977; Durnová, 2018) includes techniques of surveillance, control, and manipulation, i.e. how society governs emotions through cultural and institutional processes. Emotional governance is used more or less explicitly by all political leaders in emotional regimes to create and maintain, from the top down, cementing emotions and emotion rules (Hochschild, 1983; Frijda & Mesquita, 1994; Wettergren, 2012; Flam, 2024). Emotion rules aim to give individuals a sense of what is considered appropriate (right) and inappropriate (wrong) thoughts and behaviour and the circumstances in which certain emotions become acceptable (Crawford, 2014). As described by Foucault (1977), families, neighbours and people at workplaces are often manipulated to perform monitoring in emotional governance, which makes structural, symbolic and cultural violence central tactics (cf. Galtung, 1969; Inhetveen, 2017). Recent comparative studies show that liberal democracies, totalitarian states and authoritarian states have different emotional regimes (Verbalyte & Ulinskaitė, 2024) but that cementing emotions like fear, anger, shame and pride are present in all types of political regimes.

Anyone wanting to challenge the status quo must counteract the dominant cemented emotions in an emotional regime by defining subversive counter-feelings directed at the opponents (Wettergren & Jamieson, 2006; Wettergren, 2012) They must emotionally reinterpret and normatively reformulate specific aspects of social ‘reality’, demanding new, obligatory and dominant emotions and emotional rules for their members, their opponents and other relevant aspects of reality. Such subversive counter-feelings often include hatred, distrust and contempt, creating dissatisfaction with the prevailing system. An obvious example is the populist radical right using fictional crises and blaming alleged enemies for causing the crises to mobilise followers in their culture war. The good people must be protected from the enemies of the nation, who must be suspended, ostracised or eliminated.

Social psychology research defines hate as a strong, intense, enduring, and destructive emotional experience, intended to harm or eliminate its targets physically, socially, or symbolically (Opotow & McClelland, 2007, Fischer et al., 2018). It also finds a causal relationship between hate and aggression in terms of aggressive tendencies and hurting behaviour experienced towards specific individuals and entire outgroups (Martínez et al., 2022a, 2022b).

Anger is another feeling often directed at opponents. It is less aggressive than hate. While hate is a destructive force, anger is a constructive force, which makes a person wanting to change the opponents, not hurt or eliminate them (cf. Martínez et al., 2022a, 2022b). Since anger is normally reserved for those in power, a countermovement and its members who challenge the current situation must reclaim the right to feel and show anger. This can be problematic in liberal democracies and creates an increased risk of state repression, including violence, in more repressive regimes or contexts (Inhetveen, 2005; Wettergren, 2012). Inhetveen (2005) claims that culturality is a central characteristic of violence, which means that what is considered a violent act is always open to interpretation. But violence is also tightly connected with power, which implies that certain meanings of violence can be propagated and used politically, which may also influence further violent actions (Inhetveen, 2005, 2017).

Injustices in the system can create destabilising feelings of cynicism and resignation, while moral outrage and anger, but also hope, defined as “the emotion of future possibility, distinct from self-confidence, faith and trust” (Wettergren, 2025, p. 133), can create cohesion and mobilise more members.

2.2. Hate Speech and Violence in Nasty Politics

The concept of nasty politics was introduced by Zeitzoff (2023, p. 6, 9) to analyse the phenomenon when politicians use “a set of tactics […] to insult, accuse, denigrate, threaten and in rare cases physically harm their domestic political opponents”, which can include “political parties, partisans, ethnic groups, police and security services, immigrants, judges, businessmen, companies, journalists, members of the press, NGOs, government officials, military, business groups, or other domestic political opponents broadly construed”. The core of nasty politics is the use of nasty rhetoric, characterised by divisive and contentious rhetoric with insults and threats containing elements of hatred and aggression that entrenches political divides with ‘us vs. them’ narratives, i.e. pernicious polarisation (Klein, 2020; Somer et al., 2021). Nasty rhetoric, covering soft and hard state repression, is designed to denigrate, deprecate, delegitimise and dehumanise people (Whillock & Slayden, 1995; Moffitt & Tormey, 2014; Moffitt, 2016; Cassese, 2021; Zeitzoff, 2023). Taking a socio-cultural and performative approach to populism, Ostiguy (2017) highlights the importance of affects in populism. He defines populism as the ‘flaunting of “the low”’ (p. 73), referring to an antagonistic, uninhibited and coarse style adopted by personalistic leaders. Likewise, Moffitt refers to the role of ‘bad manners’ in populist performative style (Moffitt & Tormey 2014; Moffitt 2016). Thus, nasty rhetoric used to invoke emotions, especially fear, is at the core of emotional governance.

Nasty rhetoric covers offline and online hate speech as well as hate crime (Whillock & Slayden, 1995; Chetty & Alathur, 2018; Castaño-Pulgarín et al., 2021; Vergani et al., 2024). But as presented in Table 1, nasty rhetoric also includes hard repressive acts of the state, such as economic and legal violence justified by the state as legitimate acts of violence (cf. Inhetveen, 2005).

Actions like denunciation, detention, strategic lawsuits against public participation with arrest, fines and imprisonment, performed by the state to dehumanise people it considers to less ‘human’, not part of the ‘people’, are usually not considered as violence, as violence is somehow thought of linked to physical harm of the body. But sociology of violence distinguishes between direct, structural, symbolic and cultural violence (Galtung, 1969, 1990; Bourdieu, 1984; Inhetveen, 2017), including phenomena in which no physical access of nameable actors to victims of violence can be observed. Analytically, violence is no longer considered only as direct physical interaction causing physical harm, like direct violence, that also not only hurts the body physically, but also the person, the self. While framing structural violence as unequal power relations causing “the difference between the potential and the actual” realisation of peoples’ needs and wants (Galtung, 1969, p. 168), cultural violence is defined as any aspect of a culture that can be used to legitimise violence in its direct physical or indirect structural form (Galtung, 1990). Symbolic violence built into a culture does not kill or harm like direct violence or the violence built into the structure. Instead, it represents the subtle and often unnoticed forms of domination that are exerted through social norms, values, and cultural practices (Bourdieu, 1984). Thus, symbolic and cultural violence is used to legitimise either or both direct and structural violence, as for instance in the acts of imperial colonisers in the 15th to early 20th centuries and the German nazis in the 1930s and 40s, but also President Trump and the MAGA movement in the contemporary US (von Malmborg, 2026).

As for direct violence, it is seldom, if ever, used by the state in (pseudo)liberal democracies to silence political opponents, but the state and leading politicians can incite physical violence through hate speech (Schweppe & Perry, 2021), or as stated by Cohen-Almagor et al. (2018, p. 38): “speech can and does inspire crime” And as stated by Maria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 2021: “Online violence does not stay online. Online violence leads to real world violence”. 2 For instance, US president Donlad J. Trump, a populist radical right leader, is well-known for publicly denigrating people and violating numerous democratic norms such as legitimacy and accountability in delivery and content of his speeches (Jamieson & Taussig, 2017; Ross & Rivers, 2020; Valcore et al., 2023; Vargiu et al., 2024). He actively incited violent riots at the storming of Capitolium on 6 January 2021, an act that is considered ‘state terrorism’ sine it resulted in seven deaths, over a hundred injured law enforcement officers, and over USD30 million in damage (Piazza, 2020; Zeitzoff, 2023). Thus, hate speech is also seen as a type of terrorism or trigger event of terrorism, i.e. any intentional act directed against life or related entities causing a common danger (Chetty & Alathur, 2018; Piazza, 2020).

As described by Zeitzoff (2023), different types of nasty rhetoric do not happen in isolation, but tend to happen together, with more threatening and aggressive rhetoric happening alongside less aggressive rhetoric. What starts with different expressions of hate soon escalates to different forms of threats, one more aggressive than the other, and further to violence. Deprecation, i.e. insults and accusations to make claims about action, may be a precursor to more targeted violent rhetoric and action, and act as a provocation and incitement to addressees and bystanders as much as emotional sentiments that wound the targets of a speech, text, picture or video. As stated by Klemperer (2002, p. 15), “words can be like tiny doses of arsenic: they are swallowed unnoticed, appear to have no effect, and then after a little time the toxic reaction sets in after all”, which has also been described as the banality of evil (Arendt, 1971).

At the individual level, political leaders’ use of nasty rhetoric plays a role in creating prejudice against people and groups. On a larger scale, it can also play a role in the dehumanisation of entire groups of people, which can then be leveraged to drive change in institutions, governments, and societies. It conveys an image to followers in the ingroup that the opponent is inferior, insensitive to punishment and free game. Hatred towards the outgroup is normalised, which cements structural violence leading to persecution of marginalised groups, denial of rights based on group identities, or even acts of direct violence against others (Jacobs & Potter, 2000). According to Herman Goering, this permeated Nazi Germany’s propaganda machine. With violence and threats of violence, you can easily control the people.

3. Emotions in Science and Academic Writing

3.1. Emotional Science

A widely held view in the discourse of science is that science can proceed only when emotions are excluded, that emotions are seen as incompatible with rationality and objectivity of science (Barbalet, 2002). This trend has changed progressively, and emotions are slowly finding their way into our understanding of what science is. Sociology and philosophy of science is increasingly considering tight contact between emotions and scientific reasoning, e.g. for scientific motivation, scientific evaluations, scientific explanations, scientific understanding, scientific imagination, and coherence in science (Kozlov, 2023). Emotions are values that contribute to both epistemic and humanistic dimensions of science. Science is a social process like any other human activity (Latour & Woolgar, 1986).

The importance of connecting emotions and scientific reasoning is prominent in science education research, where Zembylas (2004) highlight the significance of ‘emotion metaphors’ and the performance of ‘emotional labour’ in the reality of being a science teacher. Partly because of the changing conditions of new media environments, the tight connection between emotions and science is also addressed under three themes in the field of science communication (Taddicken & Reif, 2020): (i) emotions of science communicators, (ii) emotional(ized) content, and (iii) emotions of science communication audiences. This is topic of particular interest in science communication about politicized risks, such as climate change, where some argue that researchers should express more emotions to emphasize the seriousness of the climate issue and persuade the public to act (Lidskog et al., 2020; Gregersen & Bye, 2023). Such scientific storytelling, with normative orientation and emotional appeals, can provide meaning and motivate and guide action. However, this attachment to emotions needs to be done reflexively to counteract a post-truth society where passionate imperatives go against scientific knowledge (Lidskog et al., 2020). The latter is indeed what climate sceptics in general and radical right populist climate sceptics in particular are doing.

3.2. Writing Differently

Letting forward emotions in teaching and communicating science is important. How we approach academic writing is also important. A groundswell of resistance towards traditional norms of academic writing in critical management and organization studies claims that these norms are “restrictive, inhibit the development of knowledge and excise much of what it is to be human from our learning, teaching and research” (Gilmore et al., 2019; p. 3). Livholts (2012) claims that just like academics think of which method to employ in our research, we should also think of what form of writing the research demands.

Polish-Swedish organizational sociologist Barbara Czarniawska-Joerges (1995) was a pioneer in experimental forms of academic writing, using novels and poems to critically understand organizations and management to reach beyond the often stultifying formats inculcated by ‘scientific’ norms, to engage and absorb the readers so that learning happens almost unknowingly through emotions (Parker, 2014; Kociatkiewicz & Kostera, 2016). More Swedish scholars in sociology have followed this path, with an edited volume of Edling and Rydgren (2015) including essays on different sociologies by more than 30 scholars. In a similar vein, Dubois (2022, 2025) use and analyse poetry to imagine means of action and dialogue on a community’s political organization and its relationship to the world. Linking science and art help us expand meanings and understandings of who matters (Riaz, 2023). It “broadens your affective capabilities, when you experience a broadening of your world, when it makes you know things emotionally and bodily, rather than cognitively” (Burø, 2021, pp. 692-693). While some scholars advocate writing differently to communicate less abstractly (Grey & Sinclair, 2006), others suggest that creativity might follow if academics were loosened from the binds of traditional academic writing that elision the author from the text (Gilmore et al., 2019).

Drawing on the works of French literary scholar Hélène Cixous (1976), writing differently acknowledges the value of incorporating the voice and material presence of the author (Höpfl, 2007), aiming to provide a mode of writing that develops a distinct, affective feminist politics for research seeking to effect concrete changes in challenging gendered structures (Åhäll, 2018; Vachhani, 2019). Some scholars write of their body, where the body has the potential to become a site of power and change, while others write from the body, embodying and giving voice to the writer’s emotions, unlocking her vulnerabilities (e.g. Pullen & Rhodes, 2008; Helin, 2019). Embodying the writer’s emotions, often fear, angst or anger, is the most common approach to writing differently in management and organization studies (see e.g. Beavan, 2019; Boncori & Smith, 2019; Helin, 2023).

Writing from the body does not seek to escape from academic rigour. The aim is to deepen and broaden our understanding of different phenomena in society, organizations and politics through research and theorizing in which the writing itself contributes to research and theory. It is not trying to replace academic writing with art forms such as poetry, novels, autobiographies, music and painting. Doing so would be to abandon the riches that academic research offers. Rather, writing differently aims to enrich knowledge through maintaining academic rigour while slipping the surly bonds of stultifying writing bound to a comforting but empty, homogenous and horizontal, masculine temporality following the chronological time from the past to the future (Fjelkestam, 2018). Like Surrealists wanted to liberate human creativity from the constraints of rationality to find a truer reality—a sur realité (Breton, 1924), writing differently, from the body, moves towards a vertical, feminine temporality that shifts focus from counting to content, and to a cognitive process that leads to problematizing instead of harmonizing, contextualizing instead of neutralizing, and specifying instead of generalizing (cf. Bränström Öhman, 2012).

As proposed by French philosopher of science and phenomenologist Gaston Bachelard (1934), who inspired André Breton’s manifesto of surrealism (Caws, 1966), a vertical temporality is multidimensional and connected to sensing simultaneities, a time of complexity and multitude, a time of the body that can host contradictory feelings, a time of heights and depths. It is a time of the instant that will always die and make every moment unique. Contrary to the aim of traditional academic writing based on horizontal temporality to fill gaps, writing differently based on a vertical temporality aims at creating gaps by thought-provoking research and academic texts on instants that take us by surprise (Helin, 2023). Writing differently aims at “broadening, widening and deepening knowledge and understanding by giving our ideas space in which they can flourish, create new meanings, help us learn and become human” (Gilmore et al., 2019, p. 4). Writing differently, embodying emotions of the author, is a concrete example of how emotions can enhance scientific explanations, scientific understanding, scientific imagination (cf. Barbalet, 2002; Kozlov, 2023).

3.3. Writing from the Body to Understand Victims of Nasty Rhetoric

Following the course of scholars in critical management and organization studies, I write this paper differently but still adhering to norms of academic rigour. Writing from the body, as part of my method, adds a human dimension to the otherwise soulless presentation of language and pictures of ideologically based hatred and threats. My own emotions of fear, angst and anger and related behavioural responses, evocated by being personally targeted and harmed by ideological hate and threat campaigns, including threats of murder, provides a central set of material for my interpretative analysis of the nature of nasty rhetoric. My own story led me to deep dive into research on nasty rhetoric as a crime and its harms on real people and democracy. Adding to my own testimony, my analysis draws on self-reported testimonies of two climate justice activists, Marie and Pontus, seriously harmed by nasty rhetoric in Swedish climate politics. Marie was fired from her job under questionable circumstances because her support of climate activism. Her case has rendered large interest in international media after the UN special rapporteur on environmental movements’ rights under the Aarhus Convention engaged in the case. Her testimony is exclusive for this paper, but she shares all the details of her case in a personal blog.3 Pontus was the first climate activist in Sweden being imprisoned for his climate activism, following a trespassing at an airport. His testimony is also exclusive for this paper, but he has written a book about his experiences (Bergendahl, 2025), an autobiography about civil disobedience, climate grief and hope.

I reflect upon, interpret and analyse qualitatively my own emotional and behavioural experiences and those of other victims as instants in a vertical temporality, a time of heights and depths and a body that can host contradictory feelings simultaneously (cf. Bachelard, 1934). In this sense, “this is how we can go deep in the sense of associating with that which is most important to us as well as finding ways to fly high and be connected to something bigger through writing” (Helin, 2023, p. 382).

4. Three Cases Embodying Emotions and Acknowledging Vulnerabilities

4.1. Fredrik

Referencing freedom of speech, the Swedish Police Authority permitted the Nordic Resistance Movement (NMR), a violent neo-Nazi organization recently classified by several countries as a terrorist organisation, to demonstrate at the Almedalen week in 2018. The Almedalen week is the main Swedish and the world’s largest and oldest forum for democratic dialogue between politicians, private sector actors, civil society organisations and concerned citizens. Legal and democracy experts claimed that this decision could lead to violence and that there were legal grounds not to permitting the NMR demonstration.

To me, as an academic scholar in political science and civil servant working with climate change policy and upholding liberal democracy, a point was reached where I had to react. Permitting a violent, extremist and outspoken antidemocratic terrorist organisation to demonstrate, hate and threat people at the hallmark of Swedish democratic dialogue on loose legal grounds was an ‘in-your-face’ provocation to Swedish democracy and to me. I commented in social media that the Police Authority was a coward not taking its task seriously. I tagged my comment #ACAB

My comment and tag sparked the worst months in my life. A well-known radical right influencer claimed that I was a scam criticizing the Swedish police force. This was followed by months of accusations, intimidations and incitement by a few public and hundreds of anonymous accounts on Twitter, Facebook and phone calls. I was doxxed as an enemy to the nation with my name, photo, home address and telephone number posted on radical right extremist internet forums. I should be sacked from my jobs. A man claiming to be a police officer stalked me from different anonymous phone numbers for two months, claiming that I had to come to court to defend myself or else I would be sentenced to prison. My bones should be broken. I should be killed – executed in front of my children. It was not only me that was threatened. My family, including my pet animals (which I don’t have), my friends and everyone working with me should have their bones broken.

I had been threatened before, by drunkards in the night streets and subway of Stockholm, but not me as a person and not related to my political opinions. I was just a random man that got bullied. Those instants ended after me keeping calm. In this new situation, I was attacked as a person because my political opinion was different from others and me being me. My kids were threatened because they were my kids. It left me with anger about how wicked and evil some people and the political climate had become, and with fear and anxiety about what was going to happen next. I couldn’t control or influence the inflow of evil other than closing my Twitter account, changing name on my Facebook account and turn off my mobile. The only way to handle the situation was through disappearance. Silencing in the public debate.

But why must I disappear for using my constitutional right, my freedom of expression? I had to go to work, get my kids from school, answer the phone, run, shop for food, meet with friends and family. But leaving home every morning was associated with fear and angst, as was getting home. Fear of being followed or chased. Who would wait for me and my family outside the entrance of our house? Will there be someone following me to physically harm or kill me? The anxiety exacerbated by not knowing when the inflow of hatred and threats would end, when life would turn normal. Would it continue for a week, a couple of weeks, a month, several months or longer? At some points fear and angst created darkness and depression. I lost my self-consciousness, my self-confidence and dignity as a human being. Who am I? Why was I bereft of my voice? Yet, I am a white privileged man, living in a country that yet is ranked high in global studies of democracy and safety. I could hardly imagine what would have happened and how I would have responded if I would have been a woman, a transgender person, gay, a person of indigenous background, a person of colour, a Jew or a Muslim.

The offenders succeeded in their tactics, partially. I fell silent for more than five years. I self-censored my posts on social media. I stopped commenting Swedish politics. But when the use of hate speech and hate crime increased in the subject area of my own research, I felt that enough is enough. I had to resist and tell the world what is happening. I became radicalised.

Since then, I regularly write essays and op-eds on climate policy, democracy and antifascism in Swedish newspapers and magazines. I am openly critical on social media to the Tidö parties, currently governing Sweden. I also realised that doing research and writing will not change the world alone. I know that people read my papers, essays and posts, and that some are inspired. But I’ve taken my social science activism further and am now active member and sit on the national board of a political party that combines activism and parliamentarism to stop fascism and end social and economic injustice bottom-up. I’m not a policy professional turning to science to find arguments for my policy proposals, I’m a social scientist turning to politics because of the findings of my research.

4.2. Marie

I had worked with the energy/climate issue for long but felt lonely. I struggled myself to try to get the climate message across, including at work, where I created a type of climate workshop to engage people and went on for quite a long time before I realised that I had to join something bigger and get support from others to cope. I tried to get involved in four different organisations to see what I would like best (2022-2023), of which the Mother Rebellion (MR)4 and Greenpeace are two where I remain active. I like Mother Rebellion because the organisation is incredibly flat, with high ceilings and lots of loving. There is no leadership, and you are very free to act with people who really want to make a difference. There is an incredible amount of knowledge in that organisation, and it is a privilege to be able to socialise and discuss such big issues with many people who know the issues.

In 2024 I was dismissed from my employment as national gas coordinator at the at the Swedish Energy Agency due to harassments, accusations and intimidations of my predecessor and right-wing and radical right media that I was a threat to Swedish national security. Once fired and the minister for civil defence had officially accused me, more newspapers wrote about the case taking the side of the person who initially harassed. This led to me being further targeted in a collective and coordinated online hate speech campaign. I was accused, among other things, of being disloyal to Sweden, unreliable, prepared to blow up gas pipelines, etc. My probationary period was cancelled immediately, only three days before it ended and I was supposed to get a permanent employment. The alleged reason for the accusations was that I had forwarded on my open Facebook account an invitation to a climate demonstration organised by MR, a peaceful subgroup of XR. Compared to XR, MR does not engage in civil disobedience. Their climate actions are mainly friendly sit-ins with singing.

I was shocked and scared but also sad and disgraced by the hate campaign. Initially, I blamed myself for what had happened, even though the accusations were completely absurd. I thought at first that I had done something wrong, but I later realised how it was all staged and understood that it wasn’t my fault. Since I was publicly targeted, it affected my chances of getting a new job, and many of my previous work contacts no longer dared to have contact with me. I chose to be open about what had happened and was interviewed in national as well as international media yet remaining anonymous to protect my current work and my family.

Being open to people in MR, I received so much support that the feeling of guilt was replaced by a determination to try and make the best of the situation and spread this bizarre story as much as possible, to protect other climate activists and try to avoid similar things happening again. I nurtured a hope that my case could lead to something positive, as a clear example of the antidemocratic currents that shape Sweden today. In this regard, I am so happy that the UN Special Rapporteur on rights of environmental organisations under the UN Aarhus Convention has engaged himself in my case.5

The aftermath of the hate campaign and being fired from the Swedish Energy Agency is still ongoing. My trade union brought the case to the Chancellor of Justice and later sued the state at the District Court for violating my human rights. The trial was held in court in mid-May 2026, and the verdict was communicated in late June. The verdict of the district court was very ambiguous. It ruled that the Swedish Energy Agency had violated my human rights by firing me, but also that they had the right to fire me. Thus, the main question of what a government employee can think and do in her/his spare time was never answered.

***

When the verdict was announced, I was at first very surprised, almost overwhelmed and had a hard time understanding why it turned out the way it did. Now, I’m basically a very positive person, so that may have been why, but I was so sure that we would win. I thought it was obvious that we were right, partly because it had been clear that both of my former bosses lied during the process in the District Court. But now the court had still managed to formulate it as if it didn’t matter that they lied! It felt so unreal.

At first, it all felt like a big failure. I was at Almedalen6 when I got the information and had to take a walk by myself to be able to swallow it. I ended up in the middle of town and bought a pair of sunglasses to hide behind and hoped that no one would recognise me. I actually haven’t felt like this before in this story. I didn’t feel guilty, because I didn’t think we had done wrong, but I did feel shame towards the entire climate movement. It was as if we had completely failed. As if I had suggested that we in the climate movement would get redress for completely unreasonable accusations, but that I had not managed to deliver.

I never took the accusations in the media campaign personally. This feeling was reinforced by the Swedish Energy Agency’s actions, because I knew the driving forces and the people behind them. On the other hand, I felt an enormous amount of anger that they had managed to cast suspicion on an entire movement – on people who in their spare time fight to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. I felt angry that my former bosses cast suspicion that I and my fellow members in the climate justice movement would blow up gas pipelines that would lead to increased amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The whole thing is so absurd, so I couldn’t understand that we could have failed.

But then after a while, I can also see that we also won, even if we did not reach all the way. The District Court states that the Swedish Energy Agency has violated my rights and freedoms, which means that they have violated the Swedish Constitution. So that’s huge in itself.

But at the same time, the court formulates itself as if the Swedish Energy Agency also had the right to violate the constitution, which is simply not true. It was simply a cowardly verdict; the court has not dared to address the basic question of which law is overriding the other; the Security Protection Act or the constitutional freedom of expression. The verdict may thus lead to the freedom of expression and opinion of state officials (which are constitutionally protected) being restricted.

I am not running this process for my own financial gain in any way, and the money that I possibly win will go to the climate movement. So, it would have been nice if the money I got for damages had been bigger, and came before the election, so it is of course disappointing. Because of the ambiguities, my trade union has decided to appeal the judgment to the Labour Court.

***

I understand that there are very dangerous people involved in this story and I have, for example, moved my children’s permanent address to their fathers to ensure that no one connects their name with mine. They live alternately. I didn't want their name to come up if you search for my address.

Now, I understand why I was exposed and don’t take it personally, I understand that the person who initiated the online hate campaign has a need for revenge against the Swedish Energy Agency. However, I feel that it has affected my work opportunities, which makes me very angry. I’m angry because we live in a society where people are afraid of such obvious things as demonstrating for a sensible climate policy and that people are scared to get involved.

The pernicious polarisation in society and the ways in which the current government restricts our possibility to communicate and protest frightens me. I’m afraid my harm might scare others into silence, but simultaneously I hope it will help others get involved. I am so incredibly grateful and happy for the support I have received from others in the climate justice movement, and from brave climate journalists who have highlighted my bizarre case.

I am angry that Sweden is governed in such a way that security classifications at work are politicised and they are increasingly used in the public sector to control who is appointed to a position. Not necessarily because the work involves managing classified tasks, but as a way to stop people with different opinions. I am angry with the Swedish Energy Agency for their cowardice, not daring to stand up for human rights. I’m angry with those who started the hate campaign because they got away with it.

It’s sick that this could have happened from the start. But in all, the hate campaign and the hard economic repression that follows being fired from a job have not stopped me in my commitment. On the contrary, being severely harmed has made me even more determined to continue. My case is yet another proof that we are united in the climate justice movement. I am proud to be part of something constructive and positive. I think I’m a winner somewhere, and if it makes people becoming less afraid, if it becomes more difficult to repress or dismiss people who engage in activism from employment, then this has contributed to something good. Together with brave journalists and my trade union, and the support from my fellow activists, I have shown that if you fire people who are committed to the climate issue without reason, then you will appear as a villain in newspapers. Even the UN steps in and writes the world’s finest letter. Such strong words! The UN’s letter was to all of us. Not just for me. I’ve come out of this stronger. And now I feel that there has been a point to everything. We have managed to turn a hate campaign into something positive.

Nevertheless, I am above all terrified of what the climate catastrophe will mean for my children and for others who are innocent of what is to come. Although I am afraid of those who started the hate campaign and Sweden’s destructive forces that are gradually dismantling democracy, I am even more afraid of what the climate crisis will mean, which is why I am determined to try to do what I can to influence.

4.3. Pontus

The wildfires in Swedish forests and Greta Thunberg’s climate strikes in 2018 made me realise that climate change is a real and acute problem. The issue about ‘someone should address climate change’ became highly personal for me and I joined Fridays for Future (FFF) but changed to Extinction Rebellion (XR) in 2019 because of their more direct actions. I resigned from my job in 2021 and have since worked full-time as a climate justice activist, without pay or benefits. In 2021, I left XR and joined Restore Wetlands, since I consider it the most effective climate organisation in Sweden, particularly regarding the structured decision-making process, focus on winning demands and professionalism around the actions. Since the beginning, I have blockaded oil ports, coal-fired power plants and airports, occupied buildings, stopped forestry machines, dug ditches in peat quarries and blocked traffic more times than I can count.

I’ve had a constant threat of being imprisoned since 2020. There is always some preliminary investigation with prison on the punishment scale. Personally, I think it’s the hardest, that you never know if and when you’re going to end up in prison. It’s a constant worry and it makes it difficult for me and my family to make longer plans. That is why I chose not to appeal the prison sentence after the action at an airport in 2020 and instead serve the time in prison.

A couple of months after I was released, I was caught walking in a demonstration procession over a bridge in Stockholm, Sweden. There I was caught and suspected of sabotage. The prosecutor asked for six to eight months in prison. And then, the threat of prison was back again. Today I sit with suspicion of gross illegal intrusion on peat bogs, which can result in six to twelve months in prison. I’ve gotten used to living with the threat of prison. It’s part of the job.

Personally, I feel pretty good when I’m locked up. I can take a break from activism and enjoy the little things. Most of the time I work with reading and writing. I usually say that being locked up for a little longer is like a retreat, or like an adult kindergarten where you get three meals a day. I have written a lot about the freedom to be locked up, the freedom to overcome one’s fear of repression, the freedom to disobey and the freedom in the stripped-down, simple environment inside. As a climate justice activist, you are an odd bird in prison and detention, so there are often no problems with other inmates. However, I notice that I must take a week off after I’ve been locked up. Inevitably, there is some stress in the background of being deprived of liberty.

I have received many death threats and threats of violence targeting both me and my family. It means that I am more careful when I move around town so as not to be knocked down by someone who recognizes me. The threats to the family are much, much worse. However, nothing has happened yet. I think that most threats are just empty. So far, I’ve only received fake orders and nasty letters. When a brick goes through the window, or something similar happens, we must rethink how the threats affect us and what we can do to reduce them.

I have been beaten and physically threatened (for example, being run over by the motorist in front of me or that the excavator operator is going to crush my arms). In that moment, I get completely cold. Silent and passive. Afterwards, I can be very sad and sad that people can be so mean. These events have made me more afraid that staff and people around the action will act violently towards me or my friends.

I have also been subjected to police violence a few times. The worst was when I sat on a runway alone with a sign. They drew their guns, wrestled me down and put the handcuffs on so hard that I had nerve damage for a year afterwards. Before, I was never afraid when the police came. On the contrary, it felt safe that they could calm down the situation. Today I am afraid of how the police will react. It's not until I notice that they are professional and calm that I can relax.

I have noticed that the increasing state repression has made people much more cautious about demonstrating and taking part in actions. This is the so-called cooling effect. It is even difficult to get people to join completely legal demonstrations/actions. With the small group of radical activists in Restore Wetlands and parts of Extinction Rebellion, it is the other way around. We are only strengthened in our conviction and what is required when we have serious suspicions directed at us. After the trial, we sometimes go out immediately afterwards and do the same thing again, to show that we never give in to hard repression.

We know that our methods work because we measure and investigate the effects. We can also see that petitions and permitted demonstrations have less effect, both in media space and being able to influence decision-makers. The fact that we in Restore Wetlands have had such a great impact on restoring wetlands, and that the Swedish Riksdag has adopted an announcement to the Government to present a proposal for a ban on peat mining and for restoring wetlands shows that we are successful. You must disturb to be heard, and we disturb just enough for it to have an effect.

But the fact that we are completely ignored by authorities and politicians while state repression is increasing, with proposals for sabotage charges and using the anti-terror legislation against us, has made me loose hope in the political parliamentary system. I, and many with me, consider not to vote in the next election7. On the other hand, our struggle has become more of a struggle for democracy and human rights, in parallel to the struggle for our survival. The discussion on deepening and developing democracy has become a central part of our work.

Many climate justice activists find that the police and the prosecutor are often biased in the conflicts we find ourselves in. Reports of environmental crimes, assault, perjury (staff from the fossil fuel companies who outright lie in court) are not considered or are immediately dropped. On site, the police usually are prejudiced that we are the ones who are breaking the law. Knowledge of international law and governing conventions is very inadequate. However, we have a lot of very good personal meetings with individual police officers in the field where we can meet and an understanding arises. In the trials, we have so far received an objective factual assessment. We often have to defend ourselves without being interrupted. We have also won many judgments on the most serious charges, such as sabotage and gross unlawful trespassing. Unfortunately, the courts consistently duck in dealing with the issue of emergency law. Even in the rulings, we do not get a good justification as to why the right of necessity should not be applicable. But overall, I look forward to trials and feel secure that I will receive a fair assessment.

The effects of climate change are only getting worse. In its wake, we see that populism and right-wing extremism are spreading with the dismantling of democratic principles. This means that I know that hard repression, threats and violence will increase. The same with the resistance movement that activism entails, the more we become and the more we can influence, the tougher the resistance we will get. It is not possible to win this battle without sacrifice. I’m slowly getting used to the idea of multi-year prison sentences and damages in the multi-million class. It’s gone so far that I can’t really see that I have a long life ahead of me.

Finally, I can say that life as a full-time activist is extremely stressful from all sides. Financially, the vulnerability to stand out, the uncertainty, the fear of getting in trouble and the inadequacy. It is more the rule than the exception that you have a few periods of exhaustion behind you. I’ve had a couple where I haven’t had the energy to work more than an hour a day. Just a visit to the store 100m from home was so exhausting that I had to sleep for an hour afterwards. They usually last a few months if you take it easy.

5. Reason and Resonance of Emotions Embodied

Do our experiences as victims of nasty politics and rhetoric, including symbolic, cultural but also structural economic and legal violence, mean something to people beyond the three of us, our families, our friends and colleagues? Do they mean something for understanding nasty politics and nasty rhetoric? I believe so. Our experiences confirm previous studies, reporting that victims of hate speech and hate crime react emotionally with fear, unrest, discomfort, frustration, angst and sometimes anger (Lazarus, 1991; Calvert, 1997; Lang et al., 2000; Wagner & Morisi, 2019; Cowan & Hodge, 2022; Renström et al., 2023; Glad et al., 2024). Fear and angst, in turn, evocate posttraumatic stress disorder and depression symptoms, as well as feelings of distrust, suspicion and insecurity (Hagerlid, 2021; Allwood et al., 2022; Wachs et al., 2022; Glad et al., 2024; Wypych & Bilewicz, 2024). But a key lesson from more critical research is that victims of racist, misogynist or political hate speech and hate crime respond differently, depending upon several factors, such as personal identity, political ideology, social embeddedness, victimisation as an individual person or as member of a group, victimisation in their occupation or as private persons, support of management etcetera (see e.g. Hagerlid, 2021; Atak, 2022; Glad et al., 2024; Ilse & Hagerlid, 2025; von Malmborg, 2026).

The personal stories of myself, Marie and Pontus illustrate both similarities and differences in our emotional and behavioural responses to nasty politics and rhetoric. All of us got scared, but also angry, providing evidence of a vertical temporality with accusations, intimidations, incitements and violence showing up as instants to the victims – instants holding somewhat contradictory feelings. This section let our experiences reason and resonate with theory and emotional and behavioural responses of other victims of nasty rhetoric interviewed in a related study (von Malmborg, 2026). Some reinforce the narrative in our stories, others may contradict it or provide other insights.

5.1. Emotional Responses

5.1.1. Fear, Insecurity and Angst

Being targeted, Marie, Pontus and I initially became scared and felt discomfort from hate speech. This grew into fear. Fear of what would come. Fear of being physically harmed or even killed. Fear of our children and families being physically harmed. It made us insecure, imagining how we were followed or chased to and from work or just walking in town. Not knowing when the next attack would appear or if they would ever stop so life could get normal made especially me anxious. Not knowing if a threat will be realised, keeping in mind that there may be physically violent people who go from words to action, triggered by incitements made by others. Compared to Marie and Pontus, I was alone and had no one in a similar situation to share my emotions and thoughts with. They had the support of other climate activists. Similar emotional responses as ours were mentioned by climate scientists and climate journalists severely threatened, getting afraid from the content in the hateful and threatening messages targeting them and potentially their children and family in person (von Malmborg, 2026a, p. 111):

I remember laughing at the first threat that came. It was so banal, such blatant lies. There were five individuals/organizations that over a period of nine months wrote ‘articles’ with lies, several a day. Each article was followed by harassments and threats from their followers. The phone rang non-stop, the e-mail inbox was filled up, all social media accounts were sabotaged. It wasn’t really the content that tired me, but the amount... After a couple of months, a death threat came that was so cold and uncomfortably worded that I was really scared, and after that it was hard to stop being afraid. As if something had shifted inside me.

(journalist)

As reported by Dreißigacker et al. (2024), victims of online hate speech exhibit a more pronounced feeling of insecurity outside the Internet, while victims of offline hate speech did not show the same sense of insecurity. Their research indicates that insecurity rise from the uncontrollable spread of hatred on the Internet reaching its victims even in protected private spheres. Victims being threatened with physical violence or even murder perceive heightened risks of being followed or chased. Climate journalists attacked are usually equipped with personal safety alarms and their homes equipped with security doors and windows and surveillance cameras to reduce the risks of direct physical violence, but only if they work at large newspapers or public service (von Malmborg, 2026a). Climate scientists are also attacked because of their occupation, but they say that they get little help from security departments at the universities. At best they get help to censor future e-mails, reducing the inflow of hate and threats, but not other measure to increase personal security from direct violence, e.g. related to a risk of being followed or chased (von Malmborg, 2026a, p. 96).

The security department was involved, I got a crash course in safety and was taught, among other things, that if I was physically attacked, I would run in zigzags. That instruction has stubbornly lingered in the back of my mind.

(scientist)

Emotional responses of climate scientists and journalists resemble mine and those reported in Swedish research on hate speech based on misogynist or racist motives (Hagerlid, 2021; Atak, 2022; Ilse & Hagerlid, 2024).

Climate justice activists like Marie and Pontus do also take offense to hate and threats, but unlike journalists and scientists and myself they are not scared or afraid to the same extent. They tend to see insults and accusations as ‘background noise’ that they must live with. They are more afraid of and anxious about the climate emergency, and they get scared by the PM’s general accusation that the climate justice movement is totalitarian and an antidemocratic security threat. Not from the content of the accusations, but from the message it sends to people in society that it is normal and legitimate to follow suit and expand the use nasty rhetoric to increase polarisation and dehumanisation (cf. Jamieson & Taussig, 2017; Crawford & Brandt, 2020; Abuín-Vences et al., 2022; Renström et al., 2023). Climate justice activists actively support each other in the movements and have learned that the orchestrated hate speech and hate crime targeting them are not about them as individual persons, but climate activism as a political movement.

As part of the nasty rhetoric of Swedish right-wing politicians, climate justice activists are also harmed from expanding hard state repression, being fired from their jobs, denied citizenship, threatened with deportation and prosecuted and sentenced for sabotage (von Malmborg, 2026b). As expressed by Pontus, they worry more about lawsuits and other forms of economic and legal violence than emotional and potential physical harm caused and instigated by hate speech. Police interventions and lawsuits following climate actions, with face-to-face threats from officers of the judicial system, and the suspicions of more severe crimes and potential imprisonment also lead to emotional reactions among climate activists. They worry about penalties, potentially imprisonment and its implications economically and professionally. Will they get a new job if fired? But they also worry about practical things such as how things will go at work and with the family while they are on trial and whether they will be sentenced to prison. As reported by von Malmborg (2026a), many climate justice activists talks about a sense of surrealism and schizophrenia leading to physical illness and depression (cf. Allwood et al., 2022; Wachs et al., 2022; Wypych & Bilewicz, 2024. But to Pontus, spending time in prison was a kind of retreat, giving space and time to reflect, read and think about climate activism without having to take care of everyday-life issues.

5.1.2. Anger

Disapproval and disappointment with political and business leaders ignoring their responsibilities to take action on the climate emergency made both Marie and Pontus become climate justice activists in the first instance. The system inertia sourced an anger to advocate structural change through climate justice activism (Wettergren, 2025).

Pontus and other radical climate activists tell that they have balanced pros and cons of radical climate activism, taking part in civil disobedience actions, and found that it is worth taking the risk of being prosecuted and sentenced. They stand up for their actions and do not want to be martyrs harmed by responses to their activism. Rather than getting scared, they find nasty rhetoric part of a larger strategy orchestrated by populist radical right politicians to perniciously polarise and break down society and democracy, to safeguard economic growth and white male supremacy (cf. Hultman et al., 2017; Vowles & Hultman, 2021a). The disappointment and disapproval turned into anger and they were strengthened in their conviction that they are both emotionally and ideologically right, and that current climate policy as well as politicians in power and perpetrators of hate speech are wrong. To them, the fight for a just climate transition is so important that they largely set aside or stand above negative emotional reactions from hate speech.

Both Marie and Pontus stress reacting upon nasty rhetoric with anger. Compared to hate, anger is a constructive force, which makes a person wanting to change the opponents, not hurt or eliminate them (cf. Martínez et al., 2022a, 2022b). As other climate justice activists they are convinced that they must continue their effort to make people change to save the planet, both climate politicians and offenders and bystanders in nasty rhetoric. By this, they and their fellow climate justice activists, challenging status quo, reclaim the right to feel and show anger (cf. Wettergren, 2012). Rather than creating destabilising feelings of cynicism and resignation, both Marie and Pontus, who are severely harmed by hard state repression and the injustices in the system, describe that moral outrage and anger create hope, i.e. a sense of future possibilities, faith and trust in the collective movement, which in turn can create cohesion. They relentlessly stress the importance of the movement and the different people and organisations that support them in their struggle, but also how their two different cases feed back into the movement, instilling hope.

In comparison, I got angry from the beginning when targeted, but my anger rose several years after being harmed by nasty rhetoric and injustice in the system. Reflecting on the reason, I found myself alone at the time. Despite knowing that other people were also victims of hate speech, it was mainly an issue for politicians and journalists. That people rather unknown to the public was targets of hate speech and death threats was uncommon at the time. Four to five years later, with a populist radical right party holding powers, the situation had changed. There was a larger community to discuss experiences with, which made it easier to host emotions of anger and use it as a constructive force.

5.1.3. Hope

We live in times of a climate change emergency. At the same time, populist radical right parties are advocating an authoritarian change of politics and governance that changes peoples’ views on culture, language and other people. However, these losses to people and societies caring for nature and other people will one day certainly be regarded as episodes – moments or instants – in history’s long struggle for human emancipation (Weiss, 2005). As advocated by Marie, Pontus and me, this reminds us of our opportunity for agency, not to be passive. This, in turn, gives us hope, a feeling of future possibilities. Fear, with anger as a bridge, is a companion to hope, and a reasonable balance between hope and fear can make hope more in tune with real-world circumstances.

The hope that meaningful climate action is possible is an important emotion for climate activists, not least because catastrophic climate events like droughts, wildfires and flooding are already witnessed around the world, also in the Global North (Kleres & Wettergren, 2017; Wettergren, 2025). The same is true for the defenders and developers of democracy (Somer et al., 2021), even though the present looks very gloomy with populist radical right parties holding powers and being successful in influencing conservatives to gain parliamentary majority for anti-democratic and anti-climate policies. This does not reduce hope but can lead to other emotions and emotional-cognitive orientations, such as anger and restoration, becoming more central to motivating collective action (Kleres & Wettergren, 2017; Wettergren, 2025). Hope appears in an action continuum where hope is never really passive, which is why the (collective) action itself generates hope and manages fear. Hope in this sense is a verb, an action.

5.2. Behavioural Responses

Because of my fear from being targeted by hate and threats, I withdrew from the public discussion on political issues for several years. I fell silent, avoided or censored posts on social media. In addition to such withdrawal, my previous analysis of victims of nasty rhetoric in Swedish climate politics identified resistance as a behavioural response (von Malmborg, 2026a). In all, this equals the basic flighting or fighting behavioural reactions to negative emotions (Izard, 2010; Lebel, 2016). But I didn’t remain silent forever. The increasing use of nasty rhetoric and the antidemocratic behaviour of the current Swedish government made me radicalized. Being able to reason and resonate with other people being targeted and harmed, my anger rose and I became a social scientist social activist. I analyse and write publicly in academic papers, op-eds and essays and participate in podcasts and open seminars on hate speech, hate crime and nasty politics with nasty rhetoric. In comparison, Marie and Pontus, being targeted also with hard repression, never really silenced. They had a community of fellow activists that helped them channel their anger into resistance from the very beginning.

5.2.1. Silence

Silence seems to come in two forms: (i) professional, and (ii) political. Professional silence means changing job, e.g. quitting work as a journalist or changing research focus, withdrawing from research in areas that have become politically contested and polarised. Political silence means withdrawing from public debates on politically polarised topics. Climate scientists and journalists respond in both ways to nasty rhetoric, and they report reduced fear of crime after self-censoring and withdrawing from the public debate (von Malmborg, 2026). This indicates that professional and political withdrawal is a plausible coping strategy for victims of hate speech and hate crime based on antagonistic political preferences, but it differs for victims of more explicit identity-related hate speech and hate crime such as people in the LGBTQ+ community (Ilse & Hagerlid, 2024). Hate speech and hate crime targeting scientists and journalists may impact their identity as professionals, but not their personal identity and personhood.

Drawing on insights of sociology of emotions (Kemper, 2006; Wettergren (2013), a reason that scientists and journalists, as well as I initially, get silent and withdraw after being targeted by hate speech is the negative relational connotations to emotions like fear, angst and depression, also linked to shame. They are all emotions related to loss of power or status and should not be expressed in the hegemonic emotion regime as they are signs of weakness. I was alone in my victimisation. The same holds true for many journalists and scientists, who often receive hate from perpetrators within their own workplaces (von Malmborg, 2026a).

Some climate justice activists, but not all, do also withdraw from the political conversation. They step back from civil disobedience protests like roadblocks or disturbing TV shows to more friendly actions like song sit-ins, or withdraw and remain silent after being subjected to hate and threats, often people with families being worried. As Pontus mentions, people are more cautious about demonstrating and taking part in climate actions, even in completely legal demonstrations/actions.

5.2.2. Resistance

Threats to a person’s safety or resources are seen as realistic threats (Stephan & Stephan, 2017). In comparison to symbolic threats to a person’s worldview that elicit emotions of hate, realistic threats give rise to anger and dislike. While hate is a destructive force, anger is a constructive force, which makes a person wanting to change the offender, not hurt or eliminate it (cf. Martínez et al., 2022a, 2022b).

As mentioned, I withdrew and fell silent. An important factor for this response was the seriousness of the threats I received – physical violence and murder – and the lack of people in a similar situation to talk to. In addition, my kids were threatened, indirectly. But eventually, I decided to end the silence. Experiencing how more people are harmed in similar ways for similar reasons as me, a feeling of anger, combined with emotions of contempt, disapproval, antipathy towards the instigators of nasty politics and rhetoric, rose inside me. I had to tell the world about what is happening. Like Marie and Pontus, I want to help people open their eyes and resist, to make a change, contributing to transformative justice interventions capable of promoting social change (e.g., Gready & Robins 2019; Chisari, 2024).

Some climate activists targeted, particularly the more radical ones like Pontus, but also Marie also react with anger, contempt, disapproval and antipathy towards the offenders. When the climate minister cancelled a meeting because an attendant was engaged in XR and the PM claimed that XR is “a threat to Swedish democracy and just pretend to care for the climate”, spokespersons of Greenpeace and XR commented sharply in social media and newspapers:8

We need to talk about democracy, Ulf Kristersson.

(Greenpeace)

It’s really, really bad that PM accuses XR of being a security threat instead of taking the climate threat seriously.

(XR)

Members of the Swedish climate justice organization Take Back the Future also got angry about the PM’s statement. In a press release, they clarified:

We are a truly peaceful movement. When the PM lied about his own policies during his open after-works, we felt a need to protest in the way we could. The fact that the PM is now portraying peaceful children and young people as a security threat is undemocratic.

Reacting with anger and antipathy, climate justice activists and their organisations are sometimes responding to hate speech with insults and accusations themselves, but with a humoristic twist. Adhering to norms of deliberative democracy, sacralising the good argument, hate and threats have little or no place in the repertoire of climate activists. Previous research portraits climate activists as ‘radically kind’ that use humour in digital activism to transform democracy (Pickard et al., 2020; Sloam et al., 2022; Chiew et al., 2024). This humoristic turn to nasty rhetoric was evident in Greta Thunberg’s insulting response to an intimidation by a leading SD politician outside the entrance of the Riksdag – a laughter, saying that the perpetrator is a loser (von Malmborg, 2026b). In a similar vein, Greenpeace and FFF organised a demonstration outside the government’s national climate meeting in June 2023, to which they were not invited. The invitation to the demonstration referred to the government’s “climate meeting” with presence of “civil society organizations”. Adding quotation marks, they wanted to insult the government in a subtle way insinuated that the meeting was not a real climate meeting and that civil society organiations were not properly represented.

Exposure to derogatory language can also lead to political radicalisation and deteriorates intergroup relations (Bilewicz & Soral, 2020; Schäfer et al., 2022; Renström et al., 2023). The increased presence of hate speech in one’s environment creates a sense of a descriptive norm that allows outgroup derogation, which leads to polarisation and the erosion of existing anti-discriminatory norms. Renström et al. (2023) found that individuals reacting to threats with hate or more aggressive emotions, are more prone to affective polarisation and intergroup differentiation with increased reliance on stereotypes.

This is evident in the case of Swedish climate politics. The government uses nasty politics and nasty rhetoric to polarise the political landscape. Climate activists implicitly enhance this detrimental journey by responding to its critics as an enemy outgroup, i.e. anti-democratic and climate sceptic politicians using nasty rhetoric (von Malmborg, 2026). Climate activists like Marie and Pontus both testify that they are more afraid and anxious about the climate emergency and that politicians and business leaders are not acting appropriately fast and ambitious given the severe situation. They are strengthened in their conviction that they are right, and the perpetrators are wrong. Based on climate science and deliberative democracy, critical to the hegemonic norm of liberal democracy, neoliberal economics and economic growth, they are fighting for the sake of the climate, human rights of current and future generations and democracy. They get angry and want to make things clear in a constructive way, make perpetrators understand that they are wrong and the real threat to democracy.

Instead of being deterred and silenced by accusations, intimidations and hard state repression, activists convicted of crime take their punishment, usually fines, sometimes imprisonment and they are radicalised in the eyes of the government, who increases the stakes in hard state repression. Nasty rhetoric ignites anger, a holy wrath, that radicalizes some. Not to turn violent, but like Pontus, to intensify peaceful actions of civil disobedience over and over again to pursue their science-based argumentation for strong climate policy and degrowth. They may be arrested at a climate action, but as soon they are released they return to the action. One example is Greta Thunberg, who has been prosecuted and sentenced to fines several times. Compared to emotions like fear and anxiety, sociology of emotions suggests that emotions like anger, disappointment and antipathy should be expressed to reclaim power and status in the hegemonic emotional regime (Klemper, 2006; Wettergren, 2013).

Marie directed her anger in two ways. She has been more active in MR after being fired and targeted with hate speech. But more importantly, she sued the Swedish state in a unique court case, accusing the Swedish Energy Agency of violating her human rights. The case is important not only for Marie, but for all climate justice activists and all people raising or wanting to raise their voices to detrimental policies, nasty politics and other system injustices. As commented by Marie, the verdict was ambiguous why it will be appealed.

Since anger is normally reserved as an emotion rule for those in power, people and social movements reclaiming the right to feel and show anger are at risk of state repression in more repressive regimes or contexts (Wettergren, 2012). The reactions of the Swedish government to protests of climate activists is an obvious example. We have recently seen similar reactions towards Swedish protestors to the Israeli genocide in Gaza. The repeated climate actions by some activists, perceived of as radicalisation by the government, feed the hate of some climate antagonists. Both Pontus and Greta Thunberg have reflected on the extreme political existence they and other climate activists find themselves in. As Pontus mentions in this paper, and Greta Thunberg mentions in As We Burn, a documentary film about FFF, both have accepted that they will probably not live long lives.

6. Interpreting Nasty Rhetoric

6.1. Nasty Rhetoric as a Swarm of Instants

No matter if the offender aims to emotionally hurt the target or use nasty rhetoric to socially fit in, each insult, accusation, intimidation or incitement is an emotional instant to the victim. Even if each case comes into being after a process of thinking and preparation from the offender, sometimes carefully elaborated for timing to set the stage in a political debate, it appears suddenly to the victim. To Bachelard (1934), every instant is suspended between two voids. An instant will always die, making every moment unique, with no history or future (Helin, 2023). Victims of nasty rhetoric, reacting with fear, angst or anger (Lazarus, 1991; Cowan & Hodge, 2022; Renström et al., 2023), would wish that an accusation or incitement has no future or history—that it would die. But they keep coming, in new shapes, in new forms, from new offenders, sometimes asynchronously (Lee-Won et al., 2019), sometimes in a coordinated manner as ‘networked harassment’ (Marwick, 2021). Not in a continuous flow in a horizontal temporality, but haphazardly as new instants in a vertical temporality. Each time, the victim hopes that the instant dies, but each new instant from multiple sources adds to a swarm of instants with no clear beginning and end, magnifying the effects on the victims in terms of emotional, behavioural and relational harm (cf. Lee-Won et al., 2019). The victim becomes lost in the void with contradictory feelings – afraid, anxious and angry.

6.2. Nasty Rhetoric as a Traffic Cone

Nasty rhetoric appears to victims as a swarm of instants in a vertical temporality, leading to contradictory feelings and different behaviours. The different behaviours used by victims to cope with hate speech and hard state repression – flight or fight – makes me think metaphorically of nasty rhetoric as a traffic cone. While some victims flight, hide under the wide end and turn silent, others fight and use it as a megaphone to speak louder to mobilise followers and backfire on the perpetrators of nasty rhetoric. The traffic cone is an illustrative metaphor since it is normally used to block traffic in the roads, like climate activists did to get attention and raise awareness about the climate emergency. Such roadblocks is what ignited the escalation of leading politicians’ nasty rhetoric against advocates of strong climate policy.

7. Learning from Writing Differently

Traditional norms of academic writing are criticized for excising much of what it is to be human from our research and learning. Writing differently about dehumanizing nasty rhetoric in Swedish climate politics, openly embodying emotions and vulnerabilities of myself and two other victims, and resonating with previous research, the fear and anxiety, but also anger and hope, related to individual human beings harmed by hatred, threats and hard repression, adds a new, emotional and vulnerable dimension to the otherwise soulless presentation of words and pictures of political hate speech and hate crime.

Writing differently can be seen as “earthquakes that shift the tectonic plates of management learning to usher in something new” (Gilmore et al., 2019, p. 9). The same would be true for political science or social sciences in general. I hope that this paper, through vertical writing, drawing from surrealism and phenomenology (Caws, 1966), can touch vulnerable flesh and help the reader and the critical policy studies community to understand and learn more engaged about the nature of nasty rhetoric as a phenomenon targeting humans. Learn to understand the anxiety of not being able to live as human beings with dignity. Through the experiences of Marie, Pontus and myself, the power of powerlessness is portrayed – not to be allowed to live, but only to survive. But the power of hope and anger is also portrayed and analysed, where hope as an emotion of future possibility guiding present action, that helps victims of nasty politics individually but particularly collectively reclaim the right to feel and show anger and make resistance towards injustice. Anger as a power emotion can attenuate fear which is an emotion of powerlessness. This confirms the potential of hope and anger for social change and how we collectively create the future (Wettergren, 2025).

Thus, the paper may also invoke new political and ethical practices to delegitimize nasty politics and nasty rhetoric in climate politics and in general (cf. Henderson & Black, 2017; Gilmore et al., 2019; Helin, 2019, 2023). Being a victim myself, I’m not speaking for, but in solidarity with other victims and knowledge producers inside and outside of academic institutions. Writing differently, from my body and the bodies of Marie and Pontus, could provide an opportunity for the possibilities of wonder, despair, disgust and imagination in critical policy studies revealing the true nature of nasty politics (cf. Carlsen & Sandelands, 2015). Even the smallest vertical movement to engagement with non-linear forms of temporality, addressing the instant, might help in moving toward such a vulnerable understanding (Page, 2017). This bears resemblance to critical studies of arts–activism in management and organization research, that researchers should not only write about the arts, but also doing the arts (Riaz, 2023). As mentioned by Danish anarchist punk rock kid in academia, Thomas Burø, in a meditation on the entanglement of punk rock arts and activism with organization studies (2021, p. 689):

The premise was to write songs that could express a state of crisis. We did not want to write statement songs about crisis, we wanted to write from the point of view of crisis: how does it feel to live in a failing socio-economic and ecological system.

Like living arts, writing from the body is an important space open to critical scholars, to be what we are and for our activism against oppressive systems. In this vein, recognizing that activism often requires artistic expression of various types, Riaz (2023) argues we should interpret the call for more activist academic lives (Gray, 2023) as a call also for doing art and being ourselves through art. While Bourdieu (2008) encourages us to “organize a more effective resistance” (p. 152), the reverse – enhancing our conversation and engagement with ourselves – could also rescue us and defend our freedom from the encroachment of current oppressive systems on ourselves and our worldviews (cf. Riaz, 2023).